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“What movies have you been watching?” I asked.
“You are on a strict regimen of the Oprah network after this,” Jane told her. “No more Celebrity Ghost Stories for you.”
“Please?” Andrea pleaded.
“Fine,” Jane sighed, then called, “OK, spirit world, we are hereby hanging up, closing the channel. Don’t call us. We’ll call you.”
I asked, “Don’t you own a whole section of books on appropriate ritual language? And it’s not true, what you said earlier. We did learn quite a bit tonight. We learned that Nana was a closet Gaga fan.”
“What do you think she meant? Love. Mother. Gaga. Desk. Those words don’t make any sense,” Andrea complained.
“Maybe I need to look through your desk again, Jane,” I said, returning some of the candles to the display shelf.
“You looked through my desk?”
“We refinished Jane’s desk before we moved it into her office. There were no papers or anything left in the drawers,” Andrea said, squinting when I turned the lights back on.
“Are you sure your mother hasn’t taken any other objects out of the shop?” I asked, my voice trailing off as I noticed one of Jane’s photos hanging over the shelf where the candles were displayed. It showed Jane’s mother, wearing a black T-shirt with two white triangles on the chest and a logo that read, “FFOTU.” Was this more Klingon nonsense? She was standing next to the cash register with this thunderstruck expression on her face. Jane’s mama was a funny little thing. It seemed odd that Nana would mention her twice, when we’d already located the candle. What did Nana want us to know about Jane’s mother?
I looked at the picture more closely. “Hey, Jane, what’s that?”
“It’s a picture of our first meeting of the Friends and Family of the Undead. It was the first time my mother saw the shop, and Andrea wanted to capture my mother’s stunned expression when she saw how nice everything was.”
“That’s horrible,” I told Andrea.
Jane shook her head. “No, it’s fair. The moment she stepped inside, she said Andrea must have worked very hard to organize and decorate everything.” Andrea snickered when my face drooped in disbelief. Jane added, “Mama and I used to have a pretty rocky relationship.”
I poked at the photo, my hands shaking. “And that little brown blob by the cash register? The one vaguely shaped like an acorn? The one I’m pretty sure is the altar plaque representing Earth?”
“Our take-a-penny dish?” Jane asked, peering around the maple and glass counter, as if she were looking for it.
“Take a penny?”
“You know, when you get pennies back as change, you leave them in the take-a-penny dish, so when other customers are trying to give exact change, they don’t have to dig around for them,” Andrea said. “Pennies are basically the redheaded stepchildren of the currency world.”
“You were using my family’s centuries-old altar plate as a change dish?”
“Have you noticed the Irish accent gets a lot stronger when she’s angry?” Jane asked her husband.
“We didn’t know that’s what it was. I found it lying loose in Mr. Wainwright’s storage room!” Andrea exclaimed. “It looked a lot more acorn-like in your sketch, by the way. In reality, it’s just blobby with a stem hanging off of it.” I glowered at her. She threw up her hands. “OK, you’re right. Not the appropriate time to criticize your family’s prowess at arts and crafts.”
I looked toward the register, but the spot to the left of it was being used to display copies of a book called The Guide for the Newly Undead. “Where is the dish now?”
“It was right here,” Jane said, looking under the counter and behind the promotional supplies, just in case the plaque had fallen.
Andrea’s expression was a mix of confusion and guilt. “Jane, when I think about it, I don’t think I’ve seen that thing for months. I thought you’d moved it.”
“When was the last time you remember seeing it?”
Andrea chewed her lip. “A month or two ago. The day Mama Ginger came in.”
“Mama Ginger?” I said. “Another mother? Starting with a G?”
“Mama Ginger is Zeb’s mother. She and Jane have a checkered history,” Gabriel told me quietly.
“Don’t you remember, Jane?” Andrea asked. “She ‘dropped by’ before opening hours to give you your extremely late wedding present . . . and you kicked her out of the store . . . and banned her for life?”
“Why did you do that?” I asked.
