The Ghost and Mrs. Mewer (A Paws and Claws Mystery Book 2) (7 page)

“It’s not
that
ridiculous,” Dave protested. “Mallory was dressed as Becca Wraith when she died. She might have been inside the hotel with someone.”

The door opened, and Doc Kilgore peeked in. “Sorry I’m late.” He tucked a pair of glasses into the pocket of his blue plaid flannel shirt and took a seat next to Oma.

Aunt Birdie sat up straighter and primly crossed her thin legs.

“Doc,” she said, “Dave has just told us Mallory’s death might not have been an accident.”

Rose gazed at Doc Kilgore hopefully.

Doc scratched the side of his face and winced. “Well now, Dave was one of my scouts. Always was a smart little fellow.”

I glanced at Dave. Doc was talking about him like he was twelve. I felt for him. People like Doc still saw him as a little boy.

“Gotta say I’m right proud of him. But this time,” said Doc, “I’m afraid it’s just a very sad accident. I’ve seen a lot of drownings in my time. There’s no evidence of foul play. No sign of a struggle. Mallory has a hematoma on the back of her head. There are particles of bark in her wig, so it appears that she fell and hit her head before she made it into the gazebo. It all fits together. She was drunk, which caused her to fall, then she became disoriented or confused, and that accounts for her being in the gazebo and unable to save herself when she hit the water. We’re sending her to Roanoke to the medical examiner’s office, so we won’t know anything more for a few days. I expect they’ll find water in her lungs and evidence of intoxication.”

In spite of my own doubts, Doc’s position on the matter came as a relief. He made it sound so simple. Maybe it was.

“Shameful!” Birdie spouted. “It’s simply shameful that we have young women carousing about at night in Wagtail.”

“Then I don’t see why we have to call off the ghost walk,” said Rose. “I’m as sick as everyone else about Mallory’s death. She was a lovely young woman. But we can’t shut down the town every time someone dies. Dave, you just tell those men to be through sweeping the hotel by eight o’clock tonight. That ought to be plenty of time for them to know if anything untoward happened in there. The walking tour doesn’t take people into the gazebo anyway. We flash a light on it, but that’s all.”

I left the room before they took a vote, but I thought I could see where it was going. Zelda would be as relieved as I was by Doc’s findings. Poor Dave needed to do his job, but he was under a lot of pressure from the merchants to keep up appearances and follow through on the advertised Howloween activities. Mallory could very well have been intoxicated. Val said the Zombie Brain drinks packed a punch.

I called Trixie and found Gingersnap out on the front porch, as usual. I laughed aloud when I realized she had settled next to a sign written in a bloody Halloween script:
Beware of dog . . . kisses!

“How about we get some lunch, Gingersnap?”

She readily accompanied us. It was late enough for the noontime crowd to have dwindled. I settled at the corner table near the pass-through where Shelley picked up food.

The cook opened it and saw me. “Pulled pork for all three of you?”

“Yes, please!”

Shelley deposited a tray of dishes to be washed, hurried over to my table, and slid into a chair. “Is it true?”

“Is what true?”

“That you found Mallory’s body?”

“I’m afraid so. Was she a friend of yours?”

“I didn’t know her. She came and went, I think.” Shelley fidgeted with the salt shaker. “I know we’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but she was a little bit high on her horse.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, just about everybody knows and loves Mark. He’s outgoing and friendly, and he’s been talking to a lot of us about the ghosts we’ve seen over the years. He fit in real well. Then when Mallory came, she acted like she thought she was some kind of rock star or something and ran around town taking credit for Mark’s book. I think it put folks off, you know?”

The pass-through opened, and the cook slid three dishes onto the counter. “Y’all enjoy!” The window snapped shut.

Shelley and I rose to collect the dishes. They looked like food for Goldilocks’ three bears. The platter with a bun, coleslaw, and hush puppies was the largest. A smaller one was meant for Gingersnap, and the tiny one belonged to Trixie.

“Hot tea or iced?” asked Shelley.

“Hot, thanks. I think I’m still a little chilled from last night.”

She brought a mug for me. “It must have been awful.”

I nodded. “I was so focused on trying to save her that it didn’t really sink in at that moment.”

Shelley studied her fingers for a second.

“What’s wrong?”

In the softest whisper, Shelley asked, “Was she really murdered?”

“Where did you hear that?”

“People talk. Several reliable people reported seeing Becca Wraith’s ghost at the Wagtail Springs Hotel this week.”

I laughed aloud. “Oh, Shelley. I’m sure that was some kind of advertising stunt for the tourists. You’re so silly.”

“Really? Why would they advertise at two in the morning the night of Mallory’s death?”

No wonder Dave had the cops searching the hotel. Had Mallory managed to get inside and wander about? Why would she do that? I tried to make light of it so the rumor of murder wouldn’t spread. “That place is spooky just because it’s empty. I’m not surprised that people think they see ghosts in the windows.”

“Holly Miller, one day you’ll see a real ghost and sing a different tune. Just you wait. Wish I could sit and chat longer. I still have a few customers, though.”

I ate my lunch while Gingersnap and Trixie watched me with hopeful eyes.

“There you are!” Oma said, bustling over with Rose. “I need a strong cup of tea. How about you, Rose?”

“Make mine strong coffee, Liesel. I have a long night ahead of me.”

Oma disappeared into the kitchen while Rose sat down with me. “I’m so relieved that the ghost walk won’t be cancelled. Honestly, you’d think it would be easy to set up a ghost walk, but there are always complications.”

Oma returned with mugs of coffee and tea, as well as sugar and cream, and a platter of pumpkin whoopie pies with shapes cut out of the tops so that the white filling showed through like a ghost. “This is much more relaxing than eating at the meeting.”

“I thought your first meeting went very well, Liesel.” Rose doctored her coffee with cream.

“Overall I can’t complain. Everyone was most cooperative. It’s you who has the problem now.”

“Liesel! Don’t bother Holly with our headaches. For heaven’s sake, she just arrived.” Rose ate a bite of whoopie pie, taking great care not to look at Oma.

Oma poured cream into her tea. “It wouldn’t interest Holly anyway.”

“Exactly. It’s not her sort of thing,” said Rose.

I could smell a plot afoot. “You do realize that I’m right here?”

“Of course we do, liebling.” Oma smiled at me. “We’ll work something out, Rose.”

I took a deep breath. Why did they feel they had to bait me? “Why don’t you just tell me?”

“You see, Mallory was going to help us with the ghost walk.” Rose placed a hand on her chest and heaved a huge sigh. “It’s tonight, and it’s important that we pull it off well because we’ve been advertising it just everywhere, and now, at the last minute, I have to find a replacement for Mallory.”

That didn’t sound too bad. “What was she supposed to do? Maybe I can fill in for her.”

“Nooo.” Oma sipped her tea.

“If only so many people hadn’t gone to the dog show,” Rose complained.

Oma lifted her hand in a gesture of hopelessness. “Maybe one of my employees could do it?”

I sucked in a deep breath but couldn’t hold back my grin. “You two are terrible actresses. What do you want me to do?”

With feigned innocence, Oma said, “You know, maybe Holly
is
the right person for this. She doesn’t believe in ghosts, so she wouldn’t be afraid.”

“That’s right. I forgot all about that.” Rose smiled at me sweetly.

Forgot, my foot!
They knew exactly what they were doing.

Rose reached for the shopping bag and handed it to me. “You are the sweetest person in the whole world to volunteer, Holly.” She met my eyes. “I should warn you, though—there are ghosts haunting the Wagtail Springs Hotel.”

What a show they had put on. They had everything ready and waiting for me. I peered in the bag. A long white wig and a crown of black roses lay on top. “Becca Wraith? You want me to dress as the ghost of
Becca Wraith
?”

“It’s easy, sweetheart,” said Rose. “You’ll have fun. You just flit up to the windows like a ghost when you hear me talking about Becca. There’s nothing to it.”

I had to yank her chain a little bit. “You’re afraid real ghosts won’t show up for the ghost walk, so you have to ask people to pretend to be ghosts?”

Rose answered sincerely, “You just never know about ghosts. Sometimes they show and other times they don’t! I’ll leave the bag with your costume in the Wagtail Springs Hotel, upstairs in room ten. That way, you can go on part of the ghost walk with us.” She bestowed another sunny smile on me. “But don’t blame me if the real ghost of Becca Wraith shows up for tonight’s performance.”

Yeah. Like that was going to happen.

*   *   *

After they left, it dawned on me that I hadn’t asked Oma about Clementine. I was on my way to find Oma when I met Eva in the lobby walking Mrs. Mewer on a leash. “We had the best time this morning,” she raved. “I took Mrs. Mewer to the cat park. It’s so clever the way they set it up with moving mice and pretend birds. She absolutely loved it. Then we had brunch at a darling café. I thought the poor baby would be locked in my room all the time. I couldn’t have been more wrong.”

Felix, Casper, and Brian were just coming down the grand staircase.

“Are you headed for Mark’s house?” Felix asked Eva.

She adjusted her glasses. “I don’t believe I was invited.”

“There aren’t any invitations,” Brian blurted. “We’re going to pay our respects.”

Eva frowned at him. “Respects? Who died?”

“Mallory,” said Brian.

Eva stared at him. “That’s not funny.”

“I’m afraid it’s true, Eva,” said Felix. “She died last night—or early this morning, I guess.”

Eva blinked hard. And then she crumpled into a heap on the floor, landing on Mrs. Mewer’s tail.

Mrs. Mewer yowled and raced down the hallway, dragging her leash behind her.

I knelt beside Eva and said her name softly. She didn’t respond and appeared to be out cold. I tapped her cheeks. “Eva?”

Additional ghost hunters clustered behind Brian and Felix, asking what had happened. The dogs milled around their legs, sensing the tension. Shelley must have seen Eva faint, because she broke through the little crowd to hand me a wet cloth.

I dabbed Eva’s face. She blinked several times and groaned.

“Can you sit up?” I asked.

She reached out one hand. I slid my arm around her and helped her to a sitting position. For a few minutes, she remained on the floor, refusing all assistance.

Trixie reached her head toward Eva’s and licked her nose.

“Okay, okay. Thanks, Trixie. I think I’ll be fine.” Eva was wobbly when she stood, but managed to make her way to a sofa in the sitting room.

I leaned over to her and asked very softly, “Would you rather I helped you to your room?”

“Good heavens, no. Please don’t fuss. To tell the truth, I’m thoroughly embarrassed. I’ve never fainted before. I’m quite sure I’ll be fine. Thank you, Holly.”

She adjusted her glasses using both hands, her fingers extended. The worry in her face made me want to reach out to hug her.

She jolted forward and jumped up unsteadily. “Where’s Mrs. Mewer?”

Felix came to the rescue. “We’ll look for her. She can’t have gone far. Everybody, spread out and look for a Siamese cat.”

Eva stumbled toward the front door, frantically chanting, “Mrs. Mewer! Here, kitty, kitty, kitty.”

Felix murmured, “Oh, man. She’s lost it.”

“You’d probably do the same for Casper. You go that way, and I’ll look upstairs.”

“Deal.”

Ten minutes later, I was back in the dining area, but we still had no clue where Mrs. Mewer had gone. “Can you find the kitty?” I asked Trixie. “Do you know where she is?”

Shelley was setting up for tea. “Do you hear something? What is that?”

We tiptoed to the lobby. Eva was in the Dogwood Room bawling.

I sat down next to her on the couch and let her cry on my shoulder.

“It’s my fault. I never should have let go of her leash. I never should have brought her here. I never should have come at all! This is all my fault!”

I could understand her distress. I didn’t think it was quite so hopeless, though. Chances were pretty good that Mrs. Mewer was still inside the inn somewhere. But I let Eva cry because I had a strong suspicion that it wasn’t just Mrs. Mewer that had upset her.

She sniffled and pulled away. “I’m so sorry. You’re really a stranger to me. Thank you for being so kind.”

I didn’t know what to say.
You’re welcome
seemed so wrong. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I want to find Mrs. Mewer!” The torrent of tears began again.

Grayson, Felix, and Casper appeared in the lobby. Felix held up his hands and shrugged.

“Of course you do. I bet she’s hiding somewhere in the inn. She was probably scared when you fainted.” I avoided mentioning that she fell on Mrs. Mewer’s tail, fearing that would set off more guilt and tears.

Felix inched closer, evidently feeling awkward. “Um . . . you know, Mark is a friend of mine, too.”

“He is?” she sniffled.

Grayson took a seat, his elbows on his knees, his face turned toward the floor.

Felix sat down near Eva. “We were college roommates. He’s a great guy. I can’t believe Mallory is dead. Mark must be flipping out.”

Eva nodded. Was she holding her breath?

“Did . . . did you work with Mark?” asked Felix.

“Sort of. We met when he was investigating some haunted manor houses in England.”

Felix’s eyes widened in surprise. “Cool. I’ve done a few of those. Did you know Mallory?”

“This is so tragic. Do you know her family story?” Eva sniffled and knotted a tissue. Her face screwed up. “It’s so sad!”

Grayson wiped his eyes with his fingers. “When Mallory was fourteen, her father and brother died in a boating accident. You can imagine how horrible that was. Her mother couldn’t take it, and a month later, Mallory came home from school to find her mother had intentionally overdosed.”

“She was shipped from relative to relative,” said Eva. “I can’t believe that their family saga ended this way.”

“It’s like they were cursed,” said Grayson.

Felix seemed at a loss. “I talked with her last night. She was so happy.” Felix rubbed his face with both palms. He looked at me when he said, “Mark is a trust fund baby from an Oklahoma oil family. You’d never know it. He acts like a regular guy, but he’s filthy rich.”

“Must be nice,” said Grayson. “My grandfathers were missing in action.”

“Both of them? Vietnam?” asked Felix.

“That’s not what I meant. They were just absentee. We never saw them. My parents went through a nasty divorce when I was just a baby. My mom took my sister and me, started a new life, and in the ensuing bitterness, cut off all contact with my dad’s family. Then my dad died.”

“Good grief!” said Felix. “Your life sounds like a Greek tragedy.”

“It wasn’t that bad.” Grayson grinned. “My mom remarried, and my stepdad adopted us. But my mom’s dad had alcohol issues that brought on an estrangement between them, so I never knew my grandfathers.” He shrugged. “Standard family dysfunction, you know?” Grayson thought for a moment. “Funny, I’ve known Mark for a few years, but he’s never driven a fancy car or been a flashy kind of guy.”

Eva nodded. “He’s so grounded. Not at all pretentious.”

A smile briefly twitched over Felix’s lips. “His grandfather wasn’t happy with the laziness and financial demands of his own children, so he set up trusts for the grandchildren that they would get on whichever event happened first—they got a doctorate or turned sixty. I always thought he must have been a pretty sharp guy. Of course, they all did graduate work to get their money, so he had a bunch of grandchildren who were very well educated.”

I smiled. “Pretty clever of Gramps.”

“Mark is a physicist,” said Felix, “which is great, because he thinks about ghosts in a different way.”

“Was Mallory a physicist, too?” I asked.

Felix shrugged. “She was a psychic. She said something about being an assistant manager of a store. A girly kind of store, accessories or something.”

“A psychic?” asked Grayson.

Eva tilted her head. “Not a very good one. She relied on a lot of guesses and mostly parroted back what people wanted to hear.”

“I don’t get it,” said Grayson.

Eva sniffled, but raised both of her hands, palms outward. “I’m getting the letter M. Who had someone pass over with that initial? Ah, it’s a grandmother, or possibly an aunt.”

Grayson sat up straighter. “Okay, now you’re freaking me out. My aunt’s name started with an M.”

Eva sighed. “She loved you very much. She’s telling me what fun she had reading to you.”

Grayson gasped.

“And I’m seeing cookies. Chocolate, maybe?”

“How could you know that?” asked Grayson. “It was our thing to bake chocolate chip cookies. And she always read to me. Are you psychic?”

Felix laughed. “In most groups of people, it’s a good bet that someone has lost a grandparent. Eva expanded that by adding an aunt. She used one of the most common initials—M. Other likely initials are A, C, S, and J.”

“But the cookies and the reading,” protested Grayson.

Eva shrugged. “A good guess. That’s what a lot of aunts and grandmothers do. And everyone wants to hear they were loved.”

Grayson sat back. “Aww. Now you’ve taken the fun out of it.”

“I called Mark this morning,” said Felix. “They’re sending Mallory for an . . . an autopsy, so he doesn’t know when she’ll be buried. Luciano is giving everyone the opportunity to withdraw from the show. But . . . everybody is here, and we signed contracts and everything.” He heaved another big breath. “It sounds so uncaring for life to go on.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “That really bothers me. But it’s not like calling off the ghost hunt would bring Mallory back.”

I was glad Grayson had taken Eva’s mind off Mrs. Mewer. It wouldn’t be long before she remembered, though. “Why don’t you three talk while I take care of a few things?”

As I walked away with Trixie, Eva asked, “Felix, what happened? How did Mallory die?”

Trixie and I walked from one end of the inn to the other, starting on the top floor and ending in the basement. Unless someone had invited Mrs. Mewer into a guest room, which was always a possibility, she had either escaped the inn or was curled up somewhere. When I reached the reception desk, I took a few minutes to print notices that said
Do Not Let Cats Out
. I taped one on the glass door in reception and another on the front door.

We took Casper along with us when we walked around the outside of the inn. Mrs. Mewer wasn’t on the porch with Gingersnap, but Grayson had moved outside. He sat in a rocking chair staring at his hands.

“You okay?” I asked, perching on the chair next to him.

“Yeah. It’s just . . . wow. You don’t expect things like this to happen.”

“You knew her well?”

“No, but I just spent the last couple of days with her and Mark. She liked to hang out with ghost hunters. It’s just mind-boggling that she was fine a few hours before and then she drowned.”

“Mr. Luciano would probably let you go home.”

Grayson nodded. “I know. But I can’t let the other guys down. A TV show is probably the biggest thing that ever happened to them. And there’s the possibility of a series. I can’t walk out on it.” He massaged Casper’s ears.

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

“Did you find Eva’s cat?”

“Not yet. I was just going to look outside the inn just in case she managed to sneak past someone.”

We left him to his thoughts of Mallory and walked around the property. Mrs. Mewer wasn’t lounging in the sun on the back terraces. If she had climbed a tree or nestled somewhere, the dogs showed no sign of noticing her.

When I returned, Grayson had fetched Zelda.

All eyes were on her as she rotated a hand under her chin. “I see her. Mrs. Mewer says she’s scared. She found a place to hide.”

“Where is she?” asked Eva eagerly.

I couldn’t help wondering what had happened to the woman who didn’t believe in psychics. Now that
her
cat was lost, she certainly had a different attitude toward Zelda’s alleged powers.

“All I see is white walls,” said Zelda. “Maybe a closet or a corner someplace?”

“Doesn’t she miss me? Tell her I want her to come back!”

Zelda smiled at Eva very kindly. “She loves you, too. But right now, she wants to hide for a little bit.”

“Eva,” I said, “if you want to go with the guys to pay your respects, I’ll stick around and keep an eye out for Mrs. Mewer.”

Eva sucked in a sharp breath of air. “No! Oh, no, no, no. I’ll stay here. Maybe Mrs. Mewer will come out of hiding when everyone is gone and it’s quiet.”

Felix took the cue, collected the ghost hunters and herded them out the front door. In mere seconds, the inn fell silent.

Shelley very thoughtfully appeared with a tray bearing a cup of tea and a platter of the pumpkin whoopie pies. She set it on the table in front of Eva. “Let me know if there’s anything you need, sugar.”