The Misadventures of the Laundry Hag: All Washed Up: (Book 3 in the Misadventures of the Laundry Hag series)

by Jennifer L. Hart

  Chapter Twelve

  Sylvia and I left Neil fielding phone calls between the insurance company and the garage that had towed the remains of the truck. Leo was bustling about, overseeing the construction crew.

  “Maggie, I’m really sorry,” Sylvia said for the hundredth time as the Prius putt-putted into town.

  I blew out a sigh at the familiar and unwelcome refrain. “I know. It’s all right. I forgive you.”

  Either she didn’t believe me or she hadn’t reached her apology quota for the day. “I should have told you when Neil first asked me to help.”

  I rolled my eyes. Clearly she wasn’t ready to accept the forgiveness I’d practically shoved down her throat. Between Sylvia’s regret, Leo’s multitasking and Neil’s everything else, I had the perfect spouse. Of course they were all interfering busybodies.

  Takes one to know one, Margret. That was my mother’s disembodied voice, chiming in with her two cents. Best to change the subject before Mom worked her way around to making the whole situation my fault.

  “So, do you have any cosmic vibrations I should know about?” I cringed as I heard the words come out. Jeeze, it sounded like I inquired after her personal massager.

  Sylvia parked the Prius but made no move to get out. Her gaze focused, not on the squat stone multipurpose building but at some distant point I couldn’t see. “There’s something wrong here.”

  I wondered if that was the ghost of her great aunt speaking to her. Since I’d just chatted it up with my own personal ghost, I was in no position to judge. “Something? Can you be more specific?”

  She shook her head and climbed from the car. “I wish I could. It’s just this feeling I’ve had since last night.”

  Last night, huh? I considered the goings on of last night and hefted myself from the car. “Do you remember when, exactly?”

  She hesitated. “No. It’s just a feeling, like we’re walking around in a fog and about to stumble off a cliff.”

  And that was precisely why I was no longer upset with Sylvia. Whether or not she thought this little ghost hunting trip was good for my mental health, she genuinely believed that there were spirits wandering about.

  “Hmm, so the sage cleanse didn’t work?” The whole house reeked of burnt sage, so I knew she’d done her treatment.

  She shook her head no. “Whatever grounds the spirits here, it’s a strong tether. I think it’s trying to tell me something.”

  Despite the bright sunshine, I shivered. “The bean nighe? Or maybe the woman in the road last night?” I’d convinced myself that they were two separate ghosts.

  Sylvia looked helpless. “I really can’t say.”

  Though I felt ridiculous for bringing it up, I had to ask. “Do you have like a power crystal or talisman or something to help us out?”

  She shook her head. “No, but I really think we should get some salt while we’re out.”

  “Salt?” I blinked in surprise. Sylvia was a monument to healthy eating. I doubted she’d ever bought salt before.

  Turned out, I was wrong. “It’ll keep malicious spirits at bay. Unrefined sea salt works best, but any salt will do the job.”

  That made sense to me, more sense than the mountain of ghost hunting paraphernalia in the trunk. Stories of ghosts were most often told by impoverished country folk and they wouldn’t have much on hand to combat the malicious deceased. Salt though, that they’d have. At least we didn’t have to slaughter live chickens or something equally gruesome.

  “Buy salt before we go home, got it.” I made a mental note to tell Leo so he didn’t sweep it up in one of his tidying fits. “Anything else?”

  She gave me a curious look. “You really believe in all this, don’t you? What’s changed?”

  Uncomfortable, I turned away and stared at my battered reflection in the glass doors. “A year ago I would have said definitely that I didn’t believe in ghosts. Absolutely positively did not believe. Since then, I’ve been an alibi to a creepy man who got his jollies from imagining scenes of torture, had a body left in my stolen wheelbarrow, found the cooling corpse of a cleaning partner. Neil and I found the body of one of my clients and I was arrested for murder. After all that, my guess is that I’ve seen enough misery and wrongful death to believe ghosts could come from it.”

  “Oh, Maggie.” Sadness threaded through her soft tone. “Oh honey,”

  Sympathy was the last thing I needed or wanted. “I’m fine.”

  One perfectly sculpted eyebrow went up. “Are you, or are you just saying that?”

  “Fake it ‘til you make it, baby.” I smiled, but she didn’t smile back. “Seriously Sylvie, I don’t want to harp on all that right now. Let’s get to work.”

  She nodded but whispered, “If you ever want to talk, you know I’m here.”

  “Thanks.” I squared my still stiff shoulders and marched into the library. This time we didn’t bother with the dusty tomes. Instead we headed to the front desk where the librarian, Beatrice Small, held court.

  “Hi,” I greeted her. Despite her last name, Beatrice was a large woman, almost as tall as Sylvia and built like a bratwurst. She wore cat eye glasses and a white beehive that looked like nothing more than a dollop of whipped cream. The smile lines by her eyes and mouth were friendly as I explained what we were looking for.

  “Grant, you say? Well, we can check the microfiche for death notices if it happened locally and there is a huge newspaper collection in the basement if you want to look through that.” Her voice was high and squeaky, like Minnie Mouse’s grandmother.

  “Of course there is,” I murmured, my sinuses already clogged at the promise of dust.

  Judging from the photograph I’d seen of their granddaughter, Aileene Grant had died within the last twenty five years. The microfiche yielded almost nothing on the Grants. Though they’d lived in town for fifty years, they’d kept mostly to themselves. They were only mentioned in articles about their employers, the Greys, who threw lavish parties and donated piles of money to the local schools, hospitals and soup kitchens. Desperate, I turned to the internet. More information on the Greys, including the current Mr. Grey, first name Christopher. He worked in banking, while Mrs. Grey, Veronica, was a full time philanthropist who raised money for every charity venture I’d ever heard of. They had one child, a boy named Jacob. He attended private school on Long Island and was a member of a sailing club.

  I studied a public photograph of the Greys, a handsome and obviously refined couple, with their small son. All three were slim and had dark hair and aristocratic noses. The picture was taken about six months ago. It was easy enough to envision Laura, Ralph and Neil thirty years earlier posed in exactly the same way. I wondered if Jacob would grow up to be his own man the way Neil had or if he’d follow in Mr. Grey’s name brand footsteps.

  I logged off. All the speculation wasn’t getting us anywhere fast. Resigned, Sylvia and I trudged downstairs to combat the newspaper archive.

  An hour and a half later, my hands were smudgy from holding yellowed newsprint and my eyes had crossed and uncrossed enough times to lace up a sneaker. My back ached from being hunched over binders filled with news clippings. I couldn’t know more about this town if I’d given it a prostate exam.

  “I’m about ready to admit defeat,” I called to Sylvia, who’d wandered to the other side of the palatial bookshelf to retrieve another binder for 1992. “Wanna bop across to the diner for lunch?”

  She didn’t respond.

  “Sylvia?” I rolled my shoulders to loosen the spasming muscles. “Are you ready to go?”

  Maybe she’d gone to the restroom.

  The soft shuffle of footsteps to my left dispelled that notion and without further thought, I followed the sound.

  “Hey, where are you—?” The question cut off when I realized the woman I had followed was about four inches too short to be Sylvia. That and she was barefoot. She turned and looked at me with soulless eyes.

  It was the ghost who’d caused the accident.<
br />
  My mouth opened and shut a few times as I stared at her. I struggled for the right question. “Who—?”

  A noise sounded behind us and I whirled around. Something struck me on the back of the head and the world tunneled to darkness.

  ****

  “Maggie?” Someone slapped the side of my face.

  “Ow,” I groaned and put my arm up to ward off any further blows. Though it took humongous effort, I opened my eyes and glared up at Sylvia. “Quit it.”

  “You’re all right.” Relief was etched on every inch of her face.

  “That’s relative,” I muttered. The room spun around me but the floor was cold and I thought I might vomit. “Help me up.”

  Good thing Sylvia kept in shape because I was essentially dead weight. She pulled, I lurched, she straightened and with the help of a nearby chair, I made it to an almost human position. I blinked several times in rapid succession and tried to clear the spots from my vision. “She hit me?”

  Though I couldn’t be sure, I thought Sylvia frowned. “A bookshelf tipped over, right on top of you. The corner must have struck the back of your head. No one hit you.”

  I surveyed the room, which seemed to be moving. She was right though. A bookcase had been knocked on its side and its contents littered the floor all around us. I raised a hand to my head to check for new holes, or maybe a dent. No blood, thankfully. “I could have sworn that she—”

  “Oh my goodness gracious!” Beatrice Small lumbered down the stairs, probably to shush us for the racket. Her eyes went round behind her cat eye glasses and she stared from the mess to the two of us. “What on earth have you two been doing?”

  I blinked and tried to get her image to congeal into one solid form. “We’ll clean it up.” I may have slurred a wee bit.

  “Are you hurt, dear?” She zipped over to my side like an anxious bumble bee.

  “I’ve had worse,” I said, truthfully. “Mrs. Small, have you ever seen a ghost down here?”

  “Ghost?” she repeated tonelessly. “Why no, of course not.”

  I turned to Sylvia. “Did you see her?”

  “Who?”

  “The ghost.” My exasperation seeped into the words. “I’m beginning to think I’m the only one who can see her.”

  I bit my lip. And she might be trying to kill me because of it.

  “Are you bleeding? Should I call a doctor? Or the paramedics? Can I get you anything? A bag of ice, or an aspirin perhaps?” Mrs. Small shifted her weight anxiously, ready to zip off in whatever direction necessary.

  “Aspirin would be great.” I offered her a flimsy smile.

  “Maybe we should go to the hospital. You might have a concussion.”

  I found the knot on the back of my skull and winced. “I’ve had a concussion before and honestly, this doesn’t feel that bad. Trust me, I’ll be fine. Maybe we should go to the diner and talk to Alex, see if she knows anything about Aileene Grant’s death.”

  “Maggie,” Sylvia said in the same tone I used for the boys when they were being particularly stubborn. “You just had an accident. You should rest.”

  “I will be resting. At the diner, where there’s pie. Nothing too strenuous in eating pie, is there?” I waggled my eyebrows at her, the way Neil did at me when he wanted to get my mind off of whatever fretful train it had boarded.

  That garnered a snort from my partner in crime. “Why does that sound dirty to me?”

  “Because you are a sick and twisted individual.”

  “Which is why we get along so well,” she quipped back. Huh, Neil must be on to something with the banter.

  Mrs. Small returned with the aspirin and I downed two tablets with the bottle of water she provided. “Thank you.”

  “You be careful, dear,” Mrs. Small warned as though I were an irresponsible eight-year-old intent on riding her bike across a busy highway at rush hour.

  I’d only done that once.

  Though my head throbbed, I did want pie and wanted to talk to Alex Ruiz even more. The diner seemed to act as the beating heart of this town, the same way my kitchen was the heart of my house. Just like animals, people were friendlier when you fed them.

  Though I shouldn’t have been surprised, I was taken aback when I saw Neil and Leo already seated in the diner. Obviously Sylvia’s phone had seen some texting action.

  Neil had a plate of fries and a worried expression on his face. “What happened?”

  I let Sylvia fill him in, while I reached for a fry. Neil made a disgusted sound and pushed the plate in front of me. “Jesus wept, Maggie—”

  Alex bustled over, coffee pot in hand. She looked from Neil’s battered countenance to whatever magic I had going on and raised a brow. “What can I get you?”

  “Pie,” I said. “Whatever kind is best for recovery.”

  She tapped a pen to her chin. “Kentucky, I think. You like chocolate chips?”

  “Does a bear shit in the woods? Hit me,” I said. Beside me Neil winced and I added, “Better make it a double.”

  I waited for Alex to leave then turned to Leo and Sylvia. “Would you guys give us a minute?”

  “I wanted to pop into the market anyhow. Come on, Leo. I want to introduce you to the many delights of a Vegan diet.”

  “Joy, rapture.” Leo’s tone was dry.

  Alex set down two slices of what looked like a warm, gooey chocolate chip cookie inside a pie crust and topped with homemade vanilla ice cream. My mouth watered at the decadent treat, which I felt I’d justly earned. I slid one in Neil’s direction and cut into mine with the side of a fork.

  “We’re a mess, Slick,” I told him before I took my first forkful of pie. It was delicious enough to cut through the pain better than any pill ever could.

  He studied my face and I saw him swallow hard, pie untouched before him. “In more ways than one. Any ideas how to fix it?”

  “It would probably help if the ghost quit trying to kill me.”

  He blew out a breath at that. “I’m serious.”

  “So am I.” I took another bite, then pushed the plate away and reached for his hand. His eyes widened. Well, one did and the other expanded as much as it could with the swelling.

  “That’s the first time.” His brows drew down as he studied our interlocked fingers. “The first time since you got out of the hospital.”

  I knew what he meant. Since I’d been burned, I hadn’t reached for him or engaged him in any kind of physical intimacy. I’d shied away from his touch at the same time I craved it. It was past time to get the hell over it.

  “I’m prepared to forgive you. For all of it, across the board—the lying, the scheming, the mindfuck, turning my friends against me—the whole shebang. I won’t even drag it out like holiday decorations to gloat over or wave around under your nose. Total absolution,” I said and heard him suck in a sharp breath. So, he hadn’t expected it. Good, time to let the other shoe drop. “On one condition.”

  “Anything,” he rasped.

  There was so much feeling in that one word. Not just about me letting it go, either. I picked up on the fear that had been seething just beneath the surface. It threatened to drown him. He’d been afraid for me and for himself and I’d just thrown him a life preserver. I had to tread carefully.

  “What I need,” I said, my gaze locked on his, “is for you to be completely honest with me. No more sneak attacks, fibs or nasty surprises. No more making plans behind my back for my own good. You don’t get to lie to spare my feelings or to make things easier. I need to trust one person completely and I want that person to be you. Can you do that?”

  He blew out a huge breath and the corner of his mouth kicked up. “You’re not asking much, are you?”

  I let go of him and reached for the comfort of the pie, but he snagged my hand back before I got a hold of the plate. He brought the mangled thing to his lips and kissed my knuckles. “All right.”

  I squared my shoulders and stared him down. “I mean it, Neil. From now on, we’re o
n the same team and you have to respect my decisions.”

  His eyes softened. “We’re always on the same team and I do respect your decisions. I just want you to make sane ones.”

  I smiled at that. “I‘ll work on that.”

  I tried to take my hand back because my ice cream was melting and damn, what a waste, but he held fast. “And are you going to be completely honest with me, too? No more sneaking out to stalk potential murderers in the middle of the night?”

  “That happened once—,”

  “No more spying on me instead of just asking what I’m doing?”

  “Again, it was one time and totally by accident.”

  “No more hiding Dr. Bob’s homework assignments?” He smoldered at me across the table.

  A hot flash stole over me like a minor electrocution. The homework assignment in question had been like the Kama Sutra on steroids. I’d taken one look at it, panicked, and found the nearest recycling bin. “You’re melting my ice cream.”

  “Good,” he smiled and released my hand before picking up his fork. “Something to look forward to later.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Luckily, Sylvia and Leo returned before someone reported us for public indecency. Despite the recent head injury, or maybe due to the pie, I was thinking clearly. The diner crowd had thinned and I caught Alex’s eye and waved her over.

  “Sam told me about your accident yesterday. Glad to see you two are all right. Was it a deer? You gotta watch out for them, particularly after dark.”

  “No, it wasn’t a deer.” It was no secret why we were in town and I figured Alex had heard worse. “I think it was a ghost.”

  “Really?” Alex didn’t appear all that surprised. “How do you know it was a ghost?”

  “We don’t,” Neil said. “Not for sure. I just saw a woman—”

  “The same one I saw in the library just now before a bookshelf was pushed on top of me. I’m convinced she’s a ghost. What I don’t know is whose ghost she is or why she’s trying to kill me.”