Sample chapters of Dead Men Don't Retire.
CHAPTER ONE
“I’ll own this place by the time I’m done with you, Bernard Jackson! I’ll own you! You tried to kill me, but it didn’t work, did it? I’m still here, and now I’m gonna destroy you!”
I’ve seen a lot of impressive entrances in my life, but I gotta say the one made by the wild-haired brunette standing just inside the door of the Goose Lick Café beat them all. I was so surprised I stopped with a forkful of pecan pie halfway to my mouth. For a second or two, I even forgot I was holding it, and trust me, it takes a lot to make me forget pie. I quickly recovered and lowered the fork to my plate, careful not to let the bite of pie fall off. I didn’t want to lose even a crumb of what little was left.
Now that you know I really like pecan pie—well, all pie, really—let me introduce myself. My name is Shelby Wolfe, and I’m sitting in the café my twin cousins, Bernard and Bernice Jackson, run in Goose Lick, Kentucky. Goose Lick sits on a bluff overlooking the Ohio River. I moved here about nine months ago, but I couldn’t remember ever seeing the upset woman before.
“Tone it down, Lil,” one of the half dozen men seated at the counter said, his tone mild. “Before you give us indigestion.”
A couple of the men chuckled, while one who had been looking at his phone hunched over it even more in an effort to distance himself from what was going on. The rest just went on with what they were doing. The only occupied table held two women, and they leaned across the table and whispered to each other while keeping an eye on the screeching harpy.
“Indigestion? You’ll be lucky if that’s all you get.” The woman who I guessed to be around fifty years old stepped farther into the café before she stopped and pounded her chest with her open palm. “I almost died from food poisoning! This place should be closed down, and if I have anything to say about it, it will be.”
By this time, my cousin, Red—real name, Bernard—had stepped through the swinging doors that divided the kitchen from the customer section. His face nearly matched his red hair. He’d apparently been chopping veggies, and he still held the chef’s knife in his right hand. Now he waved it at the woman.
“Food poisoning? Food poisoning?” His voice rose as he repeated the words. “Ain’t nobody ever got sick from my cooking, you crazy broad!”
“I puked my guts out half the night,” the woman screeched. “Bloody vomit all over my toilet!”
“Ah, man!” The customer who was concentrating on his phone when the woman started shouting groaned in disgust and pushed his half-eaten burger away.
“You tried to kill me,” the woman said, emphasizing her words by slamming her hand down on the counter by the register. “But you failed. I’m still here.”
“If I wanted to kill you, I wouldn’t use food to do it.” Red shook the chef’s knife at her. “I’d use something I could be sure would work.”
“Did you all see that?” The woman turned to the customers seated at the counter. “He threatened me with that knife! You’re my witnesses!”
“I didn’t see anything.” The man who had told the woman to tone it down turned to the man sitting on his left. “You see anything, Bill?”
“See what?” Bill said, and all but the disgusted man laughed. He shook his head, got up, and headed for the restrooms.
“Don’t think I don’t know a lot of people would like to see me dead. I know things certain people don’t want known.”
She stopped talking and slowly gazed around the café, looking at each person for a second or two. Most looked away when they saw her eyes on them. It didn’t seem like they were trying to ignore her. It was more like she made them nervous, and I wondered if any of them were the people she claimed to know things about.
Then her eyes landed on me, and before I could stop myself, I averted my eyes and focused on scraping crumbs off my pie plate. And I didn’t even have anything interesting I wanted hidden. Well, unless you counted my roommate…
“Well, I’m not scared of any of you or anyone else in this town,” she continued when she was finished scanning the café. “I’ve always stood up for myself, and I’m standing up for myself this time, too.”
She turned back to Red and drew herself up to her full height, which wasn’t all that impressive since she was only a couple of inches over five feet.
“As for you, I’ll see you in court. Tell whoever paid you to kill me they wasted their money!”
With those parting words, she turned and stormed out of the café. The pneumatic closer on the café’s door prevented her from slamming it, but she compensated for that by flashing Red her middle finger as she stomped past the plate glass window.
“You okay?”
Jeannie Jeffers put her hand on Red’s left shoulder. He took a deep breath before he turned and looked at her, gave her a little smile, and patted her hand.
“I’m better now that she’s gone,” he said. “I need to get back to work.”
He turned and pushed through the swinging doors, and a few seconds later, everyone in the place could hear him using the chef’s knife to take out his frustrations on the poor vegetables.
Jeannie made her way to the end of the counter where I was seated.
“Who was that?” she said.
I shrugged.
“I have no idea. I’m new here, remember?”
I’d met Jeannie Jeffers the previous summer when I’d gone to question her about her best friend who’d died under mysterious circumstances. She was living in Maysville, Kentucky, at the time. I’d quickly seen that life hadn’t been good to Jeannie. She was married to an abusive man, had had some substance abuse problems herself, and had lost custody of her children. When she finally decided to leave her husband, she ran to me. Why, I don’t know, but when her husband came after her and my resident ghost kicked him out, she needed a place to stay so I rented her a room in my house.
Yeah, you read that right. I have a ghost living in my home. My house started life as a hotel, then became the town’s police station until they built a new one, but the police neglected to take their deceased police chief with them when they moved. I never believed in ghosts, but apparently what I believed didn’t matter.
“So, you don’t know her either?” I said.
Jeannie had grown up in Goose Lick, but she’d moved away not long after graduation. Now she shook her head.
“No. She must have moved here after I left.”
“She’s from Goose Lick,” the tone-it-down man said. “Name’s Lil Harris. She left to go to college and didn’t come back till her folks died ‘bout five years ago and left her their house.”
“Six,” Bill said. “I remember ‘cause she raised a stink at the high school graduation the year my grandson graduated. She hadn’t been back more’n a month, but she was already threatening to sue the school. Said the phys ed teacher hadn’t done her job, and that’s why she was overweight and had bad knees.”
“That’s right.” Another man nodded his agreement. “I remember that. Was six years ago.”
“I do sort of remember the Harrises,” Jeannie said. “Didn’t they live in that little white house with the gray brick chimney over on Possum Branch Road? Seems like they were kind of weird.”
“That’s them.” The tone-it-down man nodded. “She comes by it natural.”
“I remember all the kids were afraid to go begging at their house on Halloween,” Jeannie said. “We thought they were witches.”
“When it comes to Lil and her mom, I think you kids got the first letter wrong,” Bill said.
The other men at the counter and the two women at the table all laughed.
The bell above the door chimed as Bernie came in.
“Did I see Lil Harris just leaving?” she said. “And give somebody in here the bird when she did?”
“Yep. You missed all the action,” Bill said. “She accused your brother of being a hitman.”
“What?”
“Accused him of poisoning her with bad food because somebody paid him to do it,” the tone-it-down man said. “Said she vomited bloody stuff all night.”
The disgusted man who’d lost his appetite had come out of the restroom and was halfway back to the counter, but when he heard that, he turned around and headed back. I was glad I didn’t have a weak stomach because I would have hated to waste the last bite of my pie.
“Said she’d see him in court,” Bill said. “Guess the judge’ll be gettin’ a visit from her.”
Bernie moved behind the counter and stashed her purse in a lower cabinet on the wall between the kitchen and the counter.
“That woman’s got some serious problems.”
Her statement got a lot of nods of agreement, and just like that, the mood shifted back to what it had been before the crazy woman had burst in. Bernie topped off everyone’s coffee, including mine. The disgusted man ventured out of the restroom, hurried to the register to settle his bill, and left before anyone could bring up the subject of Lil’s emesis again.
“You have some interesting people in this town,” I said to Bernie when she made her way back to my end of the counter.
“Yeah, we do. Some of them even claim to see ghosts.”
“Hush!”
I looked around, but the men had gone back to discussing University of Kentucky basketball and the two women were conversing in a low voice about something they obviously didn’t want anyone else to hear. Jeannie had gone to the kitchen when Bernie got back, probably to check on Red.
“Will she really sue Red? Or the café?”
“Probably.” Bernie shrugged. “She’s sued us before. Twice.”
“Really?”
“Yep. Sued the café once because we ran out of toilet paper in the ladies’ room and sued Dad once for overcharging her for a piece of pie that she thought was too small.”
“Well, I can understand that,” I said. “Especially the small piece of pie.”
“You’re hilarious. Not.”
“What happened with those cases?”
“Nothing. She filed them herself because she couldn’t find an attorney who needed money badly enough to deal with her, and the judge threw them out as soon as he heard what they were about.”
“Do you think that will happen this time? She claimed she got sick.”
Bernie shrugged again.
“Who knows? Maybe if she saw a doctor and he can back up she was suffering from food poisoning, the judge might allow it. But unless someone else comes forward who claims they got sick from eating here, too, I doubt it will go anywhere.”
“Maybe you should just ban her from the café,” I suggested.
“Now that’s the best idea I’ve heard you come up with in a long time.”
CHAPTER TWO
The disgusted man might not have been able to finish his hamburger after hearing about Lil Harris’s digestive issues, but his loss was Biscuit’s gain. Biscuit is my dog. She’s a 20-pound beauty with blond hair—kind of looks like a Golden Retriever puppy, but she’s nearly four years old. She loves talking walks, especially when they include a stop at the café where she always gets a tiny piece of hamburger from Bernie. This time her chunk was a little bigger than usual thanks to the disgusted man’s leftovers.
I knew better than to offer it to her with my hand—that’s a good way to lose a fingertip—so I tossed it to her before I untied her from the post that had once been part of a hitching post during horse and buggy days. Unless it’s raining or icy, Biscuit and I always walk or jog to the café, usually on the paved path that runs along the bluff that overlooks the Ohio. We’d walked the path on our way to the café, but now I opted for taking the sidewalk through downtown on our return home.
Home. We’d been in Goose Lick for a little more than six months, but already “home” was what it felt like. As we walked, we passed several Goose Lick residents bundled in their winter coats who cheerfully greeted us and patted Biscuit, telling her how pretty she looked in her blue and black checkered dog coat with the fleece lining. I’d given it to her for Christmas and told her it came from Santa. It could have, right? I’d never believed in him either, even when I was a kid, but after learning I’d been wrong about the existence of ghosts, I figured anything was possible.
The former hotel/police station I’d bought was at the edge of town, but since the town wasn’t all that large, it took us only twenty minutes or so to get there—and that was only because we kept getting stopped by Biscuit’s admirers. We’d had a three-inch snowfall a few days before. It had all melted, but the streets were still wet, and in some places, mud had been smeared across the concrete when cars pulled in or out of unpaved driveways. Rather than mess up the front hall, I opted for going around to the back door that led into the mud room.
My ex-husband, Scott, and I had made a career out of buying houses cheap, rehabbing them, then selling them for a profit. We’d also had a few fourplexes that brought in a modest rental income. When I walked in on him doing the nasty—in our bed, no less!—with Amy Winegardner, the realtor who’d handled the listings for our flipped houses, I’d thrown the expected fit and promptly divorced the creep. Truth was, I was a little relieved to have the excuse.
Anyway, Bernie had called me a few days before that unpleasant occurrence and told me about the old police station. It had been built as a hotel around 1900 and had lots of charm, but it also needed a lot of work. She thought it was perfect for Scott and me to rehab and resell or turn into apartments. It would have been perfect for us if Scott had kept his pants zipped, but now it was perfect for me.
Warmth and the smell of freshly baked bread enveloped us as we entered the house. I pushed the door shut behind me and breathed in the yummy smell. Not for the first time, I was thankful for my roommates—well, the live ones at least. I unleashed Biscuit, who promptly went tearing into the kitchen without wiping her paws, then shrugged out of my jacket, pulled off my boots, and sat down on the small bench to pull on the sneakers I’d left there.
“Hi, sweetie,” my aunt Vivian cooed. “Did you have a nice walk?”
I didn’t bother to answer since I knew she wasn’t talking to me. I know my place in the household. Biscuit and Sneaky Pete, my brown tabby, might argue over who was number one, but I knew I wasn’t in the running.
“She got a bigger than usual chunk of burger,” I said, “so, yes, she had a nice walk.”
“That’s was nice of Bernie, wasn’t it, cutie pie?” my aunt cooed to Biscuit.
“I don’t think she did it to be nice,” I said. “She just didn’t want to waste the food.”
While Biscuit ran off to do her dog duty of checking that the house was as she’d left it, I sat down at the kitchen table and told Viv what had happened at the café. Aunt Lucy came in while I was talking. By the time I finished, Vivian looked shocked and dismayed, while Lucy looked ready to find Lil Harris and kick her you-know-what. They’re sisters, but they have different approaches to life.
“She’s going to sue Red?” Lucy said. “Sue my nephew? He won’t have to kill her because I will!”
“Lucy!” Vivian’s hand went to her throat. “Oh, my goodness! You don’t mean that!”
“The heck I don’t!” Lucy slammed her hand down on the kitchen counter.
“What am I missin’? Who’s killin’ who?”
I groaned when I heard the voice. I don’t know why I kept expecting to come home one day and find it empty of ghosts, but I did. Hope springs eternal, I guess. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Chief Jebediah Carpenter. I did, but I was pretty sure I’d like him better if he were alive and actually knocked before he showed up. This just popping up unexpectedly anywhere in the house was unnerving.
Well, okay, almost anywhere. He was respectful of bathrooms and bedrooms, so I suppose it could be worse. Still…
“Some crazy woman named Lil Harris says Red tried to poison her. She says she’s going to sue him.”
Lucy spit the words out, and I do mean “spit.” I saw droplets of moisture glittering in the light from the windows. Lucy will be ninety-four in March—just two months away—but age hasn’t slowed her down. If Lucy decided to take on Lil Harris, I’d put my money on Lucy.
Hmmm…maybe I could rent out the old skating rink and stage a cage fight. I could publicize it on my blog. If the weather cooperated and the roads were passable, we could probably draw tourists from Indiana, West Virginia, and maybe Tennessee and…
“Aw, don’t worry about Lil,” my ghost said. “She’s sued everybody in this town at one time or another.”
“She hasn’t sued me,” I said.
“Give her time.” Jeb grinned. “She sued me three—no, four—times, but she dropped the suits before they even made it to the judge.”
“Why? Did you agree to settle out of court?”
“Nope. I just turned on the charm. That’s all it took.” He winked at Aunt Viv. “I’m a charmin’ guy, ain’t I, Vivian?”
“Oh, Jeb!” Vivian blushed, her hand going to her throat, while Lucy rolled her eyes.
“What’s she threatenin’ to sue Red about?” Jeb said.
“She claims she got food poisoning from something she ate at the café.”
I realized then that I hadn’t asked Bernie or Red when Lil Harris had last eaten there and what she’d eaten. I’d check with Jeannie when she got home. Red had probably told her the whole story.
When Jeannie had moved in with the aunts and me—and Jeb—she’d needed a job. The café needed a waitress. Serendipity in action. It was serendipity in action when Jeannie and Red laid eyes on one another, too. When I’d first gone to see Jeannie in Maysville and told her who I was related to, she’d confessed she’d had a crush on Red when they were in high school. Bernie told me Red had had a crush on Jeannie back then, too, but because she was two years ahead of him, he’d never had the nerve to do anything about it.
Jeannie had filed for divorce by the end of the first week she’d lived with the aunts and me. She didn’t have money for an attorney, but considering she and her mean husband, Billy, didn’t have anything to fight over, she didn’t need one. However, there were still fees to file on your own. Jeannie had been going to wait till she had a job, but Lucy wouldn’t hear of it. She gave her the money and told her to consider it a gift.
Now Jeannie was saving every dollar she could to hire an attorney to help her regain custody of her children. She wasn’t worried about Billy fighting her for them.
“He never cared about them anyway,” she said. “Yelled at them all the time and said they were more trouble than they were worth. He won’t fight me.”
I agreed. He wouldn’t fight her for the kids, but his being a poor excuse for a father wasn’t the only reason or even the main one. When she’d run to me, he’d come after her, but it turned out he could see Jeb—and his friends. That man wasn’t coming anywhere near Jeannie or Goose Lick again.
The only downside was that I was worried that that poor excuse for a human being might be related to the aunts and me. Our gift or curse—depending on whether you asked the aunts or me—ran in our family. Bernie couldn’t see them, but she could hear them. The aunts assured me that our family wasn’t the only one with the so-called gift, but I was still trying to figure out how to get a DNA sample from Billy that I could send off to one of those places that could confirm if he was or wasn’t related to us.
Or maybe I should leave well enough alone. Ignorance is bliss, right?
“Anybody else get sick?” Jeb said.
“If they did, they haven’t told Bernie or Red yet,” I said. “Bernie doesn’t seem too worried about it.”
“Poor ol’ Lil.” Jeb shook his head.
“Poor?” Lucy looked at him like he’d lost his transparent mind. “Poor?”
“She’s an unhappy woman,” Jeb said. “Has been as long as I’ve known her. We was in high school together. Her family was a little on the strange side, and you know how kids are. She got picked on a lot. Was short and chubby and not the prettiest thing—had acne real bad back then and clothes that looked like somethin’ even Goodwill would throw in the dumpster. Smart, though. Got a scholarship to UK, went off to college, and that’s the last Goose Lick saw of her till her folks died. I don’t think she even came home for a visit in all those years. Surprised me when she decided to stay.”
“Considering all the lawsuits you say she’s filed against people in Goose Lick, maybe she came back to get even,” I said.
Jeb pushed his transparent cop cap back on his head.
“You know, you might be right. Hadn’t thought of that.”
“Well, she’d better leave my nephew alone,” Lucy said, “or she’ll wish she’d stayed in whatever hole she’d been in all those years because food poisoning will be the least of her worries.”
CHAPTER THREE
I sat up in the dark, my heart racing, struggling to get loose from whatever had me trapped. Pete was crouched on the other pillow, growling, and Biscuit was at the bedroom door barking. As I got more awake, I realized it was only the blankets that were holding me down. I stopped struggling and peeled them off me, then sat up on the edge of the bed and listened.
Two voices toward the front of the house. One was male and I was pretty sure it belonged to Jeb. I couldn’t understand the words because he was speaking in a low voice. It sounded like he was trying to calm someone down, and since the other voice was loud and belonged to a female who sounded upset, I was pretty sure I’d interpreted the tone correctly. The female voice sounded familiar, but it didn’t sound like either of the aunts or Jeannie. I slipped my feet into my bedroom slippers and stood, sliding my arms into the robe I’d tossed over the chair next to my bed.
At the door, I hesitated. Jeb was a ghost. The female voice didn’t belong to either of the aunts or Jeannie, so that meant…
You can see where I’m going with this.
Chief Jebediah Carpenter wasn’t the only ghost who’d made an appearance since I’d moved into the old police station. There was Bullet, his beagle, who had died of carbon monoxide at the same time he had. He was Biscuit’s buddy and Pete’s archenemy. But there were other human ghosts, too. Crake and Krystal were two who had died in their teens, and they stopped by to visit from time to time. Then there had been the night when Jeannie’s abusive husband had tried to drag her back home, and all those angry female ghosts had shown up and helped escort him off the premises. They hadn’t been back to visit, and for that I was grateful. They were a scary bunch.
I wondered if the voice I heard belonged to one of them. It didn’t sound like Krystal, and it definitely wasn’t the aunts or Jeannie. But I hadn’t heard the voices of any of the angry ones who’d helped kick Jeannie’s husband to the curb, so how would it sound familiar to me…
And then I knew. The voice had sounded familiar because I’d heard it earlier that day in the Goose Lick Café. It belonged to Lil Harris, and that raised a few questions for me, like what was she doing here? Had she learned I was related to Bernie and Red and decided she might need to include me in the lawsuit? But the most important question to me right now was how could she be carrying on a conversation with Jeb? Learning she could see ghosts would explain why she sounded upset, but was I going to have to figure out a way to get a DNA sample from her, too?
I cinched my robe tighter and used my foot to shove Biscuit back from the door. The last thing I wanted was for her to run out. Lil was liable to accuse me of siccing my dog on her. I glanced back at the bed and confirmed Pete was still on the pillow, tail switching and a low growl emanating from his throat. The livestock secured, I opened the door a foot or so and squeezed out, then quickly shut it before Biscuit could squeeze out behind me.
My haunted house is three stories high, but the ground floor is larger than the second floor and the full attic thanks to an addition that had been added at some point in its life. What the aunts and I call the “back hall” extends from the dining room to a rear door leading to the back yard. One side of the hall is an outside wall, but six large rooms open off it on the other side which looks out toward the river.
Soon after I moved in, I remodeled the first two rooms for my bedroom, office, full bath and a walk-in closet. When the aunts joined me, I’d offered them each their own room, but they insisted on sharing like they’d done all their lives. So, I created another suite out of the two rooms at the end of the hall.
That left two rooms and a hall bath. Jeannie was currently set up in one of the rooms. I had painted the walls and refinished the floor, but that was all I’d done so far. I was waiting to see if she was staying and if she’d get her children back. The aunts and I had met her seven-year-old twins, Molly and Kyle, and fallen in love with them. We’d told her when—not “if”—she got the kids back, they could continue to live with us if that’s what she wanted. That had made her cry and Aunt Viv hug her. Aunt Lucy and I had stood back and blinked a lot until it was all over. Anyway, I figured if and when the three of them were reunited, I’d remodel the rear of the second floor into a separate apartment for them if they decided to stay.
Now that I was outside my bedroom, I could tell the voices were coming from the front of the house. I made my way to the dining room. The kitchen, living room, and front hall open off it, and I could see the kitchen and living room were empty. Jeb and Lil Harris were either in the foyer or in the library that opened off the foyer opposite the living room. I headed that direction, and sure enough, the two of them were standing in the foyer.
Jeb was facing my direction and looked up when he saw me in the living room doorway. I stopped, shocked at the sadness I saw in his eyes. I’d expected irritation, frustration, or even his usual expression of tolerant amusement, but I hadn’t expected sadness. Then my eyes shifted to the irate woman shaking her finger at him and I understood.
Lil Harris was dressed in a blue flannel nightgown patterned with small white flowers with green leaves. It reached to her feet, which were bare. Her black hair was mussed, as it would be if she’d just gotten out of bed.
It had been in the high thirties when I’d gone to bed, and the weatherman had said the low overnight would be twenty-nine, yet Lil wasn’t wearing a coat. Or shoes. But that wasn’t surprising. Dead people didn’t need coats or shoes in winter or any other time.
She must have noticed Jeb’s eyes focus on me because now she half-turned, and when she saw me, she looked confused. She also looked transparent, but the part of me that was starting to recover from the shock noticed that she looked more solid than Jeb had the first time he’d appeared to me. I wondered if her assertive personality made her more solid or if I was getting better at seeing dead people.
“Who are you?” she demanded, her hands on her hips. “I don’t remember ever seeing you here before. You spying on me?”
Before I could gather my wits enough to answer, she continued.
“Wait! I’ve seen you before. You were at the café this morning. You were a witness. You saw Bernard Jackson threaten me with that knife.”
She turned back to Jeb.
“She can tell you. He threatened me in front of everyone in the café, and now look what he’s done.”
She ran her hands down over the front of her nightgown to draw Jeb’s attention to it, and then she turned back to me. This time she turned all the way around, and when I saw the front of her gown, I thought for a second I was going to pass out. I steadied myself on the door frame and took a deep breath.
The front of Lil Harris’s semi-transparent gown was ripped open and covered in blood. There was no question that poisoning from food or any other means hadn’t been the cause of her death. Lil Harris had been stabbed to death, and according to her, Red had been the stabber.
CHAPTER ONE
“I’ll own this place by the time I’m done with you, Bernard Jackson! I’ll own you! You tried to kill me, but it didn’t work, did it? I’m still here, and now I’m gonna destroy you!”
I’ve seen a lot of impressive entrances in my life, but I gotta say the one made by the wild-haired brunette standing just inside the door of the Goose Lick Café beat them all. I was so surprised I stopped with a forkful of pecan pie halfway to my mouth. For a second or two, I even forgot I was holding it, and trust me, it takes a lot to make me forget pie. I quickly recovered and lowered the fork to my plate, careful not to let the bite of pie fall off. I didn’t want to lose even a crumb of what little was left.
Now that you know I really like pecan pie—well, all pie, really—let me introduce myself. My name is Shelby Wolfe, and I’m sitting in the café my twin cousins, Bernard and Bernice Jackson, run in Goose Lick, Kentucky. Goose Lick sits on a bluff overlooking the Ohio River. I moved here about nine months ago, but I couldn’t remember ever seeing the upset woman before.
“Tone it down, Lil,” one of the half dozen men seated at the counter said, his tone mild. “Before you give us indigestion.”
A couple of the men chuckled, while one who had been looking at his phone hunched over it even more in an effort to distance himself from what was going on. The rest just went on with what they were doing. The only occupied table held two women, and they leaned across the table and whispered to each other while keeping an eye on the screeching harpy.
“Indigestion? You’ll be lucky if that’s all you get.” The woman who I guessed to be around fifty years old stepped farther into the café before she stopped and pounded her chest with her open palm. “I almost died from food poisoning! This place should be closed down, and if I have anything to say about it, it will be.”
By this time, my cousin, Red—real name, Bernard—had stepped through the swinging doors that divided the kitchen from the customer section. His face nearly matched his red hair. He’d apparently been chopping veggies, and he still held the chef’s knife in his right hand. Now he waved it at the woman.
“Food poisoning? Food poisoning?” His voice rose as he repeated the words. “Ain’t nobody ever got sick from my cooking, you crazy broad!”
“I puked my guts out half the night,” the woman screeched. “Bloody vomit all over my toilet!”
“Ah, man!” The customer who was concentrating on his phone when the woman started shouting groaned in disgust and pushed his half-eaten burger away.
“You tried to kill me,” the woman said, emphasizing her words by slamming her hand down on the counter by the register. “But you failed. I’m still here.”
“If I wanted to kill you, I wouldn’t use food to do it.” Red shook the chef’s knife at her. “I’d use something I could be sure would work.”
“Did you all see that?” The woman turned to the customers seated at the counter. “He threatened me with that knife! You’re my witnesses!”
“I didn’t see anything.” The man who had told the woman to tone it down turned to the man sitting on his left. “You see anything, Bill?”
“See what?” Bill said, and all but the disgusted man laughed. He shook his head, got up, and headed for the restrooms.
“Don’t think I don’t know a lot of people would like to see me dead. I know things certain people don’t want known.”
She stopped talking and slowly gazed around the café, looking at each person for a second or two. Most looked away when they saw her eyes on them. It didn’t seem like they were trying to ignore her. It was more like she made them nervous, and I wondered if any of them were the people she claimed to know things about.
Then her eyes landed on me, and before I could stop myself, I averted my eyes and focused on scraping crumbs off my pie plate. And I didn’t even have anything interesting I wanted hidden. Well, unless you counted my roommate…
“Well, I’m not scared of any of you or anyone else in this town,” she continued when she was finished scanning the café. “I’ve always stood up for myself, and I’m standing up for myself this time, too.”
She turned back to Red and drew herself up to her full height, which wasn’t all that impressive since she was only a couple of inches over five feet.
“As for you, I’ll see you in court. Tell whoever paid you to kill me they wasted their money!”
With those parting words, she turned and stormed out of the café. The pneumatic closer on the café’s door prevented her from slamming it, but she compensated for that by flashing Red her middle finger as she stomped past the plate glass window.
“You okay?”
Jeannie Jeffers put her hand on Red’s left shoulder. He took a deep breath before he turned and looked at her, gave her a little smile, and patted her hand.
“I’m better now that she’s gone,” he said. “I need to get back to work.”
He turned and pushed through the swinging doors, and a few seconds later, everyone in the place could hear him using the chef’s knife to take out his frustrations on the poor vegetables.
Jeannie made her way to the end of the counter where I was seated.
“Who was that?” she said.
I shrugged.
“I have no idea. I’m new here, remember?”
I’d met Jeannie Jeffers the previous summer when I’d gone to question her about her best friend who’d died under mysterious circumstances. She was living in Maysville, Kentucky, at the time. I’d quickly seen that life hadn’t been good to Jeannie. She was married to an abusive man, had had some substance abuse problems herself, and had lost custody of her children. When she finally decided to leave her husband, she ran to me. Why, I don’t know, but when her husband came after her and my resident ghost kicked him out, she needed a place to stay so I rented her a room in my house.
Yeah, you read that right. I have a ghost living in my home. My house started life as a hotel, then became the town’s police station until they built a new one, but the police neglected to take their deceased police chief with them when they moved. I never believed in ghosts, but apparently what I believed didn’t matter.
“So, you don’t know her either?” I said.
Jeannie had grown up in Goose Lick, but she’d moved away not long after graduation. Now she shook her head.
“No. She must have moved here after I left.”
“She’s from Goose Lick,” the tone-it-down man said. “Name’s Lil Harris. She left to go to college and didn’t come back till her folks died ‘bout five years ago and left her their house.”
“Six,” Bill said. “I remember ‘cause she raised a stink at the high school graduation the year my grandson graduated. She hadn’t been back more’n a month, but she was already threatening to sue the school. Said the phys ed teacher hadn’t done her job, and that’s why she was overweight and had bad knees.”
“That’s right.” Another man nodded his agreement. “I remember that. Was six years ago.”
“I do sort of remember the Harrises,” Jeannie said. “Didn’t they live in that little white house with the gray brick chimney over on Possum Branch Road? Seems like they were kind of weird.”
“That’s them.” The tone-it-down man nodded. “She comes by it natural.”
“I remember all the kids were afraid to go begging at their house on Halloween,” Jeannie said. “We thought they were witches.”
“When it comes to Lil and her mom, I think you kids got the first letter wrong,” Bill said.
The other men at the counter and the two women at the table all laughed.
The bell above the door chimed as Bernie came in.
“Did I see Lil Harris just leaving?” she said. “And give somebody in here the bird when she did?”
“Yep. You missed all the action,” Bill said. “She accused your brother of being a hitman.”
“What?”
“Accused him of poisoning her with bad food because somebody paid him to do it,” the tone-it-down man said. “Said she vomited bloody stuff all night.”
The disgusted man who’d lost his appetite had come out of the restroom and was halfway back to the counter, but when he heard that, he turned around and headed back. I was glad I didn’t have a weak stomach because I would have hated to waste the last bite of my pie.
“Said she’d see him in court,” Bill said. “Guess the judge’ll be gettin’ a visit from her.”
Bernie moved behind the counter and stashed her purse in a lower cabinet on the wall between the kitchen and the counter.
“That woman’s got some serious problems.”
Her statement got a lot of nods of agreement, and just like that, the mood shifted back to what it had been before the crazy woman had burst in. Bernie topped off everyone’s coffee, including mine. The disgusted man ventured out of the restroom, hurried to the register to settle his bill, and left before anyone could bring up the subject of Lil’s emesis again.
“You have some interesting people in this town,” I said to Bernie when she made her way back to my end of the counter.
“Yeah, we do. Some of them even claim to see ghosts.”
“Hush!”
I looked around, but the men had gone back to discussing University of Kentucky basketball and the two women were conversing in a low voice about something they obviously didn’t want anyone else to hear. Jeannie had gone to the kitchen when Bernie got back, probably to check on Red.
“Will she really sue Red? Or the café?”
“Probably.” Bernie shrugged. “She’s sued us before. Twice.”
“Really?”
“Yep. Sued the café once because we ran out of toilet paper in the ladies’ room and sued Dad once for overcharging her for a piece of pie that she thought was too small.”
“Well, I can understand that,” I said. “Especially the small piece of pie.”
“You’re hilarious. Not.”
“What happened with those cases?”
“Nothing. She filed them herself because she couldn’t find an attorney who needed money badly enough to deal with her, and the judge threw them out as soon as he heard what they were about.”
“Do you think that will happen this time? She claimed she got sick.”
Bernie shrugged again.
“Who knows? Maybe if she saw a doctor and he can back up she was suffering from food poisoning, the judge might allow it. But unless someone else comes forward who claims they got sick from eating here, too, I doubt it will go anywhere.”
“Maybe you should just ban her from the café,” I suggested.
“Now that’s the best idea I’ve heard you come up with in a long time.”
CHAPTER TWO
The disgusted man might not have been able to finish his hamburger after hearing about Lil Harris’s digestive issues, but his loss was Biscuit’s gain. Biscuit is my dog. She’s a 20-pound beauty with blond hair—kind of looks like a Golden Retriever puppy, but she’s nearly four years old. She loves talking walks, especially when they include a stop at the café where she always gets a tiny piece of hamburger from Bernie. This time her chunk was a little bigger than usual thanks to the disgusted man’s leftovers.
I knew better than to offer it to her with my hand—that’s a good way to lose a fingertip—so I tossed it to her before I untied her from the post that had once been part of a hitching post during horse and buggy days. Unless it’s raining or icy, Biscuit and I always walk or jog to the café, usually on the paved path that runs along the bluff that overlooks the Ohio. We’d walked the path on our way to the café, but now I opted for taking the sidewalk through downtown on our return home.
Home. We’d been in Goose Lick for a little more than six months, but already “home” was what it felt like. As we walked, we passed several Goose Lick residents bundled in their winter coats who cheerfully greeted us and patted Biscuit, telling her how pretty she looked in her blue and black checkered dog coat with the fleece lining. I’d given it to her for Christmas and told her it came from Santa. It could have, right? I’d never believed in him either, even when I was a kid, but after learning I’d been wrong about the existence of ghosts, I figured anything was possible.
The former hotel/police station I’d bought was at the edge of town, but since the town wasn’t all that large, it took us only twenty minutes or so to get there—and that was only because we kept getting stopped by Biscuit’s admirers. We’d had a three-inch snowfall a few days before. It had all melted, but the streets were still wet, and in some places, mud had been smeared across the concrete when cars pulled in or out of unpaved driveways. Rather than mess up the front hall, I opted for going around to the back door that led into the mud room.
My ex-husband, Scott, and I had made a career out of buying houses cheap, rehabbing them, then selling them for a profit. We’d also had a few fourplexes that brought in a modest rental income. When I walked in on him doing the nasty—in our bed, no less!—with Amy Winegardner, the realtor who’d handled the listings for our flipped houses, I’d thrown the expected fit and promptly divorced the creep. Truth was, I was a little relieved to have the excuse.
Anyway, Bernie had called me a few days before that unpleasant occurrence and told me about the old police station. It had been built as a hotel around 1900 and had lots of charm, but it also needed a lot of work. She thought it was perfect for Scott and me to rehab and resell or turn into apartments. It would have been perfect for us if Scott had kept his pants zipped, but now it was perfect for me.
Warmth and the smell of freshly baked bread enveloped us as we entered the house. I pushed the door shut behind me and breathed in the yummy smell. Not for the first time, I was thankful for my roommates—well, the live ones at least. I unleashed Biscuit, who promptly went tearing into the kitchen without wiping her paws, then shrugged out of my jacket, pulled off my boots, and sat down on the small bench to pull on the sneakers I’d left there.
“Hi, sweetie,” my aunt Vivian cooed. “Did you have a nice walk?”
I didn’t bother to answer since I knew she wasn’t talking to me. I know my place in the household. Biscuit and Sneaky Pete, my brown tabby, might argue over who was number one, but I knew I wasn’t in the running.
“She got a bigger than usual chunk of burger,” I said, “so, yes, she had a nice walk.”
“That’s was nice of Bernie, wasn’t it, cutie pie?” my aunt cooed to Biscuit.
“I don’t think she did it to be nice,” I said. “She just didn’t want to waste the food.”
While Biscuit ran off to do her dog duty of checking that the house was as she’d left it, I sat down at the kitchen table and told Viv what had happened at the café. Aunt Lucy came in while I was talking. By the time I finished, Vivian looked shocked and dismayed, while Lucy looked ready to find Lil Harris and kick her you-know-what. They’re sisters, but they have different approaches to life.
“She’s going to sue Red?” Lucy said. “Sue my nephew? He won’t have to kill her because I will!”
“Lucy!” Vivian’s hand went to her throat. “Oh, my goodness! You don’t mean that!”
“The heck I don’t!” Lucy slammed her hand down on the kitchen counter.
“What am I missin’? Who’s killin’ who?”
I groaned when I heard the voice. I don’t know why I kept expecting to come home one day and find it empty of ghosts, but I did. Hope springs eternal, I guess. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Chief Jebediah Carpenter. I did, but I was pretty sure I’d like him better if he were alive and actually knocked before he showed up. This just popping up unexpectedly anywhere in the house was unnerving.
Well, okay, almost anywhere. He was respectful of bathrooms and bedrooms, so I suppose it could be worse. Still…
“Some crazy woman named Lil Harris says Red tried to poison her. She says she’s going to sue him.”
Lucy spit the words out, and I do mean “spit.” I saw droplets of moisture glittering in the light from the windows. Lucy will be ninety-four in March—just two months away—but age hasn’t slowed her down. If Lucy decided to take on Lil Harris, I’d put my money on Lucy.
Hmmm…maybe I could rent out the old skating rink and stage a cage fight. I could publicize it on my blog. If the weather cooperated and the roads were passable, we could probably draw tourists from Indiana, West Virginia, and maybe Tennessee and…
“Aw, don’t worry about Lil,” my ghost said. “She’s sued everybody in this town at one time or another.”
“She hasn’t sued me,” I said.
“Give her time.” Jeb grinned. “She sued me three—no, four—times, but she dropped the suits before they even made it to the judge.”
“Why? Did you agree to settle out of court?”
“Nope. I just turned on the charm. That’s all it took.” He winked at Aunt Viv. “I’m a charmin’ guy, ain’t I, Vivian?”
“Oh, Jeb!” Vivian blushed, her hand going to her throat, while Lucy rolled her eyes.
“What’s she threatenin’ to sue Red about?” Jeb said.
“She claims she got food poisoning from something she ate at the café.”
I realized then that I hadn’t asked Bernie or Red when Lil Harris had last eaten there and what she’d eaten. I’d check with Jeannie when she got home. Red had probably told her the whole story.
When Jeannie had moved in with the aunts and me—and Jeb—she’d needed a job. The café needed a waitress. Serendipity in action. It was serendipity in action when Jeannie and Red laid eyes on one another, too. When I’d first gone to see Jeannie in Maysville and told her who I was related to, she’d confessed she’d had a crush on Red when they were in high school. Bernie told me Red had had a crush on Jeannie back then, too, but because she was two years ahead of him, he’d never had the nerve to do anything about it.
Jeannie had filed for divorce by the end of the first week she’d lived with the aunts and me. She didn’t have money for an attorney, but considering she and her mean husband, Billy, didn’t have anything to fight over, she didn’t need one. However, there were still fees to file on your own. Jeannie had been going to wait till she had a job, but Lucy wouldn’t hear of it. She gave her the money and told her to consider it a gift.
Now Jeannie was saving every dollar she could to hire an attorney to help her regain custody of her children. She wasn’t worried about Billy fighting her for them.
“He never cared about them anyway,” she said. “Yelled at them all the time and said they were more trouble than they were worth. He won’t fight me.”
I agreed. He wouldn’t fight her for the kids, but his being a poor excuse for a father wasn’t the only reason or even the main one. When she’d run to me, he’d come after her, but it turned out he could see Jeb—and his friends. That man wasn’t coming anywhere near Jeannie or Goose Lick again.
The only downside was that I was worried that that poor excuse for a human being might be related to the aunts and me. Our gift or curse—depending on whether you asked the aunts or me—ran in our family. Bernie couldn’t see them, but she could hear them. The aunts assured me that our family wasn’t the only one with the so-called gift, but I was still trying to figure out how to get a DNA sample from Billy that I could send off to one of those places that could confirm if he was or wasn’t related to us.
Or maybe I should leave well enough alone. Ignorance is bliss, right?
“Anybody else get sick?” Jeb said.
“If they did, they haven’t told Bernie or Red yet,” I said. “Bernie doesn’t seem too worried about it.”
“Poor ol’ Lil.” Jeb shook his head.
“Poor?” Lucy looked at him like he’d lost his transparent mind. “Poor?”
“She’s an unhappy woman,” Jeb said. “Has been as long as I’ve known her. We was in high school together. Her family was a little on the strange side, and you know how kids are. She got picked on a lot. Was short and chubby and not the prettiest thing—had acne real bad back then and clothes that looked like somethin’ even Goodwill would throw in the dumpster. Smart, though. Got a scholarship to UK, went off to college, and that’s the last Goose Lick saw of her till her folks died. I don’t think she even came home for a visit in all those years. Surprised me when she decided to stay.”
“Considering all the lawsuits you say she’s filed against people in Goose Lick, maybe she came back to get even,” I said.
Jeb pushed his transparent cop cap back on his head.
“You know, you might be right. Hadn’t thought of that.”
“Well, she’d better leave my nephew alone,” Lucy said, “or she’ll wish she’d stayed in whatever hole she’d been in all those years because food poisoning will be the least of her worries.”
CHAPTER THREE
I sat up in the dark, my heart racing, struggling to get loose from whatever had me trapped. Pete was crouched on the other pillow, growling, and Biscuit was at the bedroom door barking. As I got more awake, I realized it was only the blankets that were holding me down. I stopped struggling and peeled them off me, then sat up on the edge of the bed and listened.
Two voices toward the front of the house. One was male and I was pretty sure it belonged to Jeb. I couldn’t understand the words because he was speaking in a low voice. It sounded like he was trying to calm someone down, and since the other voice was loud and belonged to a female who sounded upset, I was pretty sure I’d interpreted the tone correctly. The female voice sounded familiar, but it didn’t sound like either of the aunts or Jeannie. I slipped my feet into my bedroom slippers and stood, sliding my arms into the robe I’d tossed over the chair next to my bed.
At the door, I hesitated. Jeb was a ghost. The female voice didn’t belong to either of the aunts or Jeannie, so that meant…
You can see where I’m going with this.
Chief Jebediah Carpenter wasn’t the only ghost who’d made an appearance since I’d moved into the old police station. There was Bullet, his beagle, who had died of carbon monoxide at the same time he had. He was Biscuit’s buddy and Pete’s archenemy. But there were other human ghosts, too. Crake and Krystal were two who had died in their teens, and they stopped by to visit from time to time. Then there had been the night when Jeannie’s abusive husband had tried to drag her back home, and all those angry female ghosts had shown up and helped escort him off the premises. They hadn’t been back to visit, and for that I was grateful. They were a scary bunch.
I wondered if the voice I heard belonged to one of them. It didn’t sound like Krystal, and it definitely wasn’t the aunts or Jeannie. But I hadn’t heard the voices of any of the angry ones who’d helped kick Jeannie’s husband to the curb, so how would it sound familiar to me…
And then I knew. The voice had sounded familiar because I’d heard it earlier that day in the Goose Lick Café. It belonged to Lil Harris, and that raised a few questions for me, like what was she doing here? Had she learned I was related to Bernie and Red and decided she might need to include me in the lawsuit? But the most important question to me right now was how could she be carrying on a conversation with Jeb? Learning she could see ghosts would explain why she sounded upset, but was I going to have to figure out a way to get a DNA sample from her, too?
I cinched my robe tighter and used my foot to shove Biscuit back from the door. The last thing I wanted was for her to run out. Lil was liable to accuse me of siccing my dog on her. I glanced back at the bed and confirmed Pete was still on the pillow, tail switching and a low growl emanating from his throat. The livestock secured, I opened the door a foot or so and squeezed out, then quickly shut it before Biscuit could squeeze out behind me.
My haunted house is three stories high, but the ground floor is larger than the second floor and the full attic thanks to an addition that had been added at some point in its life. What the aunts and I call the “back hall” extends from the dining room to a rear door leading to the back yard. One side of the hall is an outside wall, but six large rooms open off it on the other side which looks out toward the river.
Soon after I moved in, I remodeled the first two rooms for my bedroom, office, full bath and a walk-in closet. When the aunts joined me, I’d offered them each their own room, but they insisted on sharing like they’d done all their lives. So, I created another suite out of the two rooms at the end of the hall.
That left two rooms and a hall bath. Jeannie was currently set up in one of the rooms. I had painted the walls and refinished the floor, but that was all I’d done so far. I was waiting to see if she was staying and if she’d get her children back. The aunts and I had met her seven-year-old twins, Molly and Kyle, and fallen in love with them. We’d told her when—not “if”—she got the kids back, they could continue to live with us if that’s what she wanted. That had made her cry and Aunt Viv hug her. Aunt Lucy and I had stood back and blinked a lot until it was all over. Anyway, I figured if and when the three of them were reunited, I’d remodel the rear of the second floor into a separate apartment for them if they decided to stay.
Now that I was outside my bedroom, I could tell the voices were coming from the front of the house. I made my way to the dining room. The kitchen, living room, and front hall open off it, and I could see the kitchen and living room were empty. Jeb and Lil Harris were either in the foyer or in the library that opened off the foyer opposite the living room. I headed that direction, and sure enough, the two of them were standing in the foyer.
Jeb was facing my direction and looked up when he saw me in the living room doorway. I stopped, shocked at the sadness I saw in his eyes. I’d expected irritation, frustration, or even his usual expression of tolerant amusement, but I hadn’t expected sadness. Then my eyes shifted to the irate woman shaking her finger at him and I understood.
Lil Harris was dressed in a blue flannel nightgown patterned with small white flowers with green leaves. It reached to her feet, which were bare. Her black hair was mussed, as it would be if she’d just gotten out of bed.
It had been in the high thirties when I’d gone to bed, and the weatherman had said the low overnight would be twenty-nine, yet Lil wasn’t wearing a coat. Or shoes. But that wasn’t surprising. Dead people didn’t need coats or shoes in winter or any other time.
She must have noticed Jeb’s eyes focus on me because now she half-turned, and when she saw me, she looked confused. She also looked transparent, but the part of me that was starting to recover from the shock noticed that she looked more solid than Jeb had the first time he’d appeared to me. I wondered if her assertive personality made her more solid or if I was getting better at seeing dead people.
“Who are you?” she demanded, her hands on her hips. “I don’t remember ever seeing you here before. You spying on me?”
Before I could gather my wits enough to answer, she continued.
“Wait! I’ve seen you before. You were at the café this morning. You were a witness. You saw Bernard Jackson threaten me with that knife.”
She turned back to Jeb.
“She can tell you. He threatened me in front of everyone in the café, and now look what he’s done.”
She ran her hands down over the front of her nightgown to draw Jeb’s attention to it, and then she turned back to me. This time she turned all the way around, and when I saw the front of her gown, I thought for a second I was going to pass out. I steadied myself on the door frame and took a deep breath.
The front of Lil Harris’s semi-transparent gown was ripped open and covered in blood. There was no question that poisoning from food or any other means hadn’t been the cause of her death. Lil Harris had been stabbed to death, and according to her, Red had been the stabber.
