Emily thought of a boy she’d broken up with at University. When she’d decided to stay on in Christchurch for a job rather than travel overseas as they’d planned, instead of the tears she’d expected, he’d grinned. “That’s rough.”
“For all the problems money is meant to solve, it doesn’t do a good job at making anyone happy.”
“I guess it’s just an easier goal for most people to focus on than actually mending what’s wrong with their life.”
“Who’d even buy an empty frame?”
Emily gave up any pretence of sorting through the boxes and stared at the portrait. “It’s a common size for a painting. I guess, if it was expensive, someone might snap it up as a bargain.”
“It was gold-plating over hand-cast metal. Compared to this tacky wooden thing, it was gorgeous.”
“How about I open all the boxes and you see if there’s anything immediately jumps out at you as suspicious?” Emily moved back to the open one, fearful that if they sat and considered the portrait any longer, they’d never get anything else done.
“I can do that. Although, I don’t know what something suspicious would look like.”
“Anything out of place, I guess.” Emily grinned. “Or bloodstains on a baseball bat, that sort of thing.”
When the alarm blared the next morning, Emily groaned and cracked open an eye. She could have sworn she’d only just laid down on the bed, but here it was—bright morning.
They’d stayed at the charity shop until close on midnight the evening before, but they might as well have not bothered. Nothing in the boxes brought back any memories. At least, not connected to the murder. From the array of hurt expressions that crossed Mrs Pettigrew’s face during the night, they contained a boatload of pain.
“About time,” the ghost grumped as her way of saying good morning. “It’s so boring here with nobody around to talk to.”
For Emily’s part, the ghost appeared to talk at her rather than to her, but it was far too soon in the day to start complaining. She yawned and pulled her laptop towards her, starting up the button Pete had set up to enable voice commands.
“Medium, Pinetar Township,” she said aloud, talking into the screen because she was unsure where the microphone was. Wherever the device was located, it heard her well enough. A circle of dots lit up the monitor and a browser tab opened.
“Crystal Dreaming,” Mrs Pettigrew read aloud over her shoulder with a snort. “I hope that name is made up. Imagine going to school with kids teasing you about that clanger every day.”
“Does it have a phone number?” Emily asked.
“You’re not actually going to call this woman, are you?” When Emily nodded, the ghost rolled her eyes. “She’s as fake as the days are long.”
“Or she has a gift and she might be able to help us both out.”
Mrs Pettigrew rolled her eyes again. “Whatever.”
Emily pulled out her phone and following Mrs Pettigrew’s instruction, hit the buttons until it connected and began ringing. Soon enough, the call went to voicemail.
“I’d like to make an appointment for a reading,” Emily said after the beep. “I work during the day, but I’m available at midday for an hour or after work from five onwards.”
She rang off, feeling silly. Now her consciousness was more fully engaged, the idea didn’t seem as brilliant as it had when she first woke.
“It should be good for a laugh,” Mrs Pettigrew said, perhaps hoping to allay Emily’s worries but managing to enforce them instead. “I wonder if Crystal uses a crystal ball.” She hugged herself. “That would be too perfect.”
“If she’s the real deal, you can tell her all that yourself. I just hope she has some experience to help me. If she can wave a magic wand to get rid of you, it won’t matter how much she charges.”
“You know I’m standing right here.” The ghost appeared upset. “If you want to talk about how awful I am, at least have the same courtesy as everyone else and do it behind my back.”
“Sorry.” Emily experienced genuine remorse. “I didn’t get enough sleep and I’m taking it out on you. Plus, the reaction at the police station last night did nothing for my ego.”
“I told you to take me in with you. I could’ve directed the conversation until they were all convinced.”
“You can do that next time when we bring in the ton of evidence you’re going to direct me to find.”
Mrs Pettigrew tilted her head to one side, frowning. “What evidence?”
“The police need something solid before they’ll look at your case again and I don’t know what happened, so it’ll have to come from you.” Emily walked over and mimed rapping her knuckles near the ghost’s head. “Get your thinking cap on.”
“I’ve already thought about it. I’ve been doing nothing else. What about the coroner’s report? When are you going to do that?”
Last night, Emily had thought she might be able to use the voice commands on her computer to listen and fill out the form, but the document wasn’t enabled to do that. She still had the scrap of paper with whatever reference the sergeant had jotted on it but the prospect of explaining her disability to yet another person didn’t fill her with joy.
“If the medium doesn’t call back to make an appointment, I’ll use my lunch break today.”
“Okay.” Mrs Pettigrew looked thoughtful for a second. “If you do your work more quickly this morning, will Pete let you off earlier?”
“I don’t really work for him, as such,” Emily said, her brow creasing. “But if I don’t get your boxes sorted ready to take to the auction house tomorrow, then I won’t have any money coming in from sales this week. It’ll take three weeks from now for the final sales to come through to the account. I can’t postpone it any longer.”
“Don’t worry about that.” The ghost looked even more satisfied with herself than usual. “You don’t need to go through the box and guess the value for each item when I can stand there and tell you the exact provenance and worth of each object.”
Emily glanced at her in surprise. “Do you seriously remember all of that?”
“They’re my most treasured possessions in the world,” Mrs Pettigrew said with a catch in her voice. “Bet your bottom dollar, I remember.”
Chapter Eight
The medium hadn’t called back before lunchtime, so when the clock struck one o’clock and Pete came back from his break, Emily made a beeline for the library. Without an idea of how long the process would take, she munched a sandwich while walking along the street.
“If you want to keep trim as you get older,” Mrs Pettigrew said, “you should try to cut out carbs.”
Emily looked at her six-grain sandwich bread, brown and tough, much like the leathery skin on the back of her hands. She remembered the bread from her childhood, springy, thick-crusted, and any variety you could imagine so long as it was white.
Nowadays, she felt the same pang of guilt grabbing hold of a loaf of white toast bread as she did buying a bag of lollies.
“I’ve given up enough stuff lately, thank you,” she said and popped the last bite into her mouth. She tossed the screwed-up plastic wrap went into a roadside rubbish bin.
“The least you can do is add a few raw vegetables.”
Sergeant Winchester’s comment from the night before popped up in Emily’s mind and she smiled. “No, the least I can do is nothing, so I’ll choose that.”
They sauntered the last few metres to the library. “Remember, I don’t want you talking in here. I get enough strange looks out on the street where it’s possible I could be having a Bluetooth conversation on my phone. Indoors, it won’t work at all.”
Mrs Pettigrew gazed into the far distance as though Emily must be talking to someone else. Perhaps a phantom child.
With one last stern glance of warning, Emily pulled open the doorway to the library, revelling in the chill of the first gust of air-conditioning after the heat of the sun outdoors. In a far cry from the dim libraries she
remembered from university, the building sported large windows and a high ceiling, filling the space with light.
Her bank of memories was becoming outdated. Time had turned even this familiar township into a foreign world.
A row of tables in the middle of the room held a bank of computers and Emily made a beeline for them, then looked around for help. A smiling young woman engaged in a conversation nearby gave her a nod, and finished her conversation, sending the other midday patron on their way to the large stacks on the left-hand-side wall.
“I wanted to submit an official information request,” Emily said, pulling the card the sergeant had given her out of her pocket. “I spoke to a policeman yesterday who said I could get help with that here.”
“Of course,” the young librarian said with a smile, a frown briefly caressing her forehead as she read the card. “Take a seat here, and I’ll log in. It’s been a wee while since I’ve filled one out, so apologies if it takes some time.”
“I’m in no hurry,” Emily said, flushing with gratitude that the woman was helping without needing a long-winded explanation. She sat in the chair and watched as the woman’s hands went to work, sailing gracefully over the keys.
Even in her old job, Emily had never learned to touch-type. Apart from the numerical keyboard on the side. She’d been able to work that blindfolded for the length of a spreadsheet screen.
“Cynthia Pettigrew,” the librarian repeated when Emily gave her the name to enter. Her eyebrows rose, and her mouth pursed for the second, then fell back into its earlier smile as she typed in the information.
“Did you know her?”
The ghost was already shaking her head, a moue of distaste on her lips.
“No, apart from knowing who she was.” The librarian shrugged. “In a town this small, it’s hard not to know everyone by name after a while, whether you’ve been introduced or not.”
Emily laughed. “I’m still getting back to that point, but I know what you mean. When I was growing up here, I could walk into a room and tell you who was from town or outside in a glance.”
“Even those who scrupulously keep their noses out of other people’s business knew Cynthia Pettigrew,” the librarian happily continued. “Not to speak ill of the dead, but that family had more than its share of troubles and I think a lot of them stemmed from her.”
“What sort of troubles?” Emily kept her gaze fixed to the screen in a show of uninterest.
“The son, Gregory, got expelled from University for drugs,” the woman confided in a whisper. “Not just taking them, either.”
“He was selling them?” Emily gave a low whistle. “I wouldn’t have thought they were in the income bracket for that sort of trouble.”
“They’re not as wealthy as it might appear,” the librarian said, her smile turning to one of satisfaction. “Nathaniel Pettigrew’s business interests have been sliding southward for quite some time. I’ve got a friend in the bank who says the house is mortgaged up to the hilt.”
“What rubbish!” Mrs Pettigrew burst out. “I’m not the one getting my card declined at the supermarket, Miss know-it-all.” She gave the librarian a prod with her finger and snarled when it produced no reaction.
Emily ignored her, concentrating on the screen and what the woman was saying. “It seems a bit strange,” she commented in as deadpan a tone as possible. “They donated all the wife’s belongings to the charity shop, and it’s worth a great deal. If the family really were struggling, I’d expect them to sell it rather than donating it to a good cause.”
The librarian shrugged again. “It’ll be a tax write-off or something.” She gave a quick glance around, then leaned in close again. “From what I heard, the Inland Revenue took a second look at the business’s finances and decided to add a few zeros to the bill.”
Again, Emily tried to keep her expression bland. If that were true, she should be able to verify it through the companies register. As long as the business was publicly listed, the finances should be disclosed.
Mrs Pettigrew cleared her throat loudly and Emily focused her attention back on the task in hand. “How long will it take for this application to go through?”
“The government rules stipulate the department has to provide an answer within three weeks,” the librarian said, finishing off her typing and submitting the form. She signed out of the computer.
“That long?” Emily felt a rush of disappointment. She’d expected with the digital submission it would go much faster.
“And that’s just to get an answer on whether you can have the information. There’re no deadlines on the actual supply of the documents. Even if the coroner’s office says yes, you’re probably looking at a wait.”
“Oh.”
Emily’s face must have fallen because the librarian touched a hand to her shoulder. “If it’s important you get hold of it quicker than that, you could try asking the family. When the coroner entered his findings, he would’ve given a copy of the entire report to them.”
Mrs Pettigrew shook her head.
“Thanks for helping me out,” Emily said. “I owe you one.”
“Don’t be silly, that’s what I’m here for,” the librarian responded, her eyes scanning the room in search of another patron to aid. “You’re welcome at any time.”
The emergence back into the bright daylight had Emily blinking back tears. She stood in the doorway for a moment, letting her eyes adjust. The warmth and humidity outside were like an exhalation of a gigantic creature’s fetid breath. A stock truck must be in the vicinity—the reek of lanolin and animal waste hung heavily in the air.
“Three weeks is far too long to wait,” Mrs Pettigrew said with a sigh of disappointment. “I need to know all the facts now.”
“Can you float into your house and have a search for it?”
The ghost snorted. “If Nathaniel has it lying open on his desk, sure. If it’s in his locked drawers or his filing cabinet…” She mimed the action, shaking her head.
“I suppose.” Emily walked to a bench and sat, stretching out her leg. The right thigh muscle was twitching, and she kneaded it, trying to avoid a cramp. Just as she ready to stand, the mobile in her pocket buzzed. “Emily Curtis speaking.”
“This is Crystal Dreaming. You left a message? I just wanted to get in touch and say I’ve got space free at five o’clock if you still want to meet today.”
Emily nodded, giving Mrs Pettigrew a thumbs-up sign. “Fantastic.”
The front lounge of Crystal Dreaming’s house served as her business. When Emily fought her way through the tangle of tinkling wind chimes and spinning dream catchers that lined the medium’s porch, she hesitated before knocking.
“What’s the problem?” Mrs Pettigrew said, folding her arms across her chest. “Having second thoughts?”
Yes. And third ones.
The policemen’s cruel laughter from the evening before recurred to Emily. They’d mentioned Crystal then, a few times, using the same mocking tones. Did that mean she was about to meet with an ally or go sailing off the edge into pure madness?
Only one way to tell.
She rapped her knuckles on the door, too late seeing the neat button doorbell set next to the French sliders. A bustle of movement inside and the door slid open to show a plump and cheerful woman standing there.
Windswept. That was the first word that occurred to Emily. Crystal Dreaming looked like she’d just fought her way through a raging storm to reach the front door—her halo of curly brown hair, well-streaked with grey, stuck out in all directions above a comfortably large frame.
“Come in, you must be Emily,” Crystal boomed, her voice as loud as the colourful pattern on her dress. “I’ve got the room all set up to go but if you need to take a few moments to get settled before we dig in, that’s fine too.”
The room had curtains half drawn to create an atmosphere of gloom. The windows being half-covered had done nothing to stop the heat of the day encroaching and the room felt stuffy. Emily
reached up a hand to touch her own curls, drooping limply as they gave up the fight before it had begun.
“Take a seat here, love,” Crystal said, pulling out a chair.
The heavy damask coating was embroidered to within an inch of its life with a pastoral scene. At a point in the past, it had split—maybe under the weight of an overburdened client—and the pink woollen stitching formed an incongruous scar.
“Oh, my goodness,” Mrs Pettigrew exclaimed, then snickered. “She’s actually got a crystal ball.”
Since the large object sat pride of place in the centre of the table, Emily hardly needed her attention drawn to it. Crystal must have been reading her face because she reached out a hand to touch Emily on the arm.
“I can read cards or tea leaves if that’s your preference. As long as the spirits are willing, I don’t mind how they appear to me. I can intuit their message in whatever format makes you most comfortable.”
“Can you interpret this?” Mrs Pettigrew shouted, holding up a pair of fingers as rabbit’s ears behind the medium’s head.
Considering Crystal continued to beam out a beatific smile, Emily concluded she couldn’t. Unless her relationship with the spirit world was very different to the one Emily had formed, she suspected they might be in the presence of a fraud.
Still, giving the woman the benefit of the doubt, Emily nodded. “The crystal ball is fine, I don’t have another preference. I’ve never seen one before in real life. It’s very pretty.”
The ball did catch the dull light sneaking around the corners of the room and refracted it out into a roaring display of colour. Emily leaned forward, squinting and winking to see the difference it made.
“Steady on, there,” Crystal said with a laugh. “I’m the one meant to stare into the ball and interpret its secrets. You can sit back and relax. I assure you, you’re in safe hands.”
“Safe from the ghost world, at least,” Mrs Pettigrew said. She leaned onto the table on her elbows, sticking her face up close against the side of the globe. “See anything, lady? Catching a glimpse into the spirit realm, are you?”
Charity Shop Haunted Mysteries Page 6
