Emily winced. Well, on the bright side, Crystal had been right to be paranoid.
As the article continued to play, highlighting the range of deceptive practices and abuses they suggested were the medium’s stock in trade, Emily’s emotions went on a tilt-a-whirl. She liked Crystal and enjoyed her company but agreed with some of the journalist’s accusations.
If their original meeting hadn’t gone pear-shaped with accusations flying, Crystal would have a few hundred of Emily’s dollars in return for nothing. Not even a drinkable cup of tea.
The woman’s self-delusion that she had ‘feelings’ and ‘intuitions’ she ascribed to another plane of existence was one thing, to charge clients an exorbitant fee to join in with that delusion, another.
Of course, Emily wasn’t her customer. If it hadn’t been for the hallucination of Mrs Pettigrew, the medium would never have entered her circle of consciousness.
One part of her wanted to visit and check Crystal was doing okay while the other said to leave it alone.
By the end of the day, Emily decided paying a short visit couldn’t do anybody harm. Now she didn’t have an annoying delusion of her own to drag around, it left her free to assess the woman anew. Any funny business and she’d be out of there.
To try to shake the stiffness in Emily’s legs, she decided to walk around to Crystal’s house. If she rested while the tendons were this tight, by tomorrow she’d barely be able to stand.
It meant by the time she turned onto the medium’s street, she was tired and needed to rest. The crush of reporters standing outside Crystal’s house sent Emily’s stomach on a roller-coaster ride, and not one it enjoyed.
She slowed to a snail’s pace while surveying the residence. If she tried hard enough, the gathered crowd would probably step back to let her through to the house. They might hurl questions or even unwanted opinions at her, but nothing she couldn’t handle.
Except…
Crystal wasn’t a close friend. She was just a person Emily had met a few times and gelled with. Not a confidant or soul mate to defend, even against the indefensible. The choice to drop by had been a poor one, and she turned and walked back around the corner, leaving the crowd of journalists and gawkers behind.
No. It wasn’t Emily’s mess. She didn’t need to fight to clear Crystal’s name or spruce up her reputation.
Except for the trickery of a skull fragment, Emily wouldn’t even know the woman’s name. Best to pretend that had never happened.
The flush of shame Emily felt as she arrived back at work to collect her car was just a foolish automatic reaction. A good night’s sleep and she’d feel better.
“About time,” Pete said the next morning. “I’ve been waiting and waiting.”
Emily backed up a step, pulling at the top button on her blouse. “I’m not late, am I?”
“No, you’re not late.” Pete pushed across the screen, then blinked hard and pulled it back towards himself. “Sorry, forgot. We’ve got the money through from the first auction.”
A burst of relief went through Emily and she hurried forward. “Do tell. How much did everything come to, added up?”
“Five hundred and eighty-five dollars.”
The number seemed light considering the auction bids Emily remembered from the night, but it was enough to keep her going. “Not too shabby,” she said with a smile, hiding the quick stab of disappointment. “Is that already transferred through to my account?”
Pete squinted, and Emily took a step back, warning bells sounding in her head. “That’s my cut, right? You’re not suggesting that’s the total.”
He screwed up his face. “Sorry, I should have worked backwards, shouldn’t I? Yeah, it’s the total for all sales, which gives you fifty-eight dollars fifty. I’ve already transferred it across.”
Fifty-eight dollars? Emily tried to swallow but couldn’t past the enormous lump in her throat. She’d spent more on cat food in the past week. It didn’t make any sense. She remembered…
Emily’s hand crept up to her scar, picking at the top of the twisted skin. “I can make that work, too,” she forced herself to say. It wasn’t Pete’s fault her brain had gone on sabbatical during her first week at work. As a volunteer, he didn’t get paid at all for working here. To complain about her earnings was shallow and self-indulgent.
“I’d better get upstairs and sort out another lot, then.” She turned away, just in time to stop him seeing the sheen of tears in her eyes.
“No rest for the wicked,” Pete agreed.
“Not even the extremely wicked.”
Chapter Eighteen
Emily lifted Peanut up from the laptop keyboard and moved him to one side. “Good kitty, but I can’t have you blocking up the screen. Your new mummy’s got work to do.”
Mummy also wished she had an old ghost companion back who could read over her shoulder and tell her what the symbols meant. She hadn’t thought of it when in the hospital a week ago, but that part of her hallucination was weird.
If the delusions were hers, then being able to read was her, too. With a mind split into two, Emily had become more of a whole person than she’d been for a while.
“If the doctor could work out how to get one part of that back, minus the other, it’d be good, wouldn’t it?”
Peanut ignored her, stalking off to another seat. With his tail pointing in the air, he gave Emily a great view of his puckered rectum. He curled himself into a semi-circle and yawned so wide his head looked like a flip-top lid.
“Thanks for keeping me company, buddy. Why don’t I take it from here?”
She had an earpiece in one ear, connected to her phone, while the other listened to the computer reading back information. Even though the process to transfer the amounts from one system to the other was painstaking, and possibly riddled with errors, it was the best Emily could think to do on her own.
“Of course, I could pay the librarian a visit. Or maybe the police officers would be in the mood to lend me a hand.”
If her suspicions proved correct, Emily might well have to pay the police station a visit. Another reason to hope she’d been mistaken on the night and would soon prove her doubts wrong.
“Item 889A/17,” the auctioneer droned in her ear. “A three-piece Georg Jensen Sterling Silver 925 S Pyramid Child's Place Setting. Designed by Harald Nielsen.”
This was the one Emily remembered. She held her breath, wondering if she was about to be proven right, or shown up as mad.
“I’m bid six hundred and fifty dollars via phone,” the auctioneer recited in his strange, fast monotone, and Emily gave a single sob of relief. Not mad. “Final bid, sold.”
The gavel thumped, and Emily scrolled back to the start of the section. This time, as she heard the voice in her ear, she recited the words aloud into the computer. Next, she paused the phone and switched the earpiece to the laptop instead. After positioning the cursor on the line, she confirmed the same number was read back to her.
Only then did she copy and paste the words into her main document. So far, there were fourteen lines in total. Until now, they hadn’t offered proof one way or the other, but the last bid cinched it.
The deposit into the bank account, even accounting for the fifteen percent fee the auction house was entitled to retain, was short. By Emily’s reckoning, the list she’d painstakingly compiled now totalled over one thousand dollars. That put the deposit at a minimum of eight hundred and fifty. Not five hundred and change.
There was still another forty-five minutes of recording to go.
“Turns out your new mummy’s not such an idiot,” Emily whispered to Peanut.
The cat didn’t care. He’d fallen asleep.
Emily pressed a hand to her stomach as she walked into the library the following day. Her heart beat a fast rhythm and her legs shook, despite only having travelled from the car.
The night before, having listed out the items and obtaining a figure above eight thousand, Emily felt confident she could stride
into work the next day and tackle Pete about the discrepancy.
This morning, her self-assurance had dissipated. The struggle to get showered and dressed took all her energy and she couldn’t imagine replenishing it any time soon. She’d decided then to go to the library and ask the nice woman there to add up the figures, independently.
If she got the same result, Emily hoped her indignation would be enough to fuel her through the difficult conversation.
“Did you get a response already?” the librarian asked coming up beside Emily. “That’s quicker than I expected.”
It took Emily a second to remember what she’d been up to on her last visit. She shook her head. “No, I’ve got another task I need help with if you have time.”
“I certainly do. On the computer?”
“Not necessarily. I need somebody to add up a list of figures and tell me the total. I’ve done it in my head, but I’d feel better if I could double check.”
“At the computer, then,” the librarian said with a smile. “There’s no chance I could add something this long in my head. Despite my maths teacher always telling me that I wouldn’t always be able to lay my hands on a calculator when I needed to, I think I’ve a much better shot at that.”
Emily laughed politely as she followed the woman back to the computer desk. Her insides were now so twisted with anxiety, she barely registered the joke. “I don’t want to take you away from anyone else.”
It was the librarian’s turn to laugh. “Does it look like I’ve got people queueing up for my services?” She waved a hand around the library, where apart from a few students with their heads buried in textbooks, there was no one to be seen.
“They might be hiding farther back in the stacks.”
“If they’re out of sight, they don’t want me poking my nose in their business. Quite the opposite.” She wrinkled her nose. “And don’t get me started. I could tell you stories would turn your hair white.”
“It’s got most of the way there on its own.” Emily put a hand up to touch her curls while the librarian brought an online calculator up on the screen.
“Do you want to go and search for some books while you’re waiting?” the librarian asked. “There’re some lovely graphic novels on the shelves over there.”
Emily looked where the woman nodded and was about to decline when she registered the hunched shoulders. “What a good idea.” She walked away, letting the librarian settle into her chair without someone staring.
It was a long time since she’d looked through books. Even before they became useless to her, Emily had preferred to store them on the Kindle in her purse rather than taking up space on the shelves.
The first few books she pulled out showed action scenes. Men fought each other with gigantic shocks of lightning and fire spilling out all around them. The fourth book she opened showed a small girl instead, and Emily carried it to the nearest table.
Taking the weight off her feet was so wonderful, she gave a small sigh of satisfaction. No matter that she’d done her stretches religiously every day, the tendons in her legs steadily tightened. If the tests Joanne had scheduled for her later today offered insight into how to reverse that, Emily would be grateful.
From the pictures in the graphic novel, she worked out the thread of the story without needing the text. A warrior, albeit a very young one, armed with a formidable weapon to topple the large monsters inhabiting her world. She became so immersed in the story that it wasn’t until the librarian touched her on the shoulder that Emily remembered where she was.
“Here’re the figures I got,” the woman said, handing across a note. “The total came to eight thousand, six hundred and sixty-five dollars.” She clutched her elbows and hunched in her shoulders. “I added it up three times and got the same.”
“Thank you so much for doing that,” Emily said, leaning most of her weight on the table as she lifted herself out of the seat. “It’s the exact same amount I got.”
The librarian breathed out a sigh and let her arms drop to her side. “At least if we’re wrong, we’re both wrong, then.”
“I now feel very confident we’re right.” Emily hesitated. “Can I borrow this book?”
“Sure,” the woman said, her voice stronger now they were on more familiar territory. “Do you have a library card?”
Emily didn’t, but that was a circumstance soon sorted out. She left the library clutching a few hours of entertainment that she’d long considered lost to her, along with her newfound assurance her addition was right.
“It’s not that I don’t trust the auction house,” Emily took pains to explain to Pete. His chin jutted out with her first sentence and the tight line of his lips hadn’t relaxed. “But I’m now sure these are the correct figures, so something’s gone wrong somewhere down the line.”
He pulled the list of numbers towards him and scanned them quickly. Emily hid her envy that the task that had taken her most of an evening to perform could be done in a glance.
“I’ve had someone else check them too,” she said, pulling out the paper on which the librarian had written her figures. “Here. She came to the same total I did.”
“The problem isn’t the addition, I’m sure it’s right.” Pete looked at the new piece of paper but didn’t touch it. “But this isn’t the same list of items you took along to be sold.”
Emily leaned back on her heels and frowned. She hadn’t expected that response and her mind moved sluggishly to work out how to combat the new challenge. “I remember these items being in the boxes I took down there,” she said. “I’m not sure what list you’re talking about.”
“The checklist.” Pete stared at her, his face creased with annoyance when she didn’t follow. He gave a large sigh and ran a hand through his hair. “Look, when you went to the auction house, they would have made you tag every item. Do you remember that?”
“Sure,” Emily nodded, feeling a rush of relief. “The lady at the auction rooms helped me with that part.” She clicked her fingers, searching through her memory for the name. “Sariah.”
“Yeah, she’s a good chick.” Pete stared at the list of numbers, then put it on the counter and pushed it back to Emily. He reached down and pulled out a binder, then flipped through the pages. “She’d have given you a copy of the list while you were at the house, but she also scans through one to our computer. I keep tabs on all of that for the tax man.”
Even though the charity held a tax-exempt status, they still had to account for every penny they didn’t have to pay.
“This is from the week before last, right?”
Emily nodded and waited while he flicked through the pages in the folder. She still had the checklist Sariah had given her tucked away for safety in her wallet, but she was now so suspicious, she thought they might be very different records.
“Here we go.” Pete pulled back the list Emily had meticulously assembled and began to cross through the figures. “These are from our charity. I’m not sure where the rest of the goods came from, but they’re not from us.” When he got to the end, he pulled out a calculator and ran through the crossed-out lines. “It’s exactly as they declared.”
Expecting an entirely different scenario, Emily pressed a hand against her churning stomach. Her vocal cords felt as though they’d be tuned to a higher octave. “I have a copy of the list. The one she gave me on the night.”
She pulled it out of her pocket and handed it across, half-closing her eyes. Emily didn’t want to see the look of realisation cross Pete’s face as he understood somebody he trusted had cheated them.
But he glanced at the list, then pulled the computer printout from the binder. “I know you can’t read the information on here, but surely you can see they’re exactly the same.”
He pushed the two sheets towards her, and Emily forced herself to look even though her head now thumped with an ache so strong her vision swam before her eyes. Flicking from one page to the other, she had to admit they appeared identical.
&
nbsp; “Sariah must have given me the wrong list—”
Pete thumped his hand down on the counter. “Don’t! I don’t want to hear this. I’m sorry if the money didn’t meet your expectations but I’m not going to stand here and listen to you bad-mouth someone just because you’re disappointed.”
“It’s not that. I remember—”
“This was during the time you were hallucinating, yes?” Pete stared at her with a mix of anger and pity. Twin circles of red highlighted his cheeks.
Emily wanted to refute the very suggestion. She remembered everything about the day. She had a recording to back up her theory. Except…
She’d also thought she was talking to a ghost. She’d hidden in the back of the auction house because she knew she shouldn’t be there. The recording might include items from her box, but it could just as easily belong to someone else. The numbers meant nothing to her after all.
Emily stepped back from the counter, shame rising to choke her throat and tears swimming in her eyes. It didn’t matter. Whether Sariah had cheated her or if she’d just made a mistake in the midst of a delirium.
Either way, it was her brain at fault.
Either way, she couldn’t do her job.
If Emily wasn’t capable of realising someone was cheating her right beneath her nose, she couldn’t continue to drag items along for sale.
If her brain had confused the events so badly that she’d concocted a theft where there was none, Emily couldn’t even trust herself.
Her leg twisted, buckling beneath her. Pete rushed around from behind the counter to catch her and Emily fought against him. She didn’t want his help.
But she needed it. For a few weeks, Emily had forgotten that she was a useless sham of a human being. She’d lulled herself into thinking she could rebuild her life when in truth all she’d done was drag down the people around her.
Charity Shop Haunted Mysteries Page 13
