Good Buy Girls 05 - All Sales Final (6 page)

“All right, Maggie,” Ginger said. “I’ve known you since
we were in kneesocks and plaid skirts and I can tell when you are waffling on a decision.”

“I’m not—” Maggie protested.

“Yeah, you are,” Claire said. “It’s been going on since you told us about Marshall Dillon getting trapped in the basement. What we can’t figure out is if you’re trying to get us to talk you into loving the house or hating it. So give us a little direction here, would you?”

Maggie sighed. “I don’t know.”

Ginger put her arm around her friend and gave her a squeeze. “Let’s approach this like we would a sale at Stegner’s.”

“Excellent idea,” Claire said. “Let’s start with the number one question: Is the price right?”

“We’re getting a smoking good deal,” Maggie confirmed. “It needs some work and it’s been on the market for a long time.”

“Will it retain its value if you decide to sell it?” Ginger asked.

“It’s in the historic area of town, and if we put in the work, it could double in value,” Maggie said. She felt her nerves calming a bit.

“All right, now the critical question,” Claire said. “Do you need it?”

“Yes, Sam’s house is a rental and my house, well, it’s full of a lot of memories of a different life, you know, with Charlie and Laura. I think starting our marriage in a fresh place is wise, don’t you?”

“Definitely,” Claire said. “You don’t want any ghosts of the past living with you and Sam.”

“Funny you should mention ghosts,” Maggie said. She glanced at her two friends and wondered if they were going to think she was crazy. “I think our house has one.”

Ginger and Claire looked at her and then at each other. Claire laughed first and Ginger followed.

“Oh, Maggie, you are so funny,” Claire said. “You almost had me going.”

“Me, too,” Ginger said. She waved a dismissive hand and walked back into the main living room. “Look at this place. Does it look creepy and scary to you? I mean there’s not even a cobweb in sight.”

“No, but—”

“And I haven’t heard any strange noises like rattling chains or moaning,” Claire said. “You pretty much always have to hear moaning.”

“Agreed,” Ginger said. “You know, it was probably just a case of buyer’s panic giving you the shivers.”

“You’re right,” Maggie said. She felt her tension ease. Thank goodness for the Good Buy Girls talking her out of her crazy spell.

“Come on, let’s eat,” Claire said.

They had brought a pizza and a bottle of wine with them to eat after they toured the house. Because there was no furniture, they sat on a blanket Ginger had brought in from her car and ate the pizza off paper plates and drank the wine out of paper cups picnic-style. Claire dished the pizza and Ginger poured the wine.

Maggie sat quietly, trying not to think about the cold air she felt moving in the room.
It’s just a draft
, she told
herself. The girls were right. The house wasn’t haunted. She was just being ridiculous.

“You know what it could be,” Claire said after swallowing a bite of pizza. “Wedding jitters.”

“Absolutely,” Ginger agreed. “You’re uprooting your entire life. It is perfectly natural that you’re having anxiety which has manifested itself into the idea of ghosts in your new house.”

“But I’m not nervous—” Maggie began but Claire interrupted her.

“It makes perfect sense if you think about it. I mean moving and getting married are two of the three biggest life changes a person can make. Good thing you’re not having a baby, too, or you’d have a trifecta of anxiety going on.”

“I don’t think—” Maggie began but she was interrupted by the sound of a door slamming up above.

All three of them jumped and glanced up at the ceiling.

“What was that?” Ginger hissed.

“It sounded like a door slamming,” Maggie said. Her voice was faint, and she cleared her throat. “It’s an old house. I suppose it could just be settling.”

“Of course,” Ginger said. Maggie noticed that her voice sounded a bit faint as well.

Claire forced a laugh. “Look at us. We’re as jumpy as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.”

Ginger took a long sip of her wine and then laughed. “You’re right. We are so lame. The boys would tease me no end if they saw me acting all scared.”

Maggie glanced up at the ceiling. She couldn’t shake
the feeling that this wasn’t just the house settling. She didn’t want to say anything that would freak the others out but she was sure she felt a presence in the house.

“You know, Sam and I never really figured out how Marshall Dillon got shut in the basement,” Maggie said. “Neither one of us remembers closing the door.”

“I’m sure it was just an accident,” Ginger said.

Claire slowly lowered her pizza onto her plate. “Did Marshall Dillon stare past you like he could see something that wasn’t there?”

“No,” Maggie said.

“Did he freak out and run out of the room or try to get out of the house?” Ginger asked.

“No, he pretty much just went all big and fluffy, hissy and spitting, as he scurried past us into the room,” Maggie said.

“Maybe the door was shut by a draft,” Claire suggested.

“Yeah, or maybe Marcy did it, not realizing the cat was down there,” Ginger said.

“Or a ghost did it,” Maggie said and glanced around the room as if she was afraid of being overheard.

“Jitters, it’s just wedding jitters,” Claire insisted. “There is no such thing as ghosts.”

Ginger nodded. “She’s right. It’s just your nerves. Once we get your dress and you have your cake ordered and the place for the reception nailed down, you’ll feel much better.”

Maggie bit a piece of pizza to keep herself from saying anything. Maybe her friends were right. Maybe she was just nervous about the wedding. The dress, if she could
just nail down the dress, then she wouldn’t be freaking out so much.

“You’re right,” she said. “I suppose I am just on anxiety overload.”

“It’s completely normal,” Claire said.

“Absolutely, but we’ll get you through it,” Ginger agreed. She held up her paper cup of wine and Maggie and Claire tapped theirs against hers.

Maggie glanced around the room that would be her living room. It was a nice room. She could see herself enjoying cold winter evenings curled up on the couch reading while Sam watched his favorite sports teams and did his armchair coaching thing. The thought made her smile, and she felt herself relax.

“Okay, so what is our next move on the dress?” Ginger asked.

“I was thinking—” Maggie began but her voice trailed off as a noise from the kitchen sounded.

They all turned their heads toward the noise, which was the distinctive creak of a door opening very slowly and with great reluctance.

“House settling,” Claire said. “A place this old is probably always adjusting itself.”

“Right,” Ginger agreed.

The lights flickered once, then twice, and the three of them looked at one another.

“Settling, my ass,” Ginger said and she jumped to her feet.

A door slammed upstairs again and Claire shrieked. She and Maggie hopped to their feet as well. Claire moved
to pick up the pizza box but Ginger grabbed her hand and said, “Leave it!”

A moan sounded and Maggie felt the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.

“Go! Go! Go!” she yelled. Ginger led the way with Claire behind her and Maggie following, only pausing to grab the open bottle of wine.

They ran out of the house, across the porch and down the front walk, not stopping until they were standing on the sidewalk in front of the house, huffing and puffing as they tried to catch their breath.

“Lord-a-mercy, girl.” Ginger was the first to speak. “You have a ghost.”

Maggie looked at her friends. They were both wide-eyed and gasping for breath. She knew she probably looked the same.

“I have to tell Sam,” she said. “We can’t live here. We can’t live in a house with a ghost.”

“What if it’s a mean ghost?” Claire asked. “You could be possessed or it might make one of you kill the other.”

Maggie felt all of her insides twitch in full-on panic. “Do you think it’s evil? Did you get that feeling?”

Ginger put her hands on her hips while she considered. “No, I didn’t get that feeling, but we were moving out of there so fast, I don’t know that I would have noticed if it was a benevolent spirit or not. And really, if it is nice, why is it banging around so much?”

“And flickering off the lights is a totally passive-aggressive thing to do,” Claire said.

Maggie turned to look at the house she’d been planning
to call home. The porch was wide and welcoming. She knew exactly where she wanted to put the porch swing. She’d had daydreams about her and Sam sitting on it, sharing a pitcher of lemonade on a hot summer afternoon.

The wind whipped down the street, tossing her hair about her head. A glance at the sky and the ominous clouds of an incoming storm got her feet moving toward the car.

“Come on, let’s get out of here,” Maggie said.

“Aren’t you going to lock the door?” Claire asked her.

Maggie looked at her and then the house. “I am not going back there. You two go home. I have to talk to Sam.”

Ginger nodded as if this was the most sensible thing Maggie had said all evening.

“Call us later,” Claire said. “I’m going to stop by the library on my way home. I bet I can find some information on exorcisms.”

Maggie gave her a faint smile. She had a feeling she was going to need something stronger than an exorcism spell. Especially when she told Sam they definitely had a ghost, and she was not moving into the house. Yeah, she was going to need a calm-the-heck-down spell.

Chapter 6

“What are you doing here?” Sam asked. He was sitting at his desk, working through a pile of paperwork, and his eyebrows shot up on his forehead when she appeared in his doorway. “And why are you carrying around an open bottle of wine?”

“To calm my nerves,” Maggie said.

“What nerves?” Sam asked.

“These,” Maggie said. She held out her hand so he could see her fingers trembling.

“Whoa,” Sam said. He came from around his desk and held out his hand to take the bottle from her. Then he opened his arms and pulled her close.

Maggie gripped him tightly as if his warmth could chase away her fears. It almost worked.

“What happened?” Sam asked. “I thought you were meeting Ginger and Claire at the new house for a picnic?”

“We met,” she said. “Then doors banged and creaked, lights flashed off then on then off then on . . .”

She paused, knowing that what she was about to say was going to sound insane. She really couldn’t blame Sam if he didn’t believe her. Then again, she had witnesses, so he couldn’t totally dismiss what she was about to tell him.

“Then what?” he asked. He stepped back to study her face. The concern in his eyes just about undid her, but Maggie forced herself to tough it out.

“Then the ghost began moaning,” she said. “Moaning as in really unhappy sounding moans as in ‘get out of my house before I hurt you’ moans. Sam, we can’t buy that house.”

He blinked at her. “Moaning?”

“Yes,” she said. “Moaning as in groaning. You know,
Oooooh
, that sort of thing.”

Sam propelled her toward the nearest chair. “Are you all right? Did you hit your head on anything lately? Have you eaten today? You know you go a little sideways when you haven’t eaten.”

“No and yes,” she said. “I am not suffering from a head injury and I ate a huge lunch and was in fact just enjoying a slice of pizza when the haunting started. If you don’t believe me, call Ginger and Claire, they heard it, too.”

“Oh, I believe you heard something,” he said. “A storm has been rolling toward us all day, bits and pieces
of it have sprung up with rain and high winds right about the time you all were in the house.”

“It was not wind,” Maggie said. “Can wind make the lights flicker?”

“Sure, if the lines are old, and the ones to our house are,” he said. “Probably, the wind is also what caused you to hear the door slam.”

“Fine, but the moaning was not wind,” Maggie argued.

“If it got into one of the vents or maybe a rush of air swept down the chimney, it could sound like moaning,” Sam said. “Listen, we’re buying a very old house. I’m sure it has tons of drafts. We’re going to have to plug them all until we get the place seaworthy again.”

“
Seaworthy
doesn’t work for me,” Maggie said. “I’m telling you that place is haunted, and it would do well to be shoved to the bottom of the ocean.”

Sam gave her a small smile. “It’s not haunted. You’re just having a new homeowner freak-out and you’re transferring your anxiety to the house.”

“No, I’m not,” Maggie said. “There is clearly a presence there. Even Marshall Dillon felt it.”

“Marshall Dillon got locked in the basement,” Sam said. “You know he hates to feel left out. I’m sure that’s why he was strange the day we toured the house.”

“Let’s bring him back there and see,” Maggie said.

“Will that make you feel better?” Sam asked.

“Only if he’s calmer this time,” she said. “If he freaks out, I am telling you the deal is off.”

“You do realize Marcy will have a nervous breakdown if we back out of the sale now.”