Page 63

Chapter 16

Partners in Crime

I opened my eyes the next morning and stared up at the ceiling for a long time. Nothing about it had changed — I was looking at the same plaster and dark wood molding that had been there ever since I started sleeping in this bed and probably more than a hundred years before that — and yet I knew something in me had changed.

My fingers still seemed to sense the pressure of Jude’s hand against mine, and I could almost feel the warmth of the fire in his living room. Nothing was settled yet or even really solved, but I still felt a hundred times better.

Jude believed me, and he was going to help me.

When I came downstairs, Hazel was waiting for me in the parlor. Today’s twin set was a deep pine green, a color I hadn’t seen her wear before. More than once, I’d wondered if the various colors of her wardrobe had any special significance, or whether they only reflected what she wanted to wear that day and nothing more. I thought it was kind of interesting that her wardrobe changed all the time, while both Mack’s and Father Frank’s clothing never seemed to change.

Did that have something to do with the circumstances in which they’d died, or did it simply mean that the priest and the federal agent cared a lot less about clothes than my great-aunt did?

Maybe someday I’d ask.

Hazel said, “You got home late last night.”

“I did,” I agreed. If I’d worked a regular shift and headed back to the house afterward, I wouldn’t have gotten there any later than nine-thirty at the most, whereas I’d lingered at Jude’s place until almost ten.

“And?”

“And I told Jude the whole thing.”

Her gaze suddenly focused on me with laser-sharp intensity. “You told Jude what?”

“All of it,” I replied. “I told him about you, and about Mack, and about Father Frank. I told him about the gift.”

She didn’t respond right away. Her expression shifted through a rapid sequence of emotions — first concern, then a kind of calculation, and finally something I thought might be careful approval.

“And how did he take it?” she said at last.

“He believed me before I was even finished telling him the whole story. He had an experience seeing a spirit about five years ago, so he knows ghosts are real.”

Her penciled brows drew together. “That’s a lot of trust to put in a man you’ve only known for two weeks, Lorelei.”

“I know,” I said simply. “But Jude is a very trustworthy person. I know he won’t say anything to anyone unless I give him explicit permission.”

“Of course he won’t,” Hazel said. “He might not be a priest anymore, but he still understands the value of keeping confidences.”

I knew she was right about that. But because I figured I should keep her in the loop, I told her about my conversation with Jude the night before, about how we’d agreed to figure out a plan together and how I was growing increasingly certain that the Lindleys were involved in Father Frank’s death somehow.

Hazel nodded, but her expression now seemed almost distant. She glanced toward one of the windows that looked out on Park Street, and then returned her attention to me.

“There’s more I should probably tell you,” she said, and I tilted my head at her.

“More what?”

“More about ghosts, and why some of them stay and some of them don’t.”

I’d already wondered about that, since it was fairly clear to me already that most of the dearly departed didn’t stick around on this plane, or I would have been knee-deep in spirits every time I went downtown.

“Most people don’t become ghosts,” she went on. “They don’t have any reason to stay here, so they move on. But if they die violently, then they sometimes feel compelled to stay, like Mack and Father Frank.”

“But you didn’t,” I ventured. “Die violently, I mean.”

Because even if I couldn’t stop thinking about my suspicions that she’d known too much, no one could dispute that Hazel had died quietly in her own bed, with no sign of a scuffle or anything close to violence.

“No,” she said. “But I’m very attached to this house. The Cosgroves have owned it for going on five generations, and even though I married and had adventures elsewhere, I always came back here. I always knew that one day I would take my last breath in this house.”