Nothing but her stare. Frustrating, creepy ghost.
Why was she even sitting there in the window seat? Why didn’t she moan and disappear? Billow and then vanish until she worked through whatever griped her? Fade away and stay away until her trouble drifted out of her shadowy memory and she could complain that she had no idea what I was nagging her about if I tried to remind her? Obviously there was still a lot I didn’t understand about the care and feelings of ghosts.
But in peering more closely at her, in my own cringing way, I realized there wasn’t anything in her stare that felt menacing. There wasn’t any threat in her dejected posture. And she
did
remain visible. She was there, damp and depleted, looking at me. And that gave me a small measure of hope—a ghost of a hope.
I almost snorted at that thought, but I wasn’t feeling
that
comfortable with her behavior. Plus I didn’t want her to think I was laughing at her. Maybe it was her natural inclination to keen and wail over the troubles paralyzing her, but she was holding herself in for my sake. Maybe this was her way of asking for help. And if all of this had to do with her horrific memories of that earlier murder-suicide, then there
was
something I could try to do to help.
“Okay, tell you what.” I packed as much positive, upbeat, “altogether now, we can do it” into those words as I could muster. “It’s Saturday, so the shop will be busy,
but if I can get away for a break, I’m going to run over to the library, do some research. Cat, I’m sure you’ll think you need another nap by then, but Geneva, um…” My upbeat faltered. I knew I might regret this later, but I made myself smile and pressed on. “Geneva, if you want to come with me, you can.”
A
rdis and Joe Dunbar arrived simultaneously not long after I had the shop up and running for the day. Ardis came in the back singing, “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’.” Joe came in the front door with two steaming take-away cups in his hands and a newspaper tucked under his arm.
“It is,” Joe said, agreeing with Ardis when she’d flung her arms out on the last note. “I was over in Unicoi and watched the sunrise from up on top of Beauty Spot.”
“And I watched it with my eyes closed from under my pillow with the shades drawn,” Ardis said. “Sleeping late is a beautiful way to start any day. I didn’t get where I am by traipsing all the way to Unicoi to watch the sunrise. What were you doing over there?”
“Bit of this and that. Here, I thought you two might like coffee.” He handed us each a cup.
“You’re a doll,” Ardis said. “I slept so late I didn’t have time to make any. You’re sure you don’t mind?”
“That’s why I brought them.”
“You’re a very sweet liar, too. I know you brought one of these for Kath and the other for yourself.”
I could feel her looking at me out of the corner of her eye, wondering how much an offered cup of coffee might mean. She could wonder all she liked. I might wonder, too, and for all I knew, so might Joe. I’d never given him
any particular encouragement toward anything beyond a getting-to-know-you-type friendship. That murky baggage thing was taking some getting used to.
“Be a dear, though,” Ardis said, holding her cup under her nose and closing her eyes, “and when you run back to Mel’s for your own cup, see if she has any cheese bagels and bring me one?” She took a noisy sip. “Mmm, straight to my caffeine tooth.”
“Bagel for you?” Joe asked, looking my way.
“No, the coffee’s fine. Thanks.”
“Back in a few, then. I’ll just leave this here.” He took the paper from under his arm and set it on the corner of the counter.
Ardis opened her eyes when she heard the camel bells signal he’d left. “I don’t really need the bagel, but I wanted a chance to talk to you in private first. Now that you’ve slept on it, what’s your take on all of that out there at Debbie’s place last night?”
Right then I was more interested in the newspaper Joe had so casually left on the counter. Too casually? Why bother to leave it? Was it suddenly too cumbersome to carry around with another cup of coffee and a bagel? Hmm. Two could play at casual. I pulled the paper toward me. It was the
Asheville Citizen
. Not one I usually read.
“I think we need to find out where the other journalist was,” Ardis was saying. “Whatever she was up to might be more ominous than what the one we caught was doing. Whatever
that
was. It might be like that Sherlock Holmes case about the dog that didn’t bark. I think her absence from the scene of last night’s crime means something sinister. Are you listening?”
“Halfway.” I was also leafing through Joe’s paper, but I interrupted that and told her about my middle-of-the-night brainstorming. “I wrote down a few notes and
some questions it would be good to follow up on. I’ll add yours. Do you think Mel and Thea will mind if I ask them to do a few things?”
“You mean
assignments
?” Ardis asked.
“We can call them that if you want.” She’d made “assignments” sound exotic and dangerous. Also possibly foolish. I hoped I wasn’t getting anyone into anything we’d regret.
“I most certainly do want to call them assignments,” Ardis said, almost licking her lips. “And you should, too. Hon, if you don’t mind a little constructive criticism, move beyond the ‘might be’ and ‘maybe.’ You passed that stage days ago.”
“You could be right.”
“I
am
right. And when you give out the
assignments
, don’t leave out Ernestine. You know she’ll want one, too. And Debbie. They all want to contribute. Can you e-mail their assignments to them? Or text them! I don’t have one of those fancy phones, but now I really think I should get one. Instant communication. Instant answers. Tiny camera. Video! The only thing they’re missing these days is phasers you can set to stun. And wouldn’t
that
be useful. Then again, maybe you should speak to everyone in person. That might be safer. What do you think?”
She didn’t wait to hear what I thought. She was in high-excitement mode. “And what’s
my
assignment? Wait—I know—my assignment
is
Debbie. Perfect. We did well last night and she’ll be here for her shift this afternoon; you can count on that. But…”
Her hands flew, carving out the scenario playing in her mind. It was a good demonstration of why she wasn’t just a favorite player at the Blue Plum Repertory Theater, but was also the permanent, much-valued volunteer director. While she elaborated on her plan, I scanned the business section of Joe’s paper.
“…But I should see if I can get Debbie to tell me what she’s holding back from us. Don’t you get the feeling there
is
something? Well, and it’s not just a feeling. I
know
there’s something. And I know she’ll feel better once she gets it off her chest. I need to be gentle, though. That’s paramount. And don’t you love that word? Paramount. It reminds me of all those Hitchcock thrillers. But I will be gentle; I promise you that.”
“Sounds perfect,” I said, flipping through the sports section. “You’ll be all honeysuckle and kid gloves. Resistance will be futile.”
“Exactly. What have you got for the others to work on?”
“Listening in on gossip. Looking for information about the wannabe journalists. I don’t know, though. That all sounded good in the middle of the night. It’s kind of lame in the light of day.”
“Gussy it up, then. It’s all in the makeup and costuming. If you call it surveillance and research, you aren’t gossiping and being nosy; you’re skillfully employing tools of the information-gathering trade. See what I mean? From lame to legitimate in one easy vocabulary lesson. So then, besides operating Brain Central and analyzing our findings, what will
you
be doing?”
“Hmm? Oh, I guess I’ll go ahead and text the others.”
“Good. Get the ball rolling.”
“And I thought I’d go to the library over lunch. I’ve got some other, uh, research to do.”
“Hush-hush?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Good. Mum’s the word on my end and I’ll tackle Debbie while you’re gone. That way it won’t look like we’re ganging up on her.”
“Good plan. I think you’re right; there’s something going on with her…” I didn’t want to be more specific
than “something.” More specific was moving in the direction of “suspicious.” And beyond “suspicious” lay “suspect” and I really didn’t want my mind traveling that far. I continued flipping through the paper, flipping past my increasingly uneasy specifics…“Yeah, it’d be great if you can get Debbie to…hold on a sec.” Hah! I
knew
I’d find something in that paper. There was a two-page spread in the features section, complete with color photographs. “Oh my goodness. This is…I’m not sure what this is.” I couldn’t help smiling, though.
Ardis was about to snatch the paper from me when Joe came back sipping another coffee and carrying a bag big enough to hold half a dozen bagels. He saw me with the paper and caught my smile. Ardis caught his
and
mine and she smelled conspiracy.
“What are you two in cahoots over?”
“Nothing,” I said, letting her take the paper. “It’s the first I’ve seen or heard of it.”
Her glance went to the photographs, then to the headline.
“‘Where There’s a Will’? Oh good Lord.” She groped for the stool beside her so she could sit and read the article more carefully.
The piece was part interview, part travelogue, featuring a guy I’d run into a time or two named Aaron Carlin. Carlin wasn’t just an example of local color; he was saturated in it. I’d never seen him without a smile or an offer to help. I don’t think Ardis had ever actually met him, but she knew his family’s reputation for being an antisocial backwoods clan with a history of starting fires. She was not a fan of the Smokin’ Smoky Carlins.
In the article, Aaron claimed to know the locations of the various hidden caves and hollows where Will Embree had lived in the national forest—knew them because, he said, he’d been Will’s personal backcountry
guide and led him to them. The photographs showed Aaron in various atmospheric locations—surrounded by the dense foliage of a rhododendron hell, standing at the beginning of a passage between two towering, moss-covered boulders, walking along a narrow trail, and pointing out a dubious dark opening at the base of a shadowed bluff.
“Is this so-called piece of journalism the work of those two women?” Ardis asked. “Maybe that’s what the second one was up to last night. Talking to a ne’er-do-well and tapping out useless drivel on her keyboard while her partner was snooping.”
“No, I don’t think it’s them,” I said. “Not unless they’re using the pen name Carson Otterbank. Check the byline. That can’t be a real name, can it?” I looked at Joe.
He shrugged. “I’ve heard worse.”
Oops, he had, poor guy. Ardis had told me “Joe” was a name he gave himself sometime during his school years to get away from the shudder-inducing name his academic parents had given him. There were a few people around town, Ardis among them, who still called him Ten—short for Tennyson, full name Tennyson Yeats Dunbar—but not many could get away with it. His brother, Clod, also had a hefty name to contend with, but he’d fared better. Cole—short for Coleridge—wasn’t such a bad name, and Blake as a middle name was doable. But there wasn’t much anyone could do with either Tennyson or Yeats. Poor guy.
“Good Lord,” Ardis repeated. “Whyever would the editors think it was a good idea to interview a Smokin’ Smoky Carlin? And you two think this is funny?”
“Not funny, but kind of fun,” I said. “Interesting, anyway, after you’ve met the guy. It’s a human interest story,” I said.
“Mm-hmm. If ever there was one.”
From my quick perusal of the newspaper article, the reporter, Carson Otterbank—it wasn’t clear from the byline or the article whether Otterbank was he, she, or they—had spent several days in Aaron’s company, hiking the national forest, following the trail of Will Embree, and hearing stories of Will’s two years in the wilderness.
“Tall tales, I don’t doubt,” Ardis said, folding the paper and handing it back to Joe, “and we can only hope that Bonny doesn’t see this or hear about it.”
“A man has a right to his own story,” Joe said mildly.
“Are you talking about Will Embree or this particular Carlin?” Ardis asked.
“I’d say both of them and everyone else, too, don’t you think?” he said.
“And letting each person have his or her own story is part of the reason you’re so keen for us to investigate Will and Shannon’s deaths,” I said. “If you stop and think about it.”
She did think about it. Ardis was good that way—willing to look at more than one side and willing to make changes. She thought and she nodded and she put her hands flat on the counter. “You’re right again. It surely is part of the reason. And it’s why we can’t do anything without making an effort to be scrupulously fair-minded. So
I
will make an effort to lay aside my unkind and quite likely biased thoughts about
this
Carlin. No matter how well deserved they might be. Now, Joe, hand me over a bagel and tell me—can you find this Carlin for us?”
The question caught Joe off guard. While Ardis had talked herself through her concession to the possibility that not all Carlins were flaming sociopaths, I’d watched his face. It shifted from interested to questioning to catching on.
“What are
you
two up to?” His voice was drifting toward uneasy.
“Exactly what you think we are,” Ardis said. “Nothing more than what’s right. And that’s exactly what you always try to do, too. You know it and so do I. And we need your help on this. The rest of Fast and Furious are already in.”
“Carlin isn’t all that easy to find.” He opened the bagel bag and held it out for Ardis to choose from.
“Ah, asiago peppercorn. See, you
are
a good man.”
He pulled a short stack of paper napkins from his shirt pocket and handed one to her. She lifted a bagel from the bag and laid it in the middle of the napkin on the counter in front of her. It looked like an offering.
“If Carlin is hard to find,” she said, folding her hands, face as serene as Buddha’s, “then start with something easier, hon. You still have ties to Asheville?”