Coffee and Ghosts: The Complete First Season (Coffee and Ghosts: The Complete Seasons Book 1) (27 page)

Nigel slumps in his chair. “Oh, no. No, we’re not going there. Look, even if I did know its name, it wouldn’t let me tell you. It would be in the part of my memory it erased when it was inside me. Don’t go fishing for this thing.”

“I don’t have a choice.” I touch the spot on my left cheek. “It’s coming back for me.”

Nigel looks away. He must know that’s true. He might even know why—that the reason behind its return is tied to my affection for Malcolm. I press a hand over my heart as if it’s a tender thing I must protect. As I hold my hand there, something swells inside me. The notion is small, a tiny bit of hope struggling through all my doubt. But it takes root. I feel it grow.

It’s a spring sapling of an idea. I barely think on it. I certainly won’t speak it out loud. I must protect it from the icy wind. But when I’m at last in bed and shut my eyes, I know this.

It could work.

* * *

I’m filling the fourth thermos with coffee when Belinda wanders into the kitchen the next morning.

“And I thought yesterday’s was good.” She accepts the cup I hand her.

“Fresh beans from the Coffee Depot,” I say. “They finished roasting them this morning.”

She slumps against the refrigerator and sighs. “God, I could get used to this. Do you need me to scrub toilets or something? Because you could pay me in cups of coffee to do that.”

I almost laugh. The only thing that stops me is the question swirling in my mind, the one I must ask Belinda but dread doing so.

“Actually,” I say, “I could use your help.”

“Sure.”

She pulls up a chair, but before she can sit, I spring my question.

“How do you talk to ghosts?”

Belinda lands hard, chair legs stabbing the kitchen floor. Amazingly, she hasn’t spilled a drop of coffee. She takes a long sip, staring down at the liquid in the cup.

“You really want to know?” she says at last.

“I need to know.”

“They like small talk. Maybe because they’re not fully there?” She shrugs. “When I was younger, I would prattle away, you know, like some little kids do.” As she did back at the police station, she holds up her hand as if it’s a talking puppet. “My dad was always working. My mother was always organizing this party or that committee or whatever. The ghosts were my friends.”

“What happened?”

“What didn’t? Middle school, maybe? Somewhere along the line, I graduated from small talk to gossip to rumors. Instead of playful sprites, I started attracting the nastier ghosts. Oh, God, Katy, they say some awful things. Things you know aren’t true, but can’t help worrying that they might be.”

I nod. I remember Belinda in middle and high school. When a particularly mean ghost would attach itself, her hair lost its luster, her skin went ashen.

“When I discovered that drinking made them shut up, I thought I’d solve my problems for good.” She shakes her head. “You know the rest.”

Yes. I do.

“Small talk.” Of all the things I might have to tackle today, this seems like the most formidable.

Small talk is not one of my strengths. My grandmother was good at it. And it was Malcolm who revived the business with sales pitches and marketing and simply talking to people while I chased ghosts around with cups of coffee and Tupperware.

I continue to fill thermoses and pack them in the field kit.

“Can I ask where you’re going?”

I set the carafe of Belinda’s security coffee on the table. “Nothing should bother you today, but just in case.”

She stands and crosses her arms over her chest. “Again, where are you going?”

“On a pilgrimage,” I say. “I need to talk to a few ghosts.”

* * *

My first stop is Springside Long-term Care. If my hunch is wrong, then I’ve wasted a great deal of money brewing a great many pots of coffee. If my hunch is wrong, Malcolm is lost forever. Everything depends on a hunch. The thought makes my stomach jump. My hands, however, are steady. I carry a single thermos with me of some of the best coffee I’ve ever brewed and head for Mr. Carlotta’s room.

“Katy-Girl!” His face brightens when he sees me. “I was just talking to Jack. He’s thinking about driving down from Minneapolis this weekend.”

“How nice for you.” I point to the brand new chess set on a side table. Its carved wooden pieces are glowing in the low lamplight. “Are you going to beat him again?”

“He’s not coming down for this old man, Katy-Girl.”

I shake my head, going for ignorance. This is not an entanglement I need today.

“You. He wants to see you again.” Mr. Carlotta claps his hands together. “Give him a chance. Go out to dinner. He’s not the boy you knew in high school.”

“The one who set my hair on fire?” I strive for lightness, but it falls flat. I really am bad at small talk.

Mr. Carlotta snorts. “He’s grown up. And when you grow up, you see things differently.”

I choke back a frustrated sigh. I adore Mr. Carlotta, but he’s a product of his times. He won’t be happy until he has all his grandchildren married off, or at least his favorite one.

“He’d like to have dinner with you,” he says.

“Then he should ask me that himself.”

“He plans to. In fact—” The buzz of my cell phone cuts off Mr. Carlotta’s words. He cringes and rubs his brow. “I told him not to text you.”

I check my phone. Yes, Jack has sent me a text. Yes, he has asked me out to dinner.

“I can’t.” It’s the answer I speak out loud and the one I text to Jack.

The room grows oddly silent. I glance up to find Mr. Carlotta staring at me, pain etched on his features.

“Oh, Katy-Girl, what’s happened?”

“I...” I don’t know what to say or how to explain what’s happened in the past twenty-four hours.

“You look so much like your grandmother right now, that same stoic expression. Every time I asked her to coffee, every time she chased down my ghost. It didn’t have to get romantic. I told her that ... how many times?”

He asks this last to the air, or possibly his ghost. Certainly I don’t know the answer.

“Don’t cut yourself off like she did,” Mr. Carlotta says. “No ghost is worth that.”

But would a whole town be worth it? I know now what it is my grandmother gave up. The love of this worthy man. A chance for a new life. She kept the vigil, kept herself lonely. That photograph of my grandfather on her bedside table—an image of all she’d lost and all she could never have.

My eyes burn with a quick spate of tears. My stomach ties itself in knots. I struggle to pull in a full breath. Granted, this last might be nothing more than Mr. Carlotta’s ghost.

And that ghost is the reason I’m here.

I try to work a smile onto my face. From the one Mr. Carlotta gives me, I know it’s a weak effort.

“Mr. Carlotta, would you mind?” I gesture toward the door. “I’d like to speak to your ghost for a few minutes.”

He nods. Without another word, he wheels his chair from the room. I shut the door behind him. For a moment, all I can do is press my palm against the wood. Then I reach for my thermos.

“No Tupperware today.” I unscrew the cap and pour the coffee into the thermos’s cup. “I just want to talk.”

Aromatic steam rises into the air. Other than the entity, this ghost is the oldest I’ve ever encountered. It does not suffer fools gladly and is difficult to draw out, although I know it must be in the vicinity of Mr. Carlotta’s Purple Heart. Technically, I suppose it haunts that rather than Mr. Carlotta. In this tiny room, it makes little difference.

By degrees, it oozes its way closer to the coffee. I add a touch more to increase the heat.

“I think it’s some of my best,” I say. “What do you think?”

In answer, the ghost drops onto the cup. The steam shimmers, creating a lopsided outline that looks as grumpy as this ghost often feels.

“I have a problem.” I’m on my knees in front of the side table where the coffee is sitting. Oddly, I don’t feel all that self-conscious speaking out loud to what is no more than glimmering air. Maybe it’s because I’ve known ghosts all my life. And maybe it’s time I got better acquainted.

“You’re old enough that I think you know about this entity. I think you might know what it’s called. Can you tell me that? I can’t promise that I’ll be the one to come back with more coffee, but someone will. You won’t be ... alone.”

I hold absolutely still, eyes closed, lips slightly parted. The ghost inches closer, the air around my face cooling as it draws ever nearer. Then, it’s as if I inhale it. It places its icy caress against my eyelids, my cheeks—making certain to circumvent the spot on my left—and my lips.

A word enters my head, but this isn’t Belinda’s small talk. Slowly, as if this ghost must pull each syllable from a great depth, I have my answer.

“Thank you,” I say, and my voice vibrates the shimmering air around me.

I ask Mr. Carlotta’s ghost for one last favor, but I leave before it can respond. I’m working on trust now, and I have many more ghosts to speak to and many more favors to ask.

By two in the afternoon, I’ve located every ghost, spirit, apparition, and sprite in Springside Township. I raced around the abandoned barn near the edge of town, a thermos above my head as the wild ghosts that live there dipped and dived into the steam. I held a coffee klatch in a gazebo attended by a dozen sprites, leaving behind floorboards far damper and stickier than when I arrived. I even sneaked into Chief Ramsey’s garden shed and offered a cup to the ghost that haunts the watering can. I’ve talked to them all.

Except one.

I’m tempted to return to the care facility and ask Mrs. Greeley if she’s sensed my grandmother lately. But perhaps this is something my grandmother can’t help me with. Maybe she’s known that all along.

My next stop is the green and white Victorian. I expect some sort of barrier to entry. Crime scene tape. A large No Trespassing sign. A closed circuit camera like the one on Main and Fifth. What I don’t expect is the bright yellow van with the black lettering and the riot of antennae in a gangly mess up on top. I don’t expect Gregory B. Gone to be leaning against his van, arms crossed over his chest, his gaze trained on the house like a despondent lover.

I pull the remaining thermos of coffee from the field kit and grab two Styrofoam cups before I leave my truck.

“I hope you like it with cream,” I say, balancing the cups on the hood of his van. “I have sugar, too, if you want it.”

He purses his lips and I take that as a no. A butterfly bandage covers a wound on his forehead. The lens of his glasses is still splintered. A strip of silver duct tape keeps the whole thing from tumbling off his face.

“Thank you.” He sips and then points the cup toward the house. “You know, that’s the first time I’ve seen a ghost.”

“I’m not sure that thing really is a ghost. It’s something more.” And perhaps, in a way, something less as well.

“Always wanted to,” Gregory continues. “Everyone else senses the cold spots, hears the creaking stairs, freaks out and runs away. Me? I don’t feel a thing.”

I consider the man next to me, the van behind him proclaiming
Ghost B Gone
, and the naughty sprite whirling about his head.

“How do you eradicate ghosts if you can’t sense them?” I ask. At this point, I think that’s a fair question.

“Terese. She’s very ... open to all things supernatural.”

Yes. That turned out to be a problem, too.

“She broke up with me,” he adds.

Broke up? “I didn’t realize you two were a couple.”

“Yeah, that might have been part of it. She said I cared more about the show than I did about her.”

Well, he did leave her on the floor while he ranted like a madman about what had—and hadn’t—been caught on video. But then I let that entity take Malcolm. I maybe shouldn’t judge. Instead, I wave my fingers at the sprite, trying to get it to fly away.

“Go on, shoo,” I say under my breath.

“Ouch.” Gregory slaps his neck. “You’d think it would be too late in the season for mosquitos.”

Mission accomplished, the sprite dances off.

“What are you going to do now?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “I wish I knew.”

Despite the defeat in his words, his expression shifts. Maybe it’s the scent of wood smoke that fills the air. A soft swoosh tickles my ears, the sound of a rake across dried oak leaves. The status quo, in Springside Township, can be an enticing thing.

“This isn’t a bad little town,” he says. “Maybe I’ll stick around. Nice place to raise kids.”

I refrain from pointing out that his girlfriend just broke up with him. I strive to keep my face bland, completely noncommittal. But something must bubble to the surface because he gives me a wry grin.

“Yeah ... another one of our problems. Or maybe it was just my problem. Maybe
I’m
the problem.” He drains the last of the coffee and then crushes the Styrofoam cup. “Thanks, Katy. You make a damn good cup of coffee.”