Deadly Greetings (Book 2 in the Cardmaking Mysteries) (2 page)

I shrugged, not willing to commit to it yet.
“So what’s the catch?”

Instead of answering my question, Lillian
said, “Jennifer, look through that window.”

I did as I was asked and peered out. To my
surprise, I found a small deck just outside, replete with an iron
chair and a charming little table. For a finale, Lillian pointed
through the canopy of leaves beyond. “The lake is just a few steps
away. Autumn is nearly here, and you’ll soon have a glorious view
of the lake. Isn’t it delightful?”

I couldn’t have agreed with her more, but I
realized Lillian must have misunderstood the price. “I can’t
imagine how I can come anywhere near to affording this place.”

When she told me the rent, I didn’t need to
know anything else. “Where do we go to sign the lease?”

Lillian smiled in approval. “I took the
liberty of acquiring one from Hester Taylor.” Hester was one of
Lillian’s best friends, operating a combination copy
store/apartment/rental agency/ice cream shop in town ever since her
husband had disappeared one day ten years ago. The rumor was that
he’d taken their cash, their car, and their dog with him when he
vanished. Hester claimed that besides the cash, the only thing she
really missed was the dog.

“
So where do I sign?” I
asked.

Lillian gestured to the places Hester had
marked, then took the document from me. “Don’t worry about the
deposit or the first and last months’ rents. I’ve got those
covered.”

When I started to protest, Lillian said,
“Think of them as house warming gifts.”

“
I’d rather think of them as
paid by me,” I said. “I’m not letting you do this.”

“
It’s too late,” Lillian
said, laughing. “You already signed the lease.”

“
Then I’ll default,” I said.
“Or you will. I mean it.” I’d learned early on that if I didn’t
stand my ground with her, I’d be stampeded.

She huffed out, “Blast it all, child, do you
always have to get your way?”

“
Think of it as a character
defect I inherited from my favorite aunt,” I said.

Lillian thought about it a few moments, then
said, “Let’s compromise. You can pay me back, but only after your
store makes a profit two months in a row.”

“
Are you sure you can wait
that long?”

She scolded, “Have faith in your card shop,
Jennifer. I do.”

I knew better than to push her any more than
I had. There was only one thing left I could do, and that was to
accept as graciously as I could. “Okay, thanks, I can live with
that.”

“
You’re most welcome,” she
said as she hugged me. We were downstairs, ready to go back to the
card shop, when one of the tenants on the main floor came out into
the foyer. “Who are you?” an elderly man with a black cane asked us
fiercely.

“
I just rented the apartment
upstairs,” I said. “I’m Jennifer Shane,” I added as I offered my
hand.

He refused it, then took a step back from
us. “You can’t be serious.”

“
Why? What’s wrong with it?”
I was beginning to think that there might be something I’d failed
to ask.

The man shook his head. “You really don’t
know?” He lifted his cane and shook it in Lillian’s direction. “You
should be ashamed of yourself, Madam.”

Lillian laughed. “I often have reason to,
but I rarely am. Now go away.”

With a grunt, the man retreated back into
his apartment, slamming the door in our faces.

“
Gee thanks, Lillian, it is
so sweet of you to make such an effort to get me accepted by my
neighbors.”

“
Pooh, he’ll come around.
Give him time.”

An odd-looking tiny woman with blue hair and
a nose like an ice pick was standing on the porch when we walked
outside. I’d seen her around town from time to time, but we’d never
really spoken to each other.

Lillian said, “Hester, what are you doing
here? I told you I’d take care of this.”

The woman fluttered her fingers in the air
like a hummingbird’s wings. “I just thought ... I was nearby. . . .
Did she sign it?”

“
I’m standing right here.
Ask me yourself,” I said.

Hester continued to ignore me. “Do you have
the lease agreement?” she asked Lillian.

“
It’s right here, Hester.
Now calm down before you have a heart attack or, worse yet, give me
one.”

Hester grabbed the lease Lillian held out
and without another word she bolted for her parked car, a Cadillac
that was tinted the most unpleasant shade of green I’d ever seen in
my life.

I turned to Lillian and asked, “What in the
world was that all about?”

“
Hester always was a tad
high-strung.”

I touched my aunt’s arm. “Lillian, stop
dodging. There’s something you’re not telling me, isn’t there?”

“
Jennifer, I knew if I said
anything, you’d miss out on a wonderful opportunity. It’s all
nonsense anyway.”

“
I wish I’d had a choice,
but I’m already committed. So what is it you haven’t been telling
me?”

She frowned a moment, then admitted,
“There’s just one thing I neglected to mention. Honestly, it
shouldn’t matter one bit.”

“
Come on, Lillian, out with
it.”

My aunt scowled, then finally said, “Very
well, if you must know, some folks think the place is haunted.”

“
The entire house?” I
squealed. Great, that was just what I needed, moving into
Amityville. Suddenly my apartment didn’t seem all that
bad.

Lillian shook her head. “No, the rest of the
house is fine. It’s just your apartment that’s said to have a
ghost.”

And that was the first time I’d ever heard
of Frances Coolridge’s demise.

“
So now I’m living in a
haunted house?” I tried to keep my voice from shrieking, but it was
tough to do.

She frowned, then said, “It’s all nonsense,
Jennifer. Honestly, I expected you to be more levelheaded about the
whole thing.”

“
Well, I expected my aunt to
look out after my best interests. The world’s just full of
disappointment today, isn’t it?”

Lillian took a deep breath. “Let’s discuss
this as we walk by the lake. The air has such a soothing quality to
it.”

I stood my ground. “I’m not taking another
step until you tell me what this is all about.”

Lillian frowned, then said, “I know you; you
won’t quit until I tell you, so you might as well hear it all at
once.”

I planned to stand right there until she
told me, but Lillian had other ideas. If I wanted to hear why my
new apartment was haunted, I was going to have to follow her as she
walked down the path toward the lake.

“
Jennifer, first of all, you
must know that I would never put you in harm’s way. Will you at
least give me that much credit?”

I wasn’t ready to give her anything, but I
knew until I threw her some kind of bone, I was going to be doing
laps around the lake until my shoes wore out. “I know you wouldn’t
do it knowingly,” I said grudgingly.

She paused, glanced at me for a second, then
nodded. “Fine.” Lillian’s step faltered a moment, then she said,
“Frances Coolridge was a friend of mine in another lifetime.”

“
Oh please don’t tell me
you’re going to say you two shared a past life. Who were you,
Cleopatra?” Some folks around town thought my aunt was eccentric,
but I’d always stood up for her. It was starting to look like I’d
been a tad hasty in my support.

“
Don’t be ridiculous,” she
said. “Do you want to hear this or not?”

I was beginning to wonder that myself. Maybe
I should just trot over to the library and look it up in the
archives. Then again, the newspaper would report just the facts,
and I knew I could count on Lillian to supply the backstory, and
that was often more telling than what found its way into print.
“Sorry, I’ll try not to interrupt again, but I’m not making any
promises.”

“
As I was saying,” Lillian
continued. “Frances and I knew each other a lifetime ago. We were
locker mates in high school, and the very best of
friends.”

“
Then how come I never heard
of her until today?” I asked. “You think I would have, if the two
of you were so close.” I didn’t mean to interrupt, but I couldn’t
help myself.

Lillian chose to ignore it. “We had a
falling-out at our graduation party. I should have apologized to
her, but I kept delaying it until the issue became bigger than it
really was; all the while a wall built up with every minute our
conflict continued.”

This was getting good. “What did you do? It
must have been something huge.”

“
Jennifer, the details
aren’t important. All you need to know is that we became estranged
that night.”

“
Aunt Lillian, there’s not a
chance in the world I’m letting you off that easy. Tell me what you
did.”

She stopped and looked at me long and hard.
“I told you, it doesn’t matter.”

“
Then I don’t want to hear
the story,” I said as I turned around and started back to her car.
She was stubborn, but I’d gotten my mulish streak from her, so I
knew I could outlast her if I put my mind to it. Sometimes it was
hard to get Lillian to talk about herself, but once she got
started, I knew she’d have a tough time stopping until she
finished.

I was twenty steps back up the path before
she said, “I danced with her boyfriend one night.”

“
When you say ‘dance,’ what
exactly do you mean?”

“
Jennifer, don’t be vulgar.
It was one dance, no more and no less. Frances was in the powder
room, and Herman asked me. I still don’t know why I said
yes.”

I couldn’t hide my smile. “You had the hots
for a guy named Herman?”

Lillian said frostily, “He was rather
dashing, as I remember him. Now do you want to hear the rest of
this or not?”

“
You’ve got my undivided
attention,” I said.

At least Lillian dropped her plan to circle
the lake. She stood there and continued. “Frances never spoke to me
again, a difficult thing to do in a town this small. She moved away
soon after high school, but came back here to live after her
parents died. They were quite wealthy. The family fortune started
with a gold mine in North Carolina, but they quickly branched out
into acquiring properties all over the South. After that, they
started buying up businesses here and there as a hobby. The rumors
around town were that the family barely left anything to Frances,
choosing a charity in Richmond to receive the bulk of their wealth
instead. The only things Frances inherited were a pair of
doorstops, a swamp in Georgia and some other equally worthless
things, or so the story goes.”

“
So why is she haunting my
room? How did she die? And why didn’t I ever hear about this?” It
was hard to believe that someone could die in Rebel Forge without
the entire town knowing about it.

“
Frances’s dead husband was
related to the Dunbars, and the owners of the newspaper weren’t
about to let one whisper of the scandal out. For once, something
happened here that no one else knew about. As for the rest of it,
you’ll have to get the details from your brother.”

Great. Grilling Bradford was the last thing
I wanted to do. “Lillian, you started this story; now finish
it.”

“
Bradford really should be
the one to tell you. After all, he was the one who cut her down.
You see, she hanged herself.”

A feeling of dread swept over me. “Please
tell me she didn’t do it in my beautiful living room.”

“
Of course not,” Lillian
said, and I felt instantly better. Then she added, “There probably
wasn’t a good place to attach the rope in there. That’s why she
used your bathroom.”

So there it was. I was going to be taking a
shower in the middle of a place where someone died. How in the
world did Lillian think that would be better than my old apartment?
“I never should have signed the lease,” I said. “At least no one
ever died in my old apartment.”

“
Not that you know of,”
Lillian said.

“
Why, what have you
heard?”

She shook her head. “Jennifer, I assure you,
there’s no such thing as ghosts. You’ll be fine living here, I
promise.”

“
If you’re so sure, then why
don’t you move in with me?”

Lillian looked shocked by the suggestion. “I
have my own place, my dear girl. Besides, there’s no room for both
of us up there.”

“
Okay then, I’ll move into
your house and you relocate here. The cats will love romping around
in your big old house.” My aunt had converted one bedroom of her
rambling old house into a closet, and I knew her clothes alone
wouldn’t fit into the attic.

Lillian said, “Jennifer, you’re delusional.
I’ll tell you what I will do, though. Spend one week here. If you
absolutely hate it, you have my blessing to move out and I won’t
hold it against you.”

“
Do you honestly expect me
to stay here for a full week?” I looked up at my room and saw the
curtain fluttering in the breeze. There were just two problems with
that: there wasn’t the slightest whisper of wind in the air, and
that window had been closed when I’d left it.

She said, “Oh, pooh, don’t be so dramatic.
Now let’s get back to the card shop. You really shouldn’t leave it
unattended this long.”

I didn’t even know how to respond to that.
While it was true I was eager to leave my apartment, I hadn’t
expected to go someplace worse. Still, Lillian had paid for two
months there, if I could stand it for a week, maybe I could get
used to rooming with a ghost.