Nothing to Ghost About (3 page)

Basil followed me to the door, which
made me hope I had brushed the back of my hair properly. What if
there was a big bird’s nest of knots in it? I hadn’t been sleeping
well lately.

Basil waited to the side while I
opened the door. I took an immediate dislike to the woman standing
there. She was about my age, or perhaps a little older. She had
long, blonde hair. Sure, I did, too, but while mine was thick and
had a mind of its own, hers was sleek and well groomed. Perhaps I
would have to invest in a straightener, after all. Her heels were
impossibly high, her legs impossibly shapely and long, and her
dress way too tight. Her jewelry was as loud as it was fake. She
was wearing so much fruity, citrus perfume that it was enough to
turn me off eating oranges forever. I remembered seeing her, or
rather smelling her, at the funeral.

She extended a slim hand to me.
“Laurel Bay?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“
Anna Stiles,” she said.
“With the paper.”

Of course, there were a
million papers, but she seemed self-assured enough to assume her
paper was
the
paper. I shook her hand—her handshake was limp despite the
fact she was muscle-bound. The woman must spend half her life in
the gym. My first impression of her wasn’t a good one. Was I
envious? Most likely, but there was something about her that revved
my feminine intuition into an overdrive of red flags.

And then she saw Basil, and I knew for
sure that I didn’t like her. An unmistakable attraction flashed
across her features. I glanced at Basil. My stomach knotted, as it
seemed to me that he was attracted to her as well. She was a
good-looking woman, so of course the average man would be attracted
to her. It’s just that I really wanted Basil to be anything but the
average man.

She stepped toward him and offered her
hand, again in a limp fashion, but this time upside down, as if she
wanted him to kiss it. Thankfully, he did not. “Do you work here?”
she asked. Her voice was almost a purr.

“
Not exactly.” Basil smiled
at her. I was pretty sure he had never smiled like that at me, and
I was wondering exactly what that meant. “I’m the
accountant.”

“
For the funeral home?”
Anna asked. They still hadn’t removed their hands from one
another’s. I wanted to reach out and slap them apart.

“
Ms. Bay is a client of
mine, as are other local small business owners,” Basil
said.

Finally, after what seemed to me to be
an age, they released their grip. Anna smiled and opened her mouth
to speak, but was forestalled by another car screeching to a stop.
A man got out and wasted no time hurrying to the door.

“
Bob Hendry,” he
announced.

“
I need to get going,”
Basil said, nodding to Anna.

Bob stepped inside so Basil could
exit. I shut the door behind him. “Mr. Hendry, this is Anna Stiles
from the local paper,” I said. “I’m sorry that you’ve both arrived
at the same time.”

“
It’s quite all right.” The
look on Bob Hendry’s face showed that he considered it to be
anything but all right.

“
Let’s all sit down and
talk,” Anna suggested, her voice dripping with charm. She laid her
hand on Bob’s arm.

Bob smiled at her and I resisted the
urge to roll my eyes. I showed them into my office, and they
whipped out digital recorders in unison. Bob placed a yellow legal
pad on his crossed knee, and waved his pen over it. Anna looked
around the room with narrowed eyes.

First the talk was about celebrity
funerals, and how I had come to run the place. I was surprised that
they were asking me the very same questions that the journalist had
asked me right after the KISS funeral, almost word for
word.

I was relieved that they weren’t
asking me about the funeral singer’s murder, or for that matter,
anything about the funeral of the hit-and-run crime lord victim,
Alec Mason. My relief was short lived.

“
Tell us about the funeral
singer,” Anna said imperiously.

“
Yes, the murder victim,”
Bob said with relish.

She smiled at him. “I’ll email you the
link to his website. Do you have a card?”

He pulled out his card and handed it
to her. Their hands lingered a little too long on each other’s. I
sighed. She sure had the whole feminine wiles thing down
pat.

“
You’d have to ask the
police,” I said.

Anna leaned forward. “But didn’t you
find the body?”

“
No, it was…” I managed to
catch myself. I had nearly blurted out Ian’s name. “There were
undercover police at Alec Mason’s funeral,” I said, silently
congratulating myself, “and they found the body, as far as I know.
I was upstairs at the time.”

“
Did the police happen to
mention anything about Alec Mason?” Bob asked, now on the edge of
his seat. “Do they have any idea who murdered him? And what about
Preston Kerr? Do the police have any idea why he was murdered? Do
they have any leads?”

I shook my head. “If the police do
know anything, they haven’t told me.” I did not like the direction
in which the conversation was going.

Preston Kerr, the recently murdered
funeral singer, appeared in the corner. He could barely hold his
form. His face looked like clouds or wisps of smoke and he faded in
and out, shimmering all the while. He was the least substantial
ghost I had ever seen.

Ernie materialized and floated beside
Preston. “Don’t worry about him,” he said to me, pointing to
Preston. “He’s taking it hard. You know these theatrical types!
They make a big song and dance about being murdered.” He
snickered.

“
Well, surely you
know
something
,”
Anna pressed. “You have had two people murdered here in a short
space of time.”

“
They’re dying to know!”
Ernie floated over to Anna just to annoy me.

I glared at him. He knew that floating
creeped me out.

Anna looked behind her. “What are you
looking at?”

“
I thought I heard someone
outside,” I said untruthfully. I could hardly tell the annoying
journalist that I was staring at a bothersome ghost who loved to
make puns at every opportunity.

“
Tell us about the girl who
was murdered here recently,” Bob said. “Tiffany Hunter.”

I stood up. “No,” I said
firmly.

“
No?” Anna
asked.

“
Look, we’re just trying to
get a story here,” Bob said.

I crossed my arms. “You both told me
you were coming to speak about the celebrity funerals. You didn’t
say a word about doing a story about the murders.”

“
You have to admit, a
funeral home with two murders is a much better story, don’t you
think?” Anna asked in a sugary tone.

I shook my head. “I’ll have to ask you
to leave if you want to ask me about the murders. That’s a matter
for the police. I really don’t know anything.”

“
Hey now,” Bob said as he
stood. “You should work with us and help us out. It will kill your
business if people think they aren’t safe here.”

I glared at Bob. “Are you threatening
me?”

“
Not at all,” he said in a
far from convincing tone. “I’m sorry you wouldn’t agree to the
interview.” He turned away with a scowl, and Anna scurried out the
door after him, closing it behind her a little too
loudly.

It was with some difficulty that I
resisted the urge to throw something at the door. I sat back down
in the chair. “I handled that badly,” I said to Ernie. “And please,
land. You know that floating makes me nervous.”

Ernie landed in front of me. “You just
need something to lift your spirits.”

I groaned. “That’s not
funny.”

Ernie seemed to think it was, because
he laughed for some time before turning serious. “You know, it
really doesn’t look good for Witch Woods Funeral Home that two
people have been murdered in a short space of time.”

I shrugged. “Well, there’s nothing I
can do about that.”

“
Yes, there is,” Ernie said
smugly. “You can solve the murder.”

I snorted rudely. “Hello! That’s what
the police are for.”

“
Time is of the essence,”
Ernie said. “Those reporters will give you bad press, then people
will stop coming here. No doubt the police will solve it in their
own sweet time, but by then, you mightn’t have any customers left.
They’ll all be going to that new funeral home franchise in
Tamworth, and they’re stiff competition. Get it?
Stiff
competition.”

I rolled my eyes.

Chapter 4

Could the day get any worse? I was
forced into having dinner with my mother. That in itself would be
horrible, but tonight, Ian would be joining us.

I really would have to look into
renovating the apartment above the funeral home, so I could move
in. It was difficult—and that’s an understanding—staying with my
mother in her home adjacent to the funeral home property. I was
living in my old room, and paying Mom board.

The pungent scent of lasagna floated
up the stairs and into my room. I am a vegetarian, but I could
guarantee that my mother had meat in her lasagna. She always cooked
dishes with meat in it. Now that was her business, but she always
acted hurt when we were eating together because I always prepared a
vegetarian meal for myself. It always caused a drama, and as we ate
together most nights, that was a guaranteed daily drama, and one I
could well do without.

I reluctantly dragged myself down the
stairs to find Mom and her bestie, Ian, in the kitchen. They were
laughing and drinking sparkling mineral water from wine glasses, as
children would do.

“
There she is,” Mom said in
her shrill voice when I walked in.

“
Have you been sleeping all
day again, dear?” Ian asked.

“
I wasn’t sleeping,” I
said. “And stop calling me ‘dear’! I’m not your ‘dear’ and you’re
not much older than I am! In fact, I never sleep all day. I work
hard.”

“
That’s not what your
mother said,” Ian said, wagging a finger at me.

“
You spend so much time in
your room that I get worried about you,” my mother said. “I think
you’re sleeping because you drink too much.”

“
Mom, I hardly drink,” I
said. I needed to change the conversation quickly. “Do you realize
that you’re drinking out of wine glasses?”

Mom slammed her glass down hard on the
countertop, causing water to spray out all over the place. “Of
course they’re not wine glasses! How could you say such a thing,
Laurel? Why do you always try to upset me? I bought them today
because they looked nice. Why, I’ve never let the Demon Alcohol get
ahold of me! I signed the Temperance Pledge when I was seven years
old.”

I shrugged. “Okay. Is dinner
ready?”

“
Almost.”

“
Is there meat in
it?”

“
Of course there’s meat in
it, Laurel. I already told you that it’s lasagna. It was your
favorite when you were little.”

“
I ate meat when I was
little. I don’t now.”

Mom glared at me. “There’s not much
meat in it. You can take it out.”

I saw Ian open his mouth. I fought the
urge to leap across the kitchen and shove him out the window before
he could speak. “Not eating meat is why you’re so skinny,” he said.
“It’s not healthy.”

“
God made animals for us to
eat,” my mother said waspishly.

“
Is that so?” I said,
digging my fingernails into my palm to divert me from saying
something else.

“
Of course. We rule the
animal kingdom. Animals are tools to be used by us. We eat a lot of
animals: lambs, pigs, cows, and even ocean animals like
fish.”

“
You do, but I don’t,” I
said. “I don’t share your views.”

“
What views?” Ian
asked.

“
All of them,” I
said.

Ian shoved a finger in the air. “The
point we’re getting at, Laurel, and this is from two people who
care about you, is that you need to eat meat to be
healthy.”

“
I don’t, Ian. Not at all.”
With that, I turned and headed to the dining room. I sat and took
deep, slow breaths. When Mom and Ian brought in the dishes, I put
salad on my plate and nothing else. Mom watched me and shook her
head.

Ian spoke up once more. “You’re not
getting any protein!” he protested.

“
Ian, thank you for your
concern, but plants actually have protein,” I said through gritted
teeth.

The rest of the course was passed in
merciful silence, and then Mom produced dessert. “Angel food cake,”
Mom announced. “Ian made it.”

“
I brought it,” Ian said.
“My girlfriend made it.”

“
If only you would learn to
cook,” Mom said to me. “Then you might be able to find a nice man
like John Jones. The two of you would be a good match. Don’t you
think so, Ian?”