The Ex Who Wouldn't Die (20 page)

***

The next few days were surreal.
Every time someone came into the shop, Amanda jumped for fear it would be a police officer come to arrest her. If that wasn't bad enough, e
ither Charley was haunting her, or she was having big-time h
allucinations. He was underfoot all the time
, listening to her phone calls, giving her instructions about motorcycle repairs, turning on the TV in the middle of the night, more annoying than when he was alive. And he was obsessed
with
K
imball.

"He put poison in the coffee," he told her one morning. "When he was going through your apartment, looking for the gun. He put poison in the coffee. Just in case you survived the wreck. I can feel it when I get near the coffee."

"Charley, I don't drink coffee? You left that
container
here. So long as he didn't put poison in my Cokes, I'm okay."

"But Kimball doesn't know that!
Call the police and have them analyze your coffee."

"I want
nothing
to do with the cops
!"

One
morning a
wooden step broke when Amanda
trod
on it, sending her thumping down the last three steps.

"Kimball did it," Charley declared.

"Actually," Amanda assured him, examining the step
in question
, "dry rot did it."

He woke her in the middle of the night to warn her that Kimball
was approaching her apartment.

In spite of her certainty that Charley was being dramatic, she got up to look out and did see a man coming around her building toward the stairs
leading up
to her apartment.

"Ca
ll the police," Charley ordered.

"No way,"
Amanda
declared
,
even though her
heart
was
pounding so loud
ly
she could barely hear Charley
.

She
watched the man move closer
and weighed the terrors of
dealing with an intruder or
calling in the cops who might haul her away
.

That intruder
didn't seem very steady on his feet.

"Oh, good grief." She whirled away from the window
and grabbed the hammer she'd been keeping close at hand
.

"Don't go down there!" Charley called after her as she darted out the door.

"It's just some drunk from
the bar down the street! Hey, you!
" she shouted from the top step.
"
Yeah, you! This is not a public bathroom!"

The man ran away, tossing a few curse words over his shoulder.

Charley was trying desperately to convince her that Mayor Kimball was out to get her. For the most part, he was just being annoying.

But one event did make her nervous. The anonymous caller phoned again the second day she was home. Dawson answered and handed
the phone to her. The caller hung up as soon as she spoke
.

Charley suddenly appeared beside her. "It was Kimball!
H
e knows you're home. He'll come after you."

Amanda ignored him, but she
went to the hardware store and bought
a deadbolt
and chain
for her front door
.

Finally the police
released Charley's body.

"Now I have to decide what to do with you," she said after Brian's call to deliver the news.

"I don't want to talk about this." Charley looked out the window, avoiding her gaze.

"I'd like to have you cremated and flush your ashes down the toilet, but you'd probably stop it up."

Charley groaned. "Amanda, you have a mean streak."

"I can't do that to your mother." She found the piece of paper with Irene's phone number and called her.

Irene cried when Amanda
told
her the funeral would be in Silver Creek. "That's mighty nice of you to bring him home," she said.

If you only knew,
Amanda thought. "It's what he would have wanted," she said.
Charley rolled his eyes and left the room.

"We've got
a
place for him in the family plot, and one beside him for you. Of course, you're young. You'll probably get married again. But if you want to rest beside him, we'll save it for you."

"Thank you. I'll keep it in mind."

"I got Charley's room all cleaned up and ready for you. When do you think you'll be getting here?"

"Oh," Amanda said, "I don't want you to go to any trouble. I'll just drive back and forth. It's only about an hour."

There was a long silence. "It's no trouble," Irene said. "You do what you need to do, but just remember, you're always welcome at our house." She sounded disappointed.

"Well, maybe I'll come down a couple of days before the funeral and stay with you all." Amanda groaned inwardly when she heard the words coming out of her mouth. Lying to this woman about her son's wishes was one thing, but agreeing to spend time with Charley's family was not a good idea. "If I can," she added, then began searching her mind for reasons she couldn't while a part of her didn't want to find those reasons.
A part of her wanted to run away to the comfort of a mother-in-law who baked cookies for her, a town where she wouldn't flinch every time someone walked through the door, expecting to find Detective Daggett standing there with an arrest warrant. If she was in another jurisdiction, at least he'd have to go through her attorney to get to her, give her time to revise her
Will
and have a last meal.

Not surprisingly, Charley went ballistic when she told him her plans.

"You can't go down there! You're going into the lion's den! Kimball won't even have to leave town to kill you! I forbid you to go to Silver Creek!"

Charley's reaction cinched it. "You forbid me? Excuse me? You didn't have the right to order me around when you were alive! You sure don't now that you're dead!"

Amanda was going to Silver Creek
, and she was looking forward to it
.

Later that day she met with her parents to discuss the funeral.

The three of them sat in their
formal living room, her mother
erect and dignified in a white, high-backed chair, her father, relaxed but in control in a burgundy leather chair, and Amanda between them on the plush white sofa with burgundy pillows. That sofa was generation four, having succumbed on three previous occasions to Amanda's youthful escapades. Jenny, of course, had obeyed the rules and never destroyed furniture.

Amanda
sat on the edge of the
sofa,
unable to banish
a childish fear of somehow soiling the venerated sofa again. Why did people buy furniture if they didn't want it to be used? At the appearance of number three, she'd suggested her mother take a picture of the sofa, hang it on the wall, and let people sit on the
floor beneath it
. That hadn't gone over well.

"
I'm going to let
Charley's mom take
him
home to Silver Creek for the funeral. They've got a family plot where they can bury him." She elected not to mention the plot next to him for
her own
eventual demise.

Her mother folded her hands primly. "I think that's a good idea, dear. He should be back with his family."

Her response didn't surprise Amanda. She'd expected her m
other to be relieved to have no
further connection between their family and Charley's. If she was perfectly honest, she didn't want anything else to do with Charley.
Not his body and not his ghost.
Maybe when his body was laid to rest, he'd stay with it.
Too bad his family hadn't lived in Canada or Australia or Timbuktu.

"I'm going to go down a couple of days before the funeral
to
stay with the Randolphs so I can help."

Her mother and father exchanged shocked glances.

Her father
leaned forward, toward Amanda. "If you want Charley buried in his home town, we'll do whatever we can to help you. I'll arrange to have the body shipped to his family and pay for all expenses at whatever funeral home they choose. You don't need to upset yourself by going down there and getting involved in all that. I don't think that would be a good idea. You shouldn't have to worry about anything except getting well and getting on with your life."

Amanda
frowned.
He
r father had
always encouraged her to stand on her own feet, make her own decisions, and deal with the outcome of those decisions. Now he was talking to her as if she were fragile, unable to take care of herself.

"Thanks, Dad. I appreciate your offer, but I need to go down there and help his family with the
arrangements
."
She couldn't do something so impersonal to a woman who'd made cookies for her.

"If you insist on doing this," her mother told her, "you're on your own. Your father and I will not participate in this mockery of a funeral."

Thank goodness for small favors,
Amanda thought.

Her father
tented his fingers. He was getting ready to pronounce a verdict. Amanda sat up straighter, ready to rebel. "You don't need to do that." His voice was soft, but she wasn't fooled. This was an order. "You've been through enough. We'll see that Charley and his family are taken care of, and you can just put all that behind you and move on."

Amanda rose, moved over to her father and hugged him. "Thanks, Dad. I'll be fine. But if I get arrested
for Charley's murder
, I'm counting on you to bail me out in time for dinner."

Her father smiled, but it was a pretty weak effort. The worried look on his face as Amanda lef
t the room made her wonder if he knew something she didn't about
the progress of the murder investigation
.

***