The Case of the Sinister Spirit

by Leighann Dobbs

  “Of course I do.”

  “Nope. Trust me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You don’t see it?”

  My eyes were getting more used to the darkness. I could see the individual stalls for the horses and bales of hay piled up here and there. But there was one lumpy thing in the corner that wasn’t a bale of hay, and that was exactly where Jinx was looking. Was it the ghost? But I didn’t sense a ghostly presence, and usually they were all misty and swirly, not dark and unmoving.

  My private investigator skills kicked in. Something wasn’t right about that lump. I inched my way over, reaching into my purse for my cell phone.

  I pressed the flashlight app and aimed the beam at the lump. My heart jerked in my chest when I saw what the lump was. Bud Saunders wasn’t going to be working out a payment plan. He was crumpled in the corner, pitchfork tines sticking through his chest.

  Jinx looked up at me, his expression ominous. “I told you you didn’t want to have a light on in here.”

  As much as I hated to do it, I had to call Sheriff O’Hara. Roberta O’Hara and I had had a venomous relationship since high school, when she’d accused me of stealing Mitch from her. I hadn’t actually stolen him, as there had been nothing going on between the two of them, at least not on Mitch’s side. But Bobby was fixated on him. You’d think that now, more than fifteen years later, she would have gotten over it, especially considering the louse he turned out to be, but nope. She still hated my guts.

  Never mind that Mitch and I were no longer together. She was welcome to him, but it didn’t seem to matter, so it was no surprise when she got out of her official car and eyed me suspiciously.

  “You found a body?” she asked. The way she said it made me think she wanted to replace the word “found” with “murdered.”

  I pointed to the barn and followed her in, careful not to look at Bud. It was disturbing.

  “What were you doing out here?” Bobby asked as she slowly walked around the body.

  “I had an appointment.”

  “For what?”

  “He hired me.”

  Bobby glanced up from where she’d been crouched next to Bud’s head and eyed me skeptically. “Really? You expect me to believe that.”

  “Yes.”

  “To do what?”

  I suppose I could have told her. Having a ghost in your barn was really no big deal in Hallows Crossing. But legally, I didn’t have to tell her. And I wanted to mess with her a little. “Sorry. Client–investigator privilege. Can’t tell you.”

  She scowled at me, her face growing red. “Really? Then what’s to make me think you didn’t come here and have an argument with him and kill him?”

  “Well, if I did that, do you think I would have called it in?”

  She glanced from me to the body. “Maybe. Maybe you called it in so as to divert suspicion from yourself.”

  “That seems stupid. No one’s here. I could have just snuck off.”

  “We’ll see about that. First, I’m going to have the medical examiner determine the time of death. Then you better hope you had an alibi.” She was downright gleeful for a chance to pin a murder on me, no matter how slim that chance was.

  The whole time we were talking, I tried to avoid looking at Jinx, who was perched on a bale of hay behind her, making faces at her. I couldn’t really blame him. I wanted to make faces too.

  “Looks like something scared the bejeezus out of him.” Bobby aimed her flashlight at Bud’s face, and I peeked out between the hands that were over my eyes. She had a point. His face was frozen in a grimace, his eyes wide open as if he’d seen something horrible. Like a ghost. But the pitchfork tines were coming through his chest from the back. If someone had stabbed him in the back, what had he seen in front of him that was so scary?

  As I assessed the scene (it’s scary how quickly one can get used to looking at a gruesome dead body), the puzzle pieces started to click into place. It was possible that no one had been behind Bud. If he’d been backing up, he could have tripped and fallen over one of the warped floorboards and impaled himself on the pitchfork.

  “You think he was backing up and tripped?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so. Look at his face.”

  I tilted my head to get a better look at his expression. That grimace on his face might have just been surprise. “Maybe he was just surprised he tripped.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “You think someone stabbed him from behind?” Last I knew, ghosts couldn’t wield pitchforks.

  She started taking pictures, crouching again and tilting her head to the side to look at the wounds from all angles. Then she stood, stepped a few paces away from the body, turned, and studied it from afar.

  “It’s possible he did back up and fall on the pitchfork. This is all just preliminary. The medical examiner will know more, but looking at the angle of entry, it seems like someone would have had to be mighty tall to stab him with enough force to go through his chest. But if he fell, the weight of his body would have been enough to push the tines through.”

  “So it could have been an accident?” I asked, hopefully.

  “Nope. Just falling wouldn’t have been enough force. He was pushed. This was definitely murder.”

  “Murder!”

  We wheeled around to see Vera Hightower standing in the doorway, her mouth agape. Her eyes, which flicked from the body to my face, darkened with suspicion. “I always knew you were no good, Jane Gallows. You and that weird family of yours. Now here’s the proof.” She gestured toward Bud’s body.

  “I didn’t murder him. I just found him.”

  Vera glanced at Bobby for confirmation.

  “That’s what she says. She did call it in. At least that part is true,” Bobby said.

  It figured that Vera would show up. She was even nosier than Mrs. Newman. She considered it her duty to know everything that was going on in Hallows Crossing and monitored the police channel frequently, showing up at various crime scenes. Crimes could affect tourism.

  “Darn it all! This murder could be bad for the festival!” Hightower wailed.

  “Not to mention for Bud Saunders,” I said.

  Judging by the look on Bud’s face, he’d been scared or surprised by something. My eyes darted around the barn. Had the ghost spooked him and caused him to trip? If so, it must be a very belligerent ghost.

  This put me in a sticky situation. Should I still try to vanquish the ghost? Technically, I didn’t have a client anymore, but I felt a little loyal to Bud now. I had given him my word. There was no chance of getting paid now, but I still felt I should follow through with the job.

  “My squad will be here any minute. Vera, you don’t need to be here. Jane, I want to get your statement, but not now. You’ll have to come by the station later.” Bobby said all this without looking up at us. “I don’t want you people in here messing with the crime scene.”

  Jinx, still on the bale of hay, moved and distracted Bobby. She looked up at him. “Isn’t that your cat, Gallows?”

  “Nope. My cat has different markings.”

  “Traitor,” Jinx said. Naturally, I was the only one that could hear him. I wasn’t being a traitor though. I just didn’t want anyone asking questions as to how my cat had gotten into the barn.

  Bobby waved her hands at him. “Shoo, get out of here. Go eat a mouse or something. I don’t need you contaminating my crime scene.”

  Jinx presented her with his backside and then jumped down from the bale of hay and trotted off toward the door.

  “Well, I guess I’ll be going, too.” I edged toward the door.

  Bobby whipped around to scowl at me. “Yes, you can go. I’d say don’t leave town, but I’d actually prefer it if you did. Wish that had happened decades ago.”

  I headed toward my car with Hightower on my heels.

  “This stinks to high heaven, and I know your family has something to do with it. What were you doing in that barn, anyway?” />
  “What, are you on the police force now? I don’t need to tell you what I was doing in there, but if you really need to know, I had an appointment with Mr. Saunders.”

  “Aha! You do have something to do with this. Does this have anything to do with your aunt and her brooms?”

  “No. Leave my aunt out of this.”

  “Oh no, you’re not going to weasel out of this one like you always do. I have Mrs. Newman on the case. She’s seen what goes on in that haunted house of a mansion you call home, and I promise you, if this death turns out to be something wonky that makes tourists cross our town off their vacation list, then I’m holding you accountable.”

  Chapter Five

  “And you say he was deader than a headless zombie?” Uncle Cosmo looked up at me over the roast he was carving, his eyes brimming with equal measures of interest and concern.

  “Undoubtedly.” I took a roll and passed the basket to Liz.

  “Who? Who? Who?” Hooter, the great horned owl that was a family pet, sat on his perch near the mahogany buffet table, his enormous round gold eyes demanding to know who we were talking about.

  Aunt Wanda looked over at him. “Bud Saunders, if you must know.”

  Hooter blinked and executed a three-hundred-sixty-degree spin of his head. It always made my neck hurt when he did that.

  “He’s so nosy.” Aunt Lucretia sopped up blood from the meat tray with her roll, her white fangs slightly noticeable behind the slash of bloodred lips that made her pale face appear even more pasty.

  “What did the pitchfork look like coming out of his chest? Was it bloody?” Aunt Glad sat at the end of the table, a pointy black-and-purple-striped witch hat sticking up on top of her head.

  Wanda frowned at her. “Gladys, that’s not a very nice question for dinner talk. And by the way, it’s impolite to wear hats at the table.”

  Gladys’s eyes turned upward. “Yeah, sorry about that. I was trying on these hats. It’s new stock that Cosmo got in, and now if I take it off, I’ll have hat hair.” She lifted the hat a fraction of an inch to show us the flattened curls mashed into a triangle on the top of her head.

  “Yeah, keep the hat on,” Tess said.

  “So what about the ghost? Did you get rid of it?” Liz asked.

  “That’s the funny thing. I didn’t even sense a ghost there, but it sure looked like Bud had either been surprised or scared to death.” I’d already told everyone that Bud had hired me to get rid of a spirit in his barn. Now that he was dead, I supposed I didn’t have to keep it a secret. There would be plenty of looky-loos and rubberneckers swarming his property now with the rumors that were going to fly around. But Bud was beyond caring about that.

  “Do you really think he was killed by a ghost?” Liz asked. “I’m just surprised there would be one at the barn. Because we haven’t heard about that place being haunted, and most of the ghosts around here have been here since the 1600s.”

  Aunt Gladys made a face. “Did anyone in that area or anyone close to Bud die recently? Could be a new ghost.”

  I made a mental note to check on that. I’d been assuming the ghost was Mary Dunbuddy, but maybe it was someone else.

  “Maybe it wasn’t a ghost. Maybe it was that Charlie Henderson,” Uncle Cosmo said.

  “Who? Who? Who?” Hooter piped in.

  “Charlie Henderson,” Uncle Cosmo repeated more loudly. “Bud’s next-door neighbor.”

  “Why would he kill Bud?” I was intrigued. I’d been working on the ghost theory, but maybe it hadn’t been a ghost at all.

  “They had a feud going,” Uncle Cosmo said matter-of-factly. “Can someone pass the garlic green beans?”

  Tess passed the plate in front of Uncle Henry, who jumped back in his seat and hissed.

  “Sorry, Uncle Henry.” Tess looked sheepish. “I always forget about your aversion to garlic.”

  “Smells like crap,” Henry said, not surprisingly, considering he was a vampire.

  “A feud?” I made another mental note.

  “Oh yes, dear,” Gladys said. “They were always messing with each other, trying to get each other’s goat, you know.” She pressed her lips together. “I thought it was mostly just in fun though.”

  My eyes drifted over to the window, looking in the direction of Agnes Newman’s house. I guess one could say we had a feud with her too. She was always messing with us. In fact, she would have liked to see us gone for good. I didn’t think she’d resort to murder, but maybe Charlie was more violent than Agnes.

  “I guess we’ll just have to let Sheriff O’Hara figure that out. Jane’s not going to be looking into it. Her client is dead. Right, dear?” Aunt Wanda said.

  It was true. Bud had hired me to find the ghost, and now that he was dead, I didn’t have a client.

  “Far be it from me to tell Jane what to do, but Sheriff O’Hara is only going to be looking at human suspects. If it really is a ghost that killed Bud, it’s not a very nice ghost. It could be a deadly sinister spirit.” Aunt Glad gave us all an ominous look.

  Liz sighed. “And if it thinks killing someone by causing them to impale themselves on a pitchfork is fun, there’s no telling what it will do next.”

  Vera Hightower’s threat echoed in the back of my mind. If it was a spirit and it continued to act nasty, she was going to be all over me—and my family, especially Aunt Glad. Aunt Glad was keeping up a chipper conversation, but I could tell underneath she was truly worried about her problem with the broom. I didn’t want to add to her worries.

  But maybe I didn’t have to get involved in a big investigation. If I could just smear some of the vanishing cream on the barn, the ghost might go away, and all our problems would be solved.

  “I see those wheels turning, Jane,” Uncle Cosmo said. “I admire your loyalty to your deceased client. Your parents always taught you to finish what you started. But if you’re going to look into this, make sure you have plenty of chocolate. Whether the killer is otherworldly or not, you are dealing with someone dangerous who has already killed one person.”

  “Who? Who? Who?” Hooter flapped his great wings, and the twin tufts of fur on his head that resembled horns bristled like raised eyebrows as he craned his neck forward in my direction. His luminescent eyes stared at me, full of questions.

  I stared back at him. “That, my friend, is a good question.”

  I helped my aunts clean up after dinner then headed to the stone cottage at the edge of the estate that I called home. I parted ways with Tess and Liz in the driveway. Tess headed toward the carriage house where she lived. Liz was the smart one; she had an apartment in town.

  Jinx fell into step with me along the way.

  “Where have you been?” I asked. Jinx hardly ever missed a family dinner, as Aunt Gladys was prone to feeding him scraps of meat from the table.

  “If you must know, I was leaving Vera Hightower a present.”

  “A present? Thought you didn’t like her.”

  “Can’t stand her. This present wasn’t the kind you’re happy to get. Three little mouse heads lying right in a row on her stoop.”

  I probably should have admonished him. I couldn’t get on board with killing innocent mice. Freaking out Vera Hightower, on the other hand, I approved of wholeheartedly.

  “So, are you going to continue with the case?” Jinx asked.

  “Technically I don’t have a case. No client.”

  Jinx scowled up at me. “What are you, some kind of quitter?”

  We arrived at the stone cottage, and I stood on the steps in front of the large, round-topped oak door. Its giant iron hinges gleamed in the moonlight as I slid my oversized brass skeleton key into the lock. “I’m not a quitter.”

  “Then you have to keep working on the case. I heard Hightower’s threat. Besides, you’re not going to let O’Hara run amok with the suspects, are you? We probably left clues all over the barn that she’ll try to use to frame us.”

  Jinx had a point. O’Hara was incompetent. Who knew what she
would use in there to try to tie us to the murder?

  I opened the door, and Jinx scooted through it in front of me. “Well, I suppose I could look into it a little.”

  Jinx trotted to the kitchen while I tossed my keys onto the side table. My place wasn’t big, but it was comfortable. It had been built three hundred years ago as a caretaker cottage for the estate. The walls were all exposed stone, and an enormous stone fireplace with a hearth big enough to step inside dominated one wall. The windows were small with crosshatched panes, newly updated and energy efficient but still maintaining the old-world charm. I’d decorated in earthy tones of moss, amber, and red.

  “Hey, what are you doing out there? I’m starving,” Jinx yelled from the kitchen. “I’ve been running around all night finding mice to leave for Hightower. I think I deserve a treat.”

  I got the Fancy Feast out and slopped it into a bowl, and he immediately started gobbling it down.

  While Jinx gorged himself, I plopped down on the overstuffed couch to think things over.

  On the one hand, I wouldn’t get paid for any investigation now that Bud was dead. But since I didn’t have any other cases, I had nothing to do anyway.

  Who knew what kinds of things we’d left in the barn? When I had been in there, I hadn’t exactly been thinking that I didn’t want to leave clues in case I got framed for a murder. But O’Hara knew why I’d been there. She couldn’t possibly be dumb enough to think I’d murdered Bud and then pretended I’d stumbled across him. Then again, she did have a deep-seated vendetta against me.

  Then there was Hightower’s threat. Agnes Newman had seen Aunt Gladys with the brooms on the patio. Could that be twisted around somehow to implicate her in the murder? Probably not, but the one thing I knew was that the longer this case went unsolved, the more anxious Hightower was going to become, and the more she’d pressure O’Hara for a solution, and that couldn’t be good for us. Not to mention the fact there could be an angry, unstable ghost roaming around who might harm someone else. I didn’t want to be responsible for that. I had to try to get rid of it.