by Josie Belle
“Stay here,” Sam said.
“What? No,” Maggie protested.
“Just for a second,” Sam insisted. “You’ll be safe here.”
“If this were a horror movie and you left me, one of us would die,” Maggie argued.
“It’s not a horror movie,” Sam said. He squeezed her hand. “Just stay in the closet until I call for you. If you see or hear anything, call me and I’ll come running.”
Maggie was not happy about this. Mary Lou had already gotten the drop on each of them. Who knew if she already had Ruth? And now Sam wanted to go rogue and take on the crazy person by himself. She knew by the stubborn set to his jaw that he wasn’t going to have it any other way.
“Fine but be careful,” she said.
She watched as he slipped through the door with a sick feeling of dread in her gut. She officially hated everything about this.
Maggie kept the door open a crack. Not that she could see anything more than shadows, but still she felt better trying to monitor the situation. Of course, just like every game of hide-and-seek she’d ever played, now she had to go to the bathroom.
She bounced on her feet, trying to take her mind off her need for the facility. She couldn’t see Sam. She didn’t hear any noise at all in the house and the lights stayed off, adding to the creepy quotient.
She bounced and jiggled her leg and paced a little bit but the silence and the darkness seemed never-ending. Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore. She slipped out of the closet and stood in the bedroom.
It was then that she saw Ruth come through the doorway, heading straight for her.
Chapter 29
“Ruth!” she cried with relief. “Where have you been? Are you all right? Where’s Mary Lou?”
“Right here,” Mary Lou said as she stomped into the room.
Maggie could only make out her bulky shape in the darkness but it was enough.
“The closet!” she cried at Ruth. Maggie yanked the door open and she and Ruth hurried inside. Maggie slammed the door behind them and dashed across the small space to the other door. “Come on, down here!”
Maggie bolted down the stairs, leading Ruth to the kitchen. Once they were through, she slammed the door behind them, hoping it took Mary Lou a minute to figure out there was a door in the closet and that they had just escaped through it.
“We need to find Sam,” Maggie said. “Come on.”
She hurried through the kitchen, tossing the tablecloth she still held onto her shoulder.
“Sam!” Maggie cried. “Sam!”
Footsteps pounded down the main staircase and Sam appeared at the bottom.
“Mary Lou found us in the bedroom,” Maggie gasped. “I think she’s going to try to come through the kitchen.”
“Got it,” Sam said. “Stay here, both of you.”
Maggie was about to protest when an enraged battle cry sounded from the dining room. There was no mistaking that it was Mary Lou and that she was unhappy.
Sam moved in front of Maggie and Ruth but Mary Lou didn’t even slow down. She took him out like a wrecking ball with a head butt to the middle.
“Sam!” Maggie cried. She had no time to help, however, as Mary Lou reared up and glared at her and Ruth.
“You ruined everything!” she cried. “My whole life would have been different if it hadn’t been for you.”
Maggie turned to look at Ruth, who was sadly shaking her head at Mary Lou.
“If Jasper had just married my grandmother, we would have been raised with the Kasey fortune, but no, he left her and my daddy for you!”
Maggie narrowed her eyes at Ruth. She looked paler than usual and her hair was different. Maggie felt her own hair begin to rise on the back of her neck.
“That’s why my grandmother killed him, because he was going to leave her for you. He was buried in your house and you never even knew it!” Mary Lou tipped her head back and let out a deranged laugh.
Maggie felt Sam rise up next to her, snatch the tablecloth from her shoulder and toss it over Mary Lou’s head.
“Ah!” Mary Lou screamed and she started to kick and punch.
Sam subdued her with a bear hug.
“Maggie, in my pocket are some plastic zip tie cuffs, grab them for me, would you?”
Maggie was still staring at Ruth with her mouth agape.
Mary Lou started to buck.
“Maggie, help!” Sam cried.
“Oh, right, sorry,” Maggie said. She jumped into motion, finding the ties in his pants pocket and then wrestling with Mary Lou to get her wrists together so Sam could let go of her to get the restraints on.
Mary Lou let out a shriek of rage and Maggie whipped the cloth off her head.
“It’s over,” Maggie snapped. “Knock it off.”
Mary Lou collapsed to the floor and began to weep. Knowing that she had planned to kill them all, Maggie could not find it in herself to feel sorry for the woman.
As Mary Lou curled up into a ball, sniffling and whining, Maggie threw her arms around Sam and hugged him tight. He was okay. That was all that mattered. Sam squeezed her in return and she felt him plant a kiss in her hair.
“This was by far the most terrifying evening of my life,” he said. He leaned back to look at her. “You’re okay, really okay?”
“I’m fine,” Maggie said. “And you?”
“Never better,” he said. He wrapped his arms around her again. “When I got here, I ran right down to the basement, thinking that’s where you’d be. I was so scared when your phone went dead that I forgot twenty years of police training and walked right into an ambush. Crazy eyes there clobbered me.”
“Me, too,” Maggie said. “You were right. I never should have entered the house, but if something had happened to Ruth while I stood outside . . .”
“And that is the dilemma with police work,” Sam said. “You’re always trying to out think the bad guys.”
Maggie glanced behind her. Her accomplice was moving across the floor toward the stairs.
“Ruth . . . ?” Maggie began but then her voice trailed off. This time she could see the woman more clearly and it wasn’t Ruth. “Ida?”
She glanced up at Sam and saw him staring in wide-eyed wonder at the same apparition. Mary Lou wept on, oblivious.
The woman took on a bit more substance than she’d had before and Maggie could see that she wore old-fashioned clothes, like something out of the forties.
She waved to them and mouthed the words, “Be happy here.”
Then she turned and went up the stairs, slowly fading away before she reached the top.
Maggie and Sam were both staring at the spot where she had vanished when Ruth appeared at the top of the stairs. “What are you two staring at?”
Maggie looked at Sam and he looked at her. They both looked back at Ruth and said, “Nothing.”
Ruth glanced down at their feet at Mary Lou.
“Hot dog! You got her,” Ruth said. “Would it be police brutality if I kicked her in the pants?”
“No, but you still aren’t allowed to,” Sam said.
“Even if you turn your back for just a second, and I just happen to trip?” Ruth persisted.
“I’m not turning my back,” Sam said. “In fact, I’m going to take her outside to await her ride to the hospital.”
“Fine,” Ruth said. She kicked at the floor and Maggie wasn’t sure but she thought she heard Ruth call Sam a party pooper.
They watched as Sam pulled Mary Lou up by the elbow and led her out the door to await medical attention.
“Are you all right?” Maggie asked Ruth.
Ruth held up a sheaf of papers. “I am now.”
“You found the missing diary pages?” Maggie asked.
“They were in the upstairs sitting room, on the window seat next to your wedding gown, which is going to get all wrinkly by the way, you should really hang it up,” Ruth said.
“Wedding gown?” Maggie asked.
“Yes, your gown,” Ruth sa
id. Then she made a face. “Oh, do not tell me that Mary Lou stole that from you.”
“Show me,” Maggie said.
“All right,” Ruth said. She gave Maggie a funny look and led the way up the stairs and down the hall to the sitting room.
Maggie flipped on all of the lights as they went and was pleased to see that they stayed on.
“So, how did you manage to flicker the basement lights from up here?” Maggie asked.
Ruth gave her an abashed look. “About that . . . I was so busy reading the diary pages, I sort of forgot to pretend to be the ghost.”
Maggie looked at her. “So, you didn’t do the door slamming and flickering lights and footsteps running up and down the halls?”
“It sounded like you had it under control,” Ruth said. She shrugged. “Too much would have been overkill.”
They entered the empty sitting room and Maggie stopped short. Draped across the window seat was a beautiful blue silk dress with a white lace overlay. She picked it up and it rustled like leaves in the wind in her fingers. She held it up to her front and glanced at her reflection in the window. It looked to be a perfect fit.
Ruth stepped up behind Maggie and studied her reflection as well. “You’re going to be a beautiful bride,” she said. “Sam Collins is a lucky man.”
Maggie was pretty sure it was the only compliment Ruth had ever paid her, which made it mean that much more.
“Thank you,” she said. “I think I’ll take the dress and have it pressed and cleaned for the wedding.”
She paused to listen for any footsteps or door slams or any signs of spectral protest. There was nothing.
As Maggie walked down the stairs with her wedding dress over her arm, she tried to tell herself that it was not possible that Ida Dixon had manifested a dress for her, but a tiny little part of her hoped that somehow she had. It just seemed right to start her new life in her new home with something of Ida’s, and how perfect that it was something old, borrowed and blue all rolled into one?
They stepped outside just as the ambulance was pulling out of the driveway. Sam stood on the porch steps waiting for them and Maggie felt the need to hug him tight just one more time.
Today could have gone so differently, but they’d gotten lucky. She couldn’t help but think that Ida Dixon had been hanging around just waiting for someone to put the events of the past to rights.
Maggie was glad that she and Sam had been able to do it. She figured the dress was Ida’s way of giving them her blessing. She was humbled by it.
“Are you all right?” Sam asked.
“Never better,” Maggie said.
Sam leaned down and kissed her and Maggie heard Ruth make a choking sound.
“Eh, save it for the honeymoon,” she said. She stomped off the porch and over to the police car.
Sam and Maggie followed, trying to hide their laughter.
Chapter 30
“Aw, Mom, you look amazing,” Laura Gerber said. She adjusted the pearl hair clip that held Maggie’s hair in place in her half-up, half-down hairdo and stood back to study it.
Maggie was seated at the Louis XVI–style vanity, which had once belonged to Ida Dixon and was a wedding present from Sam, in the master bedroom of her new home. Downstairs she could hear the commotion of the guests as they arrived and made their way through the house to the backyard where the festivities were to be held.
“Thanks, honey,” Maggie said. “I’m so tickled that you’re standing up for me. It means so much to me and Sam.”
“Are you kidding?” Laura asked. She twirled and her sea foam–green dress swirled around her knees. “I get a new dress and I get to see my mom marry the love of her life. I wouldn’t miss it.”
“Your dad—” Maggie began but Laura cut her off.
“Would absolutely approve,” Laura said. She rested her hands on her mother’s shoulders and their gazes met in the mirror’s reflection. They were wearing matching strands of pearls at their throats that Charlie had bought for them shortly after Laura was born. “Dad was the love of your life once upon a time, and he’ll always be in your heart, but Sam is the love of your life right now, and I couldn’t be happier for both of you.”
Maggie’s throat felt suspiciously tight. She swallowed and it eased just a little. “I love you, honey.”
“I love you, too, Mom,” Laura said.
There was a knock on the door and they both called, “Come in.”
Maggie’s mother, sister and all of the Good Buy Girls hurried into the room. They were ready for a party in sparkly, bright-hued dresses, snappy shoes and festive jewelry. To Maggie, they looked like a flock of exotic birds, who brightened up the nearly empty room with their plumage.
It was late afternoon, and Michael Claramotta had been working his smokers since the day before and the whole neighborhood was flavored with the scent of barbecue with a hint of bacon since, once he’d heard about Dot’s recommendation for a bacon station, he’d been all in.
“We just wanted to check and make sure you have everything you need,” Ginger said. She looked a little watery around the eyeballs and Maggie noted that she had a tissue wadded up in her fist.
“I do,” Maggie said.
“Now save that for later,” Joanne teased and they all laughed. It was the breathless, excited, nervous laugh that preceded a life-changing event.
Maggie nodded. Looking at her nearest and dearest made her feel weepy again, in the best possible way, and she wasn’t sure she could speak without blubbering.
“You look red eyed,” Summer said. “You haven’t been drinking, have you? Because that never goes well.”
“No!” Maggie protested and then laughed, which she suspected was what Summer had been going for.
“You look beautiful, baby,” Lizzie said.
“Thanks, Mom,” Maggie said.
“A real knock-out,” Sissy agreed. She put a clear vase with a big bouquet of peonies and calla lilies in it on the vanity. “Your bouquet.”
Maggie looked at her in question and Sissy smiled. “Sam had the florist add the calla lilies. He said you’d understand.”
Maggie nodded. It was just one more reason why she had lost her heart to that man.
There was a discreet knock on the door, and then Blue Dixon stuck his head around the door frame.
“Sorry to interrupt, but Pastor Shields has asked that the ladies be escorted to their seats as the groom is getting a might antsy down there.”
Maggie rose from her seat and looked through the sheer curtain at the backyard. Sure enough, it was standing room only in the yard and Sam was pacing by the large white garden arch that was swathed in tulle and peonies.
She could see the Good Buy Girls’ significant others were standing with him, talking and joking as they each stole glances at the back of the house to see where their ladies were.
She was going to marry Sam! The thought filled her up from the inside out and it was all she could do to keep herself from running out the door and down the stairs to get to him.
“Well, you heard him,” Summer said. She started to shoo everyone out of the room. “We do not want a groom on the run. Let’s go!”
They each hugged Maggie on their way out, wishing her luck and dabbing at their eyes as the tears of joy began to flow.
Blue Dixon had escorted Lizzie to the wedding, and Maggie found there was something right about that as well. As he waited for Lizzie to stop fussing with Laura’s hair, he stood beside Maggie and looked at her with approval.
“Ida’s dress looks lovely on you, my dear,” he said.
Maggie’s eyes went wide. “Ida’s? How did you know?”
He looked embarrassed and then said, “When I gave you the items from storage, something made me hold that dress aside. Then one night, I dreamt that Ida demanded that I get up in the middle of the night and deliver the dress to this house. The next day when I woke I thought it was the strangest dream ever, but when I went to my closet to see where the dress had been ha
nging, it was gone.”
They exchanged wide-eyed looks and Maggie said, “She wanted me to have it.”
“Yes, I believe she did,” he said. “And she was right. You are absolutely breathtaking.”
“Thank you, Blue,” Maggie said.
He bowed his head and turned to escort Lizzie from the room. Her mother gave her a tiny finger wave and headed out the door on Blue’s arm.
“Are you ready, Mom?” Laura asked.
Maggie paused to listen to the house. There were no cold spots, no flickering lights, no slamming doors, nothing. There was a sense of contentment in the old place that eased Maggie into a feeling of deep and abiding peace.
She turned and grinned at her daughter. “Yes, I am.”
The ceremony was simple. The vows were traditional. The Good Buy Girls wept, along with a good many other attendees, with the joy that weddings bring. But laughter won out when Maggie’s grandnephew Josh felt compelled to stand on his chair and shout in his bossy three-year-old voice, “Kiss her, Uncle Sam!”
Sam did. The band played. Everyone danced, but the makeshift floor was owned by Doc Franklin and his wife, Alice. Ginger’s cake received rave reviews and Michael’s barbecue was a hit but not quite as big of a hit as the bacon station, which Dot and her boyfriend, Javier, circled repeatedly.
When the night started to wind down, Sam and Maggie slipped away from their guests and hid in the lilac bushes that lined the yard.
“Well, you’ve been Mrs. Sam Collins for five hours now,” Sam said. He pulled her into his arms so they were facing each other. “How does it feel?”
“Honestly?” Maggie asked. She looped her arms around his neck to pull him even closer. “Never better. I think I scored the bargain of my life when I married you.”
Sam laughed and hugged her hard. “How do you figure?”
“Well, I now have a wonderful man to share my bed, pay half the bills, start a new life in a new-to-me house, and he’s the sheriff so we can investigate crimes together. All this at the rock-bottom price of saying ‘I do.’ Seriously, it’s a smokin’ good deal.”
