What a Ghoul Wants (36 page)

“And for twenty-five years they looked the other way as husband after husband was
found facedown in that moat. Mary swears that she never took part in anything else,
but she was less forthcoming about whether or not her brother had assisted Fredrick
with the killings. I suspect that Arthur was not involved in André Lefebvre’s murder;
however, I do suspect he knew when and how it would be carried out by the butler.”

“Which is why he made sure to stay up late with Gilley and John the night I went to
visit Heath in the hospital,” I said. “I did think it was a bit weird that he would’ve
been up so late after such a harrowing day. I chalked it up to the fact that he was
shorthanded without Merrick. But that brings me to another question, Inspector: Why
did Arthur kill Merrick?” I’d been such a fool to believe the old man’s act. His shock
and grief over the clerk’s death had rung so true for me that I’d never suspected
he might be a killer too.

“Mary and Arthur were very nervous that Merrick was becoming a little too suspicious
of the events taking place here at Kidwellah,” he explained. “Mary caught the young
clerk eavesdropping on a phone conversation Mrs. Lefebvre had with Lady Hathaway—ostensibly
to plan the murder of her husband and arrange payment—and Mary knew that Merrick might
be perilously close to alerting me.

“She began to spy on him, and on a trip upstairs to bring Mrs. Hollingsworth her tea
service, Mary happened to see you two unlock and enter the south wing. Knowing there
was only one way you could have obtained a key, she confronted Merrick, who confessed
that he suspected there were murders taking place here at the castle. He told her
that he believed someone was using the Grim Widow to kill unsuspecting guests, and
he hoped the two of you would help to expose the scheme and the murderer. He had no
idea that Mary was a part of the evil plot, and after she told her brother. . . well,
young Merrick had to be dealt with. Quickly.”

I sighed sadly. Poor Merrick. “I’m really glad we stayed and freed him from the Widow’s
clutches,” I said after a lull in the conversation.

The inspector looked at me with a sad smile. “I’m very glad you stayed as well, Miss
Holliday. For me, my brother, and my father. We owe you and your friends here a sincere
debt.”

“What’ll happen to your mother?” I asked as gently as I could.

Lumley sighed heavily. “She’ll have to face the charges and stand trial. It’s the
least I owe my father.”

I reached out my free hand and squeezed his. “I’m really sorry, Inspector.”

His sad smile remained. “Don’t be. Yes, I may have lost Mother to this mess, but in
another sense I’ve gained back the honorable name of my father. I know now that he
was a good and decent man, and bloody courageous to boot. Someone to be proud of,
and someone I hope can be proud of me.”

“Oh, he’s proud of you,” Heath told him and I was suddenly aware of Clarance’s energy
hovering right behind my sweetie. “He wants to thank you for helping him and your
brother, and he also wants to let you know that they’ll be just fine, so don’t worry
about them. Also, after this case is all cleared up he wants you to get your butt
back to London. He says you belong at Met Pol.”

The inspector’s jaw fell open, and all he could do was stare at Heath.

Right about then I felt Clarance withdraw, and I knew he’d probably used up all the
energy he could’ve mustered after being on the other side such a short while. “He’s
gone,” Heath said, and the inspector nodded, attempting once again to smile, but it
was still very sad. Heath must have noticed, because he added, “Inspector, I’ll make
you a deal. Any time you need to hear from your dad or your brother, you call me,
and I’ll give you a reading.”

I felt my eyes mist at Heath’s sweet offering, and across the table from us, the inspector’s
smile lost all of its sadness, and I knew he’d be okay.

* * *

Two days later the whole crew was up early and everyone was packed and ready to move
on to our next location shoot. We were all anxious to be away from this castle and
its memories, even though we’d had the most successful shoot we’d ever recorded and
Chris was thrilled with our footage.

Heath and I had made sure that all of the dowager’s victims had made it safely to
the other side, and for kicks we’d also rooted out three other spooks haunting the
main side of the castle and had gotten them over as well.

The crew had been doing a lot of high-fiving since Gopher told us that our bonus checks
would be cut by the end of the week, and in general everyone was once again in very
fine spirits. All except for Gilley, who was in the foulest of moods. I couldn’t understand
it until I saw him having an almost tearful farewell to Michel.

As I watched the pair, I really felt for poor Gilley. It was a rare thing for him
to put his heart out there. When we lived in Boston, he had a new guy on his arm every
week, but none of them lasted more than a few days. He just didn’t let himself get
too close to someone. But Michel was different. The photographer was sweet and gentle
and a great conversationalist. He laughed at all of Gilley’s jokes and snarky comments,
and Michel could keep up with him quip for quip.

I knew that they’d promise to keep in touch, but it wasn’t the same, and both of them
traveled so much for their jobs that it wasn’t likely they’d ever be in the same place
together.

But then I noticed that Gopher was eyeing the two of them with a sort of half smile,
and my curiosity was piqued. At last I watched him walk over to the boys and say,
“Michel, I was wondering. Would you be open to a permanent job? I mean, I know you’re
mostly freelance, but we really benefited from having you on this shoot, and I could
use someone like you for the rest of the season.”

“Ohmigod yes!” Gilley cried, and then he realized that he’d spoken for Michel.

I laughed softly and ducked my chin, pretending I hadn’t noticed. But I heard Michel
say, “I’d like that, Gopher. I’ve nothing else lined up at the moment, and I had a
grand time on this adventure.”

I lifted my eyes to see Gilley so happy and excited that he was practically dancing.

Next to me I heard, “About time Gopher made him an offer. I thought I was gonna have
to step in there for a minute.”

I eyed Heath keenly. His look was a little too smug. “Wait. . . you did that?”

He grinned. “Gil deserves to be as happy as you and me, so I merely suggested to Gopher
that now that Chris has opened up the purse strings, we have room in our budget for
a professional cameraman, and Michel’s footage was the best out of anyone’s. I also
may have hinted that with Michel in the field, Gopher could hang back with Gilley
and direct from a safe zone.”

I couldn’t help it, I laughed. Then I wrapped my arms around him and said, “You are
so
getting lucky tonight, do you know that?”

Heath bounced his brows and replied, “We’ve got twenty minutes until the shuttle arrives
to take us to the airport, you know.”

I grabbed his hand and took off for the stairs. “We forgot something!” I called to
the crew. “Be back down in a few!”

We ended up being just a
little
late for the shuttle too.

R
ead ahead for a sneak peek at the next

GHOST HUNTER MYSTERY

Coming in January 2014 from Obsidian.

Being a psychic medium definitely has its downers. As a group, we’re a pretty haunted
lot. (Yes, I went there. . . . ) Many, if not most, of us had troubled childhoods
that caused us to develop a sixth sense in order to cope. And I’m no exception. My
mother died on an autumn morning when I was eleven, and in his subsequent grief, my
father turned to the bottle and his work. In many ways I lost both parents that day.

It took years, but Daddy finally let go of the grip he had on his daily half gallon
of vodka and sought help. He’s been sober for about sixteen years now, but the residual
damage to our relationship has remained. During my teenage years we fought constantly.
In fact, I spent most of my junior and senior years of high school at my best friend
Gilley Gillespie’s house, being looked after by Gil’s wonderful mother, who’d been
treating me like one of her own from the moment my own mama passed away.

Things didn’t improve even after high school when Gil and I moved from Georgia to
Boston. Daddy and I just couldn’t seem to make peace even with those twelve hundred
miles between us. And every visit home thereafter was torture for me—usually ending
with an early flight back to Boston. Recently, however, that’s changed, and I can
safely say that these days we’ve never gotten along better. Although that could be
because we haven’t spoken to each other since I started showcasing my talents on TV.

Daddy was willing to tolerate my rather, as he put it, “disturbing” ability to talk
to the dead as long as I didn’t make a public spectacle of myself. Nearly two years
ago I’d done a cable special on haunted objects, and since then I’ve landed a nice
contract working on my own ghostbusting cable TV series, called
Ghoul Getters
. News of my success on the airwaves spread like wildfire in Valdosta, fueled no doubt
by Mrs. Gillespie, who’s crazy proud of both Gilley and me. The consequences, however,
are that now the only acknowledgments I get from Daddy are a Christmas present (picked
out by his secretary) and a birthday card (also picked out by his secretary) with
a check inside (probably forged by his secretary).

And as I brought the mail inside my office in Boston, so happy to be home again after
a grueling four-month filming schedule, my mood dampened the moment I saw the return
address on a small package mixed in with the mail.

“Well, I guess my birthday
is
next week,” I said with a sigh, passing through the inner lobby of the little office
space I rent out on Mass Avenue, about three blocks away from my condo. After setting
the other mail aside, I searched my desk for a pair of scissors.

“Come ’ere!” I heard a squeaky voice cry.

“In a sec, baby,” I replied.

“Come ’ere!” the voice insisted.

I ignored the command and fished around the drawer, finally coming up with the scissors,
and began to carefully cut through the package.

“Come ’ere! Come ’ere!
Come ’ere!
”

I share my office (and my condo and my life) with a feathered red-tailed African gray
parrot named Doc—whom I’ve had since fifth grade. He’s adorably sweet, funny, and
maybe a teensy bit demanding. “I’m busy, honey,” I told him.

Doc climbed along the bars to exit the little door of his cage and hike his way up
to the roof—which houses a nice play stand, and where he could perch and have a better
view of what I was fiddling with. “What you do?” he asked. Doc speaks better English
than most toddlers.

“Opening a package.” At this point I got the thing opened and managed to pull out
a square black box with gold lettering on top that indicated it’d come from one of
the finer jewelry stores in Valdosta—my hometown. Lifting the lid, I sucked in a breath
when I took notice of an absolutely beautiful gold charm bracelet with three charms—a
golden parrot, a small happy ghost, and a heart. For a moment I just stared at the
gift, completely taken by surprise. “What’re you up to?” Doc called, trying to get
my attention again.

I realized I had my back to him, so I turned and lifted the beautiful bracelet up
for him to see. He cocked his head curiously.

“What do you think?” I asked him.

Doc blew me a really good raspberry.

“Everyone’s a critic,” I laughed. But I went back to staring at the charm with a mixture
of bewilderment and delight, while Doc added to the raspberry a long litany of clucks,
whistles, and happy chirps.

Doc’s been with me since right after Mama died. My paternal grandmother had given
him to me after my mother’s passing to help bring me out of the terrible grief I was
silently suffering.

The baby parrot was like a beacon of light in a world filled only with heartbreak.
My mother had been the kindest, most wonderful and loving person I’d ever known, and
her loss devastated me right into muteness. I spoke not one word for many months after
her funeral. Even when I fell and broke a finger, I cried silently, unable to free
my vocal cords from the crushing weight of my grief. Doc changed all that. Like a
phoenix he pulled me from the ashes, and slowly, with his help and love of mimicry,
I healed and started talking again. But the chatty, charming bird seemed to have no
effect on Daddy. And I’ll never understand why, but right from the start Daddy had
seemed to resent my delightful pet. In fact, he’d tolerated Doc a lot like he’d tolerated
my ability to talk to dead people. . . as in, he’d barely tolerated him at all.

So, opening Daddy’s gift to reveal something so lovely and thoughtful as a parrot
charm and a ghost charm was a real surprise. And the heart was also an out-of-character
choice from Daddy. He just wasn’t sentimental or outwardly emotive. He was more like
a closed door that I’d long since given up knocking on.

For a second I thought that it simply must have been his secretary’s choice, but she’d
never shown one shred of sensitivity for me. Previous gifts were simplistic items,
like a pair of candlesticks or a paperweight or a picture frame. I’d long thought
of Daddy’s secretary of twenty years, Willamina, as a harsh, cold woman who preferred
dressing all in black except for the bloodred lipstick she coated her thin lips with.

Her style made her look as if she were perpetually in mourning, and given how my mother’s
death had turned Daddy into such a terribly cold and bitter person, I found some irony
in that.

At last I tore my eyes away from the charm and fished around inside the envelope it’d
come in, finding a card inside too. I opened it to read a lovely handwritten note
in beautiful cursive, wishing me the happiest of birthdays and hoping to catch up
soon. The handwriting wasn’t anyone’s I recognized, but the signature was clearly
Daddy’s. And not the forged signature of his secretary, but Daddy’s real scraggly
scrawl, which added even more mystery to the gift.

I moved to my desk and sat down, because I needed to sit down. Slipping the bracelet
on, I stared at it and wondered first, what was going on with Daddy, and second, how
should I respond to such a lovely, thoughtful gift?

The average person would have immediately picked up the phone to call and thank her
father for the kindness, but as you may have guessed, I’m not exactly the average
person, and our relationship was complicated. There were too many years of missed
opportunities, broken promises, harsh words, and judgmental attitudes to be swept
aside by a bit of precious metal.

Still, after taking off the bracelet to set it gently back inside the box, I did reach
for the phone. “Sweet baby Jesus, gurl! Why are you calling me so early?” Gilley answered
by way of greeting.

“I just got a package from Daddy,” I said, getting right to the point.

Gilley yawned, and I could imagine him bleary-eyed and mop-headed, tangled in his
bedcovers. “Let me guess: This year’s check is for two hundred, right?”

“No. It’s not a check.”

“His secretary just sent a card? Jeez, M. J., why does that man even bother anymore?
I’ll call Ma, she’ll make sure you get a nice present on your birthday.”

I smiled. Mrs. Gillespie had been making sure I received lovely gifts on my birthday
for twenty-two years now, and she never needed prompting from her son, either. “No,
Gil, you don’t understand. Daddy sent me a really nice gift.”

That won me another yawn. “Black leather gloves?”

“A solid gold charm bracelet with three charms: a parrot, a heart, and a little Casper
ghost.”

Gilley was silent for about five seconds. “Is your dad sick?”

I leaned back in my chair and threw an arm over my eyes. “I have no idea. We haven’t
spoken in almost a year and a half.”

“Leave it to me,” Gil said. “I’ll call Ma and get the scoop.” Mrs. Gillespie was tied
to all the gossip in our hometown.

I hung up with Gilley but kept my arm over my eyes. What if Daddy
was
sick? What if he was
really
sick? I knew that with my abilities I could probably find out the answer, but I was
too chicken. There was a part of me that didn’t want to know, because I’d already
lived through one parent’s terminal illness, and it’d nearly been my undoing.

Doc began singing a Village People song and I knew he was trying to coax me out of
the distressed state I was in, but my mind was going in circles and I couldn’t pay
attention to him at the moment. Instead I turned my chair around, propped my feet
up on the windowsill, and went back to laying my arm over my eyes. After working four
straight months in the middle of the night, I find that I think better in the dark.

“M. J.? Are you all right?” a voice asked several minutes later.

With Doc’s singing and my whirling mind I hadn’t heard the front door open. What’s
more, as I stiffened and sat up in the chair, I realized I recognized that voice.
The day suddenly went from disconcerting to crazy weird. Turning slowly to the front,
I took in the tall, dark, and incredibly handsome man standing in my doorway and had
to work hard to appear calm and nonchalant. “Hello, Steven,” I said. “What brings
you by?”

My ex-boyfriend smiled in that way that’d always made my heart quicken. . . okay. . .
still made my heart quicken. Also, the bastard had the gall to smell really good too.
“How’ve you been?” he asked, his voice deep and rich, like a great cup of coffee.

I felt my head bobbing. “Good. . . good. You?”

“Good.”

“Good.”

There was a bit of an awkward pause and then the door opened again and in walked my
current boyfriend, Heath—who also happens to be rather tall, dark, and seriously hunky.

Things went from awkward and weird to,
Are you kidding me, Universe?

Heath said nothing; he simply came in wearing a smile, took one look at Steven, darted
his eyes to me, back to Steven, then back to me as if to say,
“Seriously?”

I pretended not to notice. Oh, and I also held in the urge to run out of there as
fast as my feet could carry me. “Steven, you remember Heath. Heath—Steven. Steven—Heath.”

The two surveyed each other with narrowed eyes and forced smiles. I had a moment to
compare the two of them side by side and it occurred to me that as similar as they
are in the basics of black hair, dark eyes, and tall stature, they’re still strikingly
different. Steven’s shoulders are broad and his chest is very defined, while his legs
are very long. His face is also distinctly European in structure with a wide brow
and square features, while Heath’s face is very angled with high cheekbones and deep-set
eyes. His frame is also more proportional and corded with lean muscle. In other words,
neither was the kind of guy you’d kick out of bed for eating crackers. . . at least
not until after you’d had your way with him.

While the men stared each other down, I cleared my throat and shuffled a few things
around on my desk, and that’s when Heath must’ve noticed the charm bracelet I’d set
back in the box. “What’s that?” he demanded, pointing to the box on my desk. “You
giving her presents now, Sable?”

Steven’s brow furrowed. “Pardon?”

Hastily I put the top of the box back on to cover the gift. “It’s from my father,
Heath,” I explained quickly.

“For your birthday,” Steven said with a knowing nod. “That was nice of him.”

I noticed Heath paled a little. “Today’s your birthday?” he blurted out; then his
face flushed red. “I mean, yeah, totally. Happy birthday, honey! I came to take you
to a birthday breakfast!” Glancing back at Steven, he said, “My gift’s in the car.”

Steven smiled (a bit evilly, I thought). “Her birthday is next week, Whitefeather.
The eleventh. Might want to mark that down on your calendar.”

“What brings you by, Steven?” I nearly screeched, desperate to change the topic before
this came to blows, and judging by the furious expression on Heath’s face, we weren’t
far from that.

Steven and Heath glared at each other for a few more seconds before my ex turned back
to me and said, “I need your help.”

“My help? With what?”

“A haunting.”

That took me by surprise. . . much like the entire morning. I waved at a chair and
he came forward and took the seat directly across from me. Heath grabbed the other
chair and brought it around the desk to park it right next to mine. I held in a sigh
and sat down, hoping there’d be no suggestion from either of them of lowered zippers
and measuring tape before the conversation was at an end. “Where?” I asked, pulling
a pad forward to write on.

“It’s not a where,” Steven said, and for the first time I could see that his eyes
were lined with worry. “It’s a who.”

I blinked. “Who what?” (I may have been a little off my game from all the testosterone
fumes.)

Steven shifted in his seat, and I suddenly noticed how nervous he was. Coming to me
hadn’t been something he’d done on a whim. He’d had to talk himself into it. “It’s
not a place that’s haunted. It’s a person. My fiancée’s brother. We think he’s possessed.”

“Your
fiancée
?” I gasped at the same time that Heath said, “He’s possessed?”