Read Make the Ghost of It (Witch Woods Funeral Home Book 3): (Ghost Cozy Mystery series) Online
Authors: Morgana Best
Make the Ghost of It (Witch Woods Funeral Home Book 3): (Ghost Cozy Mystery series)
Make the Ghost of It (Witch Woods Funeral Home, Book 3)
Copyright © 2016 by Morgana Best
All Rights Reserved.
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* * *
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The personal names have been invented by the author, and any likeness to the name of any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This book may contain references to specific commercial products, process or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, specific brand-name products and/or trade names of products, which are trademarks or registered trademarks and/or trade names, and these are property of their respective owners. Morgana Best or her associates, have no association with any specific commercial products, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, specific brand-name products and / or trade names of products.
By this act
And words of rhyme
Trouble not
These books of mine
With these words I now thee render
Candle burn and bad return
3 times stronger to its sender.
(Ancient Celtic)
Table of Contents
I was in shock. Not only had Basil Sandalwood, my accountant and my crush, just tried to kiss me, but he had clearly seen Ernie, the cranky old ghost who haunted the funeral home.
In fact, Basil would have kissed me, if Ernie had not interrupted us. Right now, as strange as it might sound, I was not focusing on Basil kissing me. No, I was taken aback that Basil had seen Ernie.
I stared at Basil with a mixture of longing and accusation. He held his hands up in front of him. “Look, Laurel, I wanted to tell you that I can see ghosts, but I thought you’d think I was crazy. And you can see them, too?”
I frowned. I supposed I couldn’t be cross with him for not telling me that he could see ghosts, when I was guilty of the same omission.
Ernie chose that point to rematerialize. “Imagine not knowing that your friend here could see ghosts, too,” he said, winking as he said the word
friend
.
“What, did you know he could?” I asked him, forgetting about Basil for the moment.
“Of course!” Ernie exclaimed.
I was annoyed. “Well, why didn’t you tell me?”
Ernie shrugged. “You didn’t ask.”
I frowned at him before turning my attention back to Basil. “I’ve been able to see ghosts since I was a child. As you can imagine, it didn’t go down well with my overly religious mother. My father seemed okay with it, though, but he was never allowed to express his opinion. And you?”
Basil nodded. “I’ve been able to see ghosts for as long as I can remember. I figure my parents thought I had a lot of imaginary friends. Anyway, how are you feeling now? That must’ve been a horrible shock, that Anna Stiles trying to kill you. You must’ve been so afraid.” He put his arm around my shoulders and drew me close.
Just as I was enjoying Basil’s proximity, my mother burst into the room. “Fear is not of God!” she declared. “Laurel, you’re late for dinner. Go home and make yourself some now. Stop inconveniencing people.”
I was furious, more than furious. I had somehow managed to put up with my mother since I had moved back to the little town of Witch Wood to run the funeral home. At first, I had missed the bustling city of Melbourne, but I had grown accustomed to the quiet life here. However, nothing would ever make me grow accustomed to my mother.
I put my hands on my hips. “Now, Mom, listen to me. This is
my
funeral home. I will go back to your house and collect my things, but I’m not living with you any longer. You have to learn to speak to me politely. I’m an adult now, and you need to respect me. This is also
my
business. If you can’t speak politely to me within the walls of my own business, then you must leave. Do you understand?”
She didn’t speak, but stood there, her face growing redder by the second. I pushed on. “I’m going to live in the apartment above the funeral home from now on.”
My mother spluttered, and it took her a few moments to find her voice. “But it’s not fit to live in!”
“That’s my problem, Mom, not yours,” I said firmly.
“Why, you always were a little…”
Fortunately, she never had the opportunity to finish her words, because Basil cut her off. “Mrs. Bay, please do not attempt to speak rudely to Laurel again, especially not in my presence. I take a very dim view of verbal abuse.”
I could see that Mom was caught between a rock and a hard place. As much as she liked to speak rudely to me, she was a people pleaser, so she clearly had no idea how to respond. “Yes, Basil,” she said politely. “Of course, you’re right.” She shot him a winning smile, and then shot a glare at me before vanishing through the door.
Basil jabbed his finger at the ceiling. “Can you really live in the apartment up there?”
“It’s not in the best of condition,” I said, “but it’s got one thing going for it.”
Basil looked puzzled. “What’s that?”
“Mom’s not in it.”
Basil smiled.
I woke up and stretched, momentarily disoriented. Where was I? I looked around me. I was lying on a blanket on a wooden floor in my new apartment. I watched for a moment as particles of dust happily danced along the beams of sunlight streaming in through the bare windows.
There was no bathroom, so I would have to use the funeral home’s bathroom. That wasn’t such a problem, as it was only downstairs, in the same building. There was even a shower in the preparation room for Janet, the cosmetician, to use. Well, there actually was a bathroom in my apartment, but it wasn’t plumbed in yet. I planned to call the plumber later that day.
The energy in the apartment felt infinitely better than Mom’s house, but I did want my privacy here, so I had to figure out a way to keep Ernie out. Having him materialize in my private quarters could prove embarrassing, and ghosts were drawn to the funeral home.
The apartment already smelled nice, because I had fetched all my belongings from my mother’s house, and those belongings included all my scented candles, items which Mom said were of the devil, or as she liked to call him, ‘The D-Word.’
Still, I wouldn’t have to worry about Mom now that I wasn’t living under her roof. So what if I had to camp out in a non-renovated apartment? I should’ve done this as soon as I arrived in town.
I sneezed violently, due no doubt to all the dust in the air. The night before, I had swept the dust out of the room that I was going to camp in at night, but the other rooms were used as storerooms and were even dustier. I had to make time in my busy schedule to clean them.
I sat up and hugged my knees to me. The night before had been wonderful. Basil had returned after I had brought all my new belongings to my apartment, bringing with him a pizza and a bottle of red wine. We had a kind of a picnic on the little oasis of swept floor in the middle of the dusty room. We’d had an enjoyable talk about our shared ability to see ghosts. Just as he had left, he had kissed me again. I tingled from my head to my toes at the thought.
A loud knock at the front door of the funeral home brought me back to the present. There were no bookings today, and I had intended to spend the day renovating my apartment. I hurried down the stairs and opened the front door.
There to my horror, were Mom and her best friend, Ian, standing on the doorstep. Ian was about my age, and I always wondered why he and Mom were best friends. The only thing they had in common was that they were both religious fanatics. Even Pastor Green was frightened of them, of that I had no doubt.
Mom was smiling, which I took as a warning sign. It was then that I noticed she had a large black trash bag in her hand. She handed it to me quite proudly. “It’s a gift!” She beamed at me.
“Your mother is so generous to you, dear,” Ian said to me.
“Please don’t call me ‘dear,’ Ian,” I said. “You can’t be any older than I am.”
Ian did not respond, but continued to smile sickeningly at me.
Before I looked in the trash bag, I was overwhelmed by the smell of mothballs. It was as if a government agency had done an experiment to see how strong they could make mothballs so that they could kill the entire population of a town. I tried to hold my breath as I reached inside the bag.
I pulled out the most hideous monstrosity I have ever seen in my life. The item appeared to be a set of heavy brocaded curtains, bright cherry pink swirls with gold embroidered edges on a bright green background of baby-diaper brown-yellow dots. I thought I would be physically sick just looking at it, but that was probably just the smell of mothballs overpowering me.
“What is it?” I asked her.
“Shouldn’t you be thanking your mother?” Ian asked me.
I glared at him. At least he hadn’t called me ‘dear.’
“They’re curtains obviously, Laurel,” my mother said through clenched teeth.
“Err, thanks,” I said, still staring at the curtains. It was hard to drag my eyes away from them.
“They were your grandmother’s,” my mother explained to me. “They were never used. Someone gave them to her as a gift, and she hated them.”
“Imagine that,” I said sarcastically, but my sarcasm appeared to be lost on my mother.
“Are you going to invite us in for coffee?” Mom said.
I thought about refusing, but I supposed there was no harm in giving her coffee in the funeral home. I didn’t want to alienate her entirely; I just needed to keep her out of my apartment. “Sure,” I said. “Come in.”
I led them into the funeral home’s kitchen, and switched on the Nespresso machine. “Ian’s upset,” Mom announced.
I looked at Ian, but he looked fine to me. “What’s happened?” I asked him.
Mom answered for him. “It’s for the best. You can’t be unequally yoked with an unbeliever.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
Mom frowned at me. “Audrey. Ian has decided to break up with her, because he’s an ass.”
“You won’t get any argument from me,” I said before I could catch myself. To my surprise, Ian agreed.
“Yes, I’m an ass and she’s an ox,” he said. “We’re unequally yoked.”
I took a while to process that, as I knew better than to ask. Aha. Finally, I got it—unequally yoked, beasts of burden—they meant a donkey. Hmm.
“So, what’s new, Laurel?” Ian asked me.
I regarded him with suspicion. He was never normally so interested in my business, nor was he usually so polite. He was usually busy telling me that I was headed straight to hell.
“Well, I’m renovating the apartment upstairs, and I moved in last night.”
“John Jones won’t be happy about that,” Ian said.
I did my best to control my anger at his words. John Jones was a church friend of Mom and Ian’s, and he was a particularly persistent man who kept asking me on dates. I had refused every time, but neither John Jones nor Mom nor Ian seemed to get it through their heads that I would never date John Jones, even if he were the last man in the universe. “What I do has nothing to do with John Jones. Do you understand me, Ian? I am not dating John Jones and I never will. Never again mention the name John Jones to me again.”
Mom and Ian both had identical expressions on their faces, their jaws dropped down and their mouths hanging open, and I could see that both of them were about to respond to my words and no doubt in not a very pleasant manner, when I was saved by the bell—literally. The bell at the funeral home front door was chiming.
This is the sort of thing that happens when I haven’t had my first coffee of the day. I had completely forgotten that Basil said he was bringing his old college friend, Lewis Lowes, to meet me this morning, on their way to a sporting event.
Just what I didn’t need, Mom and Ian in the same room as Basil.
The three of us raced toward the front door. I managed to get there first. I opened the door to see Basil and an attractive man.
Basil smiled warmly at me, but the look he gave Mom and Ian wasn’t quite so warm. “Hi, Laurel. Hello, Mrs. Bay and Ian,” he added with narrowed eyes. “I’d like you all to meet my old college friend, Lewis Lowes. He’s in town for a couple of days and he wants to go skydiving.”
“Skydiving?” I said nervously. “You didn’t mention skydiving. I thought when you mentioned a sporting event that you meant you were going to watch football or something.”
Lewis laughed. He stepped forward and kissed my hand. Basil shot him a look as he did so. “So you must be the delightful Laurel,” Lewis said in a tone that made my flesh crawl. He also kissed my mother’s hand. “And you must be her delightful sister.”
Mom laughed. Clearly she was taken with the man and didn’t realize he didn’t actually think she was my sister. “I’m in fact Laurel’s mother,” she said, smiling from ear to ear at Lewis. “You can call me Thelma.”
Lewis faked a look of shock. “Oh you must be kidding! Why, you must have been a child bride.”
Mom giggled like a schoolgirl, while Ian looked entirely puzzled. I was expecting Ian to say, ‘Liars don’t inherit the kingdom of God,’ but he wisely remained silent.
I summed up Lewis. He look like the actor who played Arthur in the TV series,
Merlin
, only older, but he was just as attractive with thick blond hair and piercing blue eyes. Clearly, he also worked out, but I suspected he was one of the guys at the gym who always stared at himself in the mirror for far too long. I couldn’t say why, but there was something unlikable about him, something that grated on me.
Lewis continued. “Thelma, may I have permission to take your lovely sister—oh, silly me, I mean your daughter—out to dinner tonight?”
I was aghast. What was Lewis thinking? What century was this? And why on earth would he do something as bizarre as to ask my mother’s permission to date me? I had no answers, only questions. I noticed that Basil looked quite annoyed and I wondered if Basil hadn’t told Lewis what was happening between us. I supposed that nothing
was
in fact happening, but we had kissed more than once now, and a relationship was progressing.
Mom opened her mouth to speak and I could see she was charmed by Lewis, but I got in first. “In this century, men usually ask women directly if they want to take them out on a date,” I said dryly. “They don’t ask their parents for their permission.”
Lewis turned his charm on me. “Laurel, would you accompany me to dinner tonight?”
“No,” I said.
“But Basil said you didn’t have a boyfriend.”
I looked at Basil who was shifting from foot to foot uncomfortably. Now I was beginning to worry. While Basil wasn’t technically my boyfriend—yet—I would’ve sworn that we were developing a relationship.
“No, I
didn’t
say that,” Basil said, shooting an annoyed look at Lewis.
Lewis appeared to be unperturbed. “How about dinner tomorrow night, Laurel?”
“No, sorry, Lewis,” I said firmly but politely.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” Lewis asked me, looking me up and down with a suggestive gaze.
His question and his stare both made me decidedly uncomfortable. Basil and I shot each other a glance before looking away, both of us at our own feet. I didn’t know what to say, so I changed the subject. “So are you an experienced skydiver, Lewis?” I asked him.
“Yes, as a matter of fact I am. Basil and I used to go skydiving when we were in college. Of course he couldn’t afford to go too often, but my parents were very wealthy, so I went skydiving most weekends.”
I saw Basil’s face flush red. My opinion of Lewis was growing lower by the minute.
“That’s very brave of you, Lewis,” my mother said with admiration. I could see she was mightily impressed.
“Well, I wouldn’t call myself a
champion
skydiver these days,” Lewis said with a smirk. “I just thought I’d take Basil out and help him brush up on his skydiving skills. And, of course, while I’m here, I can help him with any accounting problems that are too much for him.”
I was really beginning to dislike the man.
“Oh, so you’re an accountant, too?” my mother asked him. “How impressive!”
“Yes,” Lewis said. “Basil and I studied accounting together at college. I was always top of the class, and he was always second to me.” He turned to Basil and playfully slapped him on the shoulder. “Basil’s always been horribly competitive with me, and that must be awful for him, since I always beat him at everything.”
Basil laughed. “Don’t believe a word he says.”
I could see my mother and Ian thought that Lewis was some kind of accounting superhero. My loyalties lay firmly with Basil. I wondered why he had such a horrible friend as Lewis, but then I realized that Basil probably hadn’t seen Lewis much since his college days, and Lewis was only passing through town. I was glad of that; I wouldn’t want to have to spend too much time in Lewis’s company.
Lewis looked at his watch, which must have been a very expensive watch, given that he made a big display of looking at it and holding it in front of him for all of us to see. “Oh my giddy aunt, look at the time! We’d better be heading off to the drop zone, Basil.”
“Where does anyone go skydiving around here?” my mother asked him.
“There’s a drop zone not far from here,” Basil said.
I nodded. “Oh yes, is that the place with all those little airplanes? I thought they were crop-dusting planes.”
“Those ones
are
crop-dusting planes,” Basil said, “but that’s the runway for the skydiving club as well. The clubhouse buildings are just further on down that side road.”
“Be safe,” I said to Basil.
Basil smiled warmly at me, but Lewis stepped in front of him. “Catch you later, Laurel,” he said with a wink, looking me up and down once more.
I shuddered.