Page 28 of Ghost in the Cupboard

She cleared her throat.

“Well,” she said, “it does make you wonder, don’t it? Marcella suddenly disappearing?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t really know her all the well. I only saw her walking around with Gary from time to time. She’d always smile. She tried talking to me a few times, but stopped approaching me after a while. Guess she didn’t like me or something?”

“Well,” Sal looked nervous, “she probably figured out you were, well, a waste of time?”

I cocked an eyebrow.

“Marcella would depend on strange men to sometimes provide for her and Gary,” Sal said, looking anywhere but at me. “She probably figured out quickly that you were a lost cause.”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Well,” I said, “she was definitely perceptive. I’m not known for looking to spend time with pretty young women.”

Sal gave me an apologetic smile.

“Anyway,” Sal continued, hurrying away from the uncomfortable moment, “it’s not hard to see how Gary might have gotten jealous or something. Right?”

“Or one of the strange men got violent,” I said. “Why do you assume Gary had anything to do with her disappearance? It’s sad as heck, but young women like Marcella go missing often.”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Why do you suspect Gary of doing something to her?” I asked. “He comes in here all the time and never does anything violent to us.”

“I don’t know, Si,” Sal said. “That thing Ginny said the other day, about him coming in here and staring and creeping her out. Sometimes at night, I’ll wake up to find him gone, and then see him creep in later and get back to his sleeping spot as if nothing happened. He’s been doing sneaky things like that a lot. Disappearing. Reappearing. No longer talking. Lurking around. That kind of thing.”

“But has he been violent or weird otherwise?” I asked.

Sal shrugged.

“Sal—”

“Couldn’t you just ask around?” Sal’s eyes roamed around the room. “Talk to some of your ghosts and see if anyone has heard or seen anything?”

“Ghosts don’t pay attention to the living much,” I said. “Unless it’s living people they had business with in life. Or cared about.”

Sal nodded.

“You think she’s dead,” I said.

She nodded once more. Firmly.

I sighed. “Sal…I don’t get involved in these things. You know that. If she’s dead—and you think Gary had something to do with it—go to the cops. I was literally just telling Ginny hours ago that—”

“They’ll come in here and break the whole camp up, arrest everyone they can, run everyone off that isn’t arrested—they won’t investigate Marcella’s disappearance. They won’t care about some young homeless woman, and you know it!”

I couldn’t help but feel scolded. And rightfully so.

“All’s going to the cops will do is ruin everything for everyone down at the camp.”

“True.”

“If you could just ask around a bit,” Sal said. “Just see if any of them ghosts have seen or heard anything. Maybe they saw her leave town on a bus or in someone’s car? Maybe there’s no crime at all and she just had enough of Sage Grove? Anything. I just need to know we don’t have no murderer in the camp or nothing like that.”

“What if there is a crime?” I asked. “I won’t get involved in that, Sal. Nothing you can say will change that.”

What I’d said made me a complete jerk. I was willing to live with it. From experience, I knew getting involved in police business as a medium was asking for nothing but trouble. With the present state of the world, the odds of getting thrown in a jail cell or some detention center, never to be returned to my life, was exponentially higher than ever. If it made me a bad person, so be it, but I wasn’t going to ruin my life to solve one murder. Getting thrown in jail wouldn’t bring the dead person back, after all.