by K. J. Emrick
I picked out the cardboard Santa with his sleigh and reindeer. “I have a few ideas brewing, Rosie. You know me.”
She gave me a level look. “Yes. I do. Been nearly shot with ya before. Trouble likes to keep close company with Dell Powers, and that’s a fact. Just promise me you’ll be careful?”
I gave her a quick hug as I made that promise, even though I knew careful was a relative term whenever a mystery came to Lakeshore. Then I sent her on her way back to the kitchen.
As she went, she bumped into the painting of Lieutenant Governor David Collins on its tripod easel. The painting of Australia’s onetime caretaker, the proper man with the long face and the frizzy white hair, fell over backward and landed on the floor, tripod and all, with a loud whump.
“I’ll get it,” I told Rosie. She looked horrified that she’d bowled into the painting, again, and this time she would’ve killed old David Collins if he hadn’t already died back in 1810. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Sorry,” she said over and over, backing her way to the kitchen and managing to bump into the same chairs from before. “Sorry, sorry.”
I shook my head, putting the painting and the easel back to rights, juggling Santa’s picture from hand to hand so I could manage it. I really didn’t know what was going on with Rosie. She seemed so preoccupied. Maybe there was trouble at home? I’ve never known her and Josh to even argue, let alone have any sort of real fight. It couldn’t be that.
Something was wrong though. I’ll have to ask—
When I turned around, looking for a place to put Santa, I found I wasn’t alone.
Jess. The spirit of my friend, dead and gone this past year, was standing there with a fist resting against the hip of her jeans and her long blonde hair thrown back over her shoulders. This was how she’d looked when I knew her in Uni, when we were the best of friends and we could tell each other anything.
I caught my breath and went back to what I was doing rather than draw attention. I’m the only one who can see, Jess, after all. I don’t want to look like I’m talking to the empty air. Imagine the rumors that would come out of that.
“Jess, you need to start wearing a bell, or something,” I whispered. I held the Santa cutout up to the fireplace mantle. “Since you’re here, do you want to help me decorate?”
It was then that I noticed the expression on her face. Like, sadness mixed with stubborn determination. Like when she used to have a secret to tell me late at night, back when we were both barely twenty. One she knew I wouldn’t like.
“Jess? What’s wrong?”
Like I said, she never talks to me. Not when I’m awake like this. I miss hearing her, sometimes. The self-confident, feminine sarcasm that had been so uniquely her.
Instead of speaking, she just raised a finger, and pointed at the wall beside me.
The blank wall, the one behind the portrait of David Collins, the one to the left of the fireplace, where nothing would ever stay.
“Yes, I know it’s blank,” I told her. “I never got around to showing you, but nothing will stay on that wall. It’s just my Inn’s way of... being difficult, I suppose. I won’t be hanging any decorations there. You want to help me find someplace for Santa?”
She did not. Pointing at the wall again, more insistently, Jess moved closer to me without taking a step.
I saw the dark shadows around her eyes, saw her lips twisting her face into a frown.
The wall. There was something she wanted to tell me about that wall.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned since coming into this bizarro ability to interact with the ghosts in my Inn, it’s this: when the spirit of someone dead and gone comes looking for you with a message, it’s best to listen. Still, there’s just no way I can put Santa up on that wall. Waste of time to even try.
“Here,” I said to Jess, “I’ll show you. Santa’s not going on this wall. Trust me.”
Trust me.
Those words echoed in my head while I lifted Santa up to the wall. They hummed and blurred as they came back to me again. Trust me. Trust... me.
Trust me.
...Remember... me...
Jess kept pointing to the wall.
Remember me.
In a daze, I added tape to the edges of the Christmas decoration. Santa’s face looked back at me.
Remember.
Santa, in his sleigh, waving to all the good boys and girls.
Me.
My hand touched the wall and when it did, all the sounds in my head, and around me in the Inn, and everywhere, went away. Muffled in a silence more complete than I’d ever heard before I stared at the spot in front of me. The jolly face of Santa smiled back at me with his rosy cheeks and dimples. Slowly, without a sound, the scotch tape I used at the edges of the sleigh and the reindeer and Santa’s red coat peeled back, starting at the edges.
Then Santa dropped away to the floor.
The outline of a face pushed out from the wall. A man’s face, contoured in the grain of the wood paneling.
His eyes opened.
He smiled at me, and my heart jumped up into my throat.
My hands flew up to cover my mouth, and I was sure I stopped breathing. I didn’t start again until my hands found the unicorn pendant on my necklace and gripped it tight. Terror was a cold, metallic taste in my mouth.
This couldn’t be.
Not him.
It couldn’t be him.
Formed by the wall, trying to form out of the framework of the Inn itself, his mouth opened, and I saw him mouth the words to me.
Remember me.
Then he smiled that smile that I knew so well, and he melted away. His features flattened until in front of me was only the wall again. That wall that would never let us put anything on it. Ever.
Jess was gone when I turned to her for explanations. I needed to ask her how... why... a dozen different questions all at once, but she picked this moment to disappear. I guess that was a ghost’s prerogative, but I sure do wish my friend had stuck around to explain this one to me.
The face in my wall. It couldn’t be him. He was still alive.
Richard Powers.
My husband.
The man who had left me on my birthday five years ago, on my birthday, without so much as a word.
That had been the face I saw in the wall. His ghostly image, reaching out to me, telling me to remember him.
It couldn’t be.
I realized the back of my shirt was damp with perspiration and I had to look like an absolute mess, because I sure felt like an absolute mess. I couldn’t let the guests see me like this. I couldn’t stay here. Not in front of this wall.
Not after what I’d just seen.
I left the box of decorations where they were. I left Santa there on the floor. Getting up to my room where I could sit, and be alone, was my only thought. I was halfway up the stairs when Mister Brewster was suddenly standing in my way.
He was an odd man. He was a faithful guest, and I appreciated his business, but he was enough to give a fright to anyone. The way he always dressed in black and always seemed to pop up when you least expected it. The way I’ve never seen him smile. The look in his silver-black eyes, the one that says he knows a lot more than he really should.
Plus he sounds like Severus Snape.
And after what just happened to me downstairs, finding Mister Brewster in my way made me miss a step and nearly tumble to my knees.
“Oh. Mister Brewster.” I forced a smile and grasped the stair railing with both hands to keep from trembling. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.”
He didn’t move out of the way. Instead, with a nod, he studied me like he could see into my thoughts. “I wanted to say goodbye,” he told me. “I’ll be gone for a few days.”
I hadn’t seen the suitcase in his hand until now, a small leather duffel with brass fittings. It looked old. It occurred to me that I’d never been in the room he rents from us. Room six. I had no idea how much stuff he kept he
re. Not much, by the look of it. “I didn’t realize you were checking out?”
He nodded again, this time with a little twitch at the corner of his lip. “Yes. I’m not much for the Christmas holidays. I shall be gone for a few days.”
“You don’t like Christmas?” I was surprised. Everyone had a reason to like Christmas.
“Not me,” he said, either in answer to my question or my thoughts, and I wasn’t sure which.
“Well, I’m sorry to hear you won’t be with us. Um. Rosie’s putting on quite the spread.”
“She always does.” He shifted to the side, enough that I could get by, but then he stopped me with another look. “Are you all right, Miss Powers?”
No, I was not. “Yes. Sure. Right as rain.”
“You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”
I gripped the railing tighter. “Well, you know these old Inns.” I tried to laugh off what he’d said, but it was just way too on point.
Was that Richard’s ghost I had seen?
“Everyone has their ghosts,” he told me, almost smiling. “Some of us even have the chance to reconcile with ours.”
I was sure my mouth fell open. Was he talking about me, specifically? Reconcile with my ghosts. With Jess. With Lachlan Halliburton, who had taken up residence in my Inn over my strong objections.
With... Richard?
No. I refused to believe that. Richard was still alive. Somewhere on this planet he was lounging around and having the time of his life while me and his son and his daughter got left behind to pick up the pieces. I’ve lived with that knowledge for years now, and I was all right with that. I was okay with the fact that I had been dumped by a man I had given my heart and soul to. Cast aside. Abandoned. That was the reality of my life.
I’d made myself okay with it. Anything else... I don’t know if I could take it.
“Well,” Mister Brewster said. “I can see I’ve given you much to think about. Goodbye, Miss Powers. And, merry Christmas.”
He turned, and walked down the stairs very slowly, one step at a time.
As for me, I turned and raced all the way to my room, fighting back my tears.
***
I’m not sure how long I stayed up there, thinking, but it was long enough for the sunlight outside the window to grow dim. I wasn’t really paying attention. My mind was on a lot of things. The question of what time it was didn’t even make it into the top ten on the list.
Rosie brought me up a tray of food sometime around dinner. I thanked her and promised her I was okay and then picked at my food after she was gone. I was too preoccupied to eat.
There was this whole murder of a Federal officer to work out. Who killed Jason Bostwick, and why. Was his killer someone he knew? How could that be, if he didn’t know anyone in town?
Which led me back to the idea that Bostwick hadn’t let his killer into his room. The killer had let himself in. With a key.
The one person I knew who had a key to those rooms was Alfonse Calico.
I didn’t have a motive for why Alfonse, one time boy band member and current Dancing with the Stars B-Lister, would want to kill a police officer. Not yet, anyway. There had to be a motive. There was always a motive. That’s one thing I learned from my son, who was a better police officer than Senior Sergeant Angus-the-almighty-drongo-Cutter had ever thought of being. I might not know Alfonse’s motive yet, but I knew there had to be one.
That should be the most important thing for me right now. If I could prove why Alfonse Calico killed Officer Bostwick, then I’d be off the hook. Keeping myself from spending any more time in Cutter’s jail cells than I needed to was definitely a good idea. As important as that was to me, there was something else burning up my thoughts.
I had just seen my dead husband.
No. My ex-husband. He wasn’t dead. It couldn’t be him, because he wasn’t dead.
I’d filed for a divorce when it became clear he wasn’t coming back to me, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t alive.
He was alive.
And I just saw his ghost.
I sat up straighter on my bed, fisting my hands into the blankets and sheets. My heart was tied up in knots. I kept telling myself it couldn’t be him, but I knew better. I could tell myself no all I wanted, but I knew what I saw.
Richard’s ghostly face, coming at me out of the wall. That wall that never let anything stay in place on it. I had loved that man. I had lived with him for years. There was no way I could mistake him for anyone else. Even if his skin had been the same color as my wall paneling. His eyes. Those beautiful eyes of his that had been brown within a ring of hazel. I knew those eyes.
I knew his face.
Remember me, this ghost had said. On the phone, and now in person downstairs. This ghost was my ex-husband. No matter how I wanted to deny it. The voice had been familiar, and now I knew why.
How? That was the question I kept coming back to. It was the reason why tears kept pouring running hot and wet down my cheeks. How could he be dead? Years of coming to grips with being abandoned, of being the only parent to my son and my daughter, all to find out I was living a lie. One I’d told myself so I could sleep at night.
How was I going to sleep tonight?
Not very well, was my guess.
I ran my hands up through my hair. My husband’s ghost. This was so messed up.
Ever since learning I could see and talk to ghosts, my world had turned upside down. Things had been different since then. My eyes had been opened to things I never would have dreamed of. Not all of them good. With Jess, and Lachlan—
Lachlan. That man—his ghost, rather—could change his appearance at will. He’d even turned into me once. Could he... could he have mimicked my husband’s face? That would have been a sadistic thing to do but, to be sure, Lachlan was a sadistic ghost.
Clenching my jaw, I promised myself I would find Lachlan’s spirit, and make him tell me if he was playing some kind of sick prank on me.
And if he was, then I was going to kill him all over again.
If that face had been Lachlan playing around, then my ex-husband could still be alive.
I tried to make myself believe that, but in the middle of all my troubled thoughts, I just knew—
The knock on my door frayed on my already tight nerves. When I caught my breath, I stood up from the bed and started for the door. After three steps I realized who it would be.
“James,” I breathed, rushing to open the door, finding him there just like I expected. “Oh, James, I’m so sorry. I forgot all about meeting you.”
He smiled at me, even though his eyes were full of disappointment. “Ya didn’t come by for dinner, I got worried. Came over to see if everything was okay.”
I put my arms around him. It felt good, but I stepped back quickly, before he could hold me for very long. He noticed, and I knew he noticed, but that’s all I felt up to for right now. I was still confused and tied around in knots. James was my boyfriend. We loved each other. We’d even been brave enough to say so.
But my husband was back.
Sort of.
At least, his ghost was here...
I stifled a scream by turning away from James and pressing my lips into a thin, tight line.
“Dell?” he said. “You are all right, aren’t ya? Did something happen?”
Here’s the other part about me being able to talk to ghosts. Not exactly something I can tell other people. I shrugged, and sat down on the bed, and stared out the window at the darkening sky. Even if I could tell him, what would I say? Was I supposed to tell him my ex-husband had come back into my life just as me and James were becoming serious with each other?
I saw the rock, and I saw the hard place, and here I sat between the two.
“So, this murder,” he said, slowly. “I did some digging. Not sure what to make of it.”
He waited for me to say something, but I just sat there, watching him fidget with his hands.
“Er, well,” he continued,
“here’s the thing. The Coroner’s office doesn’t have the body.”
“What?” I managed.
“I know. Alfonse said someone came and took the body away while Bruce Kay stood there and watched. We assumed it was the Coroner because who else would the police release him to, right?”
My eyebrows bunched up as I tried to puzzle that out. I still wasn’t saying anything, and I could tell it was making James upset. This wasn’t like me. He had to know something was wrong, and I wasn’t telling him what it was, which wasn’t helping.
“And I mean, what about the Feds?” he asked. “Answer me that. Bostwick was one of their own. They should be all over this. Instead, I call them up today asking for a quote for the paper, and I get told that Bostwick’s on vacation for the Christmas holidays. They don’t even know he’s dead. They said they’d look into it and get back to me but that was hours ago and I haven’t heard a thing back.”
It felt like the floor was falling out from under me. This made no sense. The Coroner didn’t have the body. The Federal Police hadn’t even been told about the murder? The Coroner’s office was a big outfit, and maybe James just hadn’t talked to the right person. Same with the Feds. One hand never knew what the other was doing when it came to the government, or so Kevin used to tell me. Bostwick was definitely dead. I’d seen Cutter’s photo. Not to mention, he’d arrested me for the whole thing.
Bostwick was dead.
So was Richard...
I sat in silence for a long time, just thinking, trying to make sense of everything.
Until James cleared his throat.
“Dell? Tell me. What is it?”
I mumbled something that I’m sure made no sense. I couldn’t meet his eyes. All of this going on and he was the one person in town that I wanted to turn to for comfort and support, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it, because my husband’s ghost was standing in the way. It wasn’t bad enough he’d left me and our children, he had to come haunt me, too?
“Seriously, Dell. I just told ya there’s something very wrong with this whole investigation and you’re sitting there acting like—”
“Like I’ve seen a ghost?” I finished for him, bitter sarcasm in my voice.
