Cloudy with a Chance of Ghosts (Destiny Bay Cozy Mysteries Book 4)

by J. D. Winters

  I nodded again. “Good. And there’s still the blackmailer. He or she wouldn’t want Keri to publish what she was finding because then there wouldn’t be any more leverage over Carlton. Right?”

  “As far as we know. We’re just speculating. That’s all we can do since we don’t really know what he was being blackmailed about, do we?”

  I hesitated, wondering if Jagger knew more than he was telling. It was only common sense to realize that most people involved in this were busy covering their own rear ends, just in case anything might get exposed. And Jagger was one of the best at it, it seemed. Should I tell him what I’d found?

  Finally, I pulled out Keri’s practice letter and handed it to him. “I found this outside Marilee’s house. I think somebody dropped it when they ran off with some of the papers Marilee was hoarding.”

  He read it over quickly, then looked at me and whistled softly. “There it is in black and white,” he noted.

  The sound of a siren on the distant highway caught his attention. His head turned toward the sound and he seemed to remember he didn’t have much time left.

  Chapter Nine

  “Listen, I’ve got somebody waiting in a car for me near here,” Jagger said. “I’ve got to go. But I’ve got a mission for you to undertake, if you’re ready for it.”

  I should have told him “no” right off the beam, but like a fool I had to ask: “What is that?”

  “You know when I had Keri’s clutch purse? I went through it, just in case.”

  I glared at him, but he didn’t notice.

  “I found her microcassette recorder. She told me at dinner the other night that she tried to put all her notes on that recorder and destroy all hard copies in order to keep from leaving a trail behind.”

  “Oh. Interesting.”

  “Yes. I didn’t put that recorder back into her purse before I gave it up. In fact, I hid it on the grounds of Carlton’s house.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’ve tried to get back in to get it back, but there are guards there now. They won’t let anyone in. Carlton wouldn’t even see me. I guess he believes the rumors. I want to change that as soon as possible.” He gave me a hopeful smile. “So now I’m counting on you. Think you can get it?”

  I sighed. “No. Why would anyone let me in?”

  He shook his head. “You never know. Pretty women have their ways.”

  “Not me,” I said stubbornly.

  “Okay, whatever. But just in case you get a chance, here’s where I hid it.” He told me quickly. A car had come up and was waiting, engine running, at the edge of the yard. “Gotta go. Thanks, Mele. Give Jill a hug and a kiss from me.”

  And he was gone.

  I stood there steaming. I’d seen the beautiful brunette who was driving his getaway car.

  “Hugs and kisses, huh?” I muttered darkly as I headed back to my bed, stopping only to let Sami in too. “Fat chance.”

  And this man wanted me to go search out his loot from past trespasses, did he? I was supposed to go where he couldn’t manage to get and do his deed for him? And in the end, he was sure his charm would mean he could trust me to give the thing up to him once I got it. Well, he could think again. Hah!

  I went back to bed and slept like a log for about two hours. Then Sami was back, head butting like crazy.

  “What?” I moaned at him. “It’s too early.”

  But he didn’t stop. He obviously wanted me up and active. Somehow, I knew he wanted me to go out in the back again and talk to someone. Who? I was too groggy to care. All I wanted was to stop this ridiculous head butting.

  “Okay, okay. I’m going. But you better believe I’m going to start locking my door at night.” I put on a robe this time and clomped out into the yard, very resentfully. But my attitude changed when I saw Aunty Jane.

  “Aunty Jane! Where have you been? I was worried about you.”

  “I had to go,” she said, looking abashed. “I had to hide.”

  “Hide?” I got chills. “From what?”

  She shook her head. “There is something bad happening in the spirit world right now,” she told me softly, coming close so that she could keep her voice down. “There are fights between strong enemies.”

  “Is that why Dante is gone?”

  She nodded.

  My heart raced. Dante was my own special ghost, as least that was what he’d seemed to be. I’d seen him as a child in Hawaii, and I’d been astonished when I’d found him here with my Aunt Bebe. He’d helped me out of a few scrapes, and then he’d warned me he was going to have to be gone for awhile. But that had stretched on and on and I’d begun to wonder if he was ever coming back at all. If there was anything I could do to help Dante, I was ready to do it.

  “What is it? What can we do?”

  She shook her head. “You can’t do anything. It better you don’t know.”

  “But…”

  “When I can tell you, I will.”

  “Oh.” I wasn’t sure if she meant what she was saying or if this was just her way to let me know I didn’t belong in that world, and it would be better if I didn’t try to intrude. I could understand that.

  Sami was rubbing up against my ankles, as though he thought he ought to be rewarded with an early breakfast for all his hard work getting me out there. That made me think of things that had been happening lately.

  “Aunty, what is the deal between cats and ghosts?” I asked her. “I mean, do you have a bond, a special way to communicate…what?”

  There was so much I didn’t know about ghosts and how that whole system operated. But this, at least, was something concrete I might be able to understand.

  “Why does Sami come in to tell me to come out to talk to you?”

  She looked at me as though she had no idea what I was talking about, but finally she relented...a bit.

  “Cats are special,” she admitted. “They can pass in and out of our space. Sometimes they are almost ghosts. Sometimes they aren’t. But they are protectors. I don’t know why.”

  Okay. That was as good as it got. I had to accept that. I thought of the little Siamese cat at the castle. That certainly fit what I’d seen of her.

  But Aunty was here to talk about something else. I deferred to her. She hesitated. I had a feeling I knew what she wanted to talk about.

  “So here I am, Aunty. What is it you want to say to me?”

  She frowned as though she wasn’t sure how to go on.

  “Bebe told me about my mother,” I said, watching her reaction.

  She nodded slowly. “Yes. I heard her.”

  “You heard?”

  She nodded. “She didn’t tell you the whole story. I think maybe I have to do that.”

  “What? What did she leave out?”

  “I don’t know if she left it out on purpose, or she just didn’t know about it at the time. But I think it’s only fair if you know. She’s your mother. You should know.”

  “Okay.” My heart was thumping with anxiety. “So what happened?”

  She seemed to take a deep breath, as though preparing for something hard to do. “Okay. She told you how your mother got involved with De Ponce. How he treated her so special. She felt like a princess. And he had her sing at his performances and she was a sensation.”

  “Yes.” How I wished I could have seen her—heard her sing. The longing for my mother was a constant drumbeat to my life.

  “She had never felt so exalted before. He put her on a pedestal and made her feel like a star. And she loved it.”

  “Who wouldn’t?”

  “Yes. But your mother made a big mistake. She wanted a new dress to wear to De Ponce’s final service or performance or whatever you would call it. She’d seen what she wanted in the store. She just had to have that dress. She had the money saved up to buy it, but the morning when she planned to go get it, John, your father, he found her hiding place and he took it.”

  I could hardly breathe. “He took her money?”

  Aunty nodded, h
er eyes huge and sad. “She was so upset by that, so angry, that she did something bad. She took the dress from the store to wear it that night. She was going to wear it and be very careful with it and take it back the next day. She sang her solo and it was beautiful. And she looked so wonderful in that dress. But when she finished singing, the police were waiting for her.”

  “Oh.” I felt tears threatening and I held them back with all my might. “All for a dress?”

  “Yes. It was a small town. Everybody knew everybody else. They knew what she’d done and they came.”

  Aunty shook her head. “I’ve never been very clear on what happened after that. I know she was taken to the police station, and that they were accusing her of having stolen other things. She came looking for you the next day. I think she’d already made her plans to leave. If she stayed, she knew she might have to go to jail. She wanted to take you with her. But she couldn’t find you in time. Your father was acting crazy and I think Grandma Kalena had hidden you.”

  I listened numbly, wondering if all this was true or if it was just Aunty’s way of trying to soften the truth. My mother abandoned me. My father never really cared much anyway. But my Grandmother loved me. At least I had that.

  “So she went with that man?”

  Aunty nodded. “He got her out of the islands somehow. And we never heard from her again.”

  I nodded. That part I knew. I looked at Aunty Jane. I knew she was telling me all this to help me understand. She wanted me to love my mother. She wanted me to forgive her. But somehow, this really wasn’t helping. When I didn’t know anything, at least I had room to dream. Now the cold, hard facts would keep that from happening.

  “So whatever became of De Ponce?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve never been able to find out anything at all. Both of them just seemed to disappear.”

  “Okay then,” I said, knowing my tone was not going to please her but totally unable to do anything about that. “Thanks for telling me. At least now I know.”

  I couldn’t sleep any more after that. My mind was racing and my emotions were in turmoil. I got up and did some work around the house, made breakfast and tried to pretend to be cheerful. And all the time, I was thinking about what Jagger had told me, what he’d asked me to do for him. I was resolved not to do it. No way.

  I’d woken up with a headache and things hadn’t improved much since. Jill had already been up and she was ready to go to work. I knew if I didn’t tell her about Jagger’s visit she’d never forgive me, so I forced myself to join her for a quick chat before she left. I told her about everything except the brunette. That could wait for later, if at all. And there was no way I was going to do what Jagger had asked of me.

  “Why not?” she asked, her eyes huge and worried.

  I hesitated. I wasn’t going to tell her about the brunette, remember?

  “I don’t think I can get onto the grounds anyway,” I said.

  She looked sad. I felt like a brute.

  “Maybe I’ll go over later and give it a try,” she said.

  I knew that wasn’t going to fly. “Uh…okay.”

  I gave her a ride to her coffee shop and watched her walk sadly up the steps and cursed softly.

  Okay, so my strength of resolution lasted only a few hours. That was it. And then I was at Carlton’s Castle, trying to puzzle out a way to get onto the grounds myself. There were guards on all sides and road blocks on all roads leading inside. It didn’t look good, but I was going to give it the old college try.

  And then I was parked outside of the castle. I’d pulled in a good way up the hill, out of sight of the main entrance, and sat in my car for awhile, eyes closed, chanting. It had only been a few weeks since Aunty Jane had begun teaching me how to use my magic, and already the chant was becoming like second nature to me. I could go into a trance by snapping my fingers. I could focus and become one with the magic whenever I wanted to. When I was ready, when the time was right, I got out of the car and walked down to the entrance.

  “Hi,” I said to the young man standing guard. “I’m a friend of Carlton’s.”

  He stared at me impassively. “Sorry. No visitors.”

  I nodded slowly and did the chant so softly, I don’t think he could hear. But whether he could or couldn’t he didn’t react at all.

  “I’d like to go in,” I said in a calm, monotone voice. “I need to go in. Please open the gate for me.”

  I saw him twitch, blink a few times, then shake his head. But he didn’t relent. “Sorry. No visitors.”

  We went through the paces twice more and still he didn’t give. I was amazed. I hadn’t used the magic all that often, but I’d never had such a complete bust with it before. It was pretty disheartening. The only thing I could think of was that he had his own brand of magic and it was stronger than mine.

  Finally, I turned and went back up the hill, retreating into a stand of black bamboo and watching the entrance from there. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I thought hard, trying to contact Aunty Jane in my own way, wishing for some help. Nothing was happening. I saw a police car arrive at the gate and go right in.

  Hey! Maybe I should call Roy and ask for a ride.

  But then I had another idea. Aunty Jane had been teaching me island magic—or was it ghost magic? Not sure which, probably a mix of both. There was a lot of learning ancient island chants, and brewing special teas and such. The innate ability to use magic was supposedly running rampant in my family, only dormant until someone actually took you aside and gave you lessons. And Aunty was giving me lessons all the time lately. There were some things that she hadn’t specifically trained me for yet. One of them was invisibility.

  Yes, you heard that right. I know it sounds crazy. But according to her, I should be able to make myself invisible once I get really good at this stuff. She showed me how she’d done it. Now if I could only remember…

  I worked on it, bringing up chants I didn’t even know I knew, putting myself into the proper mindset. I had some special tea in a thermos and I drank some of that. When another police cruiser showed up, I quickly left my car behind and went down the hill, reaching the gate just as the guard began talking to the driver.

  It was Julian Cortez, a friend and fellow detective of Roy’s. My heart was pounding like a drum and I walked up beside him, on the driver’s side, and waited to see if he saw me.

  “Okay,” the guard was saying. “Sign here. On the dotted line, please. Your name and the time of entry.”

  Julian signed, joking a bit with the guard, and I started walking into the compound. My heart was jumping and I was listening so hard, expecting at any moment to have someone call me back, but no one said a word.

  It worked. I was invisible.

  Was it just to those people at the gate, or would it work on anybody else? I had no idea and I was half out of my mind with fear. Would it work? Would it?

  I couldn’t take the chance. I ducked down into the orchard that swung down in front of the house and I kept to the shadows. Just in case.

  “Hi,” said a voice, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

  Whirling, I found myself face to face with Julia Geiger, the ghost girl I’d met in the bedroom the day before.

  “Can you see me?” I asked, irrelevantly. Of course she could see me. Hadn’t she just proved that?

  “Sure,” she said, coming up to walk beside me. “Where are you headed? Can I come with?”

  I hesitated. I really didn’t want her to see me pick up Keri’s recorder. But I couldn’t very well tell her that. “Sure,” I said lamely. “I’m just going down to take a look at the crime scene.”

  She didn’t seem particularly interested in that.

  “Things are crazy around here,” she told me. “Carlton is drunk at all hours of the day and Debbie it trying hard to help him cope. Things were starting to get better, and then they heard about Marilee and all hell broke loose again.”

  “Has, uh…has Carlton left the house at all?�
�

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I see him around a lot, but I don’t pay that much attention.”

  “How about Debbie?”

  She looked at me blankly. Ghosts! They’re so weak on details.

  “Okay, has anyone else been here yesterday evening or today? Any visitors?”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t see any.”

  We turned a corner and practically ran into Debbie. She’d been crying. Her eyes were red. I flattened myself against the adobe wall of the house and held my breath, letting her pass. She didn’t see me. Wow. This was a real kick.

  Julia was talking. She hadn’t even noticed that I was invisible. I felt a giddy sense of empowerment. Maybe I could leap around like Spiderman and….

  And what? Get myself killed, that was what. I had to calm down and pay attention to what I was doing.

  The good thing was that Julia was fading. I didn’t want her with me when I went down and looked for Jagger’s hiding place, so that was a relief. Of course, the way things worked in this amazing level of reality, just beyond what most people saw, might mean that Julia could appear again at any time. I was going to have to watch out for that one.

  But for now she was walking off up toward the terrace and talking as though she thought I was still with her. Or maybe she’d found some other invisible person to attach herself to. Whatever. I took advantage of the opportunity and headed down toward the area where Keri had been killed.

  It was no problem finding the recorder. It was barely covered with leaves and moss, right behind a little frog fountain, just like he’d said it would be. I crouched down and took hold of it, rose again and slipped it into my pocket.

  I’d barely finished doing that when Debbie came into sight, trudging through the brush. I’d been invisible to her before, so I didn’t panic. If I stayed very quiet, I thought I could get away without any real problem. The only things was, she came directly at me and it was soon apparent that she could see me just fine.

  Chapter Ten

  “You again!” Debbie cried, looking outraged. “How did you get in here? Why are you always showing up in places you have no right to be in?”