by Molly Macrae
There almost certainly hadn’t been a dozen customers in the shop, all carrying on conversations, boring or otherwise, during the ten or fifteen minutes she was on her self-assigned stakeout. And, far from sounding bored, she sounded keyed up. If her eyes could be, they would be glinting.
“But you did hear something interesting?” I whispered so I wouldn’t embarrass myself by being overheard in case Ardis or a customer was near the kitchen.
“I heard quite a lot about self-striping sock yarn. It’s on sale today and is always fascinating, if you enjoy listening to Ardis run on about such things. If I weren’t such a good detective, I think I might try my hand at being a shopkeeper.”
“You’re a good tease, anyway. What did you hear?”
“I have you wondering, don’t I?” She wriggled with satisfaction. “I’ll give you a hint, but the full information is too long and important to rush the details. All the details are extremely interesting, of course, but I can’t stop to tell you the whole fascinating story now, because some of us are doing important and extremely interesting jobs and must get back to them.” She sat back, clapping her soundless fingertips together beneath her chin, and said nothing more.
Self-important and extremely irritating ghost. She’d probably been an irritating woman, too. I waited and counted to ten. Then counted ten more for good measure and forced a smile. Bit my tongue. Raised my eyebrows in a “what gives?” sort of way.
She dropped her hands to the table. “You aren’t being very cooperative. I am expecting you to explode with curiosity.”
“And I’m waiting for you to give me your crumb of information,” I whispered, “so you can return to your very important job and leave me to finish my very bland salad.”
“You’re hissing at me.”
I leaned farther across the table and hissed harder. “We’re in a semipublic place. I’m being careful so I’m not pegged as the next crazy person, and you’re making it seriously difficult.”
“If you were to pretend you’re talking on your telephone, you could speak in a normal tone of voice and not upset me.”
“Oh.” I sat up, snapped my mouth shut, and pulled my phone from my pocket. “My gosh. Why didn’t we think of this before?”
“It will look more realistic if you put the phone to your ear,” she said.
“Good thinking.”
“I’m brilliant, aren’t I?”
“And smug. But brilliant, yes. So what did you hear?”
“Well, and now I fear we’ve run out of time. I did warn you.” She sat back and sighed grandly. “Unfortunately you wasted what time we had with your usual nitpicking, and now I see Dirty Harry has finished his lunch and we must return to our stakeout.” She rose, nose in the air, and floated toward the door.
“After all that, you’re not going to tell me? You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Come along, Dirty Harry.” The cat actually looked up from contemplating his empty dish and started after her.
“I am not calling him Dirty Harry,” I snarled into the phone.
“Him, who?” Ardis asked, zipping in the door.
She zipped straight through Geneva. I’d never seen that happen before and couldn’t help staring. It didn’t affect Geneva, didn’t part her wispy form or displace it. She saw me staring, though, and turned her back with a hmph.
“Do you feel that odd draft?” Ardis looked back over her shoulder, then at me. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t see you were on the phone.”
I held up a “one moment, please” finger, finished the charade by saying good-bye, and flipped the phone shut. “Him, the cat.”
“Oh, well, I should hope not.” The cat rubbed against her ankles and she leaned over to pet him. “You’ve cleaned up into a fine-looking fellow, haven’t you? You’re not a dirty anybody.”
“Tell her the name has nothing to do with hygiene,” Geneva demanded.
“Don’t worry, Ardis,” I said. “Dirty Harry is just another of those ridiculous suggestions people offer for his name. You should hear some of them. Absolutely nutty. But I’ll come up with the right one, one of these days.” I felt bad as soon as the words were out of my mouth. That was carrying tit for tat further than I should have, even if Geneva had started it. She was gone, though, and I couldn’t apologize to her in front of Ardis, anyway. And if I thought hard enough, I could probably come up with several more ways to rationalize not going after her to tell her I was sorry.
I asked Ardis if she and the shop were set for the afternoon. Of course they were. I was the only one who needed help when I was alone in the shop. I was the one who didn’t know what she was doing professionally or personally. Or, as it turned out, paranormally. I told Ardis I’d see her in the morning, abandoned the search for secret journals again, and went home.
And found the Spivey twins waiting in the shadows of my front porch.
Chapter 6
If I had seen Shirley and Mercy on the porch before I pulled into the drive, I would have goosed the gas and gone around the next corner on two wheels. It was possible I overreacted to the Spiveys, but it was a genuine gut reaction, and going with my gut often worked.
But I didn’t see them. I was out of the car and walking up the steps, foolishly looking at my keys and not peering warily around for invasive cousins—even if they were only cousins several times removed—before they emerged like chameleons from the background. Heaven only knows where they found sweat suits the same yellow as the house. Although I had no trouble picturing them sneaking over to compare the outfits to the paint and returning them for a refund if the color didn’t match.
“We came over as soon as we heard,” the twin on the left said.
There was a way to tell one sixtysomething twin from the other, thanks to Mercy’s wearing only one particular cologne. The kindest thing anyone could say about her scent was that she wore it sparingly. Unfortunately when the twins stood shoulder to shoulder a comfortable distance away, that clue was useless.
“We know how much you value our advice,” the right-hand twin said.
“And after the shock of finding the bodies, even though you seem to attract an unnatural number of them, Mercy thought you might need consoling.” It was Shirley on the left, then.
“Gosh.” That was the best response I could come up with on short notice.
“We know, we know,” Mercy said, coming toward me and looking as though she planned to pat me on the back.
I dropped my keys in my purse so that I didn’t forget myself and unlock the door and invite them in. In the short time I’d been back in Blue Plum, I’d managed to avoid either Spivey setting foot inside, scented or unscented.
“Let’s back up, though,” Shirley said.
“Good idea,” I said, retreating before Mercy’s advance.
“Not literally,” Shirley said with a tsk.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, continuing to back.
“She meant back up to what I said about advice,” Mercy said.
“And how much you’ve valued ours before, in similar situations,” Shirley added.
It didn’t surprise me that the conversation was heading in a suspicious direction. That was a hallmark of Spivey interactions. What surprised me was how quickly we’d veered down that suspicious path.
I stopped with my back against the front door.
“We have information,” Mercy said.
I looked from one to the other. I felt like a trapped animal, but they misinterpreted my eyebrows rising in alarm as an invitation to continue.
“Information guaranteed to help you solve the Enigma of the Intimate Enemies,” Shirley said. She leaned closer, scrutinized my face, and then straightened. “There you go, Mercy,” she said with satisfaction. “Didn’t I tell you we would kill two birds by calling it that?”
“I still like the Case of the Sinister Stalker,” Mercy said. “‘Enigma’ sounds too highfalutin. You’re right about the birds, though, except I make it three.” She held three fingers in h
er sister’s face. “We’ve piqued her interest.” She folded down one finger. “We’ve proved we have valuable information to contribute to the investigation.” She folded down a second finger. The third finger, her index finger, she turned and pointed at my face. “And look at her eyes, Shirley. If you ignore that stunned and unattractive squint, you can see that she’s not just interested in our information; she’s already a believer.”
The odd thing was that I did believe her, despite my betraying eyebrows, which I knew had lowered and pulled together. I would rather have thought my eyebrows looked perceptive and comprehending more than stunned, but I decided I could go with stunned, too. Shannon and Will involved as intimate enemies? Will as a sinister stalker? Either image could make sense of that horrible scene under the tree and whatever it was I’d felt when I touched their bodies.
And maybe I was stunned, because I found myself inviting the Spiveys in. That must have stunned them, because they sat in the living room, as un-annoying as I’ve ever experienced them, and they didn’t attempt to roam or snoop. I wasn’t so staggered that I offered them iced tea. They were kind enough not to draw attention to that lapse.
“First,” Mercy said.
“Yes,” Shirley interrupted, “first, if you use either of the titles we just told you for this case, then you should give us credit.”
“That isn’t what I was going to say, but it’s a good point.” Mercy looked at me.
I cleared my throat.
Mercy hurried on. “And there will be plenty of time to discuss it later. I was going to say that we have two pieces of information. The first is that Will Embree and Shannon Goforth had a history.”
“They dated in high school?”
“That part is common knowledge,” Shirley said. “Their history after high school isn’t.”
“We’re talking about two years ago,” said Mercy, “during the protests at Victory Paper. Will and Shannon—the violent protester and the company’s loyal mouthpiece—were secretly engaged.”
The twins sat back, looking pleased, each crossing her right leg over her left and letting her right foot swing.
“If it was a secret, how do you know about it?”
“Ah. Thinking like an investigator. That’s good,” Shirley said. “Unfortunately, we can’t tell you.”
“Yet,” Mercy quickly added. “Our source told us in confidence, and we should check with her, um, with our source, before saying more.”
“Hmm. Okay. What’s the second piece of information?”
“Shannon Goforth told our source she was being stalked,” Shirley said.
“By Will Embree?”
“No.”
“Then by who?”
“By whom,” Mercy said.
“That’s where you come in,” said Shirley, “because we don’t know.”
After they left, I sat down in one of Granny’s old blue overstuffed chairs. Almost immediately, I got up and switched to the other overstuffed chair because Mercy’s cologne lingered in the first. Breathing more easily, I knitted my fingers behind my head and chased a flock of fluttering questions around for a while. They were about as easy to catch as an explosion of grasshoppers.
I did finally latch onto a couple of conclusions, though. The first was that everyone else was right and I’d been deluded. I was on the case. The second was only something I needed to remind myself of. That anything the Spiveys said should be doubted until verified.
The ghost and the cat were both in the kitchen when I let myself into the shop the next morning. He was hungry and she was sulky. And so we started another day.
I fed the cat and checked to see that the three of us were alone. It was my turn to open the shop, though, so I didn’t expect to find anyone else in for another half hour, and indeed didn’t. Geneva was moping in a small heap in a corner of the kitchen near the trash can. I couldn’t help thinking she’d watched for me to arrive and then thrown herself into the corner when I unlocked the door.
“Geneva, may I apologize for being so childish yesterday?”
“Will it make you feel better?”
“Yes.”
“Then please don’t.”
“I think I will anyway.”
“Why bother?”
“Because that’s what friends do. I’m sorry I was spiteful about the cat’s name.”
She didn’t respond to that, but she followed me out front, like my own personal Great Dismal Fog, and watched as I flipped on lights and put the till in the cash register. She also didn’t bring up the “very important and fascinating” information she’d claimed to overhear. If she hadn’t been so irritating and childish about that, maybe we wouldn’t have erupted into our latest argument. I didn’t remind her of her behavior, though, and the information could wait until she was in a better mood and I had time to pay close attention.
The cat helped himself to a pool of morning sun collecting under one of the front windows. He stretched himself out to soak in it and started cleaning his paws. Geneva drifted over to a display of new, undyed Icelandic wool yarns and nestled in among the creams, browns, grays, and blacks.
“Why are you wearing a skirt today?” she asked.
“No special reason. I felt like it. It was hanging in my closet. The weather’s nice. I haven’t done my laundry.” I shrugged. “Any one of those reasons. Take your pick.” It was just a pencil skirt. Herringbone. It was my favorite skirt, though. In fact, it would look good with a sweater knit from some of the wool she was cuddling.
“I choose none of the above,” she said.
“It wasn’t really a multiple-choice question, Geneva. That’s what I meant when I said no special reason.”
“I also don’t choose that answer.” Her voice, so often light and insubstantial, except when she was moaning or howling, had dropped in timbre. “And I think you will have to admit that I know what I’m talking about. I have insights that are beyond your understanding.” Her hollow eyes watched me and she swayed sinuously back and forth.
I stopped fluffing the scarf display. I tugged at my skirt and adjusted my tights, suddenly self-conscious.
“Your skirt, blouse, and black stockings tell me you are feeling sober, structured, and professional,” she droned. “They tell me you have made a decision. What you put on your body is a direct reflection of how you feel and how you approach your life.”
“Oh now, come on.” I tried to laugh. “What is that? Fashion advice from beyond the grave?”
“No, it is reality at its best. That was practically a direct quotation from What Not to Wear.” Her voice lost the sideshow-medium quality and rose toward bubbly. “Have you ever watched that show? It’s chock-full of insight and drama. I’m always on the edge of my seat waiting to see if their contestants are able to spend the entire five thousand dollars they’re given appropriately and in time. And I’ve just thought of how you can make up for being snide and spiteful about Dirty Harry’s name. Why don’t you take me on a shopping spree and I’ll be your fashion coach? I’ve had so much experience watching the show that I’ll be able to steer you away from the blunders you make so frequently. Or here’s another good idea: Why don’t you install a television in my room upstairs? It can be your choice. Shopping or a television, either one is fine with me. Isn’t this fun?”
She was into choices that morning. Maybe as a result of being in television game show withdrawal. The choice I made was to leave unsaid quite a few things, several of which went beyond snide and spiteful. But before I could congratulate myself for having that strength of character, I told a lie.
“Geneva, do you remember why I’m living here in Blue Plum now? That I lost my job? I can’t afford to buy you a television. And even if I could, if you wanted to watch shows like What Not to Wear, if the show is even still on, you’d need cable or satellite and I can’t swing monthly payments like that. The same goes for a five-thousand-dollar shopping spree. Even a hundred-dollar shopping spree. Money is tight. I’m sorry.”
&nbs
p; A retort to her comment about my frequent fashion blunders almost slipped out, but at least I was able to wrestle that back in. And what I told her was more a half-truth than a total lie. Buying a television and subscribing to cable or satellite were out of the question. And shopping with her as a fashion coach was definitely out. But if I thought that soothing her ghostly feelings by leaving a television on day and night in the attic was a good idea, I could give her mine or the one I’d inherited with Granny’s house. I didn’t think it was a good idea, though. It was a terrible idea. Even if Geneva didn’t have a brain left to rot with ceaseless television viewing, I didn’t want the constant background noise up there in the study. I also didn’t want anyone else to hear it and think it was background noise I enjoyed or needed. And I didn’t want Geneva thinking the study was her room.
She sighed and drooped. “I’m sorry you are so poor.”
“I’m better off than many people, but thank you. So are you interested in fashion?”
She didn’t answer.
“I know you like all the colors and textures in the shop. What’s your favorite color?”
She shrugged.
“Do you know that I can’t see you clearly? For instance, I can’t really tell what you’re wearing.”
At that she looked at me and cocked her head. Then she rose from her nest of Icelandic wool and spread the skirt of whatever she wore. It rippled but didn’t catch or reflect any of the sunlight streaming in through the window behind her. There was no shimmer of color or glimmer of life to it. It didn’t cast a shadow.
She floated several feet closer and the shelves I could half see through her seemed to undulate as though I saw them through rising heat waves. The clothing hung on her without much shape of its own and obscured what shape she had, though she didn’t appear to have been a big woman, either overall or in any strategic places. The garment was long, down past her ankles, and I realized I didn’t know what she wore on her feet, if anything.
“Will you come closer?” I asked.
