Little Ghost Lost (Destiny Bay Cozy Mysteries Book 5) (14 page)

“Because he’s the obvious choice. Don’t you see? Here’s how it probably went down. He was angry at Jerry and came to confront him about the dealing behind his back. But first he made sure he got the huge beautiful Tiffany Silver pitcher they had in the library out of there and into his car. He confronted Jerry. Jerry got nasty. Richard picked up the heavy fireplace shovel and beat him in the head with it. Jerry fell. Richard left. But Tom had seen him there and he knew it. So he came back once the police were gone and killed Tom to keep him quiet. Only he didn’t know that Tom had kept a record of his visit. Celinda knew, so she went through Tom’s house until she found it. She took it so you guys at the station would never see it. She went to Jill for help, Jill hooked her up with us, she hid her car in our barn and left at 3 am when Richard came and got her. Only trouble was, I’d swiped the notebook.” I thrust out my hands, palms up. “What else do you need?”

“Only one problem. The notebook shows Richard left before Jerry got there. How could he have killed him?”

Details, details! “Maybe he drove around the block and walked back in some sneaky way that Tom wouldn’t see. Waited for Jerry. Killed him.”

Roy made a rude sound. “Then why wouldn’t he kill Tom right then?”

Hmmm. He wasn’t buying it. “Okay, how about this then? Richard did take the silver pitcher and headed for home. But he was in touch with Celinda. She was the one who came home and killed Jerry. Then went back to Cambria.”

“Then why kill Tom?”

“Uhhh. Okay, I’m not sure about that. Maybe Tom threatened her in some way. Told her he knew more than she expected. Scared people can kill.”

“She doesn’t have a gun.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. We’re still working on it. I’ll let you know if I pick up any more clues you can use.”

“
The clues you can use
. That sounds like a radio commercial.”

“Maybe I ought to get my own radio show.”

“Maybe you ought to,” I teased him. “You have enough wacky ideas to fill the hours, don’t you?”

“Hey, you and me both. We could have a show together. The Crazy Ideas of Destiny Bay’s Finest!”

“I like it. Keep working on that why don’t you?”

He laughed and hung up and I smiled as I rang off. He did give me the warm fuzzies. But it was high time to get back to work. I went back to the dining room table.

“Anything new?” Bebe asked, putting down the article from the file that she was reading.
 

I told her about Celinda being with Richard.
 

“You said when you first met him that you thought there was something going on there.”

“Yes. Looks like I was right.”

“So is Richard the murderer? Or Celinda?”

“The police are still mulling that over. I guess we’ll see in all due time.”

“Sure.” She got up from the table and headed back to the bedroom to look in on Mandy. A minute later, I heard her laughing. Was that little ghost telling jokes now? I smiled and went back to the file.

I sifted through the papers until I found a carefully worded article about Alexander’s daughter’s death over twenty years ago when she was thirteen. They said she’d fallen from the upstairs balcony and hit her head on the roof of the shed on the way down.
 

Wait. I read that again. That was the same balcony I’d fallen from. Or been pushed. Was she pushed? Now the chills were seriously beginning to make my hands jittery.
 

I read on, furiously searching for something—I wasn’t sure what. Bebe was still with Mandy. She’d made her a little bed and she was cutting down a large comforter to fit the child’s size. The whole time, I could hear her having a running conversation—at least
she
was talking. What Mandy was doing I didn’t know. It was all very cute but I knew it was just perpetuating the problem. I was going to have to talk to Bebe about it soon. But first, I had to find….

There. An article about the boy. He was seventeen at the time of his death. He drowned six weeks after his sister died—just about twenty years ago. Imagine the mother’s heartbreak. And the father? Was he broken by those two deaths as well? That was something we would probably never know.
 

I sat back and took a deep breath, thinking about it. What a horrible chain of events for that family to go through. And the mother died a year later.
 

But wait a minute. I’d thought the boy’s name was Matthew, but the article gave the boy’s full name to be Alexander Matthew Pennington, Jr.. Another Junior, called Matthew, probably to differentiate him from his father, the Senior.
 

So was he the “Junior” Tom was talking about? The amp? Alexander Matthew Pennington. Amp. Nah, it couldn’t be that simple.
 

That could only work if he was a very accessible ghost. Dead men didn’t murder people. At least, I didn’t know how they could do it. But they could manipulate others to do the murder for them. And anyway, as far as I knew, Tom couldn’t see ghosts.
 

I was pacing again, pacing and thinking. So who were the ghosts haunting the Pennington House? Were they all there, back together as a family and making each other miserable again? I don’t know why I assumed that would be the case. Probably from the looks on their faces in the photos.
 

It made you think. Usually, you conceive of the options as heaven or hell. But maybe there was a worse fate—existing forever on a spiritual plane with people who hated you.

Chapter Eleven

Bebe was making lunch in the kitchen. I went out back to see if Aunty Jane had materialized. No such luck. But I did see Dante.
 

He was sitting on a stump with a huge old plumeria tree behind him, and I stopped and enjoyed the look of him for a moment. Tall and athletic, he had a Greek profile and satin skin that seemed to glisten in the sunlight. He wore fitted pants and a long-sleeved pull-over shirt that looked like it was made of the softest, thinnest calf skin ever, clinging to the muscles of his chest like a caress. A golden man, a golden boy—but not a real, live boy. Yes, that was the fly in the ointment, wasn’t it?

He looked up and saw me. “Hey,” he said. “Have you talked to her yet?”

I knew what he was nagging about. He wanted me to tell Bebe that Mandy had to go. “I will,” I said defensively. “Just give me a little time.”

He squinted at me. “We don’t have time. I promised them something would happen by tonight. If you don’t take her back, we’ll have a repeat of the haunting from last night. And I won’t be able to stop it.”

I sank down to sit on the curb near his stump. “Okay, here’s the truth. I’m scared to go back.”

He leaned toward me. “Mele, I know you got pushed off the balcony. I know you got attacked in the kitchen. I’ve warned them to leave you alone this time. Just take Mandy back to them and I don’t think they’ll hurt you.”

Just take her back. Just break Bebe’s heart. Just face those awful ghosts again. And maybe they won’t try to kill me this time. Sure.
 

“What do you know about those ghosts at the house?” I asked him. “Do you have experience with them?”

He shook his head. “Don’t worry about them. Just get Mandy back there.”

“You’ve got to understand about Bebe,” I began.
 

“I understand perfectly. She yearns for a child of her own. Mandy can’t be that child. You know it. Bebe even knows it. Let’s face reality here and get this done.”

I looked up at him. “Are they really cruel to Mandy over there? Do you know what the truth is?”

He looked at me for a long moment, then looked off toward the ocean. You couldn’t see it from where we were sitting, but just his move made me think of sea voyages and lonely widows pacing on captain’s walks. A gang of sea gulls was screaming in the distance and the air had a touch of salty marine breezes to it. I could almost hear the waves.

He shrugged. “Do they coddle her? Do they treat her like a little princess, the way Bebe wants to?” He looked back down at me. “No. But is that cruel? Or is it more cruel to let her think she can have life again, and then slowly realize it’s a hoax?”

There was a deep, emotional chord to his tone and it took my breath away. Had this happened to him in the past? “Dante…” I reached out to touch him, but he avoided my hand.
 

“Take her back, Mele. Do it now.”

And he was gone.
 

I sighed. I wanted to ask him about the Penningtons, about what he knew of the deaths there. But I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to tell me much. He never did.
 

“No,” Bebe said, shaking her head vehemently. “No, I won’t let her go back there. She would be all alone. All alone with those horrible creatures. I wouldn’t be there to protect her. Don’t you see? It’s impossible.”

I shook my head. “Bebe, you can’t protect her. Not there, not here. She has to go back where she belongs.”

I was tired and empty and so very sad. We’d been going round and round about this for half an hour.
 

“Bebe, I’m going to take her. Dante says it has to be done and he knows.”

She grabbed my arm. “No. Not yet. Let me…let me see the house. I want to see what it will be like for her.”

“The Pennington House?”

“Yes. Take me over there and show me. Then…then maybe I can begin to accept it. But not now. No. Not now.”

I swallowed. I’d already called Jill and asked her to go with me to take Mandy back. Now Bebe wanted to go too. I would welcome the help. I was scared to death to go by myself, but if Bebe and Jill were both there, maybe the ghosts would hold off for awhile.

“We’ll leave Mandy here,” Bebe said. “We can come back and get her if it seems to be okay.”

I struggled to find a way to tell her that it was all over. “Bebe, we can’t leave her alone here. They came last night, they might come again while we’re gone.”

Bebe shrugged. “She can probably handle them better than we can,” she said sensibly. “After all, she’s lived with them for decades.”

I stared at her. How could she be so logical and illogical at the same time?
 

“And anyway,” Bebe added. “Aunty Jane will watch her. Won’t you, Aunty?”

I whirled to look toward where she was facing. Sure enough, there was our resident ghost, benignly putting together a lei from the last of the plumeria blossoms.
 

“You can see her?” I asked, amazed and gratified. Jane was supposed to be Bebe’s own personal ghost and had been for years. It had been a painful crisis to have her not able to see Jane for these last few months. If that was over, I was thankful.
 

“I can see her.” Bebe went over and gave her a hug. “Oh Aunty Jane, how I’ve missed you.”

Jane sniffed. “Didn’t seem like you missed me so much. You always with that Captain Stone fella. I thought you didn’t need me anymore.”

Bebe laughed with tears in her eyes. “Crazy old lady,” she teased affectionately. “I’ll always need you. Don’t ever leave me again.”

“Oh, so it’s my fault, eh?”

They laughed and sort of hugged each other—though with a ghost, it was difficult-- and I watched in wonder. A car drove up in front of the house. It was Jill. Right on time. I was getting nervous. Very nervous.
 

“Does that mean you can see Mandy too?” I asked my aunt.
 

Bebe nodded. “I’ve been seeing her clearly all day. I can hear her too. Didn’t you see us talking together?” She looked happy for a moment, then turned and headed for the bedroom. “I’ll go tell her what’s going on. Be back in a second and then we can go.”
 

Aunty Jane came close as she left, and didn’t pull any punches. “You have to make this right,” she whispered loudly. “You have to show those ghosts that you will do the right thing. Otherwise….” She made a noise and pretending to slit her own throat with her forefinger.
 

“What do you mean?”

She nodded wisely. “Dante--he trying very hard to control them. They don’t like that. These are mean ghosts. They very unhappy. They like to take that out on the people they see. But Dante is going up against them—just for you and Bebe. He stick his neck out for you. Don’t let him down, Mele. They could do bad things to him.”

“Bad things?” My blood ran cold. “You mean, physically hurt him?” How did that work?
 

She nodded, eyes wide and significant. “That’s what I mean. You be careful. And don’t pull the carpet out from where he walking. Okay?”

“I guess.” I wasn’t totally sure I knew what she was talking about, but it sounded perilous—for all of us, but mostly for Dante. This visit to the haunted house was looking more and more menacing. If only I could think of some way to avoid it. “I’ll do what I can,” I said weakly.

Jill came in and I turned from Aunty to my best friend, giving her a hug.
 

“Hey, thanks for coming sweetie. You’re the best.”

Bebe came down the hall. “Let’s go,” she said, looking resolute. “Mandy promises to be on her best behavior. If she doesn’t stick to that, you let me know,” she told Jane.
 

And we were off.
 

 
The big old house felt eerie and ominous. But then, it always had. We went in a strangely hushed trio, gazing around carefully, looking for any signs of…anything.
 

Turning a corner into the library, we came face to face with ourselves in the big entry mirror. We stared for a moment, then all three of us began to laugh.
 

“What a gang of scared investigators we are,” Jill said. “We look like Scooby-doo and his friends, all about to freak out.”

“Remember that TV show, the Mod Squad?” I said. “Well, we’re the Odd Squad.”

“No doubt about it.”
 

We giggled. That loosened things up a bit. We weren’t quite so nervous anymore. After all, nothing had happened. The place was cold and creepy, but there were no voices, no doors slamming shut.
 

“Are the bedrooms upstairs?” Bebe asked.