Evie nearly had a heart attack and fell backward on the hard mattress. Then she glared at the translucent apparition gleefully bouncing on the bed. She had a vague impression of graying curly hair, mom jeans, a red T-shirt over a stout figure—she didn’t look like ex-FBI. There she went again with the biased preconceptions.
“You did that on purpose,” Evie accused.
“You actually see me!” Granny crowed. “I didn’t think that was possible. We had some spooks in the agency, but they bled when pricked. I don’t. I tried.”
“Hilarious. At this stage, I doubt if you could lift a knife. Want to explain what you were doing? Your granddaughter is concerned.”
Granny bounced. Her aura spurted with surprise as she floated near the ceiling. “Hoo, this is pretty cool. Can I go through walls? Are you doing this to me?”
Good question. Evie had nearly no experience with new ghosts and hadn’t a clue. She just seemed to attract spiritual energy. Did she make the energy coalesce? She knew her ghostly encounters drained cell phone batteries. Scientific experimentation probably wasn’t happening though.
Granny Marlene vanished for half a second, then re-emerged. “Wow, an empty apartment is depressing. I can’t believe I wasted so much time in this dump.”
Evie sighed. Her last murdered ghost had been a tempest of barely coherent fury. Looked like this one had attention problems worse than her own. “What’s with all the computers?”
Granny wafted in and out a bit as she spoke words more inside Evie’s head than out. “Yeah, I may have left a mess. I figured I had a few good years to make it better.”
She spun around near the ceiling and looked vaguely worried, as best as a translucent coloration could. “I was hoping my son might show up. He’s not here, is he?”
“Not corporeal or otherwise. He probably thinks packing up an apartment is woman’s work.”
“He travels. He’s probably...” Granny gestured vaguely, then shoved off the ceiling. She floated through the closed door into the hall. Evie refused to follow. It tended to be embarrassing when people saw her talking to thin air. She flipped through the last clothes in the closet—business suits that Stacey probably meant to donate. She’d read enough detective mysteries to know to hunt through pockets, but Granny had been meticulous about cleaning them out. Or her granddaughter was. That was probably how she’d found the weird bills.
Granny floated back again. “Cute guy. Is he available?”
“Not for Stacey. He’s gay. Want to give me a clue where to start? Tell me what you were investigating?” Evie pulled out a dresser to check behind it. Cobwebs.
“Bad guys, of course.” Granny’s aura colors reflected uncertainty again. “My memory isn’t clear. I used to have a great memory.”
“But you have no physical brain anymore, just leftover energy, probably because you feel as if you’ve left something undone.” Evie had been taught to be creative since birth. Reading tarot cards and crystal balls required an understanding of human nature, which her mother had. Evie—learned auras. Both required explaining things that weren’t explicable. This ghost’s aura was all over the place, in rotating pastels.
“I remember! I went fishing for phishers.” Granny Marlene spun about some more, then darted into the closet.
“Fishing forfish? Forfishermen?” Evie hoped Granny wasn’t slipping too far into the other side just yet and losing her words.
“Thieving bastards scammed what’s-er-name out of her annuity check, left her eating nothing but peanut butter all year. Social Security only pays the rent.”
Peanut butter and fish. Evie wasn’t following. She’d ask Stacey if she knew anything about annuities.
Granny flitted back and forth, her colors now cycling through various stages of anger. One thing Evie could say for Stacey’s granny, there wasn’t a muddy color in her. She was clear as a rainbow.
“Who scammed what’s-er-name?” Evie asked, in hopes of coherency. She’d learned from her last ghost that spirits didn’t seem able to recall names.
“I had to have the housekeeper fired.” Evidently agitated, she whipped back and forth faster.
“Will I find information about this in your desk? Were you murdered, by any chance?”
“Get her out.” Without further warning, Granny glimmered and was gone.
Who? Stacey? Shaken, Evie returned to the front room where Stacey and Reuben were arguing over his desire to haul all the technology to his van. She wished she could stash Stacey in the van, too.
* * *
“Can’t do this,”Roark muttered, pacing Ariel’s front porch. “Can’t live here like the damned turtle, hiding under a rock, doing nothing.” He glared at Mitch Turtle, who’d dared to poke his head out to nose his fungi dinner.
“You helped Ariel and me to uncover our real father and his killers.” Jax knew this was simplistic, but he and Ariel owed Roark, and Roark needed help.Quid pro quo. “Why shouldn’t we return the favor? You’ll be doing most of the work. You and Ariel are the computer whizzes, not me. Maybe you can teach her a few things. Who knows? You need a place to stay, and she offered.”
Roark ran his hand through his curls. “Mebbe wit my...” He glared at the security camera. “Maybe if I live out here on the porch, run an extension to keep the laptop juiced...” He studied the wooden porch running the length of the bungalow. “I’d need my sleeping bag.”