No Ghouls Allowed (11 page)

Gilley was covered in crumbs and food wrappers. In fact, he looked bloated and uncomfortable
sitting there, waiting impatiently for Heath and me to get into the car and buckle
up. “Tell me everything,” he said.

“Well—,” I began, but Gil interrupted me.

“Wait. Hold that thought. We can’t talk about this stuff without something to take
the edge off.”

Heath and I exchanged hopeful looks. Like the deputy, I could’ve gone for a drink,
too.

Ten minutes later, however, Gil had pulled up to LuLu’s Ice Cream Shop. I exchanged
another look with Heath. Clearly, the two of us had a different definition of “taking
the edge off.”

Gil bounded out the door like an anxious puppy and we had no choice but to follow
him inside. At least he’d picked the best ice-cream parlor in all of Valdosta. LuLu
made her ice cream from scratch, and it was truly heaven in a bowl.

“I’ll have one scoop of mint chocolate chip,” Gil was saying to the young teen behind
the counter when we caught up to him.

“Did you want that in a waffle cone or a bowl?”

“Bowl,” Gil said, and I had to hand it to him. He was actually showing a little restraint.
As the kid reached for the bowl, however, Gil said, “Cone! I’ll take the cone.” The
kid moved over, got one of the big homemade waffle cones, and headed toward the barrel
of mint chocolate chip. No sooner had she scooped out one round ball than Gil added,
“Make that two scoops, please.”

The double soon became a triple. With sprinkles. Whipped cream. And a freaking cherry
on top. The towering concoction was so unsteady that the girl behind the counter offered
Gilley a bowl should any of it topple over, which of course some of it did even before
he reached the table. “He’s a lotta work,” Heath whispered in my ear, but he was chuckling
when he said it, and it got me to laugh a little too, which I badly needed after the
day we’d had.

Heath and I each got a double cone of chocolate chip cookie dough and joined Gil at
the table. “Okay, spill it,” Gil said, which I thought was hilariously ironic, as
he said this while a big gob of whipped cream and sprinkles plopped onto the table,
missing the bowl entirely.

While Heath got up to get Gilley more napkins, I started in, telling him everything
that’d happened inside the house.

The more I talked, the faster Gilley ate, and I knew what I was telling him was likely
stressing him out, but it was such a relief to get it off my chest, and he was bound
to find out the details anyway. Valdosta was a relatively small town when it came
to gossip.

When I got to the part about the planchette flying out from under the bookcase and
nearly striking Heath, Gil stopped licking away furiously at his ice cream long enough
to utter a frightened squeak. “Why’d it attack you?” he asked him.

Heath shrugged, but I could tell the near miss with the planchette had shaken him.
“I was the one that kicked it under the bookcase. Maybe this Sandman was pissed off
about that.”

Gil then turned his wide eyes to me. “Do you have any idea what you’re gonna tell
Christine?”

I shook my head. “Not a clue.”

“She can’t keep hiring people to go work at that place,” Heath said. Gilley pumped
his head up and down.

“He’s right. She’ll get someone killed. I mean, someone
else
killed.”

“After what happened today with Scoffland, and the fact that we’ve now just uncovered
another murder, I doubt anybody’s gonna be allowed back at that house for a long time,”
I said, a bit relieved by that fact, actually. I had no urge to get back to Porter
Manor anytime soon. “Maybe I can talk her into letting it sit vacant and unattended
for a while.”

“Yeah, but what happens when the investigation is over?” Gil pressed. “I mean, at
some point she’s gonna want to finish working on that house, right? She had to have
forked over a ton of cash just to buy it, M.J. She’s not gonna want to abandon it
altogether, will she?”

I sighed. I hadn’t been in town longer than a day and a half and already I was exhausted.
This wasn’t what I’d signed up for. When we’d agreed to find out what was happening
at Porter Manor, I’d thought we were going to encounter some old cranky spook who
just needed a kick in the proverbial pants to cross over. I’d never expected to encounter
some sort of insanely powerful evil spirit whose origins were unknown, and who apparently
had some sort of history with my mother.

And the truth was that I didn’t want to deal with it. Whatever the Sandman was, he
scared the hell out of me. There was something sneaky and sinister about him, and
also something deadly. I knew he’d been at the root of possessing that construction
worker who’d killed Scoffland, and also Deputy Cook, who’d stabbed the sheriff. What
other minds could he take over and use to commit murder? Deep down I had another awful
foreboding, and all I wanted to do was head back to Boston.

“He’s got a point, Em,” Heath said, while I silently debated what to do. “When the
investigation is over, Christine is going to want to move forward with the renovation.
And we either have to talk her into abandoning that place altogether,
and
convince her not to sell it to anybody else, or . . .”

Heath let the rest of that sentence hang, but I knew exactly what he was implying.
So I finished the thought for him. “Or we figure out how to shut down the Sandman.”

We sat silently at the table for a few seconds, letting the weight of our responsibility
sink in if I couldn’t convince Christine to abandon Porter Manor.

And then Gilley slid his chair back from the table and said, “There’s only one thing
to do in a situation like this.”

“What’s that?” I asked him.

Without answering, Gilley turned away from me and headed back to the counter. “I’d
like a double scoop of your peanut butter lover’s with Reese’s Pieces and Heath bar
sprinkles, please. In a waffle cone. With a little chocolate syrup drizzled on top.
Oh, and don’t forget the whipped cream and cherry.”

•   •   •

We left as soon as Gil’s stomachache settled in, which was about midway through his
second waffle cone, but the brave little soldier still managed to shove the rest of
it into his piehole. “Ohhhhhhh,” he moaned from the backseat while I drove us back
to Mrs. G.’s.

“It’s your own fault,” I told him. “Going back for an extra helping of sprinkles when
you were already complaining of an upset stomach didn’t help your cause, buddy.”

“Why didn’t you stop me?” he moaned.

“For the same reason that, sometimes, even though it’s really hard, you gotta allow
a little kid to put his finger on a hot burner to find out that some stuff shouldn’t
be messed with.”

Gilley whimpered and kept it up even after entering his mother’s house. Mrs. G. came
out of the kitchen the second we returned. She took one look at Gilley’s slouched
posture and said, “What’d he eat?”

“What didn’t he eat?” Heath replied, easing Gil over to the nearest chair.

“I think it was his second double-scoop ice-cream cone that did him in,” I told her.

“Mama,” Gil whimpered.

Mrs. G. frowned at her son. “I have half a mind to let that bellyache keep achin’,
Gilley. That or a diabetic coma is surely gonna do you in.”

“I won’t do it again,” Gil lied.

Mrs. G. harrumphed and turned back to the kitchen muttering about getting her son
some sodium bicarbonate. I stood by the door, eyeing it nervously.

“What’s up?” Heath asked me.

“I think I should go talk to Christine.”

“Have you heard from your dad since he left to go see her at the hospital?”

I slapped my forehead. “Ohmigod! I totally forgot about her panic attack.”

“Did somebody say ‘hospital’?” Gil groaned. I glanced over and saw that he’d managed
to get himself from the chair over to the couch and was now lying back with one hand
over his stomach and the other over his eyes, going for the most pathetic posture
possible. Drama queen.

“No,” Heath and I said together. The last thing we needed was for Gilley to insist
on being taken away by ambulance, which he was likely to demand, given his current
state of discomfort.

“What do you want to do?” Heath asked me.

I pulled out my cell and called Christine’s phone, but it went straight to voice mail.
I tried Daddy’s cell next and he picked up right away. “Hello, Mary Jane,” he said
quietly.

“Hey, Daddy, how’s Christine?”

“Oh, she’s fine,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “She’s resting here at
the house with me. Did the sheriff finish over at the Porter place?”

I bit my lip. “Daddy, there’s something I need to tell you. . . .”

“Yes?” he asked when I lost my nerve.

I took a deep breath and chickened out for a second time. This just wasn’t something
I could explain over the phone. “I’m coming over, Daddy. I need to tell you and Christine
what happened in person.”

“What happened?” Daddy said, his voice a bit louder.

“I’m on my way. I’ll be there in a few.” With that, I hung up before he could grill
me for details.

“Want me to drive?” Heath asked.

Before I could answer, Mrs. G. came out of the kitchen with a bubbling glass of milky
liquid for Gilley. “Mary Jane, Heath,” she said, her voice full of command. “Come
over here and tell me exactly what put Gilley in the frame of mind to do this to himself.”

I eyed Heath. “Can you stay and explain it to her while I head over to Daddy’s?”

“You want to go alone?”

“I do. Christine might get upset again, and I feel like she won’t want a lot of witnesses
if that happens.”

Heath’s expression softened and he leaned in to kiss me sweetly. “Go. Text me later
and tell me how it went, okay?”

“You got it,” I said, giving him a hug before making haste toward the door. “Mrs.
G., Heath is going to stay and explain everything. I’ve got to get over to Daddy’s
to talk to Christine.”

“Will you be back by six?” she called after me. “I’ve got dinner in the oven and I’d
hate for you to miss it.”

“I’ll do my best, ma’am,” I promised.

“What’s for dinner?” Gil asked meekly.

Mrs. G. leaned the glass toward Gil’s lips. “Well, sugar, for us, it’ll be eggplant
parmigiana. For you, sodium bicarbonate and an early bedtime.”

•   •   •

I got to Daddy’s house and made my way inside without knocking. I found myself still
coming up short in the front hall; it was just a shock to see how beautiful it had
become since Christine had entered Daddy’s life. “Hello?” I called out. “Daddy?”

He came out from the right side of the staircase, which would have put him in the
parlor. He looked very different from the commanding presence I’d gone toe-to-toe
with earlier in the day. I can’t fully describe it, but there was a gentleness in
his eyes and his expression, a touching sweetness that he’d hidden from me for so
long that I hardly remembered him capable of such caring vulnerability. I realized
he must’ve been sitting with Christine. It struck me that she brought that side out
of him, when the only other person I’d ever known who could tame my father the lion
had been my mother.

I had a flashback to a moment so eerily similar, a time when Mama had been complaining
of pain in her lower back, and a feeling of fatigue. I’d been worried about her, and
Daddy had come home early one afternoon because he’d been worried too. He’d doted
on her all the rest of the day, and I’d caught him coming out of the parlor, where
Mama was resting, and he’d looked just like he did now: a bit worried, but also so—I
don’t know—content for her company. He always softened around Mama. He never raised
his voice or got angry when she was nearby. Instead, he was patient, and kind, and
even loving. She’d had that effect on him. She’d had that effect on everyone.

After she was gone, I never saw that side of him again. It was like a light had gone
out in our worlds, and for Daddy, things got very dark indeed. Until now. Until Christine.

“Daddy,” I said as he paused to acknowledge me. For a moment that gentle vulnerability
lingered as he took me in without saying a word, and I had the strongest urge to run
to him and throw my arms around him. Something I hadn’t done since Mama died. But
then, I saw him square his shoulders and something shifted inside those eyes and he
became the Daddy I’d known from the age of eleven on. Cool, commanding, and totally
unapproachable.

I felt myself tense at the sudden change, and immediately squashed the urge to run
over to him, but then, most unexpectedly, something else bubbled up from deep inside
me. Something that I’d probably kept at bay for well over two decades. It started
with my lower lip, which began to quiver, and my eyes, which started to mist. I cleared
my throat and blinked furiously, but caught sight of Daddy’s now quizzical look in
my direction. And then a tear slipped out and slid down my cheek. I blinked some more,
shook my head, and swallowed hard, but then another tear leaked out. And another.
And then I couldn’t stop.

I ducked my chin to hide my face and wiped furiously at the tears. I opened my mouth
to tell him that I was sorry for the emotional display, which was so unlike me, but
a small sob escaped instead of words, and I quickly closed my mouth and covered it
with my hand.

Turning away, I decided a hasty exit was in order, but then I found myself encircled
by strong, steady arms, which were turning me back. “Mary Jane,” Daddy said as he
pulled me into a hug. “Whatever are you on about, baby girl?”

I tried to take a steadying breath, but got only a small lungful of air before more
sobs forced their way out. I was crying and crying and I didn’t think I could stop.

All the while Daddy held on to me, patting my back and telling me, “There, there,
Mary Jane. There, there.”

After what felt like an eternity, we heard a voice say, “Monty? Mary Jane? Is everything
all right?”