by Bobbi Holmes
They sat together in the car parked near Pier Café, Melony on the driver’s side and Adam in the passenger seat. Instead of starting the engine immediately, Melony contemplated all that had happened to them that day.
“I suppose I’m not surprised at Danielle’s reaction,” Adam finally said. “She’s always had that goofy feng shui attitude about life.”
Melony turned to Adam and asked with a laugh, “You do know what feng shui means, right?”
Adam shrugged. “It’s some hippy dippy notion that how you decorate your home sends off positive or negative vibes. Or something like that.”
“Not exactly sure how that pertains to what happened in this situation.” Melony leaned back in the driver’s seat again, looking out the front windshield, her hands now resting on the steering wheel.
“Just that if you buy into all that feng shui vibes thing, it’s easier to accept lingering spirits and their energy. I remember how she didn’t like to discuss the original Walt Marlow’s death in the house. She didn’t want to offend him.”
“Now what?” Melony asked.
“Now we go get something to eat. I’m starved,” Adam said. “I can’t believe Carla walked out on her shift tonight.”
While talking to Walt and Danielle in the diner, Adam and Melony wondered what was taking Carla so long to return to take their order. They eventually discovered she had walked off in the middle of her shift, leaving the diner more shorthanded than it had already been that night.
Melony put her key into the ignition. But before she turned on the engine, she looked at Adam and said, “We didn’t get around to telling Danielle and Walt that we’re engaged.”
Adam chuckled. “I know. I thought about it when we were talking to them. But blurting out that we’re engaged right after talking about a ghost trying to kill you, it didn’t seem like the right time.”
Melony laughed, leaned over and kissed Adam—who met her halfway since they both had their seatbelts on. When the kiss ended, Melony started the car’s engine.
“I think I learned a lesson tonight,” Walt told Danielle after they walked home from Pier Café.
“What was that?” Danielle followed Walt into the living room. He flipped on the overhead light. They heard a meow and found Max lounging on the back of the sofa. The cat jumped down to the floor and walked to Danielle, weaving around her ankles until she stopped and picked him up. He snuggled into her arms and purred. Danielle absently stroked Max’s head while waiting for Walt’s answer.
“Sometimes we shouldn’t help people. We need to let them make their own mistakes and learn from them. Helping can cause more problems.” Walt walked to the sofa and sat down.
“You’re talking about Carla?” Danielle sat down next to Walt, still holding Max.
“I am.” Walt reached over and gave Max a scratch under his ear while silently conveying a greeting to the cat.
“Yeah, I think that freaked her out,” Danielle agreed. “And I wonder if anyone else in the diner saw what happened. There might be some really confused person out there who thinks they’re going crazy.”
“I should’ve let her drop the plates. She’d learn the lesson not to carry so many at one time. But now, no clue what she’s thinking. I just hope she doesn’t lose her job over this.”
Danielle leaned back on the sofa. When she did, Max stood up on her lap, jumped to the floor, and then strolled from the room. Danielle flashed the cat a smile and said, “Carla is a fixture down there. I don’t imagine this will get her fired. But it might get them to hire a couple more servers. And now that I think about it, had Carla dropped those plates, she may have still stormed out tonight. So maybe you did the right thing. At least the customer, whose plate you saved, got his dinner on time.”
“Perhaps…”
They sat in silence for a few minutes, Walt sitting next to Danielle, his right arm draped over her shoulders, and both of their stockinged feet propped up on the coffee table. Finally, Danielle said, “I hope Eva knows what she is talking about.”
Walt frowned at Danielle. “What do you mean?”
“I was thinking about what happened to Adam and Mel tonight. They were over there alone. If that pipe had hit Mel—killed her—Adam would probably be charged with her murder. I imagine he would grab the pipe, trying to stop it, get his fingerprints all over it. And who is going to believe a story that it started swinging at her itself?”
“The chief might, but that probably wouldn’t help Adam. But I suspect Eva knows what she is talking about,” Walt said.
“I hope you’re right.”
“Who do you think Adam was talking about tonight? Which friend?” Walt asked.
“No one in our circle. The way he was talking it was a family member of the friend.” Danielle turned to Walt and said, “Do you realize most of our close friends have no family?”
“We have each other.” Walt kissed her nose and then smiled at her.
“Heather doesn’t, and Chris didn’t until he met his brother. His uncle doesn’t count. But it wouldn’t be Chris, because if Adam told Noah about a haunted property, he would take it seriously. And while Mel has no family, it wouldn’t be her anyway since she obviously knows who it is.”
“True, but Lily and Ian have lots of family,” Walt reminded her. “Most of whom will descend on us in a few days.”
Danielle laughed. “Maybe it’s Joe and Kelly. You know, now that they’re getting married, maybe they’re buying property to build a house.”
Walt snickered. “And you find that possibility amusing?”
“Admit it; it would be kinda funny.”
“I imagine Lily has her fill of hauntings with her association with us,” Walt said. “I don’t think she needs more from her family.”
The only light came from the small window overhead. But the sun had set, and once again the attic room plunged into darkness. The small boy sat in a dusty corner, his arms wrapped around his bent legs, and his chin propped on a knee.
He couldn’t recall when they had first locked him up. They wanted to keep him away from her. Once he escaped, but when he found her, she had refused to talk to him. Heartbroken, he had retreated to the attic room, resigned to his fate. Yet he never forgot her and the wonderful times they shared. He closed his eyes.
“Did you ever change the lightbulb in the attic?” Tammy Miller asked her husband when she walked into the den late Monday evening. He sat on his recliner, remote in hand, channel surfing. Upon hearing his wife, he muted the television, looked up at her, and asked her to repeat the question.
“I need to go up to the attic, and the last time we were up there, the bulb went out, remember? You were going to put in a new one. Did you ever?” She stood akimbo at the doorway leading to the hall, waiting for his answer.
“What do you need to go to the attic for?” he asked.
Letting out a sigh, she dropped her balled fists from her waist and walked to the empty recliner next to her husband’s. She sat down.
“There’s a box of toys I want to take to Lily,” Tammy explained.
“Don’t you think Connor will get his own toys at his birthday party?” he asked.
“These belonged to Lily, and I’ve been saving them for years. I want to give them to her while Connor is young, and he can enjoy them. She can decide what she wants to do with them. But I figured this would be a great time to get them out of the attic. And since we’re driving up to Oregon this time, we have plenty of room to take them. So did you put a new light bulb in?”
“There’s something wrong with the light socket up there. I need to call the electrician. Every time I put a bulb in it, the darn thing goes out after a couple of weeks. Tired of replacing them.”
“Have you called an electrician?” she asked.
He let out a sigh. “No. But I will.”
“If it’s a short, couldn’t that cause a fire or something?”
He shrugged. “It hasn’t burned down the house yet. Just keep the switch off.�
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“I don’t want to worry about that when we’re up in Oregon.”
He rolled his eyes. “It’s been like that for years.”
“Why didn’t I know about it?”
He shrugged. “Probably because you only go into the attic every ten years.”
“Well, I need to go up now.”
“You’ll have to take a flashlight.”
Tammy considered the suggestion. “No, I’ll go up in the morning. But I wish you’d call an electrician.”
Sun streamed into the window, brightening the attic room. He was just standing up when he heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Panicked, he ran to the stack of boxes along the far wall and hid behind them. Peeking out from the boxes, he stared at the door leading to the staircase, waiting for it to open.
When the door opened a few moments later, a woman walked in and paused at the opening. She reached for the light switch and gave it a flick. Nothing happened. She flicked it off and on again, and then sighed.
“It would be nice if it worked,” she grumbled, and then looked around. “I just hope there aren’t any spiders up here.”
The boy hiding behind the stack of boxes watched as the woman walked to a shelf on the adjacent wall. She reached up to one box, lifted it from the shelf, and placed it on the attic floor.
“No!” the boy wailed silently. “That is my box! Stay out of there!”
The woman opened the box, looked in, and then, as if satisfied with what she saw, she picked the box up and carried it with her from the attic.
Shaken by what he had just witnessed, the boy stood up and walked from his place behind the boxes to where the woman had just stood.
“She took it. How can she do that? Isn’t it enough they locked me up here?”
He looked to the door and wondered if she had remembered to lock it. Perhaps she hadn’t, and then he could finally escape. Taking a deep breath and telling himself to be brave, he headed for the door.
When was the last time he had been on these stairs? He tiptoed down the steps leading from the attic room to the floor below, not making a sound. When he got to the main floor, he took care not to be seen or heard. He found her with the box and a man in the den. Without being seen, he slipped into the room, hiding behind the sofa while watching the pair.
The woman had the box open and pulled items from it, showing each priceless object to the man. She had no right.
“Since we’re taking the truck, why don’t you just leave them in that box. There’s plenty of room. No reason to repack them,” the man suggested.
“Lily doesn’t know I kept all this. She’s going to be tickled to see all her old toys!”
The man arched his brow, as if he did not agree with the woman’s assessment.
“Lily?” the boy silently repeated. “They’re taking those to Lily?”
The woman dropped the last toy she had shown him back into the box.
“Let’s go have breakfast. I’ll tape this up later.” The woman closed the box and shoved it to the wall. Leaving it there, she and the man left the room.
When the boy was finally alone, he walked to the large box. With a smile, he climbed in. The woman returned an hour later and taped up the box.
Eight
Carla wasn’t sure what she was walking into on Tuesday morning. Did she still have a job? Earl hadn’t been working on Monday. It had been that new cook, Stan. While Stan didn’t have the authority to fire her, as did Earl, she wasn’t sure what he had told the head cook.
She stepped into the back door of Pier Café and almost walked into Andy, the busboy. Carla thought Andy was a nice kid. He’d graduated from high school that summer, and as far as she knew, he had no plans for college. Before she said hello or “excuse me for almost running into you,” Andy grabbed hold of her wrist and quickly pulled her back outside while glancing over his shoulder to see if anyone was looking.
“Does this mean I’m fired?” Carla asked after she let Andy jerk her from the building.
“No. But if you don’t want to be fired, you need to listen to me,” Andy said in a whisper, glancing nervously back to the closed door as he released hold of her wrist.
“I’m listening,” Carla told him.
“Not sure what set you off last night, but I told Stan you got sick, and that’s why you ran out of the building. He thinks I saw you barf in the trash can. I told him I promised you I’d let him know you were sick so you wouldn’t have to come back in to tell him.”
Carla smiled. “You did?”
Andy nodded. “Yeah. I was dumping the trash when I saw you run outside and leave in your car. I figured I needed to make up something or Earl would fire you when you came in today. But Earl thinks you got sick last night too. Stan left him a note telling him, and about how I helped with your remaining tables, and how we got someone to come in and cover for you. So basically everyone except me thinks you got sick last night. I wanted to give you the heads-up before you walked in and said something else. Then we’d both be screwed.”
“You lied for me?”
He shrugged. “Hey, you’ve covered for me a few times, figured I owed you. And it was nuts last night.”
“I’m sorry I put you in that position. I should probably tell Earl it was food poisoning. Or he’ll wonder why I didn’t call in to take another day off.”
“Or he might wonder if you’re pregnant.” Andy snickered.
Carla rolled her eyes. “Funny. But thanks. I owe you.”
When Carla walked back into the café a few minutes later, Earl was just coming out of the nearby employees’ restroom.
“How you feeling? You sure you should work today?” Earl greeted her. Andy, who followed Carla back into the restaurant, flashed her a smile and then left her alone with Earl.
“Yeah. It was something I ate,” Carla lied. “I feel better today.”
Earl scowled. “I hope it wasn’t something Stan made.”
“No. It… I ate a leftover breakfast burrito before I came into work yesterday,” Carla lied. “It must have been that.”
When Carla walked out onto the dining room floor on Tuesday morning to wait on her first customer, it relieved her to see it was regulars—Joe Morelli and his fiancée, Kelly Bartley. After Danielle Marlow had dumped Joe, and before he started dating Kelly, Carla had tried to get the handsome officer’s attention. Yet Joe had obviously not been interested in taking Carla out before he started seeing Danielle, nor after. While she had never gotten Joe to look at her “that way,” she felt he had become a good friend. After all, he ate in Pier Café several times a week, and she normally waited on him. Carla considered that a steady relationship—at least a steady relationship in Carla’s world.
She picked up a pot of coffee before reaching Joe and Kelly’s table. When she did, they both greeted her and then watched as she filled their cups. After Carla finished pouring the coffee, she glanced over to the table where the “thing” had occurred. Since it had happened, she thought of it as the “thing.” The memory of what happened overwhelmed her.
“Are you okay, Carla?” Joe asked after noting Carla’s change of expression and how she just stood there, saying nothing and staring across the room.
Giving her head a little shake, as if trying to come back to earth, Carla looked from where she had been staring and then back to Joe and frowned. “Not really,” she muttered. Without asking permission, Carla sat down on one of the two empty chairs at the table, sitting next to Kelly. Still holding the coffeepot, she set it on the table.
“What’s wrong?” Kelly asked, noting the color had drained from Carla’s face.
Carla glanced to Joe and then to Kelly. “Last night, when I was working, something really freaky happened here. And… well… I just can’t get it out of my head.”
“What happened?” Kelly asked.
Carla considered the question for a minute and then said, “You’ll think I’m crazy. But I’m sure someone else had to have seen it. Walt and Danielle were he
re, and so was Pearl Huckabee. Most everyone else were tourists. Maybe some were locals; I didn’t recognize them.” Carla paused and then frowned and said, “Adam Nichols and Melony Carmichael were here too, but I think they came in after… yes… they came in after it happened.”
“What happened?” Joe asked. Both he and Kelly waited for Carla to finish her story.
Carla took a deep breath and said, “We were slammed last night. I had this big table, and I tried to carry more plates to the table than I should. One plate fell. But it didn’t fall. Not really.”
“What do you mean it didn’t fall?” Kelly asked.
“It fell. But then it just stopped. Floated there a moment. And then it landed on the table, like some invisible hand placed it there.”
Both Joe and Kelly stared at Carla, neither one commenting.
Carla noted their reaction and then shrugged. She stood and picked up the pot of coffee. “Yeah, I know it sounds nuts. Which is why it’s so freaky. You guys ready to order?”
After Carla took their order and left the table, Joe chuckled. “I think that hair dye Carla uses is finally getting to her. It’s causing some serious brain damage.”
Kelly glanced over to where Carla now stood at the window leading into the kitchen. “What was that all about?”
Joe shrugged. “Who knows? Carla has always been out there.”
“She sounds like Heather,” Kelly said with a snort.
“True. While she didn’t mention ghosts, she said something about an invisible hand,” Joe snarked.
Kelly shook her head at the idea and picked up her cup of coffee.
“I wanted to tell you,” Joe began, changing the conversation while Kelly sipped her coffee. “My sister wants to give you a bridal shower while your parents are here for Connor’s birthday.”
“That means we need to set the wedding date,” Kelly reminded him.
“I know. I figure when your parents are here, we can set the date. We can’t really set it if we don’t know when they can make it.”
