The Ghosts of Tupelo Landing

by Sheila Turnage

  Dale propped his light against his pack, casting a soft glow across the old parlor. I looked past the old desk, beyond the piano to a tall window overlooking the river. Moonlight skated across the black water quick and bold. “You got your interview questions ready?” I asked, placing the camera in easy grabbing distance.

  Dale tugged a crumpled paper from his pocket and placed it on the floor. Then he pulled four neatly wrapped slices of cake from his pack. “Angel food,” he explained, placing the cake by my camera. “I hated to bring devil’s food.”

  I hesitated. “Good social skills,” I said, and he gave me a modest nod. “Now we just got to act polite when she gets here.”

  We waited. Nothing. Finally I shifted my legs. “My feet went dead asleep,” I said, bumping my heels against the floor.

  “Don’t say dead,” Dale whispered.

  I sighed. “Okay, let’s try the piano. I hoped she’d drift in on her own, but I’m not proud.” Nobody moved. “Just one song,” I said. “If she doesn’t show, we’ll take off.”

  Dale tiptoed to the piano. A graceful river of sound rolled through the silence. I listened for footsteps. Nothing. Crud.

  “Come on, Harm,” Dale said. Harm trudged to the piano. Suddenly it felt lonely on my side of the room. Very lonely. I grabbed my camera and casually sprinted to the piano as they sang: “Heart and soul . . .”

  Queen Elizabeth sneezed and the temperature dropped like stepping off a cliff. Footsteps clattered along the upstairs hall as a pink glow swept down the stairs, hovered over our recorder and notebooks, and moved toward us.

  “Say something polite,” Dale whispered, his breath steaming in the frigid air.

  “Hey Nellie,” I said. “Thanks for dropping by.”

  The cloud slowed into a vaguely human form, a slender girl in pigtails and an old-fashioned dress. Dale elbowed me. “Grandmother Miss Lacy Thornton says hey,” I lied. “She’d probably say more, but she’s under the weather.”

  “Nerves,” Dale explained, his voice pale. “We get on them.”

  A laugh soft as wind chimes flowed across the still room.

  “I told you we’d take care of her,” Harm added, his voice shaking.

  She floated toward him. He backed up. She covered his hand. He pulled it away. Again, a laugh like wind chimes floated across the dark room.

  “Nellie,” I said, “we want to ask you some questions. For history. We’re hoping we can help you too,” I said, and Dale gave me a puzzled look. “Maybe you’re tired of this lonely old inn. Maybe you want a different place to call home. We’ll try to help you, only we don’t know why you’re still here.”

  Dale nodded. “A paranormal win-win,” he explained.

  Nellie almost looked at me. Then the swirls came faster and thicker, like cotton candy pulling itself into being. She floated to the window and whispered against the glass.

  The pane frosted over. I lifted my camera. Click.

  “Why . . . why did she do that?” Dale stammered.

  She started toward us. “Back up, Dale,” Harm whispered.

  Nellie’s chill stung my face as she rolled by us, to the inn’s old desk. One by one the desk drawers scraped open . . . all but the little one, at the top. The one Lavender couldn’t open. Click.

  She drifted back to Harm, lingered—and floated away.

  “She’s gone?” Dale said in the silence. “We risked our souls on a practically full moon for an icy window and a messy desk? What about our interview questions? What about my history grade?”

  I crossed to the frosted windowpane—a patchwork of tiny snowflakes already melting in the warming room. “A clue,” I said, staring at it.

  “Clue?” Harm said, walking up beside me. “What’s it mean?”

  “I don’t know yet. It’s a clue,” I said. “Not an answer.”

  “I’ll tell you what it means,” Dale said. “It means girls are a big fat mystery, dead or alive.” He leaned closer to the frosty windowpane and tilted his head, squinting at the frost. His breath fogged the pane next to it. Harm and I saw it at the same time.

  I grabbed Dale’s jacket. “Dale,” I said, yanking him back. “Watch out.”

  “What?” he asked, scrambling backward. “Is she here again?” He looked wild-eyed around the room. “Because I didn’t mean anything bad by whatever I said. I think Nellie’s sweet.”

  “Look,” I said, pointing to the breath-fogged pane. On it, an unseen finger had traced a single number.

  7.

  “A definite clue,” I said as water collected in the base of the 7 and picked a jagged path down the pane.

  “But a clue about what?” Harm asked.

  I turned to look at the oak desk, its drawers gaping open—all save one. I tugged the drawer. It didn’t budge. “Locked,” I said, tapping it.

  Harm crouched in front of it, shining a flashlight on the tiny keyhole. “I can open it if I have the right tools.” He straightened up. “We can come back tomorrow,” he said.

  Dale passed his cake around. “If Nellie has something to say, why doesn’t she just say it?” he asked.

  “Maybe she doesn’t know how,” Harm said, staring at the frosted window. “Or maybe she’s saying it and we don’t know how to hear her.”

  Dale wolfed his cake down and placed the last piece on the piano. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “I want to see people with skin on.”

  • •

  That night I woke up sharp as lightning. That ice on the window wasn’t a snowflake. It was lace. Lace-y Thornton, Nellie’s best friend. And the 7 . . .

  I sprang out of bed and rummaged through the odd books on my bookshelf: The Piggly Wiggly Chronicles, Karate for Beginners, Geometry. “Here it is,” I whispered, sliding out Mrs. Little’s old pamphlet.

  TUPELO SPRINGS CURE YOUR ILLS

  SPRING 1. Cools fevers.

  SPRING 2. Cures depression and illusions.

  SPRING 3. Quickens faint hearts.

  SPRING 4. Eases breathing.

  SPRING 5. Invigorates the liver.

  SPRING 6. Calms indigestion.

  SPRING 7. Steadies the nerves.

  “That’s it,” I said. “Spring Number Seven. For Grandmother Miss Lacy’s nerves.” I squinted at the clock: 4:00 a.m. I grabbed my phone and dialed.

  Dale picked up on the second ring, mumbled, and dropped his receiver. “Hello?” I said as it bounced against the floor. “Dale?”

  Queen Elizabeth II growled into the phone—an unexpected development. “Dale,” I called. “I’m down here with Liz!” Nothing. Queen Elizabeth’s toenails scrabbled against the receiver as I whipped up a quick Plan B. “Liz,” I hissed. “Squirrel!”

  She yelped like a dog possessed.

  “Hush, Liz!” Dale said. “You’ll wake up Mama.” He grabbed the phone.

  “Dale, wake up. It’s me. This is maybe life and death. Meet me at the inn. We ain’t got a moment to spare.”

  A half hour later the three of us—me, Dale, and Queen Elizabeth—crept down the path to the springhouse. I wore jeans and a windbreaker, and carried a quart jar. Dale wore cowboy pajamas and red snow boots, and carried a hammer. I didn’t ask why.

  “Where’s Harm?”

  Dale shrugged. “Snuck out an hour before you called. Said he had business.”

  I skidded to a halt. “In the middle of the night?”

  Dale nodded. “He went out the same way Lavender used to. Through the bedroom window. He said he’d be back by sunrise.”

  Lavender had a secret exit? I made a mental note.

  “I’d have gone with him if I’d known you were going to drag me over here again,” Dale said. “This better be good, Mo. Like A-plus good.”

  A breeze wafted across the river. “There’s the springhouse,” I whispered as we rounded a bend
. Its pale walls and slate roof looked serene in the moon’s flat light. The breeze shifted and I caught the scent of rosemary. Queen Elizabeth sneezed.

  “And there she is,” Dale said. “Nellie Blake, standing by the door.” The pink mist slowed. Nellie looked at us, turned, and walked through the closed door.

  “Show-off,” Dale muttered. Like I said, Dale doesn’t wake up good.

  I marched to the springhouse, grabbed the door’s chain, and gave the padlock a yank. “Stand back,” Dale said. He lifted his hammer. Crack. The lock fell to the ground and the plank door creaked open.

  Dale pulled a small flashlight from his left boot and clicked it on. Its beam crawled across the floor, across seven basins that marked the inn’s springs.

  Queen Elizabeth’s hackles rose.

  “It’s okay, Liz,” I said. “If Nellie wanted to hurt us, she’d have hurt us long ago.”

  “Where did those come from?” Dale whispered, spotlighting a single set of footprints in the middle of the red-clay floor.

  “The question is, where are they going?”

  The footprints marched across the clay floor. Dale’s light beam shook as he followed them to a spring. “That’s Spring Number Seven. I saw it on the blueprints,” I told him. “She wants that water for Grandmother Miss Lacy.”

  The pink flared.

  I knelt by the spring. Out of the corner of my eye I watched Nellie’s footprints pad to the back of the springhouse—and through a door bricked shut seventy years ago.

  Chapter 31

  A Business Offer

  “Grandmother Miss Lacy,” I shouted later that morning, pounding up her steps. “We got your cure!”

  “Over here, dear,” she called from behind a potted fern. I skidded to a halt.

  “Water,” I announced, holding out the jar.

  “From Spring Number Seven,” Dale added, and she jumped like he’d pinched her.

  The front door squeaked open. Harm Crenshaw? Here?

  “There you are, dear,” Grandmother Miss Lacy said like having him there was normal as permanent teeth. “Do you mind bringing four glasses? They’re in the cupboard by the sink.”

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, staring at Harm. He smiled at me bleary-eyed, still wearing last night’s clothes.

  “He’s cheering up an old woman,” Grandmother Miss Lacy replied.

  Harm leaned against the doorframe. “Actually I came over with a business offer from Gramps, but she turned me down,” he said. He looked at her. “You sure you won’t change your mind?”

  “Positive,” she said. “That money is Red’s. But he’d best move it if he wants it. Filch won’t be as generous as Lana and I are.”

  “Think it over,” he said. “If you change your mind, I’ll bring the blueprints.”

  Red Baker’s treasure map. Since when would Mr. Red part with that? And why would he give it to Harm?

  “Excuse me if I’m accidentally not sensitive,” I said, and Dale went tense beside me. “But Mr. Red’s a hateful old miser, which thank heavens you only got part of his DNA, giving you a scientific shot at being nice. So how did you get those blueprints? He won’t even let you in the house.”

  “Red and I had a heart-to-heart last night,” he said, not quite meeting my eyes.

  Not likely. For that to be true, Red Baker would have to have a heart.

  “A fifty-fifty split makes sense, Miss Thornton,” he said. “Red owns the map. You own the land.”

  Harm might be lying about Mr. Red, but his plan made sense. I looked at Grandmother Miss Lacy. “You need the money,” I told her.

  She patted her blue hair into place. “It’s a wonderful offer, Harm. I’ll call Red and thank him.”

  “No!” Harm said. “I mean, that would embarrass him. I’ll tell him for you.”

  “Fine. Now if you would fetch those glasses . . .”

  Moments later the door swung open, and Harm backed onto the porch awkwardly balancing four juice glasses on a small tray.

  “Thank you,” she said as he set them on a table. “Spring Number Seven. Mo, would you pour?”

  I filled the glasses, and passed them around. She lifted hers. “To your health, my friends.” She closed her eyes and sipped like she could taste her childhood. “Delicious.”

  “Glad you like it,” I said, giving the swing a nudge and setting it rocking. “We can bring you water every day if you want. To steady your nerves.”

  “It’s way better than you dying,” Dale added, giving her a smile.

  “Dying? I’m not dying,” she said, reaching over to knock on the porch rail. Grandmother Miss Lacy’s superstitious. “Who on earth told you I’m dying?”

  Dale turned to me, his blue eyes accusing. “You said life or death. Me and Liz got up at four o’clock this morning.”

  “I said maybe. Besides, it felt like life or death at four o’clock.”

  “Many things feel like life or death at four a.m.,” she said. “They generally look better in their day clothes.”

  Harm poured himself another glass of water. “No,” Dale whispered. “You’re supposed to fill their glasses first.” Harm topped off our glasses.

  “Yes, I’m fit as a fiddle,” she said. “Just ashamed of letting everyone down.”

  My heart sank a little. “We’re really going to lose the inn, then?”

  “Probably,” she said. “I’m sorry, Mo.”

  She closed her eyes. For a minute I thought she was praying. “My yard’s an absolute mess,” she said, sitting up straight. I scanned the yard, which stood ankle deep in red maple leaves and sweet gum balls. “I can’t do yard work at the moment . . . Doctor’s orders. What would you three charge me to do it?”

  Harm hopped to his feet. “Nothing. Where do you keep the rakes?”

  “In the garage,” she said. “And certainly I’ll pay you. I’m not that broke, but I am tired. Why don’t you come back this afternoon,” she said. “We’ll have refreshments, and straighten this place out.”

  “Besides,” I told Harm. “We got some work to do.”

  “At the inn,” Dale prompted.

  “Right,” he said, and yawned. “Let’s go.”

  • •

  We soon dumped our bikes on the inn’s lawn and headed for the steps. “Hold it, Harm,” I said. “How’d you get those blueprints? Mr. Red would never give them to you. He probably wouldn’t even let you see them.”

  “That’s right,” Dale said. “He pretty much hates your guts.”

  “Thanks for reminding me,” Harm muttered, heading up the steps. “Give me time to settle things, okay? I’ll tell you when I can.”

  I looked at Dale, who shrugged.

  “Thanks,” Harm said, opening the inn’s door. “Let’s get this done.” It took less than a minute to pull out the open drawers and search them. Nothing.

  Harm squinted at the lock on the last drawer and reached into his pocket. He pulled out Miss Rose’s tiny screwdriver, the one she uses on her eyeglasses. Funny he thought to bring that, I thought, since he’d planned to be back at Dale’s before morning.

  He leaned over the desk, at eye level with the lock. He slid the tiny screwdriver into the keyhole and jiggled it. “Come on, baby,” he whispered, sounding too much like Flick. “Got it!” he cried, and slid the drawer open.

  Dale and I crowded close. “What’s in there?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Harm said, looking bewildered.

  “Check the outsides then,” I said. “Nellie wanted us to see something.”

  Dale pulled the drawer out and flipped it over. Nothing on the bottom, the sides, the back. He slid the drawer into place and opened it again. It snagged. I thought of my Salvation Army desk. “Let me try,” I said. I grabbed the small brass knob, slid the drawer out, and slipped my arm all the way into the space.<
br />
  “Good idea,” Harm said as my fingers closed around a paper in the very back of the desk. I tugged the old paper free and smoothed it against the desk.

  “A letter,” I said, staring at the faded brown ink. “To Nellie.”

  Dale gulped. “I hope she doesn’t mind us reading it.” He nibbled his lip. “Aren’t there laws about opening other people’s mail?”

  The cursive slanted tall and even across the paper. “It’s from her father,” I said.

  Upstairs, a door slammed. We looked up as footsteps hurried along the hall and down the steps. Nellie clattered to a halt halfway down. I didn’t blame her. I’d be too nervous to come closer too. I turned toward her and read:

  “Darling Nellie, Forgive my greed, forgive my temper, forgive my ridiculous disagreement with Truman. How I wish he’d killed me and not you. I’d give my world to hear you laugh again. Father.”

  Nellie plunked down on the stairs. “I’d sit down too,” I said softly.

  “Looks like Truman Baker did tamper with Nellie’s car,” Dale whispered. The room went ice cold. Dale crossed his arms. “Please Nellie,” he said. “I didn’t bring a jacket.”

  “Truman Baker,” Harm said. “That’s Red’s father. And my great-grandfather.”

  He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Nellie,” he said, his voice going soft.

  “We all are,” Dale added.

  From the stairs, the soft rustling of cloth. The sound of footsteps turning and plodding up the steps and down the hall. A heartbeat later a door closed and a key clicked a lock tight.

  “I didn’t know those doors had keys,” Dale whispered.

  “They don’t,” I told him. “Not anymore.”

  I folded Mr. Blake’s letter and slipped it in my bag. “Maybe Truman Baker did tamper with that car,” I said. “But there’s no way to prove it. Not now.”

  “No way to prove what?” a voice behind us asked. I wheeled to the open door. There stood Detective Joe Starr, Red Baker by his side.

  “Arrest her,” Red Baker said, and pointed at me.

  Chapter 32