Chapter Six
Leaving Gil with his morning kibble, I grabbed my recharged phone and sprinted out the front door and down the porch steps. Someone had been in my house . Someone had been in my house long enough to trash my library and leave threatening messages on a typewriter with no ribbon.
I wasn't happy about my list of possible suspects. For one thing, it included an unknowable number of cleaners. For another, it included the cute guy who'd appealed to me more than anyone in years—including Greg—as well as the only living relative of the previous owner, and the probate attorney. I mean, seriously? Could the universe have thumbed its nose at me any more clearly?
Here, Maz, have a house. Oh, by the way, somebody clearly doesn't want you in it .
I glanced up and down the street, although what I expected to see, I couldn't say. It's not like the burglar would have hung around, waiting for me to threaten him with my poker. Which I had left inside, anyway. I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. That same pale, bespectacled face, like a studious owl, peered out at me from the window of the Craftsman house next door. When they saw me looking, they twitched the curtains across the window.
Okay, maybe there was another suspect: Creepy neighbor who wasn't keen on having an ethnic kid next door. I refused to suspect Tia Sofia. For one thing, she wouldn't have been able to reach the top library shelves. For another, Gil liked her. Although that may be more related to her giving him a metric ton of kitty treats.
I sighed. First thing, call Ricky and somehow nonchalantly inquire whether he'd come back during his flexible hours and vandalized my house. Yeah, not exactly a meet-cute, by any stretch of the imagination. I had Carson's number on his business card. As Avi's cousin, somebody who'd grown up around this house, he'd be the most likely candidate to know who else might have a key to the place. And no matter what he'd said, I didn't believe any kid worth his Playstation wouldn't know the best secret ways in and out of a house. Then there were Taryn and the mysterious cleaners.
But as I was scrolling through my contacts to find Ricky's number, a silver Prius drew up to the curb in front of me and a woman in a burgundy pantsuit climbed out of the car. She was maybe six inches shorter than me, but her elaborate crown of braided locs made her a little taller. Her warm brown skin practically glowed with health, and when she smiled at me, dimples popped in her round cheeks. "Hi. You must be Maz. I'm Taryn."
I tucked my phone away and raised one hand in a half-hearted excuse for a wave. "Yeah, that's me."
She strode around the front of her car and I was interested to note that she wore black Doc Martens with her raw silk suit. "I'm sorry I wasn't here to welcome you. I tried to call and get an ETA, but it went to voicemail."
"Yeah, my phone died about an hour and a half out of town."
"Ricky let me know you'd arrived, though, and that he'd given you the tour." She grinned, and despite myself, I smiled back. "Well? What do you think?"
"To tell you the truth, I'm not sure what to think."
Her wide brow pleated. "What do you mean?"
I held up both hands. "Don't get me wrong. The house is amazing, and I'm still pinching myself that it somehow belongs to me. But…" I huffed out a breath. "Come in?"
She nodded, although she didn't completely lose the frown. When we stepped inside, Gil immediately galloped over and stood at her feet, looking up at her. "Oh, my. Look at you." She crouched down, seemingly unconcerned about the amount of ginger fur wafting onto her burgundy pants. "Aren't you the handsome boy?" She glanced up at me. "His name?"
"Gilgamesh. Gil. And I'm not sure when he became such a flirt. Usually he disdains all strangers, but he was downright polite to Ricky and actually purred for Tia Sofia. He hated my ex-boyfriend."
She flashed me a grin as she gave Gil one last skritch and stood up, brushing her hands on her slacks and decorating them with more ginger fur. "What can I tell you? He's obviously a good judge of character."
I thought about Greg and his latest passive-aggressive shenanigans. "Yeah. I probably should have listened to him the first time he hissed at the jerk."
She tilted her head. "I'm guessing you didn't invite me in here just to meet your cat."
"That would be a no." I gestured to the library doors. "Take a look at what greeted me this morning."
She stepped past me, expertly evading Gil's attempt to trip her by flopping in front of her feet, and looked inside. Her eyes widened, and she shot a look at me that I couldn't interpret. "You found it like this?"
Was that accusation in her tone? Did she think I'd do something like this to a house that I'd lived in for less than twenty-four hours? "Yes. I came downstairs around 6:30 or so. I never heard anything. I slept in the main suite, although on the floor in the turret."
She hunkered down again, prompting Gil to try to climb onto her knee. She petted him absently as she gingerly lifted one of the torn pages. She studied it. "Is this the only book that was destroyed?"
I nodded. "Others might have been damaged a little from being tossed around, but that's the only one that had its pages ripped out, as far as I can tell."
"Interesting." She shifted Gil aside and stood. "Is this all?"
I glared at her. "Isn't it enough? I mean, look at it."
She raised both palms in a placating gesture. "I'm not belittling it, trust me. I'm just trying to determine the full scope. Did you call the police?"
"Not yet. I was about to, but…" I bit my lip and glanced away.
"What is it?"
I sighed. "The thing is, I just got into town. I'm barely moved in. I don't know anything about what the environment is here. I mean, aren't most small towns pretty insular? Don't they close ranks against strangers and newcomers?"
The corners of her lips twitched. "Ghost has its idiosyncrasies, but corrupt, bigoted law enforcement isn't one of them. We don't have a town police force, just one of the county deputies who's stationed here, but she's a good sort, and the sheriff believes in the rule of law."
"Good to know. But what I mean is, if I were to… cast aspersions on anybody when they're well known in town and I'm a cypher? Let's just say I'm planning to make this my home. I don't want to get off on the wrong foot by making enemies my first day."
"What aspersions would those be?"
"Well…" I swallowed convulsively. "The only people who know I'm here are you, Ricky, Sofia, and the person next door who keeps peeking through her curtains at me. Oh, and Carson." I grimaced. "Actually, his welcome is what made me dial into the we-don't-want-your-kind-here cliche."
Her brows drew together. "Why? What did he do?"
I laughed weakly. "He mistook me for a burglar when I was trying to get in the front door and threatened to tase me."
She rolled her eyes. "I'm not sure Carson owns a Taser. But I'm sorry that was your introduction to Ghost. We're actually a pretty friendly place. Sofia and Ricky are much more the norm than Carson, especially since he moved to Richdale to open his real estate practice."
"What about"—I jerked my thumb at the Craftsman—"the window peeper?"
This time, she laughed, a full, rolling belly laugh that would have fit somebody twice her size. "That's Professor DeHaven. Patrice."
My eyebrows shot up. "Professor? Professor of what? Covert surveillance?"
"No. She's actually an adjunct professor of parapsychology at Richdale University."
"Parapsychology? You mean, like ESP and voices from beyond the grave?"
She waggled one hand. "Among other things."
"Is that even a thing?"
"It is in Ghost and Richdale. Patrice also owns the needlework-slash-occult shop in town."
I narrowed my eyes. "Needlework and occult are not exactly two words I expect to find sharing shop space."
Taryn sighed. "They didn't used to. They used to be two separate shops, but Ghost businesses have been struggling a little since the bypass out of Richdale opened a few years ago. We don't get as many beach-goers stopping on the way to the coast anymore. Patrice's mother owned the needlework place and her aunt owned the occult shop. But after Mrs. DeHaven passed, the aunt moved to Portland. Patrice didn't want to deprive Ghost of two businesses at once, so she combined them and hired a manager to run them for her."
"Someone adept at psychic knitting?" I asked dryly.
She grinned. "You'd be surprised. But while Patrice kept the businesses open, she's a dyed-in-the-wool introvert. When she's at home, she keeps to herself to recharge for teaching her classes."
I suppose I could sympathize. My grandmother had been an introvert too, and spent much of her last couple of years happily never leaving her apartment. "Well, it's a little freaky, her peering out the window. All I can see is those round glasses glinting behind the window, like—"
"Mrs. Who," we both said simultaneously and grins broke out on both our faces.
"You read A Wrinkle in Time ?" she asked.
"From the time I was in grade school. I was so excited when they announced the movie, and the casting for Meg was perfect. But—"
"But not the three ladies." She wrinkled her nose. "Ugh. I wonder if the name actresses refused to play the parts if they couldn't glam it up." She shook her head. "Tangents aside, was there anything else?"
"Some throw pillows were tossed around in the family room, and a painting is askew. But otherwise, the only thing"—there went those spiders again, my own personal arachnid Rockettes—"was on the typewriter in the attic."
She frowned. "Typewriter in the attic? The only time I was in the attic, it was packed to the rafters with dusty cardboard boxes and chairs with their cane bottoms broken. Granted, that was when I was thirteen."
"They must have cleared it out when they did the renovation. Now, it's cleaner than my old apartment, and the only thing that's in there is a Smith Corona electric with no ribbon on top of a Mission-style secretary."
Something flickered in her eyes. "Show me."
"The typewriter? Or the paper that was on it?"
"Did you remove the paper?"
"Yeah. I brought it downstairs."
"I wish you hadn't done that," she murmured, then sighed. "Okay. Show me the paper."
I led her into the kitchen and pointed to the paper on the counter. "There. The typewriter didn't have a ribbon, but the keys still made an impression."
She didn't touch the page, just stared down at the freaky message:
no no no no no no no no no
When she looked up at me, her dark eyes shone with excitement. "Maz, I don't think you had a burglar."
"Are you kidding? Then how do you explain the mess in the library?"
She rolled her lips together, clearly weighing her response. "Could you discover how they got inside?"
I huffed. "The only thing I can figure is that they came in through the garage. Which reminds me—thanks for arranging the cleaning service, but could you return the garage opener to me?"
Her forehead puckered. "Cleaning service?"
"Yeah. The place was spotless—and I mean spotless . Even the refrigerator and oven sparkled like new. So whoever you hired did a great job—unless one of their employees got it into their head to stage a little mayhem."
She took a deep breath. "Maz. I think you should sit down."
For some reason, her gentle tone freaked me out nearly as much as Patrice peering through her curtains. I scooped up Gil and cradled him against my chest for comfort. "Why?"
"Please? Sit?"
I huffed again, but stalked over to sit at the breakfast table, settling Gil on my knee. "Okay. I'm sitting."
She sat down across from me, folding her hands on the table. "I didn't arrange a cleaning service."
I just stared at her. "But the house was clean. Could someone else have arranged it? Carson? He did show up when I arrived. Maybe he has a key, or the code to the garage." Although if he had, why hadn't he told me so when he'd met me on the porch? "Since Avi was his cousin, maybe he's been taking care of the place."
She shook her head. "Yes, they were cousins, but they weren't close. Carson resented Avi for… well, never mind why, but Avi would never have entrusted a key to Carson."
"Ricky, then," I said, a little wildly, because I did not like where this conversation was going. "He keeps the outside pristine. And he knows his way around a lock. He could have gotten inside…"
Except Ricky had been just as surprised at the state of the house as I'd been. Unless he was a really good actor. Plus, he said he knew how to change the garage door code.
But Taryn shook her head again. "He wouldn't come inside, not without an invitation."
"Then who? Damn it, Taryn, somebody came into my house while I was asleep and vandalized it. They could have vandalized me too, because I never heard them. Somebody did it, because I certainly didn't."
She nodded slowly. "Maz, have you wondered why this town is called Ghost?"
I reared back in my chair, causing Gil to dig his claws through my jeans and into my leg. "No. No no no no no." Jeez, I sounded like the mysterious typewriter message. "I am not living in a haunted house. I was not vandalized by a freaking ghost !"
"Then how else can you explain it?"
"I don't know." My eyes were probably bugging out of my head by this time. "A conspiracy? Maybe everyone in town is in on it, trying to drive me away so the other heirs can take possession. I mean, the will was contested, right?"
"Both of them. There are still issues that have to be resolved, which we can go over at my office as soon as you've got your feet under you here, but those aren't related to anyone who lives in Ghost."
"I don't care. This is reality. Reality is… concrete. It's finite. It has rules . And those rules don't include freaking ghosts popping out of the freaking beyond to trash my freaking house !"
She reached across the table and laid her hand over mine, which was clutching the edge of the table as though I were Kate Winslet and it was the only thing keeping me from going down with the Titanic .
"Maz, it's not that bad."
"No?" I jerked my hand out from under hers and jabbed a finger toward her. "Then you're saying this whole thing is an elaborate prank? Because I've gotta tell you, I've always despised April Fool's Day, and besides, that was two weeks ago."
"It's not a prank or a practical joke." Her smile was almost incandescent. "What it is, I think, is the thing that will save the town and put Ghost back on the map."
I crumpled, dropping my forehead against the table. "No no no no no no no no no ." Yeah, the typewriter knew what it was talking about.
"If it's okay with you, I'd like to invite a couple of people over to meet you and see this."
I rolled my head enough that I could glare at her out of one eye. "See what? Me having a nervous breakdown?"
"No. The library. The typewritten message. The house." She ducked so she could meet my gaze. "I think it will help. I promise."
What other option did I have? Move back to Portland for another round of couch surfing? Gil had hated that. Pretend like nothing was happening, and wait for the other shoe to drop and the destruction to escalate? I'd seen Amityville Horror . I knew that wouldn't end well.
But if I was thinking about horror movies, I'd probably crossed the threshold into provisional paranormal believer. Might as well lean into it.
"Who you gonna call?"
"One of my dads. Saul Pasternak. He's the executive director of Richdale Manor, Ghost's answer to the Winchester Mystery House." She smiled wryly. "And Patrice DeHaven. It's time to pull in the experts."