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My mother’s voice practically vibrated with excitement. “Selena, I’ve got a surprise for you!”
I didn’t bother to hold back my wince, since we were talking on the phone rather than having one of our occasional Zoom calls. While my mother was the most well-meaning person in the world, her “surprises” often turned out to be the sort of thing I would prefer to avoid. A year or so back, she’d finally abandoned all the various fix-ups with the sons of friends or friends of friends she kept trying to arrange for me, but I’d still learned to be wary whenever she decided to spring something on me out of the blue.
However, I tried to make myself sound moderately excited as I replied, “What surprise?”
“Well….” She drew out the syllable, as if doing her best to prolong the suspense. But it seemed clear she couldn’t restrain her enthusiasm for very long, because she followed that one word by exclaiming immediately, “We bought a house in Globe!”
“You what?” I blurted, too startled to rein in my response. “What about Tom’s business?”
Tom McGill was my mother’s husband. I suppose that technically made him my stepfather, but I never really thought of him that way, since he’d come on the scene when I was twenty-three and long out of the house. He was just as nice a person as my mother, so they were well-suited to each other. However, he’d owned his plumbing supply company in Tarzana for almost twenty years, and even though I guessed he was getting close to retirement age — he was twelve years older than my mother — I still couldn’t quite envision him giving up a business he’d built from nothing, just to settle down in my sleepy little adopted hometown.
“Oh, we’re not planning to live in Globe full-time,” my mother replied at once, and a wave of relief flooded through me. It wasn’t that I didn’t love her or anything, but we’d been living fairly separate lives for a decade, and I didn’t honestly know how I would have handled having her in my lap all the time.
“No,” she went on, “Tom has been thinking for a while that he’d like to buy another property, something we could stay in for a few weeks out of the year and then use as a vacation rental the rest of the time. I hear those Airbnb things are very popular.”
“They are,” I said cautiously, even as I reflected that of course she wouldn’t know much about Airbnbs, because whenever she and Tom traveled, they stayed in five-star resorts and flew first class. You might not think there was a lot of money in running a plumbing supply company in the Valley, but my mother’s husband had done very well for himself. “So, tell me about the house.”
“Oh,” she replied, her tone brightening even further, “it’s this big, beautiful Victorian mansion at the top of a hill. The pictures made the view look incredible.”
I’d only been living in Globe for a little more than four months by this point, but even I knew there was only one house in town which could possibly fit that particular description. “You bought the Bigelow mansion?” I asked, trying not to sound too incredulous and probably failing miserably.
“Yes,” my mother said. “Josie’s photos convinced us that it would be just perfect.”
Josie Woodrow, Globe’s foremost real estate agent…and someone I counted as a good friend. I couldn’t believe she’d hidden the whole transaction from me, not the least because she was one of the biggest gossips I knew, and I didn’t see how she’d managed to keep such a juicy secret.
But that was a lesser concern compared to the warning bells that had started to go off in my mind. “Mom, that place is totally haunted. Didn’t Josie tell you that?”
“Oh, sure,” she said, sounding as airy as Josie herself. “But you know I don’t believe in that sort of thing.”
Yes, my mother steadfastly continued to believe that the supernatural world was nothing more than the result of a bunch of people’s overactive imaginations, including mine. I’d pleaded with her on more than one occasion to sit in on one of my crystal ball sessions with Grandma Ellen — my mom’s late mother — but my mother had always steadfastly refused, telling me she didn’t think it would be respectful.
I’d long since put aside my annoyance with her denial of all things supernatural, since it was her life and she needed to decide how she wanted to live it, but this was different.
“It doesn’t matter whether you believe it or not,” I told her. “The Bigelow mansion’s hauntings are pretty well documented. The place was even featured on one of those cable TV ghost-hunting shows.”
“No wonder it was such a hot property,” my mother replied. “We actually got into a bidding war over the place, which wasn’t something we’d expected from a real estate transaction in Globe. But you know how Tom is when he gets his heels dug in. He wanted that house no matter what. So, we got it in the end.”
I hadn’t heard about that. But then, I didn’t pay much attention to Globe’s real estate market unless Josie was telling me about her latest listing, and clearly she’d held her cards close to the vest on this one. At the same time, I had to wonder who else had wanted the Bigelow mansion so badly they were willing to get into a bidding war with an out-of-state investor with deep pockets.
Then again, even the hottest property in Globe wasn’t exactly going to run into millions. It wasn’t like we were back in Southern California.
“That’s great,” I said, although I honestly wasn’t sure how “great” this whole development would turn out to be. “When do you think you’ll be coming to Globe?”
“Saturday,” she responded immediately. “Tom wanted to finish out the work week and get some business wrapped up, but then we’ll be out there to look over the place and stay for at least a week, maybe more.”
Which meant I had three days before they showed up. I had to wonder what the two of them planned to do while they were in Globe. The place wasn’t exactly known for its entertainment options, unless you were big on hiking. Tom liked to golf, and golf courses were in short supply in the area, although I supposed he could make the trek up to Payson to play. There were golf courses in the eastern Phoenix suburbs, of course, but playing golf in Queen Creek in early August didn’t sound like much fun.
But my mother loved to putter in the yard, and I had a vague recollection that the grounds of the Bigelow mansion were fairly extensive, with a rose garden and several other points of interest, including a maze and an apple orchard. That might be enough to keep her occupied.
“Well, let me know when you get here,” I said. “I’ll show you around.”
“Oh, of course!” she responded brightly. “I want to see your store in person…and I hope I’ll get to meet this Calvin you’ve told me about.”
Calvin Standingbear and I had been dating since the end of June. As July progressed and everything seemed to be going well between the two of us, I’d let slip to my mother that I was seeing someone local, although I hadn’t gone into a lot of detail other than to tell her that my new significant other was the chief of the San Ramon tribal police, something she seemed to find impressive.
Obviously, I couldn’t exactly tell her that Calvin — and the rest of the San Ramon tribe — were a bunch of coyote shapeshifters.
“I hope so,” I said, trying to sound vague. While it wasn’t that I didn’t want Calvin to meet my mother — and Tom — I had to wonder if this was too early in our relationship for the whole “meet the parents” thing. Although we hadn’t done anything to hide the fact we were dating, I also couldn’t help noticing that anything social we’d done had been in Globe itself, or over in Gilbert, where we’d gone wine tasting with Chuck Langdon and Hazel Marr, friends of ours who’d also started dating over the summer. Not once had Calvin taken me to dinner at the Gold Dust Casino, which the San Ramon Apache tribe owned and operated. In fact, the only time we spent on San Ramon Apache lands was when I went over to Calvin’s house.
