by Eryn Scott
“I’ll be right back,” Asher said.
I nodded, sad I had to stay behind. But I knew it would look bad if I left my competitor’s tea shop so soon, so I watched longingly as Asher met up with the group. Also left behind, Murray eyed the green matcha drink. His girlfriend waved happily even though it looked like her phone call wasn’t going well. She scowled and whispered something hurriedly into the phone before pulling her face back into a smile for Murray.
He made a show of lifting the cup to his lips and taking a big sip. His face collapsed into a scowl. “Ugh. That tastes like hot grass,” he muttered. “Pure poison.”
Without having ordered my own matcha latte, it was difficult to decide if the man was simply not a fan of matcha or if Jolene had made it incorrectly as she had with my Earl Grey. And while most of the customers I’d shared matcha with had come to love it, there were a few who just didn’t have a taste for the stuff.
Sitting back to people watch, a gasp pulled my attention back to the table next to me a few moments later. Murray’s face paled, and I caught the end of a whispered statement.
The word “ghost” lingered on his parted lips.
My heartbeat ratcheted up. “Sir, did you say something about a ghost?” I asked, leaning closer.
His mouth gaped open, but he didn’t respond. He froze, staring at the boardwalk, right at the place where Asher and the other ghosts stood.
“Does he have dark hair? Is he wearing suspenders?” I asked.
Murray swallowed, shaking his head—though I couldn’t tell if it was in answer to my question or just a gesture of general disbelief.
“Is it a cat?” I asked, trying again. I hadn’t seen Meow, the former four-legged mayor of the town, in the ghost grouping before, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t slipped in since.
The thought someone else might be able to see spirits like me became like a lifeline in rough seas, one I couldn’t let go. In hindsight, my excitement must’ve caused me overlook important signs.
Because before I could say anything else, Murray keeled over.
2
The deck erupted into chaos. Chairs pushed back from tables as people jumped to their feet and rushed to Murray’s side. Shouts for 911 rang through the cove.
I backed toward the deck railing, giving people who knew what they were doing room. I watched, stunned, as Murray convulsed on the deck. But if I thought that was a terrible sight, it became way worse when his body stopped moving.
Wincing, I looked away and tried to take a deep breath. As I did, I noticed Asher right next to me again. His body tensed, like he might jump into action even though we both knew he couldn’t do anything to help. I met Asher’s eyes, hoping his familiar blue gaze might steady me even though his arms couldn’t.
Murray’s girlfriend ran over, tossing her phone aside and collapsing over him. Her face was a terrible mixture of shock and fear. Her hands swept over his body as if she searched for something in the pockets of his Hawaiian-print shirt or khaki shorts, but it was probably just a shocked response.
“Everyone back up. Give him space,” a deep voice bellowed over the din. Police Chief Clemenson raced forward, his brows furrowed and his jaw set.
Murray’s girlfriend locked eyes with the chief, and emotion broke through her shock. Her features crumpled in the same way her body had moments before.
“Raymond,” she whispered. “Is he…?” She coughed out a sob.
Attention flicking back to the chief, I wondered how she knew his first name. He didn’t answer her. Instead, he swallowed and performed CPR on the man until paramedics raced onto the deck. The chief reached a hand out to pull Murray’s girlfriend aside.
They rushed him onto a gurney and took over administering CPR. The number of compressions they administered had an opposite effect on my hope, and as that ticked higher, my optimism plummeted. They rushed the gurney off the deck, toward their ambulance parked by the boardwalk.
Chief Clemenson wrapped an arm around Murray’s girlfriend’s shoulder as she wailed. The grim set of his lips mirrored the paramedics’ as they retreated, continuing in vain to bring Murray back to life.
“I’m a widooooooow again,” the redhead wailed into Clemenson’s uniform, burying her face into his chest.
He flinched, patting her on the back. “Tabby, you’d have to be married to him to be a widow again.” His shoulders stiffened, and his eyes locked onto her left hand, grabbing at his sleeve.
Even from where I stood, I could now see a diamond glistening on her ring finger in the afternoon sunlight.
“You married him?” The chief’s voice was low, but it rang out in the silence of the deck full of shocked townspeople.
Between the Rickster telling me the woman was dating Murray and the wide-eyed expressions of the onlookers, the chief wasn’t the only one who hadn’t known about this.
The woman he’d called Tabby nodded. “Just yesterday.” She broke into a new round of sobs.
My brain stuck on the word she’d used. Again. Had she already been a widow? The woman only looked to be in her forties, maybe fifties.
“Do you know who she is?” I whispered to Asher.
He frowned. “No. Want me to go find out?” Asher tipped his chin up, motioning to the grouping of ghosts who’d wandered closer to see what was going on. Collectively, they held the last century’s worth of knowledge about the town of Pebble Cove and its residents.
I nodded, and Asher returned to his fellow deceased-but-not-departed brethren. A pit formed in my stomach, knowing Murray would join them as soon as his spirit settled, however long that took. Asher said it took him years. Usually, the more trauma, the longer it took.
While the gathered crowd had quieted during the paramedics’ work, they whispered now that the EMTs had left.
“What happened?” The chief’s voice once again boomed over the growing sound of the customers and onlookers.
Silence sank over the deck, drowning us all in reality.
“He drank Jolene’s tea and dropped dead,” someone yelled after a few seconds.
Gasps rang out, and a few shot scolding glares in the accuser’s direction.
“What?” said the same voice. “Just telling the facts.”
“Where is Jolene?” someone else asked.
As one body, the entire crowd turned their attention inside. Jolene wasn’t behind the counter.
“What about the new girl? She sat right next to him.” A fisherman who’d been in my shop a few times pointed at me. “What if she tried to sabotage the competition?”
“Yeah, she was talking to him. I saw it,” a disembodied voice cried.
My mouth fell open. I jerked my head back. “I-I don’t even know him!”
“Easier to sacrifice him, then,” someone said in the crowd.
My vision blurred. The chief glowered at me. And even though he didn’t physically say, “You again?” the mixture of the way his posture changed and his expression hardened said it all for him.
Disappointment filled me. I thought the chief and I had moved past our bad first impressions. I’d even started taking the new weekly self-defense class he’d started. I thought we were doing better until now.
With his eyes locked onto me, Chief Clemenson spoke to the crowd. “I need everyone to back away so I can form a perimeter.” His face softened in relief as a couple more police officers jogged onto the deck. “Officer Kennedy will station himself at the entrance and take down the names of everyone present. If you have any information you think is important, see me directly.” He cleared his throat. “And someone find Jolene.”
While Officer Kennedy turned back toward the entrance, the second officer approached the chief. Officer Gerard was a no-nonsense officer and a lovely customer. She always bused her own table and left a big tip.
“Chief, how did you get here so fast?” she asked through panted breaths, resting the back of her hand on her forehead.
I realized that while the fire department sat just acros
s the street, the police station was down at the other end of downtown. Yet the chief had arrived before the EMTs.
His eyes shifted from Officer Gerard and then around at the crowd. “I was getting coffee.” He cleared his throat.
Gerard snorted. “At a tea bar?” She glanced back toward the menu board. “I didn’t realize they sold coffee here.”
Clemenson’s face reddened, and he shook his head. “Uh, I was on my way to get a coffee down at the Marina Mug when this happened.”
Proving what an astute police officer she was, Gerard screwed up her face, her lips parting as if she were about to ask another question. The chief’s explanation still made little sense, and he must’ve known it too since he sent a glowering look at the officer. Also proving that Gerard wanted very much to keep her job, she clamped her mouth shut and listened.
“Set up a crime scene,” Clemenson growled. “I want the whole deck. Make sure no one changes anything as they leave.”
Officer Gerard followed the orders, and the chief turned to me. “I need you to come with me.” Then his gaze dropped to Tabby, the woman who still clung to him like a baby opossum. “You too, Tabitha.”
I swallowed the groan I wanted to let out, slumping my shoulders and following the two of them off the deck. Chief Clemenson nodded to Officer Kennedy in a “they’re with me” way, only way less cool since we were “with him” to be questioned about a person’s death.
“When you find Jolene, send her to me,” he ordered the officer as we walked by.
Luckily, the chief didn’t parade us all the way down to the station but stopped at a set of picnic tables in a small park next to the tea shop. Setting her up at the table next to us, the chief handed Tabitha a small pack of tissues he had in his pocket.
Sitting down across from me, he said, “What happened?”
I squared my shoulders. Armed with the knowledge that I had done nothing wrong in this situation, I knew I could be completely honest. Well, about everything but the ghosts. With a final warning to myself, not to mention Asher like I’d done in the past, I began.
“I came to see Jolene’s shop because I like to support other small businesses, especially one so similar to mine.” I held the chief’s gaze. “Was a small part of me there to size up my competition? Yes. But that’s not a crime. I ordered an Earl Grey.”
I motioned to Tabitha at the next table, who blew her nose into a tissue.
“She walked up to the counter while I waited for my drink and complained about her beverages having been left to get cold. She rubbed it in that one drink was for her sweetheart. Jolene didn’t seem thrilled about that. Then again, she wasn’t too happy to see me either. Tabitha and I arrived at our tables at about the same time, but she changed her mind and switched drinks with Murray. Then she got a phone call. While she was gone, he tried the drink, said it tasted like poison, and then he collapsed.”
The chief held up a finger to stop me as he listened to a staticky voice come over the radio clipped to his shoulder. He tipped his head closer to hear.
I couldn’t quite make out every word, but I heard Dr. Hall, and he’s gone clearly enough. The local physician must’ve met them at the clinic and called it. The chief grumbled a response.
While he talked on his radio, a large tabby cat sauntered over to us. I smiled, but quickly schooled my expression, knowing I was the only one who saw the cat. The ghostly feline wasn’t just anyone either; Meow was the town’s former mayor.
I’d had a hard time wrapping my head around a cat mayor when I’d first moved to town. But Pebble Cove was so small that there weren’t enough duties for a mayor, and they preferred keeping the figurehead four-legged. The former mayor had passed on from old age but enjoyed being in his town so much that he stuck around in the afterlife.
Like Asher, he looked as solid as any other cat, to me, having spent his entire life roaming the streets of Pebble Cove.
I let my hand drop by my side as Meow approached. He couldn’t touch me, nor I him, but he still jumped up and arched his neck as if to rub against my hand. A chill washed over my fingers as he did so. Flopping onto his side in the grass next to me, the cat sighed and basked in the sun.
I returned my attention to the chief, pondering whether or not I should tell him about Murray’s mention of a ghost. I couldn’t quite figure out if it would make my story more or less credible.
Done talking on his radio, the man turned back to me. “Someone said you talked to him. What did you say?” The chief studied me as if I myself might be a clue.
I silently cursed the townspeople who had been shouting out things to the chief. They’d been all “You’re one of us,” and “Welcome to the Pebble Cove family” over the last few months. But one person dropped dead next to me, and it became “The new girl did it!”
Knowing I wasn’t great at lying, I told the chief the truth about what Murray had said.
“He said something about a ghost.” My cheeks heated. “I leaned over and asked him what he’d seen. He didn’t answer me.”
The chief listened with his whole body. His lips parted like he had more questions for me, but then his attention caught on something behind me.
When I turned to look, I noticed Jolene walking toward us, her face red and puffy.
Chief Clemenson cleared his throat. “Thank you, Miss Woodmere. I will definitely be in touch. Please don’t leave town.”
Before I said anything more, he stood and walked to meet Jolene. After a quick goodbye wave to Meow, I headed toward my car, spotting Asher waiting there.
“You could’ve come over while I was being questioned, you know,” I told him as I unlocked my door.
He shrugged. “I didn’t want to make you mess up in front of the chief.”
The man had a point. It had happened before.
But there was something off about Asher’s posture. “Want to know what I found out?” he asked, his voice tighter than my throat whenever I thought of Murray’s body on the deck.
“Desperately.”
“I found out a few things.” Asher’s face hardened.
“Okay …” I gave him a sidelong glance, wondering why he wasn’t telling me.
“But I think you have some things to answer for before I tell you.” Asher crossed his arms over his chest.
“Hey, man. What’s wrong with you?” I asked all too loudly for a public place. I checked over my shoulder to find a group of locals staring at me while I argued with air. Lowering my voice, I said, “Can we do this at home? People are already staring. I’d rather not give them even more cause to worry.”
Asher frowned. His only answer came in a curt nod before he disappeared.
The drive home was less than five minutes, but it felt like a lifetime. Worries fought a bitter game of King of the Mountain in my brain. First, thoughts about Murray’s death were on top, only to be overtaken by his confusing statement about a ghost. And then that led me to the angry look on Asher’s face as he’d vanished.
Had he somehow found out the truth about how he’d died? Being that it was the only secret I kept from him, it was the only thing that made sense. My thoughts grappled, pulling Murray back on top. Sure, it might’ve been a heart attack, but he’d died so quickly after he’d sipped that matcha. And he had said it tasted like poison. It was possible that wasn’t a hyperbole on his part.
Turning down the long easement road that served as the driveway for my house and tea shop, I eyed the house next door as I passed.
Carl’s home was sturdy and pristine. Quite like him, actually. My heart ached thinking about him receiving the news about his friend. I wasn’t sure the kind of “friends” an ornery guy like Carl had, but he’d mentioned Murray a handful of times, which seemed like a big deal for the guy.
I parked in front of my house and jogged inside, sandals flapping against the heels of my feet. Asher sat rigidly in front of the puzzle in the tea shop.
He pointed to a puzzle piece. “Found the army guy.”
; My eye twitched. Was it my imagination or had he emphasized the word army?
“Great.” I sidled toward him. “Sometimes all you need is some space from a puzzle.”
Asher sat back. “Space. Interesting. Is that why you haven’t shared all the research you’ve been doing on me? Did you need some space?” The tightness in his voice that had been present in town now hit me full force.
I blinked. “I—uh—what?” My heart hammered in my chest. I’d been right. But how had he found out?
“Tim told me he’s been following you into the library. Snuck up behind you one day and saw you were researching me. He told me maybe I shouldn’t tell you about what you want to know about Tabitha until you tell me what you’ve found on me.” He added in that last part like a twist of a knife to my gut.
A shiver worked down my spine. I’d spent the last few months digging through old records at the local library. I thought I’d felt someone looking over my shoulder the other day. Assuming I was just paranoid, I’d brushed it off. Maybe I shouldn’t have.
My toes fidgeted in my sandals as unease spread through my limbs. I wasn’t ready to spill the things I’d learned. Although I’d found more evidence supporting Asher’s desertion, I’d been unable to answer the biggest question. Why? And that had me going back through the evidence, trying to find something. But the files were there. It was all official.
What I’d learned about Asher so far in the months I’d known him was that he was an honest, kind, stand-up kinda guy. He was the last person I would think might run away from his duties, especially not to his country.
As if to illustrate this very point, Asher’s face softened. He rubbed a hand over it. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be accusatory. And it’s not like I’m on a time line. I just … the fact that you haven’t told me yet made me worried.”
I sank into the chair across from him.
Asher’s jaw tightened as if he were preparing to be punched in the face.
Taking a deep breath, I said, “I’m so sorry for keeping it from you. The truth is, yes, I’ve found some things, but …” I paused. “But I haven’t been able to verify them to my standards, and I didn’t want to tell you anything I wasn’t sure was the truth.”
