by Raven Snow
“What do you mean hang on?!” Destiny demanded. “We had a deal, didn’t we?!”
Lady paid no mind to her. “There’s something out there,” she said, pointing to the shape. It was in the distance, behind many graves. It had a white glow to it and was wearing something that looked old-fashioned. Not that Lady could have named the era, certainly not from a distance. She did recognize that the lower half must be a skirt.
“I don’t see anything,” said Crispin.
“Is it a ghost?” Destiny asked quickly. “C’mon, c’mon. Get me out of here so I can look!”
Lady didn’t want to turn her gaze away. What if it up and disappears? She spared a glance to Destiny. “Crispin, can you—”
“Boo!”
Lady nearly fell into the hole herself. Had Crispin not hooked an arm around her waist she probably would have. “What—” She didn’t have to finish that question. She saw who it was. “Otsuya!”
“Sorry, couldn’t resist.” Otsuya looked terribly pleased with herself. “It took me a second to jimmy that SUV open.”
“It took you a second to do what?” There was a dangerous edge to Destiny’s voice as it came up from below.
“Look, I brought an umbrella.” Otsuya presented the compact orange object in her hand for inspection. The rain was really starting to pick up, so it would most certainly be useful. “Is there someone in the grave? What in the world are you doing down there?”
Lady was so caught up in Crispin awkwardly disengaging his arm from her waist that it was a couple of seconds before she remembered her ghost in the distance. She looked at where it had been and promptly swore.
“What?” asked Crispin and Otsuya as one.
Lady continued to scan the horizon. “It’s gone.” She swore again.
“What’s gone?” asked Otsuya.
“There was, like, a ghost or something.” Lady gestured grandly in the direction it had been standing. “You scared it off!”
Otsuya actually snorted at the accusation. “Yeah right. You don’t scare ghosts off. There are a lot of them around here. It probably just wandered back into, like, another plane or something.”
“Well, that was the first ghost I’d ever seen,” Lady grumbled. “I feel like I was on to something.”
“Get me out of here and we’ll all go take a look,” said Destiny. “Everything is getting muddy. If I have to die down here, I’m coming back to haunt each and every one of you. And I won’t be one of those benign friendly ghosts either. We’re talking full on horror movie ghost.”
***
They finally got Destiny out of the grave. It took them all a minute or two to work out the logistics. Finally, Crispin stretched out on the ground and held his arms down. He was able to pull Destiny up, and Otsuya and Lady were able to get her out the rest of the way. It left a muddy stain on the front of Crispin’s vest. Otsuya made sure to point that out as well as the boot print on Lady’s back.
Getting back over the fence was a little easier with all of them there. Otsuya held Lion with one hand and the umbrella with the other as they searched the graveyard. There wasn’t much to see. The rain was coming down hard, so none of them wanted to linger out in it. They had only brought one umbrella, after all.
“You should work with us,” suggested Lady as they got ready to go their separate ways.
Destiny shook her head. “I doubt my boss would approve of that. It’s a lot more ways to split the money. I can ask though.”
***
Back in the car, everyone was wet and discouraged. Crispin wasn’t driving yet. They just sat there in silence. Otsuya had Lion in her lap. She was the driest of the three. “We’re not very good detectives,” Lady said at last, heaving a sigh.
“We’re not,” Crispin agreed.
“I probably need to get back to the inn,” announced Otsuya.
“What?” Lady turned to look at her with a frown. “Already?”
She shrugged. “Doyle called. He needs me.”
“Great… well… today was useless.” Lady leaned forward and rested her forehead against the back of Otsuya’s headrest. “Do you think you have time to swing by the library?”
“I always have time to swing by the library,” Otsuya said brightly.
“What’s at the library?” asked Crispin. “Aside from books, I mean.”
“Dom,” said Lady. “I want to talk to Dom.”
Chapter Seven
This time Crispin was responsible for making sure Otsuya didn’t steal anything. Lady walked ahead of them, ignoring Otsuya’s complaints. She found Dom where they had left him. The stack of books was gone. He was leaning back in his office chair, earbuds in and eyes closed. If he wasn’t napping he was in a state awfully close to it.
Lady took a page from Otsuya and slammed her hands on the desk. “Hey!”
Dom’s eyes snapped open, and he kicked back in his chair. He relaxed almost immediately after his knee-jerk reaction. “Oh, it’s you.” He snapped the buds from his ears. “You guys done sleuthing around already?”
“You weren’t sleeping on the job, were you?” Crispin came around the corner, preceded by Otsuya.
Dom’s face was all harsh lines and shadows. When Crispin asked his question however, those lines softened. “Sorry, man.” He sounded like he meant it. “I finished shelving those books, and I decided to take a break.”
“That’s fine,” Crispin said reasonably. “I just wish you would stay awake for that or, you know, give me a call like I asked you to.”
“I wasn’t asleep.” Dom glanced down at the earbuds on the desk. “But I guess I might as well have been. Look, you haven’t taken a day off in forever, you know? I didn’t want to call and bug you… even if the way you were choosing to spend your day off was stupid.”
“Next time, call me.” Crispin’s tone was reasonable, though there was a frown on his face. He pointed Otsuya toward a door. “Come on. I’ve got some books in back that I’m thinking of retiring. I’ll get them out, and you can see if there are any you want.”
“Oh.” Otsuya’s eyes lit up. She soon disappeared into a back room with Crispin.
Dom shook his head and sighed once they had left the room. “He’s so mad at me right now.”
“Really?” Lady looked at the closed door, like maybe she could see through it somehow and catch what she had apparently missed. “He seemed okay to me. Maybe a little annoyed but okay.”
“He’s mad. Trust me. I’ve known him since we were kids.” Dom pushed back from the desk so that he could stand. “I should probably do something aside from sitting around here. Maybe he’ll cheer up before closing.”
“I actually want to talk to you, if that’s all right. It’s why Crispin brought me back here. And, look, I seriously doubt it’s a big deal. You’re friends. Sure, napping on the job might get you into trouble in a retail setting, but—” Lady gestured around them. “It’s not like this place gets a lot of traffic, right?”
“No,” Dom said immediately and plainly. “This place means everything to him. I don’t get slack just because we’re good friends.” He retrieved a roll of paper towels and a spray bottle like Shannon had. “I might as well dust this place. I swear, this place gathers dust like pollen in the spring time. C’mon, you can talk to me all you want while I’m working. I can’t promise I’ll give you all the answers you want, though. Depends on how stupid your questions are.”
“Hey!”
“Just telling you like it is.” Dom walked to the other side of the wide stairway to the tables set up for reading.
“Do you have any of your usual insight into, like… anything that happened relating to your, uh, extended family?”
“My usual insight?” Dom raised an eyebrow as he squirted the spray bottle three times across the surface of the table.
“Yeah, you know, the eye stuff.”
“That’s a dumb question.”
“How is it a dumb question?” Lady couldn’t help but raise her voice a little
. She thought it was a perfectly valid question.
“I would have told someone if I thought my grandmother was murdered.”
“Would you, though? You don’t seem to like your family. Which is totally valid, if you ask me. I don’t really like my family. If you can even call them that… Well, I guess there are a couple of exceptions. I had these two foster brothers at—”
“I still would have said something.” Dom interrupted. He finished wiping down the first table and moved on to its chairs. “All the more reason for me to tell someone after the funeral, actually. If I knew what happened, I would have told Crispin so that he could finally get the money he needs to run this place. Trust me, if I could rip the financial rug out from under those jerks, I would.”
“What about your cousins then?”
“What about them?”
“Adora and Fabia,” Lady said, like maybe he had forgotten their names somehow. “Destiny thinks they might have murdered your grandmother.”
“Destiny thinks that?” Dom looked up from what he was doing and snorted. “I doubt that. I doubt Destiny thinks anyone was murdered.” He suddenly stood up ramrod straight. “She called me earlier. Now that Crispin is here, I should probably go pick her up from… something.”
“The grave? We got her out of the grave. That’s when we talked about Adora and… What did I just say the other one’s name was? God, they have stupid names.”
“Fabia, and thanks.” Dom’s posture relaxed and he went back to cleaning. “I don’t know why that idiot even climbed in there. Thanks for saving her from her own stupidity.”
“Okay, but about the sisters, though…”
Lion leapt onto the table Dom had just finished cleaning, and Dom paused to glare at the cat. “They’re also idiots, but I don’t think they could pull off a crime without immediately being caught. Destiny probably likes the idea of them being guilty because she hates them.”
“Yeah, that’s what she told me.” After what Lady had heard about them, she had found herself hopeful that they were the guilty party as well. “I have one more question.”
“Oh, really? Just one more? Do you promise?”
Lady chose to ignore Dom’s sarcasm. “I also heard that, maybe, Lucette had thought for a while that someone was going to kill her. That was why she was such a recluse a lot of the time, right? She was scared of someone.”
“That’s more than one question,” Dom pointed out.
“Oh, come on.”
“I don’t know,” Dom said with a disheartening shrug. “She was pretty paranoid, I guess. A lot of people are paranoid. That doesn’t mean that they’re right. Just because your forearm itches doesn’t mean the government planted a chip in your arm while you were sleeping.”
Lady struggled against the sudden and powerful itch in her forearm. “Was there anyone she was especially paranoid of?”
“She wasn’t all that friendly to anyone. I’m not sure what you’re hoping to hear from me. She was a mean old witch, literally. She always had a bad word or two to say about everyone, even toward her own family. She wasn’t a complete shut in. She went out from time to time, but—Cat, you’re getting paw prints over everything I just cleaned. Get down.” Dom gave the table a threatening smack when Lion didn’t do as he told him to. “Down!”
Lion jumped down to a chair and sat in that instead. “Don’t be rude to my sweet boy,” chided Lady.
“Then teach your sweet boy some manners.”
“They said Lucette made her will a while back.” Lady kept on talking. “You’re sure there wasn’t anyone who had it in for her?”
“That’s yet another question.”
“Come on,” Lady urged. “What about the school? The one that was run out of that house?”
“Doesn’t exist anymore. She put a stop to that.” Dom moved on to the next table, turning his back to her. “She closed it down for good once she had control of the place.”
“And was anyone mad about that?”
“I’m sure.”
“Mad enough that they might kill her?”
“That’s enough questions. I’m done answering them.”
“But—”
“I’m done.” Dom gave Lady a look that shot down any further questions. He wasn’t teasing. He wasn’t even being irritable with her anymore. He was angry. Thinking about this stuff too much clearly upset him.
“All right.” Lady swallowed the saliva that was in her mouth and gave him a nod. “Come on, Lion. We should get going.”
***
Crispin dropped Otsuya and Lady back off at the Fisherman’s Inn. Lady said her thanks while Otsuya loaded her down with books to carry inside. “We’ll have to do this again sometime.”
Crispin chuckled. “I don’t know. I think Dom and Destiny may be right. I think this might all be a wild goose chase.”
Lady headed inside, discouraged. She followed Otsuya upstairs with the heavy books only for Ms. Poole’s voice to come out of nowhere, yelling at her. “You need to finish cleaning up that storage room tonight! You’ve spent too long on it!”
“Let me put these books away and talk to Doyle. After that, I’ll come down and help you,” Otsuya assured her.
Lady went to the storage room and got started like she always did. After a while, she realized Otsuya probably wasn’t coming. Lady considered going to find her but decided against it. “At least I have you to depend on,” she told Lion. He flicked his tail from where he sat near the door and purred loudly in response.
Chapter Eight
That night Lady dreamed that she was in a forest, lounging on a hammock. It was a beautiful day. The trees were healthy and green. The sounds of nature were all around her. Lion was curled up on her chest. He wasn’t asleep. He was simply relaxing as she was, purring as she petted him. “You’re doing a good job,” he said, breaking the relative silence.
“Hmm?” Lady regarded him with interest. It wasn’t so much that he was speaking. It was more that she didn’t know what it was she was doing a good job at. “What do you mean?”
“I’m glad you chose to stay here in Dark Lake. It’s a good place for you. You fit in well here.”
“I don’t know, Lion. There’s a lot of weirdoes here.”
“Which is why you fit in well.”
Lady stopped petting Lion abruptly. “Dom was right. You are rude.”
“For what it’s worth,” Lion began, changing the subject. “I think you’re on to something with that old woman being murdered.”
Now that got Lady’s attention. “Really?”
“Really. I think she was murdered, and I think the people we’re living with at this inn know more about it than they’re letting on.”
“You think Ms. Poole knows something? She doesn’t even think Lucette was murdered.”
“Hmm,” hummed Lion. Or maybe he was just purring. It was hard to be sure. “I’m not so sure about that. I think—”
Lady’s alarm clock woke her up. Ms. Poole had told her she had work in the morning, so she had been forced to set it early. It took Lady a few moments to remember all that. When she did make sense of her surroundings, she found that Lion was on her chest as he had been in the dream. She grabbed him and sat up. “What do you think, Lion? What were you about to say?”
Lion’s golden eyes were large with alarm. He responded to her question with a quiet meow. Lady blinked the sleep from her eyes as she dropped him back down to the bed. “I’m talking to the cat expecting answers. I’m going insane.” Still, Lady couldn’t help but remember her dream conversation. Dreams weren’t all nonsense, were they? They could represent your subconscious and help you make sense of things… right? What if Ms. Poole really did know something she wasn’t letting on about?
There was no point wondering about it then and there. There might not even be a point to wondering about it at all. It wasn’t like Ms. Poole was the kind of woman who changed her mind about things. If she had told Lady that she thought Lucette had not been murder
ed, then there was likely a good reason for it.
Lady pulled on a thrift store t-shirt and some skinny jeans before venturing from her room. She left her room and ran into the smells of home cooking. There was no one at the table. That meant Ms. Poole was still in the kitchen, so she headed there first.
Ms. Poole was indeed in the kitchen. She stood over the stove, adding grits to a pot. She glanced up when Lady stepped onto the tile floor. “You’re up early,” she said, turning back to her cooking. There were also sausage patties sizzling in a pan.
“You were the one who told me to set an alarm,” Lady pointed out, going to the island to steal some blueberries.
Lady didn’t see Ms. Poole move, but she certainly felt it when her hand got slapped away from the blueberry bowl. “Those are for pancakes,” scolded Ms. Poole.
“Geez. I was just going to take a few.” Lady withdrew her hand anyway. “So, what did you need me up early for?”
“I need you to take rainwater to Ms. Comfrey.”
Lady groaned. She had been asked to do that before, always after heavy rainfall like there had been last night. It really shouldn’t have caught her by surprise. “Why did you have me wake up so early, though?” That still didn’t answer the question of her being forced to rise before the rest of the house… Well, the rest of the house aside from Ms. Poole. Ms. Poole didn’t count though. She was an old person. Old people were like reverse vampires.
“I wanted to talk to you.” Ms. Poole looked up from the stove pointedly. It made Lady’s heart sink. People “needing to talk” was seldom a good thing. “I wanted it to be just the two of us.”
Lady leaned against the island, trying to keep her distance from the blueberries. “So, um, what do you want to talk about?” She didn’t want to ask that question, but she felt driven to. A million different possibilities were going through her head. It was probably worse not knowing.
“It’s about the storage room,” said Ms. Poole. She was looking at Lady like she was supposed to respond.
Lady wasn’t sure of what to say. Was she in trouble? Everything Ms. Poole said to her made her feel like she was in trouble. “I finished it up like you asked me to. I know it took a long time, but I didn’t want to break anything.”
