by Mary Bowers
“She’s a genius at speculating in real estate, and builds on her fortune. Then, looking for a retreat, she purchases some cheap land on a barrier island in Florida that gives her privacy and a stunning view. She creates a world for herself there, along with her daughter, a companion, and the companion’s daughter, a little girl named Willa, who is conveniently close in age to Dolores. She calls her new home Santorini. It’s near the quaint old town of St. Augustine. As time goes by, her land appreciates, and she develops and sells the other lots on her property, but not for some years. At first, while her daughter is young, she keeps her private sanctuary tightly locked away from the world.
“In Santorini, she settles down to dominate the three women who are completely dependent upon her. Only her companion manages to escape, through death, leaving Willa at the mercy of a woman who has no blood ties to her and can cut her off at any time. If turned out, Willa knows she’ll be homeless and alone, so she behaves herself. No, ladies, I wouldn’t expect Frieda to ever loosen her grip on her daughter, even in death. Very interesting. Has Willa seen Frieda in her spirit form?”
The twins looked at one another, then back to Edson.
“She never said.”
“We never asked.”
“It would be fascinating to know,” he muttered.
Edson was silent for long minutes, gently rocking and twirling his glasses.
“Well, Mr. D-D,” Poppy said, glancing at Rosie, “we’ve got to get on with our day.”
They half-rose out of their chairs, then stopped, suspended, as Edson snapped, “Wait!”
He put his glasses back on and said, “I need more information. You said Frieda was haunting the house, but that Dolores danced on the beach with her. What goes on at the house?”
“Well,” Rosie began slowly, “you know, we still clean it, even though it’s been shut up and nobody lives there. We thought at first Dolores just wanted to keep it nice so she could show it to buyers, but she never put it up for sale. So we go in every Tuesday afternoon.” She stopped, gazing at her sister, and Poppy picked up the narrative.
“She’s there, Mr. D-D. We can feel her.”
“You’ve seen her?”
“No, not seen her, exactly. It’s . . . the third floor.”
He waited, but nothing else seemed to be forthcoming. “What’s on the third floor?” he finally asked.
Rosie answered. “The master bedroom. We never saw it when Miss Frieda was alive, because Dolores and Willa took care of things up there, but we’ve been cleaning it since the old lady – died – and . . . .” She shuddered to a halt.
“You sense her there?” Edson prompted.
The twins nodded in tandem. Looking at their faces, Edson decided not to pursue it just now. The investigation was just beginning. He’d find out about the third floor later, hopefully by studying it himself. Instead, he asked, “Does Dolores go up there? To the third floor? Is that where they meet?”
The twins were on their feet now, obviously anxious to go. Finally, Rosie came out with what was really on their minds.
“You are going to call in Teddy Force, aren’t you?”
He blinked, gave a spasmodic jerk and blushed, all at the same time. “Why should I? He never knew Frieda Strawbridge.”
“He doesn’t know any of the other ghosts he goes after, either, but he does it all the same,” said Rosie, almost scolding. “Aren’t you two partners?”
“Yeah, aren’t you partners?” Poppy said. “I think you two need to do one of your investigations right here in Santorini.”
“So that’s it,” Edson said, glaring. “You just want to be on TV.”
Poppy began to protest, but Rosie went off like a rocket. “Mr. D-D, you take that back right now!” She startled everyone, including herself.
Her sister took over. “How dare you, Mr. D-D?” she said more quietly but not less passionately. “You know how much we care about all of you. You’re our people. We like taking care of you, and that doesn’t just mean your houses. We even liked that old devil, Miss Frieda, in a way. She had the right stuff, only she threw it around too much. She was a legend. But The Mister and The Missus are in trouble, and we’re worried something awful might happen. What if her mother wants to take The Missus away with her?”
Edson made a calming motion and the twins sat down again.
“I apologize, ladies. You have no idea the people I’ve been associating with since Haunt or Hoax? has gone into production. There are people out there who will do anything to get on TV. Sometimes, I forget what normal people are like.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” Poppy said. “We know about showbiz folks. We’ve seen the magazines.”
“And The Housewives,” Rosie added.
Ed missed the reference to housewives, whoever they were, but he didn’t bother to ask. He wanted to get back to Frieda. “Can you tell me any more about this situation?”
“That’s just about all we know,” Rosie said pensively. “The Mister and The Missus don’t talk about it.”
“Then how do you know?”
“We saw the pictures,” Rosie said.
Ed spasmed as if he’d been electrocuted. “There are pictures?”
“Well, not snapshots or anything,” Rosie said. “Paintings. You know, The Missus has always painted. She has a little studio at the back of the house, facing north. She told me something about north light; it’s better for painting. She used to do vases of flowers and half-eaten apples and beach scenes. Nice stuff. Pretty stuff. Then all of a sudden she went off the deep end and started doing one right after the other, sometimes two or three at a time, all with the same creepy thing in them.”
“When was this?”
“It started about a month after Miss Frieda passed over, but lately it’s been getting worse, or – what do I mean? – faster. She’s painting faster.”
“And they’re all the same,” Poppy added. “Dark. Blues and blacks and silvery white, and this – figure. Always the same figure. Wispy, twisty, arms in the air and feet walking toward you over the water, and eyes looking right at you. I asked her one day when The Mister wasn’t around what the creature in the paintings was supposed to be, a water sprite or something? And she said no, that’s my mother. I got a funny feeling.” She took hold of her elbows, and Ed saw goosebumps on her flesh. “I thought I knew what she meant, but just to be sure, I said, your mother, you mean like she used to be? Like you remember her? From when you were a little girl and you first moved here? And she said, No, like she is now. Like when I see her now.”
“And that’s when I knew for sure,” Rosie said, her voice edging up sharply. “That was no water sprite. That was Miss Frieda! The Missus has been painting pictures of her mother, but not the alive Frieda – the ghost Frieda. I was so surprised I asked her straight out, have you been seeing your dead mother? And just as calm as you please, she said yes. Yes, she says, Mother comes to see me all the time now. We dance and we talk and everything is better between us now, but you mustn’t tell Ben, she said, because Ben can’t handle it. He couldn’t when Mother was alive, and he’s even worse about it now that she’s dead. That’s what she said, I swear it.”
Ed was stupefied. Electricity rippled through his nervous system with an almost audible hum. “I must see those paintings,” he gasped.
“Mr. D-D,” Rosie said, forgetting that she was talking to a client, and clients were always spoken to with respect, no matter what they were acting like. “You have to keep quiet about this. The Mister is really upset about it.”
“Really upset,” Poppy said. “He’s all to pieces over it. You can’t go telling anybody about this, and if you want to see those pictures, you’re going to have to be sneaky about it. You can’t just go knocking and say hey can I see those ghost pictures your wife painted? It would be bad, Mr. D-D.”
“Good lord, do you really think I’d do that?” He didn’t let them answer. “I’ve been doing this kind of investigation for decades. I promise I will
not upset Ben or let him know you’ve been gossiping about his wife. You’ve done the right thing, ladies. You came to the right person.”
Rosie eyed him sternly. “And you are going to call in Teddy Force, right? And Porter?”
“We probably don’t need the Ghost-Sniffing Dog,” Poppy said. “I’ve got my doubts about him sniffing out ghosts anyway, and he’s always knocking things over.”
“That dog is psychic,” Rosie said flatly.
“Well, I guess he can come if you need him for the sake of the show, but don’t let him break anything over at Miss Frieda’s. She has such pretty things, and they’re all valuable. The chandeliers came straight from Italy.”
Ed looked away wearily. “Even Porter can’t figure out how to break a chandelier, as long as it’s still hanging from the ceiling, but I get what you mean. No, ladies, I don’t think we’ll call on Teddy just yet. Let me get started. For the sake of keeping it ‘all in the family,’ we may need to conduct this as a private investigation.”
“Well, you know best,” Rosie said doubtfully, hoisting her tote bag and preparing to leave.
“You will keep us posted?” Poppy asked.
Ed hesitated, then glibly said, “Of course.”
Rosie gave him a level stare, then said, “See you next Monday, Mr. D-D.”
Chapter 3
Peggy Peavey looked out her office window and saw the twins coming up the driveway. She got up and charged to the front door before they could ring the doorbell. She didn’t want them to disturb her husband, Parker. That morning when she had gone into the kitchen for breakfast, he had been pan-frying a steak. She knew what that meant. He only ate red meat in the morning when he was preparing for intergalactic war.
She opened the door for the Double-Quick Maids, put a finger to her lips, and gave them a “Shhhh!” Her blond hair was sticking up funny on one side, so they knew she had been working. She always played with her hair while she worked.
The twins understood her warning, and immediately went into stealth mode. They knew without having to be told that Mr. Peavey was writing.
Mr. P was always writing, and Mrs. P was too, but she seemed to be able to give birth to her bouncy little romances without enduring the sweat-drenched labors demanded by his sci-fi military space operas.
“It’s the Daisy Slicers again,” she explained, and Rosie and Poppy registered horror. As all of Mr. Peavey’s readers knew, the Daisy Slicers had been slipping through the arc-warps at an ever-increasing rate, and whenever they did, our gritty little band of heroes lost minor appendages (ear lobes, pinkie fingers, the occasional true love), in the desperate battle for the survival of Mankind. They always triumphed in the end, but at a terrible cost. Still, they went forth into each new adventure with undaunted courage, corny jokes, and lots of really cool weapons.
“We’ll just dust around him as usual,” Rosie whispered.
“Won’t say a word,” Poppy promised.
“And we won’t peek,” Rosie added with an impish lilt.
The twins were big fans of Parker Peavey’s Stormchildren of Zhizzarr series, and they had autographed copies of all of his books. Peggy Peavey’s much more tame romances occupied the next shelf down, looking sweet in pastel colors. She published under her maiden name, Margaret Mary Moser, which fit them much better than Peggy Peavey would have. Peggy Peavey just wasn’t upper-crusty enough. She was the girl next door, not the next Baroness of Brixhamptonmoor.
Sometimes, as she looked down the long lines that formed at her autograph tables in book stores, she wished she could just dash off her married name and be done with it. By the end of the day, as she got more tired and her writing got wilder, “Margaret Mary Moser” began to take up the entire flyleaf. But it was worth it to achieve just the right tone on her book covers.
As romances went, hers were very classy. High-toned. No sweaty bodies grinding around before they even say hello, and certainly no pornographic gymnastics, like you got in those grope-and-hope romances. Margaret Mary Moser did her research, which focused on fashion, not biology. Margaret Mary Moser dressed her characters accurately according to the era, right down to the shoe buckles. And Margaret Mary Moser’s name never came exploding through flames of desire on her book covers. Her heroines were spunky virgins, clever but kind, and they always got married, usually to royalty.
That might have gagged today’s jaded readership, but Peggy saved her books from banality with a sparkling sense of humor. Those who didn’t laugh at the intended jokes could laugh at the unintended ones. Peggy didn’t care. Either way, she got paid, and her royalties were almost equal to her husband’s.
“What about the vac?” Rosie asked, still whispering.
Peggy widened her big blue eyes and considered, much as one of her own heroines might have considered a proposition from a handsome rascal (the prince, lightly disguised).
“Last thing, when you’ve finished everything else,” she said finally. “Maybe by then he’ll break for lunch.”
“Gotcha.”
The twins went forth with mops, sponges and dust rags. The vacuum stayed in the foyer.
They didn’t have to wait until lunchtime. The Daisy Slicers were embedded in gel-sacks and jettisoned to the other side of the universe by 11:15, and when Parker Peavey staggered out of his office, tired but happy, looking for a fresh cup of coffee, Rosie fired up and went in with the vac and was done in no time.
The Peaveys were still at the breakfast bar when the twins finished cleaning and prepared to leave.
Much recovered, Parker asked them what was new in their little corner of the world.
The twins glanced at one another, lifted one eyebrow each and got ready to enjoy themselves.
“You can’t tell anybody about this,” Rosie began.
“Not a word,” Parker promised. He always looked forward to their gossip. He was a good-looking middle-aged man with dark hair, expressive brown eyes and a moustache. He had a cute way of showing nice, white teeth below the moustache, like a friendly beaver. The twins liked him a lot.
“We got Mr. D-D on the job,” Poppy said. “About what we told you about. You know,” she added largely, “the lady who won’t go away.”
“The terrifying Frieda,” Parker said with relish. “Sit yourselves down, girls, and tell us all about it.”
After the twins had left, the Peaveys had a more open discussion on the matter.
“Oh, come on, Parky. Frieda is dead. She’s not running around dancing on the beach at night.”
“Then who is Dolores painting those pictures of?” he asked ungrammatically, since he wasn’t writing at the moment.
Peggy sighed heavily. “I don’t know. You know how worried I’ve been about her. But I don’t like the idea of getting Ed involved. He’s a crackpot. He’s going to be wandering around the neighborhood at night recording all of us with his infrared camera.”
“He can hardly record us if we’re asleep in our houses behind locked doors. Anyway, I, for one, am fascinated, and I intend to find out what he’s doing.”
“Oh, Parker, don’t. Leave him alone.”
“What’s the matter? Usually you’re interested in everything that goes on around here. And you like his TV show.”
“It’s good for a laugh, that’s all. And Porter is adorable. But this is real, Parky. This is people we know. I don’t like this going on in our own neighborhood.”
“I see. You think it’s a barrel of laughs when it’s somebody else’s gibbering revenant, but when it’s your own former neighbor, it’s ‘Not in my back yard.’”
“I can take a joke as well as the next guy, but there are no such things as ghosts. And I still say Ed is a crackpot.”
“That doesn’t mean he won’t get results,” Parker pointed out.
“You can’t tell anybody about this,” Rosie said to Claire Ford an hour later.
“Then don’t tell me,” she answered coolly.
Some people, the twins thought in tandem, were just too
wrapped up in themselves to be human. Who wouldn’t want to be let in on a secret? Especially one about folks in their own neighborhood? People they actually knew?
Claire Ford’s house was going to take a little longer than the previous two, because it had a second floor. Being the second house from the ocean, it had a view, and the master bedroom, living room, dining room and kitchen were on the second floor, with balconies on the north and south to take in the view. On the ground floor were the garage and a pair of jack-and-jill bedrooms, which the twins hit quickly on the way out. They only needed dusting. Claire was new to Santorini, and she hadn’t had company yet.
“That woman’s not flesh and blood,” Rosie groused as they finished and left the house. They walked down Claire’s driveway and opened the doors of their van. “She doesn’t even look real sometimes. Ashy blond hair, pale green eyes -- almost no eye color, in fact -- ivory white skin and spidery fingers.”
“Spidery?” It wasn’t often that Poppy didn’t understand what her sister meant.
“You know, fluttery little fingers and little tiny hands, too small to be useful. If she did a day’s work like we do she’d collapse and die.”
That part Poppy understood. “You got that right. Come the zombie apocalypse, she’ll be no practical use at the survivors’ camp. We’ll just have to cook her and eat her while she’s fresh, before the zombies get her.”
Rosie chuckled evilly. They were big zombie fans.
They stashed the tools of their trade in the back of the van, then got the cooler out of the backseat and took their sandwiches out. It was time for lunch.
Settled comfortably in the front seats with the doors open to catch the ocean breeze, they popped the tops on their Cokes, unwrapped the smoked turkey and cheese sandwiches on Kaiser rolls, and broke open a large bag of kettle chips, arranging it in the well of the console between them.
