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Delia Banks crouched by the front display window of Same As It Never Was antiques, not the least bit dressed for cleaning. Flowing blouse, dark slacks, multiple bracelets jangling, and long dark hair tossed out of the way over her shoulder, she tackled the small handprints and smeary mystery marks with Windex. "I don't get it," she said. "These weren't on the glass when we closed last night. And they're on the inside."
"Energetic mice?" Melinda Gordon suggested, admittedly without giving it much thought. She sat behind the marble-topped sales counter at the back of the store, scrolling through the online listings for local estate sales on her beloved laptop. Ooh, nice. "This looks good -- JWC is having an estate sale not far from here a week from now." She reached for her pen and a pad of Same As It Never Was stationery to note the particulars in an absently neat hand. The counter otherwise held the business phone, the register, and an appropriately antique keepsake box where Melinda stashed notes and paper clips and other clutter bits. Beyond that, the counter gleamed as clear as she could keep it, with gift wrapping papers, small bags, and ribbons on the shelves beneath. Every possible personal touch... and it made her customers' eyes light up when they saw the care with which their purchases were handled.
"Not mice," Delia said, still at work. "So definitely not mice. Mice always leave..."
Melinda looked up, perfectly willing to play fill-in-the-blank. "Poop?"
"I was going to say signs." Delia flipped the rag over to buff the window one last time and pushed herself to her feet. "Oof. I swear, this used to be easier." She gave Melinda a wry glance, tugging her blouse into place over her generously shapely form. "You just wait, Miss Young-and-Beautiful."
"I'm supposed to buy that?" Melinda looked up from the laptop screen, giving Delia -- forty-something, mother to teenaged Ned, as fit as stair-climbing could make her -- a skeptical look writ large.
"Yes," Delia told her. "And if you say You're only as old as you feel or anything like it, I'll..." And there she trailed off, because Delia was too gentle at heart to come up with anything truly wicked.
But sensing a note of true frustration in Delia's voice, Melinda held up her hands in surrender. "Okay, okay," she said. "You win. You're old. Happy now?"
Delia appeared to give this some thought. "Strangely," she said, "not so much." And went to return the cleaning supplies to the back room, a long narrow space crammed with furniture making its way to the sales floor, following restorations and cleanup downstairs. The cramped space was defined mostly by a desk, with just enough room for Melinda to engage in a hastily clandestine encounter with an unexpected visitor of the spiritual sort.
Once, before her store partner Andrea had been killed in the crash of Flight 395, Melinda hadn't gone to such extremes -- hadn't rushed to hide such encounters. But as Delia spent more time in the store, Melinda had grown used to concealing her gifts once again. Too many personal betrayals had taught her well, and she knew Delia wasn't even close to coming to terms with her recently acquired knowledge that her employer and friend spent a great deal of time talking to earthbound spirits.
A very versatile place, that back room. Not to mention that it was the only route to the bathroom.
Melinda tucked her long, dark hair behind her ear and returned her attention to the laptop, found she'd reached the end of the estate sales -- never a long list, not unless she went all the way into the city, or sometimes west to Albany -- and clicked on the link that would take her back to the local paper. That, too, was usually short and sweet... headlines at a glance, done for the day, and no trees killed for it.
She glanced around the store as the page loaded, satisfied that all was ready for the day -- the clothing sorted by size if nothing else, off in a niche to the side; the furniture and wood floor gleaming; the whimsical bathtub with its glass ornaments full to overflowing but no more; and the shelves of heavenly soaps and lotions neatly arranged and dusted. Hmm. This could be a lotion-sniffing day, at that. Outside, Grandview was settling into its day, the morning pedestrian rush hour through the town square tapering off to a trickle. The line at Village Java just might be getting short enough to handle...
"Hey," she called back to Delia. "You up for some coffee?"
"Coffee might help me get up," Delia responded, with a faintness that suggested she was probably washing her hands in the little bathroom.
swingbatterbatterswing a kaleidoscope of sound and motion and bursting colors and a sudden explosion of darkness and the astringent smell of ants
The counter swooped in her vision; Melinda gasped, catching herself just before she toppled from the stool and into the hard countertop. "Well," she murmured, straightening. Ants? "That was so very special." She ran a hand over the smooth, deep green velvet of her corsetlike vest and tugged the overlong sleeves of a lace-edged poet's blouse back into place. "Now I really need that coffee." Melinda scanned the store again -- this time with narrowed eyes, looking for any sign of spiritual influence.
But no flickering lamps; no lotions gone askew. Except... the seasonal section nearest the door -- vintage spring clothing and a darling wicker baby carriage beside a turn-of-the-century croquet set -- looked subtly disturbed. She focused in on it but realized quickly enough that Delia had moved the carriage in order to clean the glass.
So. Nothing.
But a spirit so fragmented... so confused that it was able to communicate only in short jumbled pieces...
Melinda could definitely count on a return engagement or two, until whoever it was sorted themselves out well enough to communicate more clearly. She took a deep breath, made the mental note to stay off ladders and other tricky high places until this particular spirit had crossed over, and returned to the online news.
Because, after all, this was her life: ghosts on board.
The headline startled her out of serenity mode. Local Man Murdered in Bayview. Whoa.
"Did you hear about this?" she called back to Delia, lowering her voice as Delia appeared in the doorway, still smoothing lavender lotion over her hands, her eyebrows raised in unspoken question. Melinda gestured at the laptop monitor. "The murder?"
"On the radio this morning." Delia moved in to look over Melinda's shoulder, where the screen displayed a photo beside the headlines. "Oh, and he looks so young, too."
"Just starting a new life," Melinda murmured, picking up on the story lead-in. Gordon Reese, murdered...
"That's what they said on the radio, that he'd been hanging with a rough crew -- one of them died young, one went to jail, and Gordon himself had a nasty temper, ran hot all the time -- but then he met his wife... went to school, got a degree, went into her family business. They run a B&B on the edge of town, and they have that great honey over in the market -- you know, the creamed honeys, and the honey with the comb -- "
"Oh! Right -- the Honey Bs stuff! I've seen it. I never dared to get any. Put that stuff on Jim's french toast and my head might just explode."
"I guess they just had a baby," Delia said, and her voice held all the wistfulness of a mother who knew her son's father would never see him grow up.
"That's so sad." But when Melinda turned back to her laptop, a flurry of activity outside the store caught her eye. Early spring morning, grass so very green, flowers so very thick and bright along the sidewalks, the war memorial standing tall in the middle of it all. Only a few stragglers from the morning traffic flow, now, and the first of the day's shoppers, and --
The murdered man's ghost.
Gordon Reese. A clear and strong angry ghost etched with unnaturally acidic sharpness -- not vague, not hazy, not uncertain. A ghost with purpose and plenty of energy.
She thought at first that he was looking for her -- looking and hadn't quite found her. But that didn't fit, because he wasn't looking at all. In fact, his entire being focused on the man before him -- a man who walked, oblivious, through the square, coffee in one hand, briefcase in the other, and distraction on his face.
Or maybe not so oblivious, for as the ghost kept pace -- not walking, but flickering from spot to spot so quickly his movement was nothing but a blur -- the man stumbled slightly, barely keeping hold of his coffee. He steadied himself, giving the sidewalk a bemused look as though he might find a gaping crack there, just as the angry spirit halted his dizzying harassment and leaned into the man so their faces nearly touched, bellowing something without sound, but with a force that made the air around them ripple with vehemence.
Spirits, Melinda had found, had a very poor understanding of personal space. Either that or they just didn't care, but to the same effect. In your face turned quite literal at times.
And then the ghost was gone. Worn out... distracted... or so beside himself that he couldn't hold his presence here.
"Melinda?" Delia said, acting as though it wasn't the first time, or the second.
"Hmm?" Melinda straightened, bouncing back into cover-your-tracks mode as she pushed the laptop lid down, ready to clear the counter and make way for the day. And then she hesitated, seeing the look on Delia's face and realizing her friend had seen too much in recent weeks to fall for cheerful misdirection any longer. So she said, "Trust me. You don't want to know."
"Maybe not, then," Delia said, acting a little sorry that she hadn't just played along with the cheerful misdirection. "But how about that coffee?"
"Sounds great." Melinda tucked the laptop beneath the counter. She had found a spirit struggling with confusion and a spirit struggling with anger, but neither of them w...
