The Misadventures of the Laundry Hag: All Washed Up: (Book 3 in the Misadventures of the Laundry Hag series) (7 page)

“I may need the truck anyway,” Neil added, and the decision was made.

Joy, rapture. More deep breathing lessons by a guy who may or may not make obscene phone calls in his spare time.

“Let me just run and grab my purse.” Sylvia darted for the stairs, leaving me alone with two hundred pounds of irritated husband.

“What did I agree to?” I asked him bluntly.

He shook his head. “I knew you were zoning out.”

I took a step closer and reached a hand for his. “That’s because you know me better than I know myself. And you love me anyway.”

His expression softened. “I do. And you’re tearing my heart out.”

I flinched, but didn’t look away. Instead, I forced myself to witness the truth of his pain. I wanted to beg him to be patient with me, but did I even have the right to ask it of him?

His hand squeezed mine. “Talk to me, Uncle Scrooge.”

I swallowed hard. “I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“Here? Or life in general?”

“Take your pick.”

We sat in silence for a time, just being together, listening to the steady churning of the river.

Finally, after an endless moment, he pulled me into his arms and sighed into my hair. “It’s not required. To know what you’re doing all the time.”

I made a very unfeminine snort. “You do.”

“Do not,” he shot back

“Well, you fake it like a pro.”

He laughed at that, a real laugh, the kind that made me believe in forever. Such undiluted joy was meant to be, wasn’t it?

“If you really believe that, Uncle Scrooge, I’ve got you completely fooled.”

Chapter Seven

The mystery errand I’d agreed to was a trip to the town library to learn more about our property and the surrounding town. Leo had already collected a good bit of info about the house itself and a few rumors on the ghost, but my partner in crime decided to dig deeper. An hour later I was up to my ears in dusty old books and moldering pages.

I sneezed for the bazillionth time and glared at Sylvia, who sat serenely across the table as she scanned microfiche. “I don’t even know what the hell I’m looking for.”

“Anything that jumps out at you.” She didn’t look up but clicked to the next slide.

“That clears things right up.” I blew my nose and turned another page.

The town had originally been a colonial logging settlement before the Revolutionary War. A semi-major battle, the battle of Minisink Ford, had taken place in the county in 1779. It had been a decidedly British victory, thanks in large part to the Iroquois, who suffered for it later when the continental army wiped out every Iroquois village they came across during the Sullivan-Clinton Expedition.

It hadn’t been a large battle, but for the colonists it had been a demoralizing one. The remains of the fallen lay unburied on the hillside as the area was considered too dangerous to traverse. In 1822 a committee sent people to comb the battlefield for remains, which were buried in a mass grave. Though I doubted that had anything to do with our particular ghost, I could imagine that if ghosts were real, there had been several on that hillside, waiting to be moved to their final resting place.

I took copious notes, shut the book and stretched my stiff back muscles. “I don’t think we’re going to find much here.”

Sylvia leaned back in her chair, knitted her fingers together and reached them up over her head. “Do you have any better ideas?”

In fact, I did. “The bean nighe is a Celtic harbinger of death. The fact that she’s called by that name means someone recognized her for what she was, via oral tradition. Ghost stories were told around a hearth fire in the old country. What we need is to find people of either Irish or Scottish decent, preferably people who’ve lived in the area for the last half century, and ask them about her.”

And hope they tell us something. I didn’t say that part out loud, but Scots in particular could be stingy about giving information to those outside their clan or family. Particularly when the information would impact their way of life. Somehow I doubted there were any McIntyres nearby to welcome me like a long lost niece and give up the deets on our ghost.

We reshelved the books, thanked the librarian and made our way across the street to the
Wayward Son
. To glean local insight we needed local perspective, and Alex Ruiz was the closest thing I had to an inside man.

Plus, I wanted her pancake recipe.

The place was empty except for a stoop-shouldered youth with a nose piercing bussing tables. Alex sat at the counter, a phone pressed to her ear. She waved and indicated the empty tables in a universal take your pick gesture. We seated ourselves at the booth nearest the counter and waited for her to finish whatever she was about.

“So, what’s wrong with you and Neil?” Sylvia asked bluntly.

One eyebrow rose nearly to my hairline. “Who says anything’s wrong?”

She rolled her eyes at me. “It’s as plain as the nose on your face.”

“Really?” Dismayed by the news, I touched the aforementioned nose.

“At least to the people who know you. Leo and I discussed it when you left to get breakfast. He said he hadn’t seen the two of you so at odds since you first met.”

I winced, partially at the idea of my two friends gossiping about my marriage but mostly because I remembered how at odds Neil and I had been back then. Him coming off a rocky divorce and enduring flashbacks of horrors he’d witnessed in the line of duty. Me with shreds of my tattered pride wrapped around myself in a flimsy shield, a broken heart and barely a penny to my name. An attraction neither of us knew what to do about and two little boys caught in the middle of the mess. We’d saved each other, come together, made a family built on love and respect.

And my zany antics were destroying it all, stone by stone.

I offered the lame excuse that people have leaned on since the dawn of time to weasel out of laying their cards flat on the table. “It’s complicated.”

“I am a certified life coach.” She tossed her braid over her shoulder.

I drummed my fingertips on the table. Maybe talking things out with Sylvia would help. Hell, at the very least it couldn’t make things worse.

Before I could get into it though, Alex approached, three mugs and a coffee pot in hand. “I was hoping you’d come back. Coffee?”

Though Sylvia waved away the offered java, the monkey on my back leapt with joy. “Your blend is delicious.”

Alex grinned. “Thanks. It’s a dark Columbian brew I got on wholesale. It’s not exactly Starbucks, which would never fly in a place like this anyway, but I do what I can to enlighten the local palates.”

“So, you’re a native then?” Sylvia asked casually.

“Born and bred. Though don’t let that fool you into thinking I’m some sort of backwoods rube.” From the flash in her eyes, I gathered someone had made that mistake before.

“Never crossed our minds,” I told her honestly. “Besides, I’m the last person to cast stones, being something of an introvert myself.”

Sylvia snorted and I kicked her under the table as subtly as possible.

Luckily, Alex was distracted when the bell over the diner door chimed and a handsome man appeared. From his dark complexion, uniform and the way her face lit up when she saw him, I guessed he was Sheriff Sam Ruiz, Alex’s husband.

“
Amor de mi vida
,” he greeted her, a tender look on his face.

She rose and they shared a sweet but thorough kiss. I smiled, even as a twinge of envy reverberated in my heart. I missed effortless moments like that with Neil. Though I thought he’d forgiven me for the lie, our parting this morning was stilted, both of us almost afraid to commit to words that might do more harm than good.

“Sam, this is Maggie Phillips and…?”

Mental forehead smack. I’d forgotten to introduce Sylvia. Luckily, she was the kind of gal who had no problem introducing herself with an outstretched hand. “Sylvia Wright.”

Sam flashed even white teeth. “Ah,
cazador de fantasmas
.”

I blinked. “Huh?”

“The hunters of ghosts, seekers of the
espíritus perdidos.”

“Lost spirits,” Alex translated with an eye roll. “For an educated man, you buy into a whole lot of rubbish, Sam Ruiz.”

Sam didn’t appear fazed by his wife’s critical assessment. “I’m not the only one. The town hasn’t had so much to discuss in years.”

Compelled by God only knew what, I hastily added, “We’re not really ghost hunters. Not like we’re certified or anything.” Hell, I didn’t even know if ghost hunters
needed
to be certified. Maybe they were just certifiable.

“No?” Sam’s dark brows drew together.

“What we’re doing is cleansing the house, both physically and spiritually,” Sylvia added.

While she and Sam lapsed into a discussion of the techniques she intended to use, I turned toward Alex.

“You don’t believe the place is haunted?”

She hesitated and I saw she was careful to choose the right words. “Well, I’ve never seen anything personally, but there have been rumors for as far back as I can remember. Creepy old estates are perfect for teenagers bent on mischief and raising hell. My friend Erin had gone there to make out with her boyfriend and said she heard something weird down by the water. She told me it was like singing, but it made all the hair on her body stand on end. Her boyfriend wanted to explore, but she was too scared so she convinced him to take her home. He went back though.”

Something about her face clued me in. “Did something happen to him?”

She shook her head but before I could breathe in relief she said, “No, not to him, at least not that he would say. But that night, his father had a heart attack.”

A chill raced through my bloodstream and left ice crystals in its wake. Just like the stories we’d unearthed about the bean nighe. “Did he actually see the ghost?”

Alex shrugged. “I have no idea. His family moved away after that and he and Erin broke up. He might have told her about that, you’d have to ask her, but it was a long time ago.”

 “Anyone else that you know of who saw the ghost?”

“The Grants,” Sam, having overheard my question, offered.

Grant was a Scottish surname, one that dated back to the time of the highland clans. This had to be the right track. I barely stifled the urge to rub my hands together. “Where do they live? Do you think they’d talk to us?”

Sam and Alex exchanged a look and Alex nodded slowly. “Maybe. They were caretakers of that property as well as the Grey estate. If anyone knows something about the ghost, it’ll be them.”

“Grey?” Sylvia blinked. “They used to own the lock house property, right?”

“Along with half the damn county,” Alex muttered. “But the taxes have been brutal for property owners and they’ve been selling off big chunks at a time whenever they can.”

“Do you think they know something about the ghost?” I asked.

Sam rubbed his smooth chin and shrugged. “It doesn’t hurt to ask, right?”

****

Neil was busy mowing the lawn when we returned to the house. I couldn’t contain my smile at his thoughtfulness. He could have started on any of the millions of tasks the place required but he was doing this one for my mental comfort. Short grass gave snakes less places to hide, just in case the exterminator had missed any.

The warm spring afternoon gave us a chance to open all the windows and let the fresh air combat the damp interior. Leo unrolled blueprints across the card table, the house and grounds as he envisioned them when we were finished.

“We’re going to take out this wall here.” He pointed at the two dimensional sketch and then at the hallway. “Make one giant great room out of it for wow factor. Floor to ceiling windows to capitalize on the view.” He rattled on about the proposed changes.

“Great,” I said when he paused for breath. “What do you want us to do?”

Though my mother-in-law had made it sound like Sylvia and I were in charge of any and all changes, I knew better. Leo had marching orders straight from the source and Laura trusted no one else to accomplish the job to her satisfaction.

 “Today we want to take note of anything salvageable. Light fixtures, windows, bathroom fixtures, etcetera. You two can test things out and make a list of what stays and what needs to be replaced. Eventually we’ll rent this place out and we want whatever property manager we hire to know what’s original and what’s been upgraded.”

 Set to our tasks, Sylvia and I explored the house, starting with the upstairs bedroom where she’d spent the night. Huge evergreens flanked the room on either side, wreaking havoc on the gutters but providing a nice bit of shade, which was badly needed in the sultry summer months. The house had one ancient air conditioning unit in the master suite.

I spun slowly to study every corner of the octagonal shaped room. “It reminds me of a fairy princess’s tower.”

Sylvia paused in her prodding of the baseboard heater. “Now which of us is the kooky one?” She gave the rusty cover a rattle and it promptly fell off.