The Misadventures of the Laundry Hag: All Washed Up: (Book 3 in the Misadventures of the Laundry Hag series) (15 page)

“Dinner’s ready, for anyone who actually eats human food!” Leo bellowed through the bedroom door.

“Bite me, Leo,” Sylvia called from somewhere above us.

“We’re in good company,” I told him. “Let’s go eat.”

Chapter Fifteen

“I think we’ve been stood up,” I said to no one in particular. The four of us, plus Atlas were clustered around the stone bench and had been for hours with not a peep from the other side. The temperature was only slightly above freezing, the night sky crystal clear with brilliant stars unobscured by smog or city lights.

Leo had brought out two thermoses, one filled with hot cocoa and the other with peppermint schnapps, which we mixed together in our individual mugs to form Anti-Freeze #2. Both Sylvia and Neil had declined the delicious offering, Neil because he wanted to keep his head clear and Sylvia because her body was a temple and all that jazz. I shrugged and refilled my mug. More for Maggie.

“It’s supposed to be served with whipped cream on top, maybe a peppermint stick or a maraschino cherry.” Leo groused about the presentation.

“It’s great, Leo. A fabulous séance beverage.” I might have been a smidge heavy-handed with the schnapps.

 “This isn’t a séance,” Sylvia complained as she fiddled with her radio.

I muttered into my cup, “Not without the ghost it sure isn’t.”

Neil and Atlas were both restless. They circled the area. Atlas lifted his leg on a nearby bush. Neil eyed Sylvia’s spirit box with distaste as she surfed through the various channels of static. “How do you know it even works?”

“It works,” she ground out. “The clerk tested it in the store.”

“Sylvia, it’s okay if it doesn’t.” Between the lovin’ earlier and the booze, I was extremely mellow, the only one of us not on edge. I wondered briefly if that said something about my survival instinct, but dismissed the notion. “It’s not like this is an exact science.”

“We should check for a signal,” Leo suggested. “Just because the cell phones work here doesn’t mean the radio will.”

“I’ll go grab the boom box.” Neil sprinted up the hill toward the house before anyone could reply.

Leo pulled up a blanket next to me. “So, you two kissed and made up, huh?”

“Yup.” That was all he was getting from me, at least without another few hits from the schnapps thermos.

“I knew you would,” he said with confidence. “It was like that for me and—” He cut himself off abruptly and turned to look out at the moonlight on the water.

“For you and George,” I finished for him and tucked my arm through his. George had been Leo’s significant other when I first met him in Virginia. A navy man and a real teddy bear of a guy who’d worshipped the ground Leo had walked on. He’d died a few months after Neil and I had been married, killed in a training exercise. The navy, being the navy of the late 90’s, hadn’t given Leo any details and he had no rights as a spouse or dependent. The loss had been so great, he’d uprooted his whole life and gone to work for Laura and Ralph. “He was such a great guy, Leo. On par with Neil even, and you know I can’t give higher praise than that.”

Leo wiped his eyes, “Damn it, I didn’t want to go spelunking down memory lane. It’s this house, though. I keep imaging what it would be like to live here, to just sit and watch the river. Doing the kind of thing we’re doing here, fixing up an old gem to make it shine. George and I talked about that. He’d do the construction while I worked on the design. We’d hire experts for plumbing and electrical, but do the majority of it ourselves.”

“Seriously?” That dissipated some of the alcoholic haze that fogged my brain. “Leo, this is
much
different than Hampton Roads or Boston. There isn’t even a Starbucks.” Not that Leo needed Starbucks since he made the best coffee on the face of the planet.

“You say that like I didn’t know. That’s the whole point, Maggie. I’ve never lived anywhere but the city or a sprawling community. The country is peaceful.
I
feel peaceful here.” He shrugged. “It’s not like it’ll happen now anyway.”

 Neil reappeared with the boom box and set it down right alongside Sylvia. Side by side they fiddled, with an equal lack of success. I refilled Leo’s mug with Anti-Freeze #2, considered for a moment, then shrugged and poured myself another one.

 Leo drank. “Do you think that there’s just one perfect person out there for everyone?”

 “No.” My answer was immediate and definite. “I think some people match up better than others, but if you really want someone and they want you back just as badly, together you’ll find a way to make it work because failure is not an option.”

 He considered that. “That gives me hope.”

 Leo hadn’t had the best dating track record and I understood why he’d asked the question. George’s death hadn’t only deprived him of his lover, but also of the dreams they’d shared of a future and growing old together.

 Neil was having a little more success with his radio. He’d picked up one of those random college stations that played pretty much anything. Sylvia dragged her spirit box closer and tried to sync up the signal.

 I hugged Leo’s arm tightly. “You’ll find someone to grow old with. I’m positive. If my brother can make it work with Penny, then you’re a shoe-in for a happily ever after.”

Leo smacked his forehead. “Oh shoot, I forgot to tell you. Marty called while you and Neil were, um, occupied.”

I groaned theatrically. “His timing is impeccable.” Leo would have interrupted us regardless if it had been an emergency. “Did he need me to call him back?”

“Yeah. He said Penny threw him out of Sylvia’s house so he’s crashing at your place with Kenny and Josh.”

“Son of a motherless goat,” I crabbed. The place would be full of soda cans, pizza boxes and dirty socks in six hours, all three of them zoned out in front of the X-box and smelling like unwashed armpits.

Neil’s head jerked up. “What?”

“It’s nothing, just my dumbass brother being a fricking dumbass.” Although I wondered if Marty was truly at fault. Something was definitely up with Penny and I wasn’t entirely convinced postpartum hormones were solely to blame.

The college station played
Bad Medicine
. I asked Neil to turn it up. Sylvia literally gave up the ghost along with the spirit box and made herself an Anti-Freeze #2. I guess her body wasn’t a temple after midnight. Neil made some noise about doing a perimeter check and slipped off into the night. Atlas sprawled across my feet and I was grateful for the extra warmth, even if it came from a big heavy slobbery head.

The DJ stuck with Bon Jovi and segued into
Livin’ on a Prayer.
I couldn’t help it, I had to sing along and Leo wasn’t far behind me. The spirits—alcohol, not ghostly spirits—lifted Sylvia’s mood and she joined in.

Ah, 80’s music, is there anything it can’t do?

By the time
Jessie’s Girl
hit the first refrain, the drunken séance had morphed into a drunken karaoke dance party.

“
Why can’t I find a woman like that
?” the three of us—all tone deaf and not a one actually looking for a woman, like that or otherwise—bellowed into the night.

“Die,” the spirit box said.

****

Neil must have followed the sound of the screams because he found us, me, Sylvia, Leo and Atlas, crammed into the back seat of Sylvia’s Prius, the nearest shelter. We shrieked again when he opened the driver’s side door, but then quieted when his very human face appeared.

“You heard that, right? Right?” Leo asked again even though Sylvia and I had repeatedly assured him that yes, we had indeed heard the creepy voice tell us to die.

“I swear I’d shut it off,” Sylvia insisted. “That shouldn’t have been possible.”

“What the hell happened?” Neil asked. “I was out by the barn and I heard the three of you screeching. Did you see the bean nighe?”

Honestly, I hadn’t even thought about the bean nighe, I’d been so wrapped up in communicating with our murder victim. I quickly filled him in on what went down as my heart rate finally started to slow to something approaching normal.

“It said die? You’re sure?” Neil didn’t sound skeptical, but neither did I think he believed us.

“If it was a drunken hallucination, all three of us had the same one,” I pointed out.

“And anyway, I’m not really drunk. There wasn’t much schnapps left,” Sylvia hiccupped.

“Right.” Leo’s tone was dry.

Atlas passed gas and the rest of us gagged but no one got out of the car.

“Okay, I’m going to go check it out,” Neil said.

“No!” the three chickens in the back yelled. Atlas added his two cents with a woof.

I cleared my throat and balled my trembling fists. “You can’t go alone. I’ll go with you.”

Sylvia and Leo protested, but I’d made up my mind. I shoved the back end of the giant dog off my lap and sucked in a steadying breath. It smelled like peppermint and dog farts, but it did the job of bolstering me enough to extract myself from the car.

“You don’t believe us, do you?” I asked Neil as we walked. Pale moonlight fell on our path, illuminating it with a silvery glow.

“It’s not that I don’t believe you,” Neil murmured when we crossed the darkened bridge. “It’s just that I haven’t seen or heard what you have.”

I clutched his arm tightly. If there was a bigger skeptic in the world than the ever-practical laundry hag, it was her husband the former SEAL. Neil knew about evil first hand, had spent years of his life fighting it. I remembered what he’d said earlier. About not believing that I’d really been in danger in my past misadventures. Sure, he’d protested, but he’d also helped me investigate. That took infinite trust, even more so after we’d both lived through the consequences.

“Tell me what you remember about the woman in the road,” I asked him.

“Only a split second image. I was too busy reacting, and then we skidded and rolled and I lost track of everything.” He blew out a breath as we crossed the hill. Even in the dark, I knew he took in his surroundings, assessed the woods and rocks and streams for a threat.

I suppressed the urge to tell him to close his eyes and bring her to mind. When he was on alert he wouldn’t relax enough to close his eyes.

We approached the bench. The darkness seemed thicker there, more impregnable, though the moon still glittered on the distant river. The boom box had been knocked over in our mad dash to get the hell out of there and lay silent in the dirt. The spirit box still crackled with white noise energy though. A chill shook me as I recalled that eerie voice from the spirit box as it told us to die. My courage dispelled like the fog and I stopped, unwilling to go any closer. My hold on Neil became a tug.

“Don’t,” I pleaded, knowing I couldn’t hold him if he decided to free himself.

He paused and squeezed my arm. “You can stay here. I’ll just shut it off and come right back, all right?”

It wasn’t, but I was in no position to stop him. Breaking down into tears wouldn’t help. And the spirit box sat and crackled.

Neil extracted himself from my death grip and took the final steps to the bench. In one quick move he flicked the spirit box off and stuck it in his coat pocket. I sagged in relief.

 He crouched down and picked up the boom box. “This thing’s busted to hell. Someone must have stepped on it.”

“What are you doing?” I asked as he shucked his coat.

“I want to collect all the pieces.” He didn’t even shiver, though I did for his sake.

I stooped down and helped him gather the various bits and bobs which had once been the boom box’s innards. We collected them in a pile on the fabric of the coat.