Among Her Final Words
Chapter One: An Opportunity to Die For
If my bad decisions ever got together and voted on which one was the worst, the one I was in the middle of doing right here and right now would win top prize.
Hands down.
I could hardly believe I was heading to the Landover Gazette office by myself. On a snowy night, no less.
Dan and Grace Herndon, the couple who owned the local newspaper, were awful people, and not just because Grace was my ex-husband’s distant cousin.
Grace’s husband tried to run me off the road once on a snowy night, much like tonight when I was investigating the boater’s cover-up last year.
But I still found myself heading over to the Gazette right now. Because this was the kind of job opportunity that my mother could finally brag about to all her friends whenever they played canasta, and that poor woman has been gunning for something like that since I left my job at the university after divorcing Jackson.
Plus, I was promised that taking on the newspaper column did not mean I had to deal with the Herndons.
I pulled around the corner, spotting the small brick two-story right away. It was darker than I thought it’d be.
Were the lights even on? Who could tell with the blinds down like that?
“Carly doll,” my ex-husband’s ghost said from the passenger’s seat. “Are you sure you have the right time? This place looks closed.”
Jackson’s eyes crinkled into concern as he blended in with my Civic’s upholstery. I could barely see his perfectly combed beard or the smoking jacket he was doomed to wear for all of eternity.
I parked in front of the building and checked the text message that had come in earlier. “Judy said to come at eight o’clock sharp, if I didn’t want to miss the opportunity.”
“AM or PM?”
“PM.”
“Tonight or tomorrow night?”
I checked again. “Tonight.”
“I guess she’s lured you to your death, then. There can be no other explanation,” my ex said with a sweeping hand gesture toward the dark building to our side. “Proceed as planned. The Herndons are likely waiting for you.”
Jackson did have a point. I barely knew Judy, except for meeting her a half dozen times. And although the senior citizen didn’t strike me as the murdering type, I’d been investigating murders long enough to know every type was the murdering type if given the right circumstances.
“Maybe I should text her,” I said, staring at the building. The blinds moved apart in the middle like someone was peeking out. They closed again.
And the front door opened, just enough for a short, gray-haired woman in a tight polo shirt to look out at the night. She motioned for me to hurry inside, then quickly closed the door again.
“And you were worried this was shady,” I said, as I hopped out of the car and crunched through the snow to the front of the building.
My ex hovered closely behind me as I stomped my boots off on the mat and went inside the dimly lit office building.
I blinked around, trying to get my eyes to adjust, but I was barely able to see Judy standing behind one of the desks.
In the near darkness, she looked like a ghost herself.
“Sorry about the lighting,” she said, as she lifted papers out of a plain cardboard box, stacking them along the desk where other papers were already stacked. “The place ‘powered down’ for the night a couple of hours ago. And I’m not turning everything back on just for us, even though I could. I certainly could. I volunteer so much, I have my own key and they let me do whatever.”
That did not surprise me.
As Landover’s favorite volunteer, Judy Miller was the kind of person who helped out wherever she could. At the museum, the theater, the food bank, the church, the country club. You name it, she’s been there.
She was the one everyone called if they needed a warm body last minute. But her do-goodness came with a price.
Judy expected special treatment wherever she went.
Even if she wasn’t helping out, and no one wanted her in the kitchen for a luncheon, she’d head into the back so she could “at least help her table get some more coffee and brownies. And did you say you wanted more chicken, too? I’ll see if they have some. Sometimes they hide it.”
Extra privileges. Her own set of keys. The good seats at plays. Judy’s volunteering did not come cheap. And I was pretty sure she was not always asked to help, either.
I wondered if this was one of those moments when she wasn’t really asked. “Do the Herndons know you’re doing this?”
“Of course they do,” she answered, a little too quickly to be convincing. “They’re bringing back a bunch of their old columns and contests that ended in the 1980s. There’s no reason they shouldn’t bring back the Paranormal Parlor, too. Just because they… uh, need a volunteer go-between to meet with the town’s famous medium.”
My ex laughed. “Sounds like Grace hates the town’s famous medium so much, she hired someone to act as a liaison.”
“They’ve been swimming in paranormal mail for a while,” Judy went on, motioning to the scattered papers in front of her.
My ex-husband and I moved closer to see what she meant by paranormal mail.
They were letters. I picked one up, noticing the postmark was from last month. “People still write paper, snail-mail letters nowadays?”
Judy looked at me like I’d just asked if people still enjoyed oxygen.
“Nothing beats hard copy correspondence, Carly Mae. And just like when Ethel Peterton ran this place back in the day, her granddaughter still prefers it.”
Judy picked up the stack of already opened letters on the desk in front of us. “Dear Landover Gazette: Please, please investigate the cause of the mist that I keep seeing in town. My husband says it’s paranormal.”
She threw me a pinched-lipped smile. “And that’s just one,” she said as she moved the letter to the back of the stack and looked the next couple over. “Oh, here’s another good one. To Whom it May Concern: Enough is enough. We’ve had mutant bird problems for the last year and a half, and you haven’t run even one article about them. If they’re shapeshifters, we should know about it.”
“Shapeshifters, ha.” She glanced up at me from behind her bifocals when she chuckled, like she was checking my reaction.
I didn’t even crack a smile. I knew those birds were likely shapeshifters. Judy did, too.
There were a lot of shifters in Landover, including my boyfriend, who was a bear shifter.
But it was funny how no one liked to talk about it.
She leaned against the desk and fanned herself with the stack of letters. “Lots and lots of paranormal mail like these two letters. There are even some people who think there’s a paranormal war brewing in the background between some sort of bird and bear shifters. They all write in anonymously, though, or else we’d know who the town crazies were around here. Everyone’s got a theory.”
I peeked in the box, eager to see all the theories from the “town crazies.” They were onto something.
She pushed a strand of her short gray hair behind an ear. “There’s plenty to choose from, if you decide to take on the column. The main focus is obviously addressing people’s concerns, but don’t worry about getting anything right or wrong. We’re going to make sure everyone knows it’s all for fun. Entertainment purposes only. That’s the disclaimer the Gazette has always used for its columns.”
“Will I get paid?”
“Of course.”
The ghost of a woman around 50 appeared behind Judy. I ignored her, even though ghosts usually only showed up when they had something to tell me. I was busy now, finding out how much I was going to make working for the newspaper.
Because taking this job would mean I’d finally be using my English degrees. I would be more than the medium working for minimum wage at a metaphysical shop.
Judy set the paper down. “The Herndons would like to stress that the main benefit of taking on a column like this is the chance to promote your services at the Purple Pony in the short bio at the end of the column. You know, all your seances and tarot-card readings and stuff.”
My shoulders stiffened a little. This was starting to sound like the Herndons wanted me to take on the column for entertainment purposes, too.
“I used to work at the paper back in the day,” Judy said. “They never pay much.” Bright red lipstick coated her two front teeth when she smiled. “The column will run every two weeks. They’re prepared to pay twenty-five dollars per column.”
“Twenty-five whole dollars,” my ex said. “For taking this mess of a box home and sorting through the newspapers’ angry paranormal mail. Meeting in dark rooms with your liaison. Carly, you’d have to be one of those town crazies not to jump on this.”
“They can pay more,” the unknown ghost said, like I didn’t already know that. “And you should get paid for the expertise you bring to the table. The Gazette paid me a hundred dollars a column back in 1981 to write as Mrs. Know, and that was on top of my regular salary working at the paper. This was back when Ethel ran the place, too. Trust me, that woman was as cheap as they came. And yes, Judy knows this because Judy and I worked together back then.”
The way the woman said “worked together” made me think she and Judy did not get along.
“Mrs. Know was paid a hundred dollars in 1981,” I blurted out, repeating what the ghost just told me. “Which, as we all know, is like a million dollars today.”
“Mrs. Know?” Judy’s face dropped. “What do you know about Mrs. Know?”
“Everything.”
She raised a shaggy gray eyebrow at me.
“I have paranormal expertise. And Mrs. Know just reminded me that I should get paid for it. She’s here.” I pointed toward my new ghost friend. “Right behind you. She says she knows you.”
Judy turned and waved her hands around, drawing them back when they passed through the faded ghost behind her.
“I don’t believe you,” she said.
“Let’s see. Mrs. Know has short, grayish brown hair and glasses. She’s wearing a pale blue apron with the words…” I took a step back and squinted at the ghost. “Cook-Off Judge printed on it. There’s also a date on the apron, but I can’t make that part out.”
Judy gasped. “I heard she died in that apron.”
“Yes, Judy. I’m manifesting in the clothes I was murdered in,” the ghost said. “And Judy should know. We both worked that cook-off together. I was a judge. She was a server. I ate poison. She served me said poison. I died from that cook-off.”
“You were poisoned at a cook-off?” I asked.
Judy’s mouth fell open.
Mrs. Know pointed to the date on her faded, ghostly apron. “Yes, I was poisoned Saturday, September 19, 1981, during the cook-off the Gazette is bringing back.”
Mrs. Know hovered closer to her old friend, looking the elderly woman up and down. “Please tell Judy that I’ve pieced everything together. I know she was the one who murdered me that night.”
I shook my head no.
“Tell her,” the ghost said, moving in closer.
“I’m not saying that because I have no idea what’s going on here,” I told the ghost.
“Say what?” Judy asked, turning from me to the spot in the room I was talking to, then back to me again. “And stop talking to no one, Carly. You’re acting like one of the town crazies.”
I locked eyes with Judy. “Mrs. Know just accused you of murdering her,” I said. “How’s that for crazy?”
Chapter Two: Never Leave a Good Ghost Behind
Judy snatched the small stack of letters sitting in front of her on the desk and stuffed them back into the box. She no longer seemed to care about being organized. She just picked up random papers and stuffed them one on top of the other, her gaze never leaving her hands.
“I don’t think this is the right fit for you, Carly,” she said, tucking the box’s cardboard flaps into one another. “I’ll tell the Herndons you’re not interested.”
“Except I am interested.”
“For a hundred dollars a pop, and all the murder accusations you can toss around.”
“I’m sorry. You asked what I was talking about with my ghost, and that’s what Mrs. Know was saying. I didn’t say it. Mrs. Know did.”
Judy looked up at me. “You think this is funny? Stop pretending Mrs. Know is here. And stop calling her that, for crying out loud. She just wrote the advice column under the pseudonym Mrs. Know. But most of us only found that out after her death. That’s not her real name. So if you want me to believe she’s really here, you’re gonna have to know more about her…”
“Gladys Pinkerton,” the ghost said. I repeated the information to Judy.
It made her lip twitch just a little.
“Anything else you’d like to know?” I asked.
“No.” She picked up the box and turned, hustling into the backroom.
“Come on, Judy,” I called to her as she went. “At least tell the Herndons I’m willing to negotiate my compensation.”
“Honestly,” she shouted over the sound of shifting boxes. “The Herndons tried to warn me. They told me you were nothing but a money-grubbing troublemaker.”
I made my way into the back area so I could hear her better, stopping just under the exit sign by the closet.
“But I went to bat for you,” Judy continued from the other side of the opened closet door. “I told them you were the only one for the job. Best medium I’d ever seen.”
“You said that?” I asked, stumbling back a couple of steps, hitting the handle on the backdoor. It beeped at me, and I jumped away before I set off some sort of alarm.
I never knew Judy thought of me in such high regard. That anyone in town did.
Cobwebs coated the top part of the woman’s gray hair when she stepped out of the closet, clapping her hands together to dust them off. “I even volunteered to be your neutral go-between, Carly Mae, because I wanted to work with you. But… a hundred dollars?”
She lowered her voice. “And Mrs. Know?”
We both walked back into the front part of the newspaper office again. It seemed darker now, even though my eyes had adjusted to the dim lighting. And colder, despite the fact it was so warm Judy was only in a polo shirt.
I’d blown it.
I rubbed my hands over the sleeves of my coat to warm up. “What happened between you and Gladys?”
Judy didn’t hear me. She was too busy lecturing me about the high costs of running a newspaper. “Back in 1981, cable hadn’t even come to Landover yet. People were forced to do stuff… like read. Whether they liked it or not. Now we have the internet and cellphones. Newspapers are dying.”
Her voice caught on the word dying.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I don’t need a hundred dollars.”
“Too late. The Herndons were right.” She turned, reaching for the long puffer jacket hanging on the standalone coat rack near the front of the office.
But before she got to it, my ex grabbed the top of the rack, making it sway ominously in front of her in the dimly lit office.
Judy’s face went three shades paler. She swung around and walked toward the desk area again. “I should find my keys first, anyway.”
Gladys’s laugh was chilling. “Did anyone else notice how Judy’s demeanor changed as soon as you mentioned me? This has nothing to do with money. Just before my death, things changed between us. Judy changed. Started going through a midlife crisis, wearing hot pants. Sowing her wild oats. It was during that time that she murdered me…”
I sucked in my lips, blinking at the grandmother-looking woman searching the desk over for her keys. I could not picture her in “hot pants.” Those were short shorts, right?
“Go on, tell her I said that,” Gladys said.
I zipped my coat all the way up, tucking my brownish blonde curls into the hood. I was done getting in the middle of this frenemy argument.
“Good seeing you, Judy,” I called to the woman as I opened the door. “Tell the Herndons I’m willing to do it for thirty, with a byline and complete creative control.”
My ex shook his head as he followed me out. “You’re not very good at negotiating.”
I walked through the snow to my Civic, both ghosts hovering closely behind me.
It was one of those pitch black nights, devoid of moonlight, where you could almost smell something paranormal dancing on the wind, tickling your nose, crawling down your lungs.
Or maybe I was the only one who felt that way.
“You didn’t tell her what I told you to tell her,” Gladys said. “Some paranormal expert you are. I’m staying here.”
I lowered my voice as I hung onto the door of my Civic, wind and snow smacking the side of my face. “I thought you were contacting me because you wanted help with your murder.”
“Just being around a strong medium has refreshed my memory,” she replied. “And I am certain now that it was Judy.”
“We don’t even know you were poisoned.”
I could hardly believe I was arguing with a ghost in the middle of a snowstorm outside the newspaper’s office.
But at least I got a good look at Gladys now, hovering in the street beside me. A loose-fitting blouse that tied at the top peeked out from under her apron, and I saw that her long skirt covered her knees.
She reminded me of an early 80s picture of my mother, back when my mom sported a similar look that I always called her “Jean Nate phase.”
I tugged my phone out of my pocket and brought up a new browser window as I leaned against my cold car.
“Let’s see how you died.” I punched in Gladys’s name into the search engine and an article came up right away.
Cause of Cook-Off Death: Mushroom Poisoning, Police Say
I scanned it for relevant information.
Mrs. Pinkerton, a judge at the contest, was taken to Landover Hospital by her daughter, Sonya, after complaining of severe stomach issues, but was released when symptoms started to subside.
By the time symptoms returned later that night, Mrs. Pinkerton had already gone into liver failure and could not be revived.
“This looks like an isolated incident, and we do not believe the public is in danger,” Sheriff Bellings said. “But we’re looking into it.”
We’re looking into it. I knew that was code for “giving up” around here.
No wonder Gladys felt like she had to take matters into her own hands. She had a horrible death, and an even worse investigation.
“Okay, so you were right. You were likely poisoned,” I said. “But we won’t know anything for sure until we’ve channeled together. I’m taking your case.” I motioned for her to get in the car.
Channelings were when I combined energy with my ghost clients so we could relive their memories in real time. I experienced not only their murders but also every interaction leading up to them, exactly as it happened back then.
She looked up at the swirling snowflakes spiraling down on the one of us who could still feel them.
“I know what happened. The newspaper was getting death threats at the time of my murder, and you’ll never guess who faked every single one of those calls. In her short shorts. And I’m going to get her to confess,” she said, then disappeared, leaving me looking off in her direction.
“I guess that’s that,” my ex added.
“I guess so,” I admitted.
I had a feeling Gladys would be back. She may have felt empowered now. But doing anything in the physical world was going to take a lot out of her spirit.
She would need my help soon.
I got in my car and turned it on, waiting as it heated up, pulling all the vents toward me.
I tried not to think about losing the column.
Even though I’d told myself the entire way over here that it didn’t matter if I got the gig or not, the truth was, it did matter.
And I needed a friend.
I called my boyfriend, listening as the call went straight to voicemail, not an unusual occurrence when Justin was working.
“I don’t think I’m getting the column,” I said after the beep. “A ghost showed up and messed up the negotiations, but on the positive side, I’m pretty sure I have a new client…”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the dark newspaper building beside me suddenly go extremely bright, like every light in the place flashed on. Then it went dark, then brightly lit again.
There was a loud crash, followed by a scream.
“I’ll call you later,” I added into my phone and hung up, watching as the door to the newspaper office swung open.
Judy hustled out in just her polo shirt, carrying the box. She motioned for me to pop the trunk.
My ex laughed as the woman angled the box into the back of my car and shut the trunk again. I rolled down my window. “You okay?” I asked.
“Thirty dollars. It’s a deal,” she yelled. “I’ll work it out with the Herndons. Just take that awful ghost with you.”
She looked around, made the sign of the cross, then hustled back into the office before I could tell her that I hadn’t seen Gladys come out with the box.
But then, I suspected tormenting her old friend was the real reason Gladys wanted to stay behind.
This was going to be an interesting case. I pulled out onto the street, happy to have the box and the job.
The roads were icy tonight, and my tires liked to slip on nothing. But that wasn’t why I slowed my car down to a crawl.
Something deep in my gut told me to slow down.
Take your foot off the gas and turn right, down this side street. But be careful of the icy patches on the sides,” I told myself, as I rounded the corner, even though there was no reason to go right. To turn anywhere.
I glanced over to the right, spotting the reason as it partially blocked the street, undulating over a couple of cars by the back parking lot of the First Landover Bank.
It was the dark mist everyone in town was talking about.
It seemed to wave to me as I passed it. Beckoning for me to follow it… somewhere.
I ignored the feeling, keeping my gaze straight ahead and my hands at ten and two, pretending I wasn’t one of Landover’s “town crazies,” even though I was likely the biggest one.
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