Walt’s lips formed a slow smile. “Brandy?”
“It was Marie’s suggestion. I’m not much of a brandy drinker, but Marie told me what her father’s favorite was; I remember you mentioning several times how you used to enjoy an evening brandy with him.”
“Thank you, Chris. I haven’t had a brandy since…since the night I was murdered. But yes, I would love one.”
“Me too,” Danielle piped up.
“Not your wine?” Chris asked.
Danielle shook her head. “I haven’t had brandy in ages. I’d like to try a little.”
Chris was inside getting drinks when Ian and Lily showed up, and a few minutes later, Heather arrived.
When they were all settled on the back patio, Heather asked, “Okay, if I understand correctly, Macbeth’s cousins are the ones who murdered him and Chet. But why? The article in the newspaper didn’t say much aside from the fact the middle brother turned state evidence on the other ones.”
“I’m more curious to find out what happened to Chet’s and Macbeth’s spirits.” Ian glanced around. “Did they move on?”
Danielle looked to Ian, who sat in one of the patio chairs next to Lily, a beer in hand. “Chet and Macbeth moved on. I think they were anxious to deal with whatever penance they have waiting. But I suspect it will go better for them considering how they helped us untangle this mess.”
“So why?” Heather asked. “Why did they kill their cousin? Why kill Chet?”
“Originally,” Danielle began, “Macbeth’s plan was to kill Walt and set up Chet for the murder.”
“Why did he want to kill Walt?” Heather asked.
“After talking to his spirit,” Walt interjected, “I think the real reason, he was afraid of me.”
“Afraid?” Lily frowned.
“When he overheard Danielle and me talking, he thought I was pulling another scam. Thought I didn’t have amnesia. At first, he just wanted to blackmail me for the paintings. But then afterwards, he started thinking about it and was worried I might double-cross him and try to get rid of him.”
“Why did his cousins kill him?” Heather asked.
“It seems the Bandoni brothers had some serious financial problems,” Danielle told her. “They inherited their grandmother’s house a few years back, but they’re behind on the taxes, and none of them seem capable of holding down a real job. They have just one car they all share. I guess they do handyman jobs around town, but they’re not that reliable, so their business isn’t doing well.
“They thought Macbeth was going to score a fortune with those portraits, and he was only planning to give them a pittance. When Clint was no longer taking his share from the heist, the cousins thought Macbeth would give them a bigger cut. But he wasn’t going to give them much more. They were tired of him pulling rank on them their entire lives. I guess they finally realized they didn’t have to let him call the shots anymore.”
“Why kill poor Chet?” Heather asked. “I know he was annoying, but I can’t help but feel sorry for the guy.”
“It was Macbeth’s initial plan to kill Chet,” Danielle explained. “He wanted to set him up for the murder, establishing jealousy as a motive, since Chet had been telling his friends how he and I were a thing.”
Lily wrinkled her nose. “Eww…”
“Macbeth planned to steal Chet’s gun, believing it would have his fingerprints on it. Then he had Chet drop him off at Marlow House, hoping someone would see his car in the neighborhood. After killing Walt, he was going to ditch the gun, and by that time Chet would be passed out from the drugs they had slipped in his beer, and they’d run his car off into the ocean.”
“Brutal.” Heather cringed. “But I thought Chet’s gun killed Macbeth?”
“The cousins got ahold of the gun first. Both Chet and Macbeth thought Laverne had taken it. So Macbeth changed plans. He got another burner gun to kill Walt and planned to put it in Chet’s car after driving it off the cliff. Make it look like Chet panicked after he killed Walt. Of course, his cousins changed the plan again. On their way back to Frederickport, they learned about Laverne’s fingerprints being on the gun, so they came up with a new motive for the murder.”
“Wow,” Lily muttered. “What about the paintings? Killing Macbeth or Chet, wouldn’t that make it more difficult to get the Bonnets? Or what they thought were the Bonnets.”
“They figured the police would assume they had their killer, so everyone’s guard would be down. And since Mac was killed when the paintings weren’t even in the house, no one would link the two crimes,” Walt explained.
“That would have been pretty bad luck had Macbeth been successful. Murdered for a second time,” Chris said with a snort.
As Walt sipped his brandy, he said, “Don’t I know it.”
“One thing that doesn’t make sense with Macbeth’s plan,” Heather began. “Wasn’t it risky for him to kill Walt before the paintings were delivered? If he had been successful, why would the police bother delivering his things on Monday? Why not just leave them in storage?”
“To be honest, I don’t think Macbeth really considered that possibility,” Danielle said.
“This is all very gloomy talk. I think we need to change the subject,” Lily suggested.
“To what?” Ian asked.
“I want to know how Walt managed to move that crate without touching it,” Lily said.
Danielle set her glass on the table between her and Walt. “I think I may have figured that out.”
All eyes turned to her.
“I’ve been doing some internet searching on the matter,” Danielle explained.
“If you’ve found the answer, then I have to say you really can find anything on the internet.” Chris chuckled.
“Telekinesis,” Danielle told them.
“Telekinesis?” Marie asked from the sidelines.
“Also called psychokinesis. It’s the ability to move objects through mind power,” Danielle told her.
“Oh phooey, that is nonsense. I’ve heard of that before, but those people who say they can do that are charlatans. No one can move objects with their minds,” Marie insisted.
In the next moment Walt released hold of his now empty brandy glass and watched as it floated over the patio toward Marie. Everyone froze, their eyes focused on the glass moving through the air seemingly under its own power. Just as the glass moved over Chris, it dropped as if someone had been carrying it, yet suddenly let go. Startled by the abrupt motion of the glass falling, Chris managed to grab it before it hit the patio floor. All eyes turned to Walt.
Walt shrugged. “I’ve been practicing.”
“I don’t understand,” Marie muttered.
“I don’t either, Marie. But when Walt was a spirit, he eventually learned to harness his energy. He didn’t do it right away. In fact, he was dead for almost ninety years before he could move much of anything. Oh, maybe a few slammed doors over the years. But it wasn’t until after I moved in and he came to terms with his reality did he figure out how to do it. I suspect, whatever he learned—he retained.”
“I thought Walt could move things because he was stuck in Marlow House,” Heather said.
Danielle looked to Heather. “It’s about the energy. Eva and Marie are using their energy to make themselves seen, to move around, and we all assume that if they decided to haunt just one place, they could then refocus that energy to move things like Walt does.”
“But Walt’s moving around now,” Lily said. “Look, he’s here. Not stuck in Marlow House.”
“But he has a body now,” Danielle reminded her. “He doesn’t need that energy in the way he did before because he has a physical body. One that burns calories, has its own energy.”
“I think I understand where Danielle is going here,” Ian said. “And it is an interesting theory.”
“Wow.” Heather let out a sigh. “There really is so much we don’t understand in this world.”
From where Eva perched, the glamorous ghost said w
ith a chuckle, “You have no idea, my dear. No idea at all.”
Brian and Joe stood with the chief and FBI Special Agents Thomas and Wilson in the hallway just outside the chief’s office.
“So you don’t think Marlow was involved in any art theft?” Joe asked, sounding disappointed.
Wilson shook his head. “Not saying we don’t believe he was involved, but we don’t have any concrete proof.”
The death penalty had been taken off the table for the two brothers charged with murder, under the condition they work with the FBI on the current art-heist ring under investigation.
“The Bandoni brothers insist Marlow was in on the plan with their cousin, but they all admit it was nothing but hearsay. None of them ever had any contact with Marlow. It was all based on what Macbeth had told them,” Thomas explained. “And considering they admitted Macbeth had told them years ago about how he made up an arson story to try to control his girlfriend, it’s obvious the man was capable of telling outrageous lies.”
“At least we were able to obtain that search warrant we’ve been trying to get on Kozlov’s boyfriend.”
“What I don’t understand,” Brian said, “after Arlo confessed, he admitted Mac had let him into Marlow House, and they switched the paintings, putting the originals in the crate. But your expert insists the reproductions were in the crate.”
“They were obviously switched again—either before they were put in the crate or after,” Thomas said. “We’ll probably never know what really happened.”
After the agents said their final goodbyes, Joe’s shift ended, and he left for home. The chief went to his office to catch up on paperwork, while Brian took the box on the long-ago Morrison arson case back to the evidence room.
Brian was unable to stop thinking of the chief’s odd behavior while interrogating the Bandoni brothers. It wasn’t the first time he seemed to cite statements from imaginary anonymous witnesses. What made matters even more curious, Brian had later discovered Danielle Boatman had been waiting in the chief’s office during the time of the interviews. Had she been the anonymous witness? Or had Marlow been the anonymous witness and had passed that information through Danielle?
Brian then thought about those fingerprints of Walt Marlow and how they didn’t match the ones on file with the real estate department. His thoughts shifted again, thinking of how Clint Marlow was now Walt Marlow. From there, his thoughts jumped to the original Walt Marlow.
Walt Marlow, dead for almost a hundred years yet he still dominated Marlow House. His memory had been kept alive by the massive portrait in the house’s library and by Danielle’s interest in the house’s history. However, the portrait was no longer on display in the library. In its place was a houseguest who looked as if he had stepped out of that painting.
Curious about the original Walt, Brian recalled an evidence box he had once come across when reorganizing the evidence room and digitalizing their records. One box had been on Walt Marlow—who apparently had been arrested for moonshining yet had somehow gotten the charges dropped. Returning the arson evidence box back to its original location, he went to look for the box on Marlow’s arrest.
His motivation was idle curiosity, nothing more. It didn’t take him long to find the box. Opening it, the first thing he spied was a fingerprint card. Brian smiled at the dog-eared card and marveled how far forensic science had progressed in the last century. Removing it from the box, he saw that the fingerprints belonged to Walt Marlow—the original Walt Marlow—the one who had been murdered in the attic of Marlow House.
Brian didn’t know why he did it. There was no reason to. Why compare the fingerprint card of a man who had been dead for almost a century with the fingerprints of his namesake, a man who was currently alive? He didn’t know what he expected to find. He certainly didn’t expect to see what he did.
Brian Henderson looked again. He shook his head and told himself he was imagining things. He held the old fingerprint card under a brighter light and looked closer. It was impossible. Once again, he studied the fingerprints taken of Walt Marlow on the night of Macbeth’s murder.
They were the same.
The fingerprints belonging to Walt Marlow—the Walt Marlow who had died almost a hundred years earlier—matched the fingerprints taken of the man he first knew as Clint Marlow—fingerprints taken just days earlier.
The Ghost Who Dream Hopped
Return to Marlow House in
The Ghost Who Dream Hopped
Officer Brian Henderson knows there is something just not right about Walt Marlow, and he’s determined to find out what it is.
* * *
Meanwhile, Beverly’s dead husband visits Danielle in a dream hop, telling her about his wife’s part in his death.
* * *
Can Danielle convince Brian to stop worrying about Walt and be a little more concerned about his new girlfriend, Beverly?
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Haunting Danielle Series
by Bobbi Holmes
The Ghost of Marlow House, Book 1
The Ghost Who Loved Diamonds, Book 2
The Ghost Who Wasn’t, Book 3
The Ghost Who Wanted Revenge, Book 4
The Ghost of Halloween Past, Book 5
The Ghost Who Came for Christmas, Book 6
The Ghost of Valentine Past, Book 7
The Ghost from the Sea, Book 8
The Ghost and the Mystery Writer, Book 9
The Ghost and the Muse, Book 10
The Ghost Who Stayed Home, Book 11
The Ghost and the Leprechaun, Book 12
The Ghost Who Lied, Book 13
The Ghost and the Bride, Book 14
The Ghost and Little Marie, Book 15
The Ghost and the Doppelganger, Book 16
The Ghost of Second Chances, Book 17
The Ghost Who Dream Hopped, Book 18
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Books 1 - 10 available in audiobook.
Bobbi Holmes
Also known as Anna J. McIntyre
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Sundered Hearts
After Sundown
While Snowbound
Sugar Rush
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The Coulson Series
by Anna J. McIntyre
Coulson’s Wife
Coulson’s Crucible
Coulson’s Lessons
Coulson’s Secret
Coulson’s Reckoning
* * *
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Also by Bobbi Ann Johnson Holmes
Havasu Palms, A Hostile Takeover
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The Ghost of Second Chances Page 26
