by Morgana Best
I thought for a moment before speaking. “It’s just, well, Basil seems the ideal man. I wonder if he’s too good to be true. And we’ve kissed, but sometimes he just kisses me on the cheek.”
Tara smiled impishly. “And you want more?”
I shook my head. “No, well, yes, of course I do. I don’t want to rush into anything, but I don’t like the fact that he isn’t rushing into anything! I know I’m not making any sense.”
“Sure you are,” Tara said. “That’s how I was with Duncan at first. Just don’t stress, give it time. It’ll all work out.”
“I sure hope you’re right,” I said, and then changed the subject. “Anyway, do you know Mandi Major?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact. She does my eyebrows,” Tara said. “She’s a beauty therapist at Taree, and comes to town twice a month to do facials, eyebrows, and stuff. She hasn’t taken on new clients for ages, though. Why?”
“She was the victim’s girlfriend.”
Tara’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh no! The poor thing!”
I tapped my chin. “What if she killed Frank? What if she didn’t know he was an escort, and then followed him to Mom’s house?”
The waitress deposited our cakes in front of us. “I don’t think that’s possible,” Tara said, as soon as the waitress was out of earshot. “There were the six guests, your mother, and the builder. Surely somebody would have seen someone who wasn’t meant to be there.”
Chapter 9
I was somewhat downhearted after I returned home from having coffee with Tara. It wasn’t just the fact that she had not yet discovered what the murder weapon was, it was also my chance meeting with John Jones. Even then, I couldn’t be sure that the meeting was entirely by chance. He was turning into something of a stalker.
Although I should have been attending to paperwork, I was trying to arrange the sprinkler hose across the roses and other flowers at the front of the funeral home. It had been unseasonably hot lately, and even some of the native bottle brush bushes were looking wilted.
No matter which way I faced the hose, the water seemed to go in any direction other than at the plants. I had to be careful with watering, given the cost of water in Witch Woods. My plan had been to arrange the sprinkler hose, a long green hose with holes along it so water would spurt out at intervals and cover the plants—in theory—and when arranged correctly, I planned to place sugarcane mulch over the top. However, the wild rabbits that lived in this part of town seemed to enjoy nothing more than digging holes all over my garden. One of the cheeky things ran past me now. “You wouldn’t do that if I had a cat or a dog for a pet instead of two borrowed sheep!” I called after it.
The rabbit disregarded me and scratched the ground, trying to dig a hole. A kookaburra in the gum tree above laughed at me.
“You’re as bad as my mother!” I called out to it.
“That’s the first sign of madness, you know.” I spun around to see Basil walking up to me, a smile all over his face.
“I’m not talking to myself, I’m talking to the animals,” I pointed out. “Sometimes I prefer them to people.”
“I just wanted to call over on my lunch break,” Basil said. “You were going to text me after you spoke with Tara.”
I was puzzled. “I did.” I pulled my phone from my pocket and checked it. The text was still sitting there—it hadn’t been sent. “Sorry about that. Yes, she confirmed what Ernie said. The detectives definitely think Mom did it.”
“This funeral business will be the death of you. Did I hear my name taken in vain?” The voice came from behind the magnolia tree. Ernie took his time materializing. “What’s going on, guys?”
“Where’s your little friend?” Basil said. “Does he still have his clothes on?”
I smiled at his tone, secretly pleased. It seemed Basil was jealous of the ghost, no doubt given the fact that the ghost flirted with me.
“He keeps to himself much of the time,” Ernie said. “Pardon my interrupting, but I figured this wasn’t secret romance stuff. You’re talking about the murder, aren’t you?”
I had to admit that we were. “We need to look at the suspects,” I said. “If the police aren’t going to dig into it, then I’ll have to. So it’s either Frank’s girlfriend, any of the six guests, or Bryce Wilson, the builder.”
“I don’t think it could be him,” Ernie said. “He plays church music loudly all day. He’s too much of a goody two shoes to do anything.”
“There’s your motive right there,” I said. “Perhaps he found out what sort of escort Frank really was, and then killed him. He would have known where the hat pins were kept.”
“But so did all the guests,” Basil said. “The hat pins were on display in your mother’s laundry room. Besides, we still don’t know what the murder weapon was. It might’ve been poison, for all we know. Perhaps the police took the hat pins as subterfuge.”
I turned to Ernie. “Have you heard anything, snooping around the guests?”
Ernie shook his head. “No, not a thing. That means that two of them weren’t in it together. If they were, then they would be discussing it, of course.”
“There’s still the possibility that someone from one couple was in it with someone from another couple,” I said. “Then they wouldn’t talk about it.”
Ernie disagreed. “They probably would discuss it, but they would have to be careful that no one heard them. And since I’m not there all the time, I might’ve missed it.”
I turned off the hose. “But I can’t see that it would be suspicious if say, Jenny Thorogood spoke to Bradley Musgrave, for example. They are writing those stories, after all.”
Basil slapped his thigh. “I’ve got it!” Several wild wood ducks scattered. “Oh, I didn’t mean to scare them.”
“Don’t worry, they’ll be back in the morning. I feed them over there.” I pointed, and then saw a hideous garden gnome under my lavender bushes. I gasped.
“What it is?” Basil asked.
“My mother’s been putting those garden gnomes all over my garden. She only does it to irritate me. I don’t know where she finds garden gnomes that are reading Bibles, anyway. Sorry, what were you going to say?”
“I know what we can do to find some evidence. We need to break into their rooms.”
Chapter 10
“Break into their rooms?” I said in horror.
“Yes, we need to read their ghost stories.”
“Why?” Ernie and I said in unison.
“Most fiction works are autobiographical. At the very least they have some elements of autobiography in them. For example, if you wrote a book, Laurel, you’d put your mother in it.”
I shuddered. “Sure, but I’d have to tone her down a lot, and even then, people would still think the character I based her on was way over the top.”
Basil nodded. “You have a point. At any rate, I think we need to look at their stories.”
Hours later, Basil and I stood nervously at Mom’s back door. We had sent Ernie into the dining room to alert us if any of the guests left. The builder had already gone home for the day.
“Are you sure the master key will work on all the bedrooms?” Basil asked me.
“I can’t be certain,” I said, “but I’d be surprised if it didn’t work.”
The back door creaked open, and Basil and I exchanged glances. “I should’ve oiled it earlier,” I whispered.
Basil shrugged. He couldn’t hear me, because Mom was playing loud Christian music. Rather than modern Christian music, the music was an old hymn with the volume turned up. Perhaps she thought the noise would drive the devils out of the guests.
“At least we have cover noise,” Basil whispered in my ear.
The door to the first guest bedroom also creaked, although no one could have heard it over the loud din downstairs. I looked around the room, hoping to see a laptop or some sort of manuscript, but all I saw was a dresser with nail polish remover, a lipstick, and an open wallet from which had s
pilled a heap of change. There was a phone being charged next to it, and on the floor was a pile of clothes. The irritating sound of a clock ticked away incessantly and loudly. “No sign of a laptop,” Basil said, stating the obvious.
“They’re retired teachers. Surely they wouldn’t write their stories long hand, with a pen and paper?” I said in horror.
Basil walked over to the bed and lifted piles of clothes, revealing two small laptops. “Eureka!”
He handed one to me and we both sat on the bed, and opened one laptop each. “This needs a password,” I said to Basil.
“So does this one,” Basil said in disgust. “But all laptops do, these days, I suppose. We just have to hope to find one that’s still open.”
“There might be handwritten notes as well,” I pointed out.
“We don’t have time to look for notes yet. Let’s go to the other two rooms, and if we don’t find anything there, we can start to look for notes. I think we should hurry for the first run through.”
I agreed. “Whose room do you think this is?”
“The Quinns’ room, I think. These clothes are maybe more conservative than the other four guests.”
The second room appeared to belong to the potters, Bradley and Bec. This room wasn’t as untidy as the Quinns’ room, and a brightly colored dress was hanging over a chair.
I turned around and jumped when I saw myself in the mirror. I was understandably nervous. After all, I was breaking and entering.
Two closed laptops sat side by side on the long wooden desk. Both proved to be password protected.
Mom’s religious literature was all over the room. I hadn’t seen it in the previous room, so I assumed the Quinns had removed it. A big canvas with the words, Repent or perish!, were painted in bright red on the white background. Under the writing were several black stick figures falling into a fiery pit. That looked like Mom’s own handiwork. I walked over to look at the signature. Sure enough, the names Thelma and Ian were written at the bottom right corner of the painting.
Two huge black leather Bibles sat on the dresser. The letters were embossed in heavy gold writing. One said, Extra Additionally Annotated Explanatory Leadership Husbands’ Study Bible: King James Version, and the other, Extra Additionally Annotated Explanatory Good Submissive Wives’ Study Bible: King James Version, They appeared to be used as paperweights, so I actually pulled the papers out from under them. They were photocopies of various interviews with people who insisted they had seen ghosts.
Basil hurried over to me. “We had better check the next room, and then we’ll have a better look around if we still have time.”
That only left the last room. I had been dreading this room, because it was my old bedroom. I wondered what Mom had done with it after I had moved out.
I opened the door and gasped. She had wallpapered the room in heavy golden brocade. I didn’t know they sold that sort of thing anymore, not in the last few decades. Gone was my once cheery and bright room. Mom had stuffed it full of oppressive antique furniture. Heavy crimson curtains hung from the windows, obscuring the light. Yellowing lace doilies covered every available surface. The room reeked depressingly of mothballs.
“Laurel, quickly, over here.” Basil beckoned me to the computer sitting on a giant lace doily on a heavy mahogany desk with a green leather insert top. “This computer’s open!”
I hurried to have a look. A glance at the emails told us that the computer belonged to Jenny Thorogood. “She owns a vintage shop,” I said to Basil.
There were several emails there asking the woman who was minding the store in her absence how the business was going.
“Does she have Office, Word, Scrivener, or anything?” I asked Basil.
He opened the Word folder on her computer, while I looked over his shoulder. Her files were all in disarray. Finally, Basil found one that said Ghost Stories. Just as I clicked on it, Ernie materialized. “Quick, get out of here. They’re coming.”
I took a long stride to the door, but Basil held my arm. “Ernie, do we have time to go back the way we came?”
“No,” he said. “Quick, go the other way.”
Unfortunately, the only other way was into my mother’s bedroom.
I grabbed Basil’s arm. “Follow me.” As we rushed for the door, I saw a hat box on the floor. It was quite a lovely vintage one, high gloss paper with Edwardian scenes. Still, I had no time to look at it. We rushed the short distance down the corridor and I shut my mother’s door quietly behind us, none too soon as we could already hear voices. “Under the bed,” I said to Basil.
“Whose room is this?” Basil asked me. From the tone of his voice, I suspected he already knew the awful truth.
“It’s Mom’s.”
Basil shuddered. I didn’t know if he was shuddering because Frank had been murdered in there, or because it was Mom’s room. I guessed the latter.
Luckily for us, Mom had a huge antique brass and porcelain bed, so there was plenty of room under it.
“What if she comes in here and starts getting dressed or something?” Basil said in a weak voice.
“Just don’t look,” I said. The cover on Mom’s bed extended to the floor, so unless she looked under the bed, we were safe. Although come to think of it, perhaps Mom did check under her bed for demons every night. I certainly wouldn’t put it past her.
“It’s unlikely she’ll come in here,” I said to Basil. “Ian’s here, so she’ll stay up late talking to him.”
I was at once proven to be wrong. The door slowly creaked open. Basil and I clutched each other in horror. “Is this the window?” It was Ian’s voice.
I shot Basil a look, my unspoken meaning being, “Why is Ian in my mother’s bedroom?”
“Yes, that’s the window I can’t open,” Mom said in a whining tone.
Their feet walked straight past the bed. I held my breath. I didn’t even want to think what would happen if they discovered us under Mom’s bed. That would take quite some explaining. Soon I heard the sound of huffing and puffing as Ian struggled to open the window. “There you go, Thelma.”
“Thank you, Ian. Now let’s go back and have a nice cup of tea and read the Bible to each other.”
“What a wonderful idea, Thelma,” Ian simpered. “Did you notice that Robert and Louise weren’t interested in reading scriptures aloud tonight?”
“Notice, Ian? How could I not? They made it obvious. How rude of them! I just can’t believe people can be so rude.”
“Yes, they were very rude, Thelma. And Louise wears too much lipstick. I can’t believe they said they didn’t want to read scriptures. And how rude to refuse to go to church with us! I just don’t like them.”
“I don’t like them either, Ian. I think there’s something funny about them. Have you noticed how their eyes are too close together?”
“Yes! And I don’t really like Bradley and Bec either,” Ian said. “Their clothes are too bright. Have you noticed that they wear horrible clothes?”
“Oh, you’re so polite, Ian,” my mother said approvingly. “That Bec with her low cut tops, showing her wares, and at her age! I’ll bet she’s trying to attract another man, with nothing but adultery in mind. What’s the world coming to? Yes, they do wear bright colors. They’re trying to draw attention to themselves.”
Their feet walked back past us and headed in the direction of the door. I hoped they would keep going, but sadly, all four feet came to a stop. “It’s James and Jenny who are the worst guests,” Mom said firmly. “Did you hear how they gossiped? Gossiping is ungodly.”
“Yes, vain babblings increase unto more ungodliness,” Ian quoted.
The door shut behind them, and Basil and I exchanged glances. “Do you think we should leave yet?” Basil asked me.
“We should wait for the all clear from Ernie,” I whispered back.
A ghost materialized, but it wasn’t Ernie. It was Frank. He beckoned to me and winked.
“That’s enough of that!” Basil said angrily, s
himmying out from under the bed. He held out his hand and helped me out. “I assume the coast is clear?”
Ernie appeared next to Frank. “Quite frankly, you’re right.”
“I’m not in the mood for your jokes, Ernie,” I said. “Are you sure it’s safe for us to leave now?”
“Quite safe.”
I didn’t need to be told twice. I hurried down the hallway with Basil hard on my heels. I tiptoed down the stairs, wincing every time one creaked.
“That was a terrible waste of time,” I lamented, as soon as we were safely outside. “We didn’t find out one useful thing. The only thing we found out was that Jenny has a vintage store, for all the good that will do us. Although she does have a vintage hatbox.”
“I have another idea,” Basil said.
I forced myself to look interested. After all, it had been his idea to search the rooms, and look how that turned out.
“They’ve forecast thunderstorms for tomorrow night. Why don’t we invite all six guests to the funeral home? I can buy snacks, and we can place candles around. We can tell them that we want to hear their ghost stories. I’ll bet they’ll give away some personal information that will lead to one of them implicating themselves as the murderer.”
“What a good idea,” I lied, plastering a false smile on my face.
Chapter 11
I jumped as another crack of thunder sounded. Basil smiled at me. “This thunder’s great! It will make it all so much more atmospheric.”
I wasn’t too sure about that idea. Basil was convinced that fiction books were largely autobiographical, but I couldn’t see how that would be the case in George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones. Well, I sure hoped not. I thought my family was bad! Still, I didn’t want to point this out to Basil, because it was nice of him to want to gather information. I was grateful that he was trying to help me save my mother from a false accusation.
A flash of lightning shot through the window followed soon after by another crack of thunder. The lights flickered for a few moments, but then went back on. Basil handed me some matches. “Laurel, it might be a good idea to hurry and light the candles in case we do lose the power soon. I’ll get the food.”
