Nothing to Ghost About

by Morgana Best

  I frowned. “John’s a criminal, too? He seems nice.”

  “Well, maybe to you,” Duncan said. “And the hit-and-run was premeditated, but keep that to yourself. The car was stolen, and eyewitnesses said the car accelerated right before it hit him. Usually, people try to stop when they realize they’re about to smash into someone with their car.”

  I took a moment to process that. The news reports had not mentioned that piece of information. “Now everyone knows the police were at the funeral,” I said.

  “It couldn’t be helped. And besides John, no one at the funeral has a criminal lifestyle. We ran all these guys through the system when they came to town for the funeral. Besides the deceased and John, everyone came back clean, even his other brothers.”

  “Do you think John had something to do with his brother’s death?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Duncan said. “I hope not, because if he did, tipping our hand made him realize we were keeping an eye on him.”

  Just then some people in white forensics suits wheeled out the funeral singer’s body right past us.

  “If everyone’s going to be here for a while, I’d better feed them,” I said. I left Duncan and went to brew pots of coffee. Just as I was filling some platters with food, Preston Kerr materialized in front of me.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know why I’m sticking around here.”

  “Do you remember anything?” I asked him.

  He shook his head. “Not really. All I can remember is that I was setting up my gear behind the curtain, and someone was speaking to the dead man in the casket. Whoever it was, was apologizing for killing him. They said they had to kill him. They said there was no other way. They had to do it.”

  Chills ran through my body. Whoever had killed Alec had killed Preston. That meant they had been at the funeral. And by all accounts, the killer was in the funeral home now.

  Chapter 3

  I was thoroughly annoyed. Anna Stiles, a journalist from the paper in the town half an hour or so away, had just called to tell me that she was coming today. Normally, I would be happy to have the publicity, but the problem was that I already had a reporter coming to speak with me at the same time. Bob Hendry was from a big Sydney paper. Anna Stiles refused to postpone, so I had reluctantly agreed to the interview.

  Both reporters had said they were coming to interview me about the celebrity funerals, but I suspected they were more interested in Preston Kerr’s murder.

  I spent the morning in my office, sitting in the old wheeled office chair that my father had sat in for so many years. I made considerable headway on the ever-mounting pile of paperwork, including drafting up a bill for the last funeral we had done. I had to knock some off the price, considering a man had been murdered, which caused it to be postponed, but still, it would be a nice chunk of change.

  I had been blissfully alone all morning. My mother was spending the day at church, no doubt trying to pray away the demon she was so sure was following me around, and she had taken Janet, the funeral home’s cosmetician, with her. When my father was alive, my mother had made sure that everyone who worked for them attended her church. The only exception was old Mr. Sandalwood, Dad’s accountant, and father of Basil, my current accountant. I have no idea how Dad managed to get Mom to agree to that.

  A ringing doorbell brought me out of my math-induced stupor, and I looked at the clock my father had hung on the office wall so long ago. It was twelve-twenty, a little too early for the reporters.

  I pulled open the front door to see Basil, my accountant and also my crush. He was tall, well built, and looked like one of those models on the cover of a romance novel. Of course, junior high girls have crushes, but sometimes Basil made me feel like a junior high girl.

  “Is it a bad time?” he asked, tucking a folder under his arm.

  “No, not at all. Come in.” It’s never a bad time for you, Basil, I thought.

  As he stepped inside, he removed his sunglasses and slipped them inside the pocket of his suit jacket.

  “A present for me?” I asked, nodding toward the folder.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said sarcastically. “Monthly expenses. Do you have time to go over them?”

  “Probably. I do have two reporters due here any minute, though.”

  He raised one eyebrow. “I can come back.”

  “No, let’s go ahead. Who knows when they’ll actually show?”

  We retreated into my office.

  Basil laid some papers in front of me after we both sat down. “Your figures have improved since your mother stopped sending the funeral home’s money to televangelists,” he said.

  “That’s good. She was furious when I changed the bank account and refused to give her the details,” I said, shaking my head and then rubbing my temples. How did I get an instant headache just at the thought of my mother? Right then, the doorbell rang several times in a row. “That must be one of them now.”

  Basil slid the papers back into the folder. “Whoever it is sounds insistent. Hungry for a story, no doubt.”

  “I can go over the rest,” I assured him, “and call you with any questions.”

  Basil shrugged. “That’s what I was thinking. I guess there wasn’t much of a reason for me to come over here, but I have to keep earning what you’re paying me somehow.”

  I laughed. I was secretly hoping that the real reason he came over to go through the paperwork with me in person was because he wanted to see me. I certainly wanted to see him, but I had no idea if it was reciprocated. Basil was a hard man to read, harder than most. Then there was the fact that he was hiding something, or so I thought. He always smelled of white sage, and I still suspected he was able to see ghosts. Of course, that could all just be my over active imagination.

  Basil followed me to the door, which made me hope I had brushed the back of my hair properly. What if there was a big bird’s nest of knots in it? I hadn’t been sleeping well lately.

  Basil waited to the side while I opened the door. I took an immediate dislike to the woman standing there. She was about my age, or perhaps a little older. She had long, blonde hair. Sure, I did, too, but while mine was thick and had a mind of its own, hers was sleek and well groomed. Perhaps I would have to invest in a straightener, after all. Her heels were impossibly high, her legs impossibly shapely and long, and her dress way too tight. Her jewelry was as loud as it was fake. She was wearing so much fruity, citrus perfume that it was enough to turn me off eating oranges forever. I remembered seeing her, or rather smelling her, at the funeral.

  She extended a slim hand to me. “Laurel Bay?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “Anna Stiles,” she said. “With the paper.”

  Of course, there were a million papers, but she seemed self-assured enough to assume her paper was the paper. I shook her hand—her handshake was limp despite the fact she was muscle-bound. The woman must spend half her life in the gym. My first impression of her wasn’t a good one. Was I envious? Most likely, but there was something about her that revved my feminine intuition into an overdrive of red flags.

  And then she saw Basil, and I knew for sure that I didn’t like her. An unmistakable attraction flashed across her features. I glanced at Basil. My stomach knotted, as it seemed to me that he was attracted to her as well. She was a good-looking woman, so of course the average man would be attracted to her. It’s just that I really wanted Basil to be anything but the average man.

  She stepped toward him and offered her hand, again in a limp fashion, but this time upside down, as if she wanted him to kiss it. Thankfully, he did not. “Do you work here?” she asked. Her voice was almost a purr.

  “Not exactly.” Basil smiled at her. I was pretty sure he had never smiled like that at me, and I was wondering exactly what that meant. “I’m the accountant.”

  “For the funeral home?” Anna asked. They still hadn’t removed their hands from one another’s. I wanted to reach out and slap them apart.

 
“Ms. Bay is a client of mine, as are other local small business owners,” Basil said.

  Finally, after what seemed to me to be an age, they released their grip. Anna smiled and opened her mouth to speak, but was forestalled by another car screeching to a stop. A man got out and wasted no time hurrying to the door.

  “Bob Hendry,” he announced.

  “I need to get going,” Basil said, nodding to Anna.

  Bob stepped inside so Basil could exit. I shut the door behind him. “Mr. Hendry, this is Anna Stiles from the local paper,” I said. “I’m sorry that you’ve both arrived at the same time.”

  “It’s quite all right.” The look on Bob Hendry’s face showed that he considered it to be anything but all right.

  “Let’s all sit down and talk,” Anna suggested, her voice dripping with charm. She laid her hand on Bob’s arm.

  Bob smiled at her and I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. I showed them into my office, and they whipped out digital recorders in unison. Bob placed a yellow legal pad on his crossed knee, and waved his pen over it. Anna looked around the room with narrowed eyes.

  First the talk was about celebrity funerals, and how I had come to run the place. I was surprised that they were asking me the very same questions that the journalist had asked me right after the KISS funeral, almost word for word.

  I was relieved that they weren’t asking me about the funeral singer’s murder, or for that matter, anything about the funeral of the hit-and-run crime lord victim, Alec Mason. My relief was short lived.

  “Tell us about the funeral singer,” Anna said imperiously.

  “Yes, the murder victim,” Bob said with relish.

  She smiled at him. “I’ll email you the link to his website. Do you have a card?”

  He pulled out his card and handed it to her. Their hands lingered a little too long on each other’s. I sighed. She sure had the whole feminine wiles thing down pat.

  “You’d have to ask the police,” I said.

  Anna leaned forward. “But didn’t you find the body?”

  “No, it was…” I managed to catch myself. I had nearly blurted out Ian’s name. “There were undercover police at Alec Mason’s funeral,” I said, silently congratulating myself, “and they found the body, as far as I know. I was upstairs at the time.”

  “Did the police happen to mention anything about Alec Mason?” Bob asked, now on the edge of his seat. “Do they have any idea who murdered him? And what about Preston Kerr? Do the police have any idea why he was murdered? Do they have any leads?”

  I shook my head. “If the police do know anything, they haven’t told me.” I did not like the direction in which the conversation was going.

  Preston Kerr, the recently murdered funeral singer, appeared in the corner. He could barely hold his form. His face looked like clouds or wisps of smoke and he faded in and out, shimmering all the while. He was the least substantial ghost I had ever seen.

  Ernie materialized and floated beside Preston. “Don’t worry about him,” he said to me, pointing to Preston. “He’s taking it hard. You know these theatrical types! They make a big song and dance about being murdered.” He snickered.

  “Well, surely you know something,” Anna pressed. “You have had two people murdered here in a short space of time.”

  “They’re dying to know!” Ernie floated over to Anna just to annoy me.

  I glared at him. He knew that floating creeped me out.

  Anna looked behind her. “What are you looking at?”

  “I thought I heard someone outside,” I said untruthfully. I could hardly tell the annoying journalist that I was staring at a bothersome ghost who loved to make puns at every opportunity.

  “Tell us about the girl who was murdered here recently,” Bob said. “Tiffany Hunter.”

  I stood up. “No,” I said firmly.

  “No?” Anna asked.

  “Look, we’re just trying to get a story here,” Bob said.

  I crossed my arms. “You both told me you were coming to speak about the celebrity funerals. You didn’t say a word about doing a story about the murders.”

  “You have to admit, a funeral home with two murders is a much better story, don’t you think?” Anna asked in a sugary tone.

  I shook my head. “I’ll have to ask you to leave if you want to ask me about the murders. That’s a matter for the police. I really don’t know anything.”

  “Hey now,” Bob said as he stood. “You should work with us and help us out. It will kill your business if people think they aren’t safe here.”

  I glared at Bob. “Are you threatening me?”

  “Not at all,” he said in a far from convincing tone. “I’m sorry you wouldn’t agree to the interview.” He turned away with a scowl, and Anna scurried out the door after him, closing it behind her a little too loudly.

  It was with some difficulty that I resisted the urge to throw something at the door. I sat back down in the chair. “I handled that badly,” I said to Ernie. “And please, land. You know that floating makes me nervous.”

  Ernie landed in front of me. “You just need something to lift your spirits.”

  I groaned. “That’s not funny.”

  Ernie seemed to think it was, because he laughed for some time before turning serious. “You know, it really doesn’t look good for Witch Woods Funeral Home that two people have been murdered in a short space of time.”

  I shrugged. “Well, there’s nothing I can do about that.”

  “Yes, there is,” Ernie said smugly. “You can solve the murder.”

  I snorted rudely. “Hello! That’s what the police are for.”

  “Time is of the essence,” Ernie said. “Those reporters will give you bad press, then people will stop coming here. No doubt the police will solve it in their own sweet time, but by then, you mightn’t have any customers left. They’ll all be going to that new funeral home franchise in Tamworth, and they’re stiff competition. Get it? Stiff competition.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  Chapter 4

  Could the day get any worse? I was forced into having dinner with my mother. That in itself would be horrible, but tonight, Ian would be joining us.

  I really would have to look into renovating the apartment above the funeral home, so I could move in. It was difficult—and that’s an understanding—staying with my mother in her home adjacent to the funeral home property. I was living in my old room, and paying Mom board.

  The pungent scent of lasagna floated up the stairs and into my room. I am a vegetarian, but I could guarantee that my mother had meat in her lasagna. She always cooked dishes with meat in it. Now that was her business, but she always acted hurt when we were eating together because I always prepared a vegetarian meal for myself. It always caused a drama, and as we ate together most nights, that was a guaranteed daily drama, and one I could well do without.

  I reluctantly dragged myself down the stairs to find Mom and her bestie, Ian, in the kitchen. They were laughing and drinking sparkling mineral water from wine glasses, as children would do.

  “There she is,” Mom said in her shrill voice when I walked in.

  “Have you been sleeping all day again, dear?” Ian asked.

  “I wasn’t sleeping,” I said. “And stop calling me ‘dear’! I’m not your ‘dear’ and you’re not much older than I am! In fact, I never sleep all day. I work hard.”

  “That’s not what your mother said,” Ian said, wagging a finger at me.

  “You spend so much time in your room that I get worried about you,” my mother said. “I think you’re sleeping because you drink too much.”

  “Mom, I hardly drink,” I said. I needed to change the conversation quickly. “Do you realize that you’re drinking out of wine glasses?”

  Mom slammed her glass down hard on the countertop, causing water to spray out all over the place. “Of course they’re not wine glasses! How could you say such a thing, Laurel? Why do you always try to upset me? I bought them today becau
se they looked nice. Why, I’ve never let the Demon Alcohol get ahold of me! I signed the Temperance Pledge when I was seven years old.”

  I shrugged. “Okay. Is dinner ready?”

  “Almost.”

  “Is there meat in it?”

  “Of course there’s meat in it, Laurel. I already told you that it’s lasagna. It was your favorite when you were little.”

  “I ate meat when I was little. I don’t now.”

  Mom glared at me. “There’s not much meat in it. You can take it out.”

  I saw Ian open his mouth. I fought the urge to leap across the kitchen and shove him out the window before he could speak. “Not eating meat is why you’re so skinny,” he said. “It’s not healthy.”

  “God made animals for us to eat,” my mother said waspishly.

  “Is that so?” I said, digging my fingernails into my palm to divert me from saying something else.

  “Of course. We rule the animal kingdom. Animals are tools to be used by us. We eat a lot of animals: lambs, pigs, cows, and even ocean animals like fish.”

  “You do, but I don’t,” I said. “I don’t share your views.”

  “What views?” Ian asked.

  “All of them,” I said.

  Ian shoved a finger in the air. “The point we’re getting at, Laurel, and this is from two people who care about you, is that you need to eat meat to be healthy.”

  “I don’t, Ian. Not at all.” With that, I turned and headed to the dining room. I sat and took deep, slow breaths. When Mom and Ian brought in the dishes, I put salad on my plate and nothing else. Mom watched me and shook her head.

  Ian spoke up once more. “You’re not getting any protein!” he protested.

  “Ian, thank you for your concern, but plants actually have protein,” I said through gritted teeth.

  The rest of the course was passed in merciful silence, and then Mom produced dessert. “Angel food cake,” Mom announced. “Ian made it.”

  “I brought it,” Ian said. “My girlfriend made it.”