Ghost Haste

by ReGina Welling

“You have to help me. It’s freezing, and it will take forever to find my boxes if you don’t.” Reva eyed the back seat. “Good thing you have such a big car.”

  “It is, isn’t it.” My jaw clenched. Whether she intended to or not, Reva played on every one of my raw nerves. I sighed but slid out of the warm car. Every inch of skin exposed to the chilled air went stiff with cold. I fumbled for my gloves but only came up with the left one. Great, I didn’t need the fingers on my dominant hand for anything. Internally, I cursed Reva’s very existence.

  You’re a gullible fool, Everly Dupree, and she’s taking advantage of you … again.

  “This will go much faster if you help. I’ll take the left side, you take the right. I’m looking for three boxes about this big.” She held up her hands—which, of course, were gloved just to make me feel like more of an idiot for losing one of mine—at about the width of a smaller packing box, gestured to show the height as well. “With my name on them.”

  While I indulged in a bout of mental name-calling, Reva turned sideways and held up her arms.

  “I can’t get the key with my gloves on.” I ran my tongue across my teeth and swallowed the urge to tell her exactly what she could do with the key as she arched a brow at me, expecting me to take it out of her pocket. When I just looked at her, she rolled her eyes. “We’re going to freeze to death because you hate me. Really?”

  “Fine.” I reached in for the key and allowed myself to appreciate the momentary warmth, then turned and fitted it into the lock.

  Without waiting for her to suggest it, I grabbed the door handle and yanked up. The aluminum door was lighter than it looked for its size because it went up like it rode on greased wheels.

  Easily fifteen feet wide, the unit was nearly double as deep, with boxes and furniture piled mostly in the center to leave a narrow aisle down either side for easier access.

  Feeling just contrary enough to stand in the cold and not help even if it took longer, I stepped back outside as she marched toward the left, and in about two seconds, located one of the boxes she’d come there to find. “Get a move on. I’m freezing, and I don’t want to be here all day.”

  We’d been something that resembled friends to one another, and it wasn’t difficult to imagine recent events had altered the way I now viewed Reva. That had to be the reason she now came off like a self-centered child. Or had she acted that way all along? I couldn’t trust my memory or my recent experience with her to tell the truth.

  For a minute or two, I stood with my bare hand tucked up under my other arm and watched with defiance. Don’t be an idiot, I told myself. It would be warmer inside the unit. I didn’t have to search for boxes, but I could get out of the light breeze.

  Except it wasn’t a bit warmer inside. Sighing again, I gave in. The faster we got this done, the better.

  I made it less than halfway down the length of the room before my stomach tried to exit my body through my mouth. Something was wrong. Very, very wrong.

  “Found one.”

  I went back toward the doors and followed the sound of Reva’s voice until I found her.

  “You need to get out of here. I have a really bad feeling. Hurry up now.” I didn’t wait for a response and took her by the arm to drag both Reva and her box out of the unit.

  “What is wrong with you?” She yanked her arm away and stomped over to the car to deposit the box on the back seat. “Stop trying to knock me down.”

  “Shush.” I waved her back and, ignoring the pang of recognition I got from seeing some of the furniture I’d helped Paul pick out, went back into the storage room. I didn’t have to go much farther than I already had.

  “Reva, call 9-1-1, right now. Get the police out here. Tell them there’s been an accident. A horrible accident.”

  All I could see were his legs, but I recognized the shoes. Brown wingtips with fancy leatherwork around the toes. Lawyer shoes.

  A wall dropped down inside my head, or I’d have run screaming into the street instead of moving closer to see if there was any hope.

  “What’s going …” Reva’s question trailed off as she ignored everything I’d told her to do, crowded up behind me, and saw.

  Winston Durham wouldn’t be defending my ex, or going to court, or looking down his nose at me ever again. Based on the hole in his chest, someone had made sure of that.

  Everything in me wanted to cringe, turn away, stop looking, but none of that mattered. The scene was already burned into my brain.

  When Reva burst into tears, I asked, “Did you call the police?”

  “I—” her mouth worked, but the only sound that came out was a low scream that went on until I realized this was Reva’s version of hysterics and did what I’d only ever seen done on TV. I slapped her—none too gently—to snap her out of it. At any other time, I might have taken some small and petty pleasure from the act, but at that moment, I was too numb to care.

  “Did you call the police?” I repeated, but she didn’t answer, so I pulled my phone from my jacket pocket and did the deed myself.

  “You knew.” Reva pulled herself together enough to point a shaky finger at me. “You brought me here because you knew Winston was dead.”

  If I’d slapped her then, I definitely would have enjoyed it. “Have you gone completely bonkers? You dragged me here, remember? If anyone knew he was here, it was you.”

  “How could I possibly know Winston would pick my storage unit to commit suicide?”

  Ridiculous.

  “It’s not suicide. There’s no gun.”

  “This is all your fault.” Apparently, I’d slapped the fake attempt to be friends right off of her. When she took it up to a shriek, Reva’s voice could cut glass. And cause instant headaches. Or maybe that came from trying to follow the twisted path of her logic.

  “I haven’t seen Winston since the day I found you and Paul doing the nasty, and that was fine with me.” On a day that was already right up there in my top three worst—losing Grammie Dupree and my aunt took the highest spots—Winston had leveled the misery up a notch. “In fact, I’d have had a perfectly happy life if I hadn’t had to lay eyes on any of the three of you again.”

  Ignoring the dig, Reva stared at Winston’s body as if she finally understood what she was seeing. Her face paled, and her eyes went glassy.

  “Go out now, Reva. You don’t need to see him like this. Go sit in the car, and I’ll wait here for the police. I’ll stay where you can see me, okay?”

  I wanted a closer look at the body.

  Sobbing, Reva obeyed.

  Alone with Winston, a chill that was more than merely the cold of the unheated space crept into my bones. Reva might not be the only one to wonder if I’d had enough and done away with one of the men responsible for forging documents that reduced my divorce settlement to nothing. Not that I cared about the money. If I had, I wouldn’t have signed the agreement when Paul asked me to. Besides, I’d stepped up, made a life without him, and considered myself better for the experience.

  No matter how it looked from the outside, I didn’t wish Winston dead. I knew that as I stood and looked down at him and wondered who had.

  More accurately, I wondered if Paul was capable of murder. Had he killed and then fled? Was that why Reva was currently staring out my car window?

  Operating solely on instinct, I scanned the scene again, noted the pooling blood under his body, the trail of red leading deeper into the middle of the unit. Using my phone as a flashlight, I picked out another, smaller puddle of blood shining darkly, smears of red on the open file boxes, and a scatter of papers.

  Winston hadn’t died fast or easy. It looked like he tried to get to the door but only made it a few feet before slumping down against the stack of boxes where I’d found him.

  A shudder ran through me, but I slipped my phone back in my pocket as the sound of sirens grew louder and went out to greet the authorities.

  In the car, her eyes haunted and red-rimmed in her pale face, Reva watched me as I
did what needed to be done. The image of her tangled in my sheets, smirking up at me from the shelter of my husband’s arms, was one I’d carried for months. Now, I had another to replace it.

  “Ma’am.” An insistent voice broke my reverie. “You reported a crime.” He identified himself as a detective, but his name flew out of my head right after he said it.

  “Yes, I’m sorry. He’s in there.” I pointed toward the storage room. “His name is Winston Durham. Someone killed him.” I would have followed the detective to the scene of the crime, but a younger female officer laid a hand on my arm and stopped me.

  “Ma’am, I’m Officer Jody Bassett. Do you think you could tell me what happened?”

  Below the brim of her hat, Officer Bassett’s green eyes missed little.

  “I’m Everly Dupree.” I spelled it for her while she wrote it down. “And that man in there is Winston Durham. He’s my ex-husband’s attorney.”

  “And is this your storage unit?”

  “No, it’s hers.” I pointed to Reva and gave her full name. “She’s been dating my ex-husband since we split up.” I let out a short, derisive laugh. “Since before that, if you want to get technical. Anyway, the important thing is she and my ex were staying in a hotel after selling our … his house, but he took off, and since he’d been paying for the room, when he stopped, she had to leave.”

  “Were they fighting?”

  I shrugged. “She says not, but you’ll have to ask her. I wouldn’t even know that much if she hadn’t landed on my doorstep, begging for a place to stay.”

  Jody Bassett’s eyebrows shot up. “And you took her in?”

  “No, but I found her a place to stay, and that somehow led to this.”

  “Do you know if the attorney had a key to the storage unit?”

  “Again, you’ll have to ask her. All I really know is that she was out of clean underwear, and now, this.”

  I waved a hand back toward the unit, and in my slightly befuddled state, I knew I wasn’t making a whole lot of sense.

  “I’m sorry, I’m a little shaken by all this.”

  “That’s understandable.” Officer Bassett seemed sympathetic. “And when you arrived, can you tell me what happened?”

  “We went in. Reva found one of the boxes she was looking for right away, and then we found him.” Because I didn’t want to hide possibly relevant information, I gave her the abridged version of Winston’s part in my divorce, which led to the story of Paul and the misappropriation of funds, the FBI. Even keeping the recitation of my downfall as brief as I could, it took a minute.

  “I’m familiar with the case,” was all she said on the subject, and then, “I’ll need to talk to Ms. McKinnon.”

  “Yeah, good luck with that. She’s convinced I’m to blame,” I said bitterly.

  Officer Bassett spoke as a woman now, and not just as a police officer. “I can’t tell if you’re the nicest woman in the world or the dumbest.”

  I know I probably should have been offended by her candor, but since I agreed with her, there didn’t seem to be much point. By then, I was shaking with cold, so when Bassett suggested I go sit in my warm car, I didn’t argue.

  “Ms. McKinnon.” She tapped on the window to get Reva’s attention as I circled toward the driver’s seat.

  Reva rolled down the window and verified the information pretty much as I’d given it. I listened carefully when Jody asked if Winston had a key to the unit.

  “Maybe.” Sniffs and tears punctuated every word. “I suppose Winston could have been sent here to find something. There were papers and things in some of the boxes. This is going to devastate my Paulie-poo. They were like brothers. Always talking on the phone and hanging out. I feel like I’ve lost my brother-in-law.” And she was milking it for all it was worth and not earning any points with me.

  Still, she’d come looking for Paul at my house. I smelled the distinct whiff of BS, and don’t even get me started on Paulie-poo.

  Did she call him that to his face? Did he like it? Maybe he preferred a woman who simpered and talked baby talk to him, but that woman would never have been me. Whether she knew it or not, Reva had done me a huge favor. Because that was the moment when I finally said goodbye to Paul and all that we’d been to each other.

  CHAPTER NINE

  AFTER TAKING DOWN both our current addresses—I had to give Reva’s since she barely remembered the name of the motel, much less its location—Officer Bassett told us we could go home, but cautioned us to remain available in case there were more questions. I sensed from her tone it wasn’t a matter of if, but of when.

  “Go back,” Reva ordered two lights before we would have turned onto the highway. “We have to go back.”

  “Why?” I slowed down in case she had a valid reason.

  “I still need my things. We have to go back for my things.”

  How dumb was she?

  “They’re not going to let you take anything else out of that storage room now. It’s a crime scene.”

  “Oh, probably not.” She popped her seatbelt off and spun in the seat to poke at the one box that had managed to make it into the car. “At least I got more clothes.”

  Reva pulled out her phone, let her fingers fly over the screen as I turned onto the highway. If Paul and Winston were “like brothers,” I doubted he’d appreciate learning of Winston’s death via text. But his needs were no longer my concern.

  “Is there anyone I can call for you? Your parents? Other family?” Funny that after being friends for several years, I knew so little about her. Enough to know her taste in purses and what kinds of movies she liked, but nothing of her family.

  “Just take me back to that motel room from throwback hell and leave me there. I want to be alone.”

  She wasn’t the only one, but I was curious enough to push a little.

  “Did you and Paul have a fight?”

  Reva folded her arms on her chest. “Oh, you’d love that, wouldn’t you?”

  An hour before, if she’d said yes, I’d have gloated. Probably because I would have been too busy thinking nasty thoughts to hear the forlorn note in her voice. Or if I did, I’d have gloated more.

  Seeing death up close and personal—again—put all the pettiness into perspective.

  “I really am sorry about Winston, and that you and Paul seem to have split. I think you made him happy in a way I never did.”

  Mentally letting Paul go had gone some way toward setting me free, and I told myself there was nothing to be gained by carrying on our feud. Since Amber hadn’t popped up with a weather report that included hell freezing over, I wasn’t inviting Reva to stay with me, but I didn’t have the energy to fight anymore, either.

  But It wasn’t only up to me, and Reva seemed perfectly happy to let silence stand between us, so I drove back to Mooselick River and pulled up in front of her room at the Bide-A-Way.

  “Are you sure there’s no one I can call? You shouldn’t be alone with all that’s happening.”

  “That’s something I’ll have to get used to, isn’t it?” Reva slammed the car door hard enough the hinges creaked.

  “If that’s the way you feel,” I muttered as I put old Sally in reverse. When I turned to make sure the way behind me was clear, I saw the box she’d left in the back seat. Sighing, I put the car back in park and carried the box toward her door.

  I knocked and listened to what sounded like an angry she-bear growling and throwing chairs around. Leaving Reva to her tantrum, I set the box down and left. She’d find it when she went out later to eat … using the money she’d borrowed from me earlier in the day.

  Way to start the year off with a bang, I thought as I yanked the car door open. I should have noticed that my windows were fogged up. I should have felt the fetid chill, seen the plume of my breath even with the heat on.

  “You could have been nicer to her.”

  I’d seen none of the signs, but the fact that Winston was sitting in the back seat didn’t surprise me in the least
.

  “Screw you.” Okay, maybe I’d let go of my animosity toward Paul, and a little bit toward Reva, but Winston was still on my list.

  “Must you act like a child?” The man did judgmental better than anyone I’d ever met.

  Finally, I turned to face him, and, in tones colder than a ghost, said, “Get out of my car. Get out of my life.”

  He picked a speck of lint off his lapel—mind-blowing, right? Then he had the nerve to roll his ghost eyes at me. “You’re going to help me. You know it, I know it. What’s the use in arguing?”

  My response? Totally adult and balanced. I turned the radio on and cranked up the tunes loud enough to drown him out. Then, I put the car in reverse, stepped on the gas, and whipped the wheel to spin the car out of the space.

  Thank you, Sally, I thought, for not being a gutless wonder. As soon as I hit the main road, I opened her up a little. By the time I slowed for the last curve heading into town, he was gone.

  “Good riddance,” I shouted into the warming air. “And don’t come back.”

  What grief I’d allowed to creep into my emotional well-being had good and truly dissipated. A mark in the plus column. Or was it? I should feel grief at the brutal murder of someone I’d known. That’s how decent people work, and I considered myself a decent person. Winston had been a jerk, but he hadn’t deserved to die—and that was as close to grief as I could get. Maybe if he’d gone into the light without bothering me, I’d have had a little more compassion, but no. He had to come slithering around with his ghost self in my car.

  I didn’t want to help him, but he wouldn’t give me a choice. Him having all the power and leaving me with none didn’t seem fair.

  The time had come to get an expert opinion on my haunting situation.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE ONLY PSYCHIC medium within a hundred-mile radius that popped up when I searched went by the unlikely name of Madame Zephyr and didn’t have a website. Based on the name alone, I formed a mental image of an age-wrinkled woman sitting behind a table covered in a red velvet cloth. Haze of smoke around her, wearing lots of makeup, fingers dripping with rings, several pendants tangled across an ample bosom.