Keep Me Ghosted (Sophie Rhodes Romantic Comedy #1)

by Karen Cantwell

  Ronald spun back around, quick on his feet to respond. “She died a year ago, last... September I think it was.”

  Dory seemed confused by what she obviously considered a non-sequitur.

  “Wasn’t it September, Dory?” he asked.

  Marmaduke narrowed his eyes. “You didn’t ask him about the girl. You asked him about the owner. That bloke heard me talking to you!”

  He sure did. And that’s why Dory was thrown for a loop.

  She shook her head, looking at him like he’d lost more than a marble or two. “The owner,” she said to me, thinking she was covering for her silly husband, “was a very quiet Indian man. Mr. Bhandari. He owned an insurance business. Ran it out of this office. What Ronald is talking about—well, it was just plain tragic. We really don’t know much about what happened except that she died right here.” She lowered her voice as if she needed to keep the information from someone. “Probably right where we’re standing now.”

  “How?”

  “No one knows. Like I said, he was a quiet man. Kept to himself. Your neighbor, the travel agent,” she pointed to my right, “That’s Mrs. Wilkins. She claims she heard them fighting, then she heard Mr. Bhandari scream. A few minutes later the police and medics arrived, but there was nothing they could do. By the end of the year, he’d put the condo on the market. I was a little disappointed he didn’t ask us to list it.”

  “Did you know his daughter’s name, the girl who died?”

  Ronald stepped in. “Jina. She wasn’t aloof like her father. She came to our office once asking if we needed any summer hires.”

  “We didn’t.” Dory sniffed.

  “She needed the work. She was a nice girl. And she got a lot of our filing done.” Ronald’s face grew a little rigid and he looked right at Marmaduke before asking me, “Why are you so interested?”

  “Because she’s floating around here like The Ghost of Christmas Dread, that’s why,” said Marmaduke.

  Ronald stiffened.

  “I was just curious,” I said. “I heard some people talking. You know how people talk.”

  “Yes, they do,” agreed Dory. “Well, let’s go, Ronny, we have clients to see.”

  She pushed him out the door.

  “That girl’s name was Jina. Doesn’t sound anything like Moonflower. You think it’s the same girl?”

  He shrugged. “We could ask her.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to get into any long conversations with a ghost that didn’t seem nearly as nice as the person Ronald Ellison had described, but I thought about it. I also thought about approaching Shane on the subject. If he was the responding police officer that day, he could probably give me more than the Ellisons since Mr. Bhandari had remained so tight-lipped. Playing Shane for information wasn’t my idea of fun, so I tucked it away in the recesses of my mind for future consideration and set back to work creating business for my employer.

  When Dr. Callahan returned with McDonald’s and a bag of light bulbs, he was surprised by the substantial token left by the Ellisons. He cut off the ribbon and began inspecting the contents: cinnamon flavored coffee beans, a small grinder, candied almonds, sesame crackers, wheat crackers, pepper jack cheese, a cheddar cheese roll, a giant milk chocolate candy bar, trail mix, an assortment of herbal teas, a baby-sized loaf of rye bread, and a salami. Except for the coffee, it all looked wonderfully tasty. Skipping breakfast and ingesting a meager egg salad sandwich for lunch had made for a very hungry Sophie. With payday still two days off and my refrigerator emptier than a pessimist’s glass, the very sight of it all made my mouth water. An envelope clung to the side of the cellophane. I pulled it free and handed it to Dr. Callahan.

  He read from the card inside: “Words and gift baskets alone cannot express our deepest and sincerest gratitude. But please, enjoy a night at Winston’s on us.” He held up a gift certificate. “One hundred dollars. They really shouldn’t have. I feel terrible taking this when I did what anyone would have done.”

  “I wouldn’t feel terrible. You did a good thing,” I said, even though I knew Ronald really brought himself around all on his own. Winston’s though. Wow. That was one fancy, classy, and very expensive restaurant. I’d never been there myself, but a co-worker at the police department had, and she told me all about it. The waiters pulled your chair out for you and everything. A hundred dollars was probably a usual tab for a two-person dinner at that place.

  “You called 911,” he said. Then suddenly he was putting everything back into the basket, including the gift certificate, and pushing it at me. “You take it. You probably need this more than me.”

  The desire to shout, “Yes I do!” and snatching the thing, was strong, but I shoved the basket back anyway. “No. They brought this for you. Besides, I don’t like coffee, remember?”

  We played a rousing round of You Take It No You Take it until finally he stopped, took the coffee, coffee grinder, and gift certificate out. “Fine. Here’s the deal. I take the coffee, you take everything else—cheese and chocolate don’t like me anyway—and we both use the gift certificate.” He anticipated my protest, holding up a hand. “Not a date, a business dinner. We’ll discuss business.”

  “At Winston’s?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll bring a steno pad and take notes. Very official. Very business like.”

  I thought about it. Actually, I only played like I was thinking about it so I wouldn’t look so desperate for the food. After an appropriate number of seconds, I agreed, thankful to have cheese, crackers, and salami dinner already planned.

  “Good,” he said with that cute, crooked smile of his. “Good.” As he walked by me, I was way too aware of his scent again. Definitely cologne, I decided. Really, really nice cologne.

  The rest of the day was slow, but steady. Moonflower had been invisible for most of it, or at least to me. During Dr. Callahan’s last therapy appointment though, a phone call came in from a parent who said she thought her daughter had pink-eye, but wasn’t sure. So new to the whole receptionist-thing, I wasn’t quite sure what to do. I decided to put her on hold and ask the man himself. Knocking lightly and hoping he wouldn’t be mad at the interruption, I held my breath.

  “Come in,” I heard him say.

  I opened the door just enough to poke my head in and see Dr. Callahan seated across a rectangular table from Kaylee, his eight-year old patient. She wore a pair of funky looking glasses—one lens was green, the other was red—and she was poking at something on the table with a pick-up stick. Unfortunately, Moonflower was there as well, hovering beside Dr. Callahan. All three of them stopped to look up at me.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but Mrs. Wallace is on the phone. She thinks her daughter has pink eye, but isn’t sure. Did you want to talk to her?”

  Dr. Callahan smiled and well, I just couldn’t help but smile back. It was a really cute, crooked smile after all. Our exchange was not appreciated by Moonflower. An electrical sensation overwhelmed me again, my hair standing on end. This was even stronger than the night before, and I knew Dr. Callahan and Kaylee felt it too by the alarm on their faces.

  “Um, tell her...”

  The charge strengthened, the lights pulsed, then Moonflower let out a banshee wail that resonated and echoed down the hall. Kaylee covered her ears, and her mother yelled from the waiting room, “What was that?”

  Poor little Kaylee screamed as a light above her dimmed, grew brighter, then burst with a pop. She tore off the funny looking glasses and screamed all the way to her mother, begging to leave and never come back to “this scary office.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I ARRIVED AT THE OFFICE EARLY again the next day and cringed when I listened to the messages on voicemail. Kaylee’s mother was canceling appointments for the next two weeks. The little girl was absolutely adamant that she never wanted to return to “that scary place,” but her mother was hopeful that Kaylee would forget the event after a couple of weeks’ time and they could return for therapy. I erased Kaylee from the book f
or the two weeks and wrote the note for Dr. Callahan, who surely wouldn’t be happy. Unfortunately, he arrived unhappy, but less one gloomy ghost. I decided to hold back the note until his mood improved, but just had to ask about Moonflower since she was so obviously absent.

  “So, you’re alone this morning?”

  “She’s probably around. Give her a minute, I’m sure, and she’ll show up to ruin my day. Any messages?”

  “Nothing urgent.” I thought some good news might cheer him up. “You have two new patients today—brothers.”

  He didn’t crack a smile, but the tension in his shoulders relaxed. “That’s good.”

  I handed him a list of his patients for the day. “What’s this?”

  “Your schedule—you can keep it with you in your exam room.”

  Finally he smiled. “Thanks. Very organized. And helpful. Look, an exam at ten. I’d better get ready. Do you have Mrs. Spodowski’s file?”

  “In your room already.”

  His smile broadened and he moved down the hall with a little more bounce in his step than when he’d entered just minutes earlier.

  When the door opened, I looked over the desk, expecting to see a somewhat early Mrs. Spodowski, but instead was confronted by a young girl. She appeared to be in her late teens, maybe sixteen or seventeen with brownish, wavy hair that hung just below her shoulders. She wore a faded and tattered Army green jacket that was about three sizes too large for her, and looked entirely out of place considering the near triple digit heat index outside. Under the jacket was a striped tank.

  “Can I help you?” I asked, thinking she had probably wandered into the wrong office.

  “I...” She scanned the room, then brought her eyes back to mine, but only for a nanosecond. She was scanning the room again when she finished her sentence finally. “... need an eye exam. I think I need glasses.”

  The girl’s gaze darted here and there, but she wouldn’t focus her attention on me. As if eye contact might harm her in some way.

  “I could probably put you in for an exam with Dr. Callahan,” I started cautiously, “but we don’t have eyeglasses here. You’d need to get them somewhere else. Dr. Callahan actually specializes—”

  “That’d be okay.” She drummed her fingers on the counter, bounced a little, and finally settled her eyes on a filing cabinet behind me. “Probably. Maybe.”

  Not sure what I was dealing with, I decided to delve into the age issue indirectly. “Possibly your mom or dad would like to come in or call, to make this appointment—”

  Finally, eye contact. “Never mind. It’s good.” As quickly as she’d appeared, she was gone, like Speedy Gonzales. I actually think some papers on the desk ruffled in the breeze left behind.

  Jumping from my desk quickly, I bounded to the door and peered out, hoping to catch a glimpse of her and which direction she’d gone. It didn’t take me long to spot her far off next to a tree, talking closely with none other than the sandy-haired boy from the night at the community center. My red flag alert rose to danger. Were they thieves, casing Dr. Callahan’s office? Maybe they thought there were valuable eyeglass frames to steal? I threw open the door, intent on finding out what they were up to, but they saw me advancing and tore off in opposite directions. At that very moment, an elderly woman made a slow approach toward our door, and suspecting she was our patient, Mrs. Spodowski, I fell back to do my job. I knew though, that I’d have to tell Dr. Callahan now about the boy and his partner. Whatever they were up to, thievery or something else, it obviously involved him.

  After Dr. Callahan took Mrs. Spodowski back for her exam, I used the quiet time without ringing phones to go through drawers and organize. A pair of identical tiny keys were thrown haplessly in a glass bowl with a wad of rubber bands, paper clips, and thumbtacks. Nearly pricking myself on the thumbtacks, I pulled out the keys joined on a small ring. They looked like my mailbox keys at the apartment.

  Realizing I had never seen mail since starting, and having not noticed Dr. Callahan returning with any himself, I decided to look around the condo complex for a mailbox. Not only did I find the mailbox, I found it stuffed to the gills. As I carried the heavy load back to the office, I caught a glimpse of Moonflower pouting in the shade-giving dogwood tree, closely following my movement. Before I could open the door, she disappeared from her perch and appeared next to me, her face right in mine. “You can go now,” she said. “We don’t need you.”

  “Funny,” I countered, “I was thinking the same thing.” I decided to play a hunch and see how she reacted. “What exactly is your problem, Jina?”

  For just a moment, after I uttered the name, she flickered off, then on again, as if she were an image on a television that lost power briefly. I also detected a minor shift in her expression, but so minor, I didn’t know if I should dismiss it, or think it was a sign that she was in fact, Jina Bhandari. The door opened, startling me, and Dr. Callahan stuck his head out. “Oh! You got the mail. Thank you. I thought I’d lost the key.” He tipped his head back toward the desk. “I need you to check Mrs. Spodowski out. Just charge her for a follow-up—she didn’t need a full exam.”

  I nodded and slipped past him, irritated by the fact that Moonflower had practically glued herself to Dr. Callahan again at the same time. I’d had enough of this morose phantom. Then, of course, I realized suddenly why Dr. Callahan couldn’t keep a receptionist. She’d been scaring them off. A few, or even all of them, probably didn’t even know why. The problem was, after taking that call from Kaylee’s mom earlier, I now knew she was also scaring off his patients.

  It was just after lunch when the front door opened and two red-haired boys erupted onto the scene, instantly turning our quiet office into a den of din. Not only did they have identical hair, they had identical faces, and identical activity levels. They reminded me of rubber bouncy balls run amok. A moment later, a woman, very obviously their mother from the matching hair color and facial features, stepped in, all smiles. At least, she was all smiles for a second or two. Then she swayed, as if the floor gave out from under her. Her hands felt the air around her while her eyes widened. “Whoa,” was all she said. She shook her head, then her hands, and the smile returned. She stepped up to the desk.

  “Are you okay?” I wondered if she was close to fainting—possibly the heat was getting to her.

  “I’m just fine.” She cocked an eyebrow. “Are you okay?”

  Not sure if she was cuckoo or just a little odd, I decided to move on with my receptionist duties rather than address her query. I peeked down at the appointment book. “Is this Robert and Michael?”

  She acknowledged them with a smile. “They’re the ones.”

  I handed her a clipboard. “I have two forms there. One for each of them. Once you fill them out, Dr. Callahan can get started with the examinations.”

  My nerves were thankful that one of the boys had settled in a chair with a book. The other, however, was rolling two toy cars around on the wall near the door. He crashed them into each other often and loudly vocalized their explosive collisions. Very loudly.

  “Robert!” his mother chastised him firmly. “That is very poor manners and unacceptable behavior. If you are going to play with those toys, do it quietly on the floor.”

  “But I like playing with it on the wall.” More crashing, more explosions.

  She leaned in toward his face and spoke in a quietly calm, but no-nonsense tone. “Then I will have to teach you how to paint that wall for Dr. Callahan after you’ve left black marks all over it with your playing. And it won’t be like the fun painting you do at school. That kind of painting will require hours of time and hard work because you will have to repair any dents first, then sand it, probably paint it several times to get it looking like new. Lots of blood, sweat, and tears, my friend.” By the end of her speech, Michael had stopped his fidgeting entirely and his eyes looked ready to pop out of their sockets. She laid a hand on his shoulder. “Should we begin that difficult and rigorous training now, or wo
uld you like to just play on the floor?”

  He gave that proposition about one second of thought then dropped to the floor, once again mimicking the sound of a car’s engine, and I was very thankful to his mother for her keen and responsible parenting. Getting along with kids was not a skill listed on my résumé. I’d never babysat as a teenager, I’d never aspired to have a job working with children, and had next to no experience with them. That being said, I did hope to be a mother one day, but only after taking a master class or something. To avoid traumas like dropping the baby on its head or scarring the child emotionally for life by ripping those toy cars from his grubby little hands and screaming, “Stop that infernal racket now or I’ll sell you to a band of pirates!”

  Marmaduke, probably reading my mind, appeared next to me. “Thank goodness for small miracles and resolute mothers. That child was putting me on edge. If I had a real head, it would have a serious ache.”

  From the corner of my eye I could see the mother’s lip curl into a slight smile. Odd, I thought, I didn’t remember anything humorous on the patient information forms she was filling out. I pointed to the computer screen as discreetly as I could, then started typing. Say something else.

  “Say something else?” asked Marmi. “Whatever do you mean?”

  Something funny.

  “Something funny? What do you think I am? Some desperate vaudevillian? A jokester? A merry widow?”

  I typed again. What’s a merry widow?

  “Seriously. You couldn’t derive the meaning from context, Sophie?”

  The mother did what I thought she might if Marmaduke talked enough. She laughed.

  We both gave her a look and she winked back. “You’re a hoot,” she whispered to Marmaduke.

  Just then Dr. Callahan arrived on the scene, tall, confident, and doctorly. Moonflower was suspiciously absent. “So, is this Robert and Michael?” He peeked around the desk, smiling at the two boys who smiled back. He did have a way with kids. “Are their files ready?” he asked me.