The Ghost and the Mystery Writer

by Anna J. McIntyre

  Melony stepped into the kitchen, but stopped by the sink and did not approach the table. “Yes. When the crime scene from one of her books included facts only known to the police, they began to look into Hillary and discovered it wasn’t the first time she’d been so eerily close to the truth—or in such close proximity to a crime scene. Of course, she insisted it was all a coincidence, and since each crime occurred six months before the book’s release, I argued she could have easily read about the crimes in the paper—and used them for her inspiration. As for the facts she included that were not public knowledge, I argued it was no more than a coincidence; after all, she is a mystery writer, with an active imagination.”

  “But that wasn’t the truth,” Hillary told her. “I didn’t read about those murders in the paper.”

  “Which is why it’s probably a good thing I didn’t let you say anything. Fortunately for you, they didn’t file any charges and we kept it out of the press.”

  “But you think I’m crazy. And now you ask if I murdered your mother!”

  Danielle studied Hillary for a moment. Finally she asked, “Hillary, if you didn’t get your ideas from the newspaper, where did you get them?”

  Melony rolled her eyes and let out a harsh laugh before saying, “From her muse!” Melony turned and marched from the room. By the sound of her pounding up the stairs, there was no doubt she had gone to her room this time.

  “It’s true,” Hillary insisted. She closed her eyes briefly and then looked up at Danielle. “Maybe Melony is right. Maybe I am crazy. But it’s my muse who tells me these things.”

  Walt took a seat at the table. “I have to hear this. Danielle, ask her to explain her muse.”

  Walt, Danielle, and Hillary sat at the kitchen table. Yet Hillary didn’t know of Walt’s presence, in spite of the hint of cigar smoke drifting in the air.

  “About eleven years ago, I was at a crossroads in my career. I wrote romance back then, and I was simply burned out. To be honest, I didn’t feel like writing romance anymore. Maybe it was my age. And then one night, I had a dream. A man came to me, told me he knew I was having a hard time figuring out what to write, and asked me to come with him.”

  “Were you dreaming about someone you knew in real life?” Danielle asked.

  Hillary shook her head. “No. I had never seen him before. And frankly, there was something frightening about him. But I went with him anyway.”

  “Where did he take you?”

  “He took me to an alley where a woman was being murdered. I was terrified—woke up screaming. I couldn’t get that murder scene out of my head, so I started writing about it. And before I knew it, an entire story came to me. It was my first murder mystery, and it made The New York Times Best Sellers list,” Hillary said proudly.

  “Then what happened?”

  “He came to me again, showed me another murder. And again I wrote about it.”

  “He’s your muse?” Danielle asked.

  Hillary nodded. “I explained it all to Melony when she asked me how the stories came to me.”

  “And she thinks you’re crazy?”

  Hillary sighed. “I think she might be right.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  By late afternoon, Hillary was back in her room, typing away on her book, and Melony was on her way to Adam’s office to discuss the comparative market analysis he had prepared on her mother’s house. Danielle wasn’t sure where Lily was, yet assumed she was with Ian, since her car was parked in front of Marlow House, while Ian’s car was not in his driveway. She thought it possible it was in his garage, yet his living room blinds were drawn, and he usually left them open when he was at home.

  Danielle found Walt in the library, reading a book, with Max curled up on the sofa by his side, sleeping soundly.

  “Is it a good book?” Danielle asked as she walked into the room and took a seat across from him.

  Looking up at Danielle, he smiled and set the book on his lap. “To be honest, I haven’t been able to get into it. Other things on my mind.”

  “Such as?”

  Walt closed his book. “What Hillary told you in the kitchen about the muse.”

  “I’ve been thinking of that too.”

  “From what Hillary said, she seemed to recall each dream vividly,” Walt reminded her.

  “Yes.” Danielle leaned back in the chair and crossed her legs.

  “Come on, Danielle, you haven’t been wondering what I have?”

  Danielle frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “To use your coined expression—a dream hop.”

  Danielle stared at Walt, her expression blank. “Are you suggesting her muse is actually a spirit who’s showing her these murders?”

  Walt shrugged. “It’s the only explanation that makes sense to me.”

  Danielle cringed. “That’s kind of creepy.”

  “Yes. Especially considering these murders have all gone unsolved. I would have to assume the spirit witnessed them when they happened. I don’t believe it would be possible to recreate a scene like that without being there.”

  “No, you’re right. I remember when you took me to the speakeasy in a dream hop, you could only show me what happened when you had actually been in the room.”

  “It might be argued the spirit didn’t actually witness the murders—perhaps he likes to hang around with homicide cops and was there when they discussed the details of the crime. But that would not explain—”

  “Jolene’s murder,” Danielle finished for him.

  “Exactly. From what I can piece together, Hillary went to bed and fell asleep when I was still downstairs the night of the murder. By the time I went upstairs, she had woken up from the dream and started writing about it.”

  “Jolene’s body wasn’t found until hours later.”

  They sat quietly for a few minutes, considering Walt’s theory.

  “You know what this means,” Danielle asked.

  “What’s that?”

  “Whatever spirit’s been visiting Hillary knows who murdered Jolene—and probably the rest of them.”

  “I imagine he does. But so?” Walt asked.

  “If I could talk to the spirit—”

  Walt stood abruptly. The book that had been on his lap now rested on the couch cushion he had seemingly been sitting on a moment before. “Absolutely not!”

  “But, Walt, this guy knows who killed Jolene!”

  Walt angrily glared at Danielle. “What kind of spirit perversely shares gruesome murder scenes—like a twisted voyeur—yet does nothing to expose the guilty party? How many other murders could have been prevented had he behaved differently?”

  Danielle studied Walt for a moment. “He’s a ghost, Walt. You more than anyone should understand how someone from your realm typically views death different from someone who is still alive. Spirits I’ve encountered—including you—often see death as less permanent—less tragic.”

  “I agree, a person’s death no longer affects me in the same way it once did—but you, Danielle, are still alive, and you should not expose yourself to that type of energy.”

  “I suppose it’s a moot point anyway. Not sure how I could hook up with Hillary’s muse. I don’t think his spirit has been lurking around the neighborhood—there haven’t been any signs of another spirit aside from Jolene, who both Chris and I saw.”

  “Where is Chris, anyway? I thought you two would be together today.”

  Narrowing her eyes, Danielle studied Walt. “Why is that?”

  Walt shrugged. “I don’t know. Figured now that he’s back, you two would be spending all your time together. Did you have a nice night last night?”

  Danielle didn’t answer immediately. Finally, she said, “It was a nice evening. I didn’t tell you…we saw Jolene.”

  “Jolene? I wonder why she’s hanging around Chris’s house. She’s still not saying who killed her?”

  Danielle sat up in her chair. “No. The moment she appeared, she started yelling at he
r daughter—and at Adam. But then Sadie jumped up and started barking at her, and she disappeared.”

  “She yelled at Adam? Why?”

  Danielle went on to tell Walt what Marie had told her about Melony and Adam’s past relationship.

  “Interesting…” Walt murmured when she was done.

  “As for where Chris is today, he’s over at the Gusarov Estate, making a list of what he needs to do to turn that place into his nonprofit headquarters.”

  Danielle sat on the front porch swing, watching the sunset, when her phone rang. It was Chris.

  “How did it go today?” Danielle asked as the toe of her right shoe gently pushed against the ground, keeping the swing in motion.

  “I forgot how big that place is. Not sure what I was thinking when I bought it.”

  “Buyer’s remorse?”

  “Nahh, not really. How was your day?”

  Danielle went on to tell Chris about her visit with Marie, what Hillary had told her about her muse, and Walt’s dream hop theory.

  “A dream hop? Possible,” Chris murmured.

  “Walt also told me if anyone tries to communicate with the muse ghost to get information on any of the murders—he says it should be you.”

  Chris chuckled. “Of course he did. But not sure how either one of us can do that. A spirit doesn’t need to be in close proximity to enter your dream. He could be haunting somewhere in the UK or already crossed over to the other side.”

  “That’s true about a general dream hop. But not in this case. If he’d crossed over, I don’t think he would’ve been able to witness Jolene’s murder. And if he did witness her murder, we know his spirit’s been in the neighborhood.”

  Chris let out a sigh. “I suppose you’re right. Plus, if those murders she’s dreamed about really happened when she was near the crime scenes, as you suggested, then it seems this ghost is sticking pretty close to Hillary.”

  “Wherever he’s been haunting, I certainly haven’t seen a hint of him, and neither has Walt or Max.”

  “Danielle, see if you can get Hillary to describe her muse.”

  “You’re suggesting we might have walked right by him and never realized it was a spirit?”

  “Exactly.”

  Melony and Adam stood under the pier. The evening’s sunset painted the blue sky in swirls of orange and red. But their attention was not on the picturesque sunset hanging over the ocean, but on the damp sand beneath the pier. The tide had since washed away any evidence of a crime scene.

  “I thought I would feel something, anything,” Melony told Adam.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  Melony shrugged. “I don’t know. It just feels like we’re standing under the pier. I don’t feel any chill going down my spine. No sense of dread.” She looked at Adam. “Does that make me a horrible person?”

  “It just looks like it always does down here.” Adam glanced around.

  “I wonder why Mother came down here in the first place. I just don’t picture her taking late night walks on the beach alone. I have to assume she came down here willingly and met with her killer. If someone had forced her down here, wouldn’t someone on the pier have heard something?” She looked up at the bottom of the pier. “After all, there were a couple of guys fishing up there that night.”

  Adam glanced around again and then looked at Melony. “You want to get going?”

  “Would you mind if we walked down the beach a bit? It looks like a beautiful sunset.”

  Adam shrugged. “Sure.” Together, he and Melony started walking north along the shoreline.

  “So do you want to list it? There’s some equity in the house,” Adam asked a few minutes later. They walked barefoot on the sand, each carrying their shoes.

  “You know, I sort of expected to have all those old negative feelings about the house, but it doesn’t feel the same.”

  “Probably because none of the furniture is there from when you lived in it.”

  “It kind of feels like a blank canvas. It’s a beautiful house…and I’ve missed the Oregon coast.”

  “A beautiful house with a hefty mortgage—in spite of the equity,” he reminded her. “If you’re looking for a vacation home here, you’d be better off selling your mother’s house and paying cash for something smaller with the equity.”

  Melony laughed. “You really are a real estate salesman, aren’t you?”

  “Hey, I’m not making that suggestion just because it would mean a commission for me—assuming you use me as your agent—on both properties. But now that you mention it, it would be a nice perk.”

  “Actually, I’m considering something other than a vacation property.”

  Adam glanced over to Melony as they continued to stroll down the beach. “What do you mean?”

  “I wouldn’t mind moving back here. I’m a little weary of living in the city,” she confessed.

  “What about your job? Aren’t you some hotshot criminal attorney?”

  “I’m a little weary of that too—at least some of the cases I take. And from what I understand, since Renton’s incarceration, Frederickport could use another attorney.” Their conversation drifted from her job to Adams and what they had each been doing over the years.

  Just as they reached the stretch of beach in front of Chris’s house, the wind began to gust up. Brushing her blond hair behind her ears, Melony squinted as the sand swirled around them.

  “We should go back,” Adam shouted over the wind. “Or we can just cut over to Marlow House, and I’ll walk down and pick up the car.” They had left Adam’s car at the pier parking lot.

  “No, I’ll go with you,” Melony shouted back as she turned toward the direction of the pier. A sheet of paper, blown by the wind, landed on her bare feet, and in the next moment the air grew still.

  Startled by the abrupt absence of wind, Adam glanced around. “Where did that come from?”

  “It was like a little twister,” Melony said as she reached down to pick up the sheet of paper from her feet. Not wanting to litter and toss the paper aside, Melony looked at it briefly, intending to crumple it and shove it in a pocket to be tossed in the trash when they returned to the pier. Instead, she stared blankly at the page, saying nothing.

  Adam noticed the black edges of the paper. It looked as if it had been scorched in a fire. “What is it, a treasure map?” he teased.

  Gripping the paper in her hand, Melony looked to Adam, her expression dazed. “This is my mother’s, Adam. It’s from her day planner.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  MacDonald wasn’t wearing his police uniform. He had already gone home for the evening, changed into denims and a T-shirt, and was fixing dinner for his boys when the call had come in from Melony, telling him she needed to see him. It was urgent. Fortunately, the teenager who lived next door to him and who often babysat his sons was able to come over and stay with his boys so he could leave.

  “I’m really sorry to have to drag you over here,” Melony told him for the third time. She sat alone with McDonald in the parlor of Marlow House. Not completely alone. Walt lounged by the bookshelf, lit cigar in hand, eavesdropping on the conversation. While Melony didn’t know they had company, MacDonald did.

  Sitting on the sofa, holding the burnt-edged paper Melony had found on the beach, MacDonald glanced up at her as she restlessly paced the room. “Where exactly did you find this?”

  “On the beach not far from Chris’s house. Like I told you, a gust of wind came up and that flew into me.”

  “More like a spiritual gust,” Walt mumbled as he puffed the cigar. “How much you want to bet your mother caused that burst of wind.”

  “What makes you so sure this is hers?” MacDonald asked.

  Melony stopped pacing and took the paper from MacDonald. “For one thing, Mother had distinct handwriting. And for another”—she pointed to a phone number jotted down along the singed edge of the paper “—that’s my cell number.”

  MacDonald took the paper back
from Melony and looked at it while she took a seat on a nearby chair. “Perhaps your mother had the book with her when she was killed, and whoever killed her took it with him and then decided to burn it. There’s nothing incriminating on this page, but who knows what was on the other pages in that book.”

  “I thought about that. But honestly, Eddy, I don’t really see Mother carrying that book around with her, especially when she’s walking down under the pier at night. It’s not like that book would have fit in her purse, and I don’t see her bringing it with her to make an appointment with her killer.”

  MacDonald shrugged. “So how do you explain this?”

  Melony let out a sigh. “I suppose she could have had it in her car, and he found it there. Maybe he was afraid something was in it that might incriminate him, and he took it.”

  “Now that I think about it, I can’t see the killer stopping along the beach to burn this. Typically, killers don’t want to draw attention to themselves, and a fire would,” MacDonald noted.

  “You’re right. And I don’t see the killer coming back to burn it. That makes less sense.”

  “There is another explanation,” MacDonald suggested.

  “What’s that?”

  “Yes, I’d like to hear that,” Walt said.

  “If your mother went to the pier to meet her killer, he might have been concerned she had something with her that might incriminate him. Maybe he checked out her car, found the book, and after looking through it, dumped it along the beach. It’s possible someone found it, figured it was trash and used it for kindling.”

  Melony stared at the rumpled page. “I wish we could find the rest of it.”

  “Even if we did, I doubt it would help us now. If the killer did take this out of her car, he probably destroyed any incriminating pages from the book.”

  Melony stood up and started pacing again. “Then perhaps we need to discuss something else.”

  MacDonald watched Melony pace. “What’s that?”

  She stopped and turned to him. “Hillary Hemmingway.”

  “I’m not sure what else there is to discuss.” After Melony’s confrontation with Hillary in the kitchen earlier that day, Melony had called MacDonald before going to the pier with Adam, and had told him about her professional history with Hillary—and how Hillary had confessed to her regarding the notes that Danielle had passed on to him.