Town Haunts
Authors: Cathy Spencer
Tags: #dog mystery, #cozy mystery series woman sleuth, #humour banter romance, #canadian small town, #paranormal ghost witch mystery
An Anna Nolan
Mystery
by Cathy Spencer
Published by Comely
Press at Smashwords
Copyright 2013 Cathy
Spencer
This book is also
available in print at most online retailers.
Other titles in the
Anna Nolan series:
Framed For
Murder
(Book 1)
Winner of the 2014 Bony
Blithe Mystery Award
Discover other titles
by
Cathy Spencer
:
The Dating Do-Over
The Affairs of Harriet
Walters, Spinster
Tall Tales Twin-Pack,
Mysteries
Tall Tales Twin-Pack,
Science Fiction and Fantasy
Smashwords Edition,
License Notes
Thank you for
downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property
of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for
commercial or non-commercial purposes.
Thank you to a great
team of beta readers ‒ Alexandra Gall, Barbara Ledger, Ann Pappert,
Diana Patterson, and Debbie Welland ‒ and to my copy editor, Kate
Spencer.
Cover photo by RDS
Photography.
To Agatha Christie,
Dorothy Sayers, and Robert B. Parker,
whose wonderful stories
inspired me to write mysteries.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
It was the
middle of the night, but Sherman couldn’t sleep. Too many old
demons whirling around his brain and pricking at his conscience.
Frustrated, he threw back the covers and sat up on the edge of the
bed, the soles of his feet chilled by the bare floor boards.
Running his hands through his clipped, grizzled hair, he pushed
himself up off the bed, jammed his feet into slippers, and limped
downstairs in his shorts and undershirt.
The kitchen was
dark, but Sherman didn’t bother with the lights. He fumbled for a
water glass from the cupboard and took the vodka bottle out of the
freezer. The blue light from the stove’s digital clock was enough
to see by as he poured two fingers of Stoli into the glass and put
the bottle back. Leaning against the counter by the kitchen sink,
he took his first sip. Ahh. The alcohol was cold and smooth going
down the back of his throat.
Meaning to
count to twenty before taking a second sip, he rested the glass on
the sink and looked out the window past the dingy curtains. The
house was set up high on a hill next to the Crane municipal
cemetery, allowing him to see over the wall into the grounds. For a
moment, he thought he caught a flicker of light through the trees.
He rubbed his eyes and stared, straining to see it again, but the
wind was up and the trees were thrashing. There! He saw the light
again, briefly. Maybe it was one of those damned kids up to no
good. They had no respect for the dead, knocking over tombstones,
spray painting ugly messages on the walls, and leaving empty beer
cans right on top of the graves. He’d better take a look, or else
he might have a mess to clean up tomorrow.
Forgetting to
savour his drink, Sherman downed the rest and hurried upstairs to
put on his pants and a warm jacket. It was mid-October in the
Alberta Foothills, and the nights were getting frosty. He grabbed
his cemetery keys and hobbled down the stairs as fast as his sore
knee would allow. Letting himself out of the house, he slid down
the damp grass heading for the gate in the cemetery wall. The door
screeched as he opened it, and he cursed himself for not keeping
the hinges oiled. Easing the door shut behind him, he paused in the
flat orange light beneath a security lamp on the ring road.
Everything was
still except for the gusting wind. He could see his breath coming
out in excited puffs and smelled the sharp wood smoke from the
houses on the far side of the church. He shivered as the wind
penetrated his clothes. It was too cold to stand still for long, so
Sherman crossed the road and set off across the frosty grass. The
sky was enshrouded in thick, grey cloud, and it was inky black
among the plots. He got his bearings from the familiar tombstones,
running his hands over their chilled, smooth surfaces as he hobbled
past them. Pausing by a stone angel, Sherman peered to the left,
toward the older part of the cemetery. That was the direction the
light had been coming from when he had seen it from the kitchen
window.
There it was,
blinking through a stand of twisting evergreens. He crept toward
the trees, taking his time so as not to snap a twig along the way.
Was that whispering he heard? He paused to listen, but the branches
were creaking too much to be sure, so he kept on. Reaching the
evergreens, he edged around them carefully, trailing his hands over
their rough bark.
He knew exactly
where he was. There was a bench on the other side of the trees with
a plot directly in front of it. The words inscribed on the black
tombstone read, “Evelyn Mason, Beloved Wife and Mother, November 2,
1954 – March 10, 2012.” Evie’s grave. He rounded the trees and
burst out of hiding.
“What do you
think you’re doing here?” he hollered. But there was no one there,
just the dim outline of the tombstone. He hesitated, sure that this
was where he had seen the light.
“Sherman . . .”
a voice sighed plaintively on the wind. He jerked his head
sideways, trying to follow the sound, but it was impossible to tell
where it came from. His hands clutched the bench for support, the
metal cold and hard beneath his fingers.
“Who’s there?”
he yelled, straining to see in the dark.
“Sherman . . .”
the voice moaned, emanating from the heart of the plot deep in
front of him. His breath came in short gasps, and his legs were
shaking.
“Sherman!” the
voice shrieked, piercing his ears and squeezing the breath from his
lungs. He turned to run and tripped. Clawing at the ground, he
staggered to his feet, terrified of skeletal fingers clutching at
his shoulder. He tore across the grass and ran between the plots,
barking his shins on more than one tombstone. He found the ring
road and pushed himself down it, running and hopping as fast as he
could. Reaching the door in the wall, he flung it open and
staggered up the slope for home.
Thank God he
had left the front door unlocked. Once inside, he shot the bolt
home and ran upstairs to cower in bed with the ceiling light on. He
lay there, his heart thumping erratically in his chest, and willed
it to calm down. Mental imaging the people at the hospital had
called it after his heart attack five years ago. He swallowed hard
and tried to think. Was he crazy, or had his wife just called to
him from the other side of the grave?
Her photograph
was on his bedside table in a polished silver frame, the only
valuable thing still left. Staring at the beautiful young woman
with shining blue eyes smiling into the camera, a snort of laughter
burst from his lips. He laughed and laughed until his eyes ran, and
he was gasping for breath. The laughter subsided, and he picked up
the picture and clutched it to his chest.
“I’m sorry,
Evie,” he said, his voice cracking.
Two
Anna Nolan strode down Main
Street in pursuit of breakfast. It was a glorious autumn morning,
the air fresh and crisp, the sky a cloudless robin’s-egg blue. The
leaves on the trees lining the street had turned sunshine-yellow
and were dry and crunchy underfoot. Anna stopped outside The Diner
and grinned at the scarecrow sitting on a straw bale beside the
door. The Crane Chamber of Commerce was holding its annual
Halloween contest, and most of the businesses were festooned with
cobwebs, spiders, scarecrows, and jack-o’-lanterns. Frank Crow, the
restaurant’s owner, was a big Elvis fan ‒ he even had one of the
King’s Vegas costumes mounted in a display case inside the
restaurant ‒ so his scarecrow was wearing a black wig, leather
jacket, and holding a plywood guitar. Stooping, she kissed its
scratchy cheek and went inside.
Mary, The
Diner’s full-time waitress, was wiping down a vacant spot at the
front counter. Thirtyish, she wore her trademark skin-tight jeans,
the strings of her white apron tied twice around her pencil-thin
waist. Four of the five stools were occupied by truckers dressed
alike in flannel shirts, jeans, and baseball caps, their forks
scraping on their plates as they concentrated on shovelling food
into their mouths as efficiently as possible.
A long, low
wolf whistle pierced the silence. Glancing over her shoulder, Anna
spied RCMP Constable Steve Walker grinning at her from a table at
the back of the room. The rangy, darkly-handsome,
twenty-eight-year-old had just finished his shift and was still in
uniform, eating his supper before going home to get some rest. Anna
beamed as she headed back to join him, a little sashay in her
walk.
“Anna Nolan,
you are looking fine this morning. Love must truly agree with you,”
Steve said, leaning back in his chair to look her up and down as
she paused beside his table. She was wearing a midnight-blue silk
blouse over jeans that cupped her curvy hips, her long, brunette
hair flowing over the shoulders of a soft black leather jacket.
Anna was forty with a grown son, Ben, in university, and long walks
with her dog helped to keep her fit and youthful.
“Thank you,
sir, you are too kind,” she said with mock gentility, plunking down
into the chair across from him. The men at the counter stopped
following Anna with their eyes and turned back to their plates.
“Taking a
vacation day?” Steve asked. It was Tuesday, and normally she would
be on her way to work at eight o’clock in the morning. Work was at
the Chinook University in Calgary, where Anna was employed as the
administrative assistant for the Kinesiology Department. She had
held the position for four years, driving the twenty minutes north
to Calgary each day. Her ex-husband, Jack, a handsome charmer who
had cheated on her throughout their marriage, had been an actor,
and the family had settled in the small town of Crane when he had
landed a role in a movie being filmed nearby. Anna had begun
divorce proceedings before the shoot was over, however, and when
Jack left town at the film’s wrap, she and Ben stayed on.
“Uh huh. I had
to take a friend to the airport,” she replied.
“That’s right.
I heard that Sergeant Tremaine was back in town last week,” Steve
said around a piece of toast. “The guys and I were really
disappointed when he didn’t drop by the station to see us. Here we
thought that we had really bonded with Tremaine over your
ex-husband’s murder investigation, but he didn’t take the time to
visit his old buddies. I wonder who or what could have been keeping
him so busy?”
Anna rolled her
eyes. Charles Tremaine was a sergeant with a national RCMP unit
that investigated high-profile homicides throughout Western Canada.
She and Tremaine had become personally involved during the
investigation the previous spring, an investigation in which Anna
had figured as the prime suspect. She thought that looking into her
ex-husband’s personal life would help to find the murderer, and had
made it her mission to meet the women Jack had been romancing.
Tremaine had discovered the real killer despite Anna’s
interference, and now they were conducting a long-distance
romance.