Desperately Seeking Salvage Read online

  “This doesn’t hurt, and Chester’s a good guy, so he won’t touch anything he isn’t supposed to. It’s just a writing thing so he can see if we can work around the block that’s been put on him.”

  “I don’t know if I like this,” Becker finally said, but there was nothing else to do. She was shunted aside as Chester came in and took over her body, most especially her left hand.

  The scribbling was so fast and furious it dug into the paper. She really hoped she’d be able to read it after they were done.

  She tried to make herself small inside herself so that she and Chester would not intertwine but would instead stay separate. It wasn’t too hard, just a bit uncomfortable.

  Her hand started cramping after two minutes, he was writing so fast. But what on earth did he have to say that was so important and couldn’t be summed up in a few words? Where, when, and who would have been enough. Even just who. From what she had heard, it was a small thing that he couldn’t tell her, not a freaking novel.

  She mentally tapped him on his ghostly shoulder.

  There was a shushing sound, and then she was alone in her body.

  Chester sat on the couch where he’d been a few minutes ago, with Becker staring back and forth between the two of them.

  “Okay, I have to admit that knowing what you do and seeing what you do are two very different things.”

  Different enough to make him leave her? Mel worried about that for a brief second. She couldn’t take more time than that. Unfortunately, there were other things that took precedence. If this was what made him leave, she would just have to take it on the chin. Of course, she’d have to ask him to not tell anyone about what exactly went on out here. It was one of the reasons she had never really tried to date. There was a reason the marriages in her family had pretty much been pre-arranged between people who were part of the same small circle.

  But once her mother died and her father had essentially left her to her own devices, no one had thought to arrange anything for her. She’d spent her high school years trying to get people within the circle to trust her while also pretending she was doing everything she did on her father’s orders. Not everyone fell for the ruse, but most people worked with her and eventually got to know her enough to trust her on her own merits.

  She was still watching to see if Becker had had enough without pleading with her eyes. She wouldn’t want him to stay just out of pity.

  Chester piped in, “And so are you going to take yourself out of here now, Mr. Vet Man? Or are you in for the long haul?”

  Becker raised an eyebrow at Chester, but spoke to her. “So what’s so important the ghost wouldn’t say it but had to invade your body to write it down?”

  That wasn’t exactly an answer. If nothing else, she was simply thankful he wasn’t running screaming from the house. She’d call it a draw and go from there.

  Pulling the paper in front of her, she glanced over the scratchy writing. Only a few words really stuck out to her, the rest of them seemed to be a bunch of squiggles and lines.

  She peered at Chester. “Did you have a hard time in school?”

  His forehead creased over his bushy eyebrows. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I did, and I didn’t learn to read until I was almost twenty. Excuse me for not having the best writing.” He was miffed, and Mel felt bad for upsetting him when he might be the only thing standing between her and figuring out this statue mess.

  “Okay, then.” She turned the page sideways, maybe hoping for a different perspective, but that didn’t help at all. She put it back in front of her, perpendicular to the desk edge. “Can you come over here to help me decipher, then? I’m not entirely sure what this says, and I don’t want to get it wrong.”

  Heaving himself out from the depths of the couch, Chester waddled over to her side of the desk. She could feel Becker’s continued stare. Sighing, she realized there wasn’t much she could do about it.

  “Oh, my, that you don’t need to read.” He placed his hand over the top of the page, perhaps not realizing she could see right through his translucent form. It didn’t matter anyway, since he continued, “This is the part you want.”

  She read under his finger, figuring she could look over the top portion another time when Chester wasn’t hovering. “What does it say?”

  He huffed out a breath. “I wrote it so I wouldn’t have to say it.”

  “And I can’t read it.” She looked up to find him frowning at her. “I’m sorry.”

  “Fine.” He propped his hands on his hips and leaned over her shoulder. “Henry Wilson is up to something he shouldn’t be. Milly over on the banged-up Corvette saw him with a book he shouldn’t have and then someone snuck into the yard from the creek and took him and his washboard.”

  She peered at the words again, sure that the squiggles and lines said nothing of the sort, but she wasn’t going to doubt him if that’s what he’d seen. He had his finger on the pulse of this place. If he said the washboard had been stolen, then it probably had. Just for verification, though, she wanted to make sure the washboard was definitely not on the back porch before she went worrying.

  If someone had taken it, then bad things were about to happen. Heck, bad things had already happened, if those weren’t actually statues down at the town square but were in fact the real people somehow turned into stone.

  Chapter Six

  Chester and Becker both followed her out to the back porch, where more often than not her father would deposit items and then hightail it back out onto the road as quickly as possible.

  Chester was not pleased that she was checking up on his information, but he could just deal with it. If she had something to go on, then she might be able to get around the book slamming on her hand again.

  Sure enough, the old washboard that Darren Hargrove had dropped off early last week was not in its assigned place. She had intended to process the piece and hang it in the kitchen with the other antique wash memorabilia, but she hadn’t gotten around to it, and now it and its inhabitant were gone.

  “This is bad. Really bad.” She leaned against the railing on the back porch with her fingers pinched on the bridge of her nose. A rogue was bad enough, but this…

  “What is the issue?” Becker said from his place behind her. “You said ghosts have left before, that you’ve taken them out yourself. What’s so wrong about him being gone? Can’t you just go get him back?”

  Chester looked expectantly at her, and she sighed.

  “It’s not that easy. In fact, it’s damn hard. And if what Chester says is true…” The ghost in question glared at her. She amended that last sentence. “Since Chester told us someone walked off with the washboard, it means the ghost has no constraints. And if I remember correctly, this one wasn’t a good one to begin with.”

  “Of course he’s not good, Mel.” Chester puffed out his chest, pinstripes looking like they were ready to break. “He locked me in that box, and I heard him setting some kind of wards against the book. That was the rest of the message I tried to write down for you. He locked me up because I saw him do it, and until you can figure out how to break it, you won’t be able to get that book to tell you anything.”

  Damn. She’d been afraid of that.

  They all trooped back into the house. Becker was trailing farther behind. Mel didn’t have the heart to ask why. Things had been going so well. He knew what she did, was fine with what she did, at least on the surface, and now that the moment of truth had arrived, he was distancing himself from her. She could feel it, and it hurt like a bitch.

  Better to know now, though, she told herself, even as she lifted a finger to wipe a speck of dust from her eye.

  Back in the office, she sat behind the desk. Chester took up his perch on the couch, and Becker paced across the room, getting closer and closer to the door that would lead him out onto the front porch and to his truck. She had really thought she didn’t have to worry about this. She guessed she had gotten ahead of herself.

  “You can go
if you want to.” She hadn’t meant to say that and about bit her tongue for its stupidity. She should not give him an easy out.

  “What?” He glanced up at her from the corner of his eye with his head down. His shoulders hunched as he stared at the floor before looking at her, his hands tucked into his front pockets.

  “I said you can go if you want to.” Repeating it was even worse. But she’d put it out there, and she couldn’t take it back. If he was going to take the out, he should do it now before she had to go hunt down a rogue. It would be easier if she went in knowing she had no backup, instead of thinking she did only to have him bolt at the wrong moment.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Was he going to make her spell it out?

  “You’re pacing. You’ve barely looked at me. If you want to leave because this is all too far out of your comfort zone, I’m not going to stop you. I have some things to do, and if you don’t want to be here, I won’t blame you.”

  His mouth hung open after her announcement, an awkward silence filling the air as Chester looked back and forth between her and Becker like Becker had looked between her and Chester earlier.

  And then Becker started to laugh. A long and hard laugh, one that rivaled anything she’d heard before from him or any one of the late-night movies from the eighties that she loved to watch.

  “Are you kidding me? This is the most excitement I’ve had in years that doesn’t involve fondling some cow’s intestines or trying to stay out of the way of a dog’s butt. You couldn’t get rid of me even if you tried.” He came over and kissed her on the head, then lifted her chin with his hand. “You’re stuck with me, babe. I was just trying to think my way through how we could pose a question to the book without stepping into whatever that ghoulie put on it to make it want to eat your hand. I have a few ideas, but let’s see if Chester has anything more he forgot before we start experimenting.”

  Well, okay then. He wasn’t going anywhere, and she was being an idiot. She could handle that.

  “Chester?” she said to the smirking ghost sitting on the couch.

  “Right, right. Okay, anything else I can think of. Put the paper down, and let’s see what else I came up with.”

  She left the paper right in front of her and felt him looking over her shoulder. She gave it two minutes, or maybe it was more like thirty seconds. But even if the ghost didn’t actually breathe it still felt like his breath was hot on her neck.

  “From what I’ve got on here, I’d say you might be able to ask about things having to do with being clean. The washboard is the connection.”

  “That was my thought, too.” Becker and Chester smiled at each other after Becker’s agreement. She was almost positive she was going to have a hard time keeping them from doing some kind of bro hug. How had she gone from being concerned Becker would leave to not being sure she’d ever have a conversation with him again without Chester interfering?

  She shook her head and pulled the book back in front of her on the desk. Putting the glasses back on her nose, she knew she did not want to be afraid of the best and most useful tool she had to run this place. If she showed that she wasn’t sure what she was doing, it could erase all the progress she’d made over the last twelve years.

  “Let me see the cleaning not in the yard.” The book shivered and started flipping pages. Becker watched, from his spot next to Chester, with his eyes wide. It was pretty impressive if you’d never seen it work before.

  The first entry was the guy, Casey Deavers, that she had sent to do the cleaning on the family with the high shelves. Okay, that was good.

  Next in red was Mrs. Franheiser, who helped out at the stables at the farm next door. “Next door” sounded funny since really the place was almost two miles away by foot, but technically it was next door. Mrs. F liked to hang out there to listen to the horses nicker to each other. She couldn’t do much, since she hadn’t learned how to move objects on her own, but she had been a maid when she was a young girl. It said so in the book, next to her name.

  Next came Flora Delacourt. Her name was ashy, not red at all, and that was because she had chosen to move on to the next plane. Several other names came and went as the book flipped back and forth. She recognized all of them and waited for that one that would be attached to the washboard.

  And then, there it was, in bright red and bold: Henry Folsom was not where he was supposed to be, and he was doing things he wasn’t supposed to be doing.

  ****

  Leaving Chester at home wasn’t her idea. Because he hadn’t gone out of the junkyard in years, he just couldn’t make himself okay with being taken off the property. So he decided to stay at the house. Which left her with few options. In the end, they brought Horace in his compass. It wasn’t magic, by any means, but it was close. He was able to sniff out ghosts. But first they had to get into town.

  She and Becker had talked about it, and the best chance to get a bead on where to start was to get into town and start driving. With the statues in the middle of town, whoever had taken the washboard would have to be within a small radius of the gazebo. They each took their own car in case they had to split up and drive around.

  She’d also talked with Sherri Bendfield, a psychic she knew through her networking and connections, to see if she’d ever come across something like this. They’d had to go back pretty far to find a similar situation. Something had happened in the late 1800s that mimicked this, but there were a lot of differences, enough that she wasn’t certain it was even prudent to go after the rogue ghost. She wished she could have talked to her dad. She called and called, finally realizing she could only leave him a message and hope he got it.

  So here they were in the middle of town, and—holy Madonna in red silk and diamonds—there were two new statues. She squealed into a parking spot and was half out of the car before she remembered that all the clothes she’d brought to dress the statues better were in the truck.

  “Find a parking spot, then go over to the statues and try to stand in front of them,” she yelled to Becker across the hood of the truck. The poor guy was stuck in the middle of the road after her quick parking.

  “Uh, I don’t know that it’s going to help.” Becker looked dubiously at the new man and woman, both naked and glistening in the afternoon sun like the others. Four was not a good number, especially when she didn’t know what the end game number might be. Lots of lore involved sevens or thirteens and twelves, but there was no way to tell what the spirit was doing or how many people it was going to take before it was done with whatever it was doing.

  She couldn’t think about that now. What she needed was to get clothes she’d brought with her on the two newly-minted wrinkled people and then start hunting like a boss. Hoping against hope that there wouldn’t be more statues hadn’t worked, so she was glad she’d come prepared, just in case.

  Becker ran from his parking spot one car ahead of her and beat her to the statues.

  She threw him a muumuu from her grandmother’s old clothes and took the bathrobe to cover the man. Mr. Harkness didn’t exactly look like a Greek god in marble. He ran the ice cream shop across the street, and Jenny Cranston was the librarian.

  Where was this person, or spirit, or people, getting these oldsters? Were they just randomly selected, or was it more pinpointed?

  Was there something here that would help her guide Horace to the right place to even start?

  With the way the statues were stacking up around the gazebo, she was pretty sure she didn’t have much time.

  Taking a moment, she stood stock still and then turned in a full circle in front of the gazebo.

  Where was the person who had taken the washboard off her back porch? How had he managed to get it out without her noticing? How did he even know what it did or how to make it work?

  So many questions and just not enough answers.

  Mel wished for some kind of inspiration, but the wish fairy must have been getting her nails done. Okay then, it was up to them a
nd Horace.

  Chapter Seven

  “Horace, I know you don’t like to be out and about,” she whispered to the compass she held in her hand.

  Muffled agreement met her statement.

  “And I know you don’t like to be used as some kind of toy.”

  “You got that right,” he said, a little louder this time.

  “I really need your help, though. I know they mess with you at the yard when they’re playing hide and seek, but this is really important. Something weird is going on in town, and if we don’t find this thing soon, my home—your home—might be in jeopardy.”

  He lifted the top of the compass just enough for her to see his eyes over the bottom rim. It reminded her of the TARDIS from Doctor Who. She’d found that no matter how small a receptacle might be, a ghost would fit into it yet could come out full size and never complain about space. Unless you counted Mrs. Hatchett, the ghost in the cookie jar above the refrigerator, which she didn’t.

  Horace’s eyes were a murky shade of brown. He’d been a sea captain in his prime when a shipwreck, coupled with a nasty alligator, had turned what could have been a tropical vacation into a nightmare of being eaten while he waited for rescue. He’d poured his soul into the compass to escape the pain. A crew member had found it on the ground next to the beast, which was also dead. The story went that Horace had sunk his knife so deep into the alligator while it started eating him that the alligator had gone on eating even as it bled to death.

  The compass had come into Mel’s great-grandfather’s hands almost seventy years ago. Horace had been with them ever since.

  “I promise I’m not using you for anything that isn’t absolutely necessary. We have to find this ghost.”

  She was pretty sure she knew what was happening, but without proof or the actual ghoulie, she had no way of stopping it.

  Horace’s fingers curled out around the edge of the compass under his eyes. “Is it really that bad?”

  “I think so.” She turned the compass toward the statues to show the quartet to him. “Those are living people in there, as far as I can tell, or they were living. I’m not sure exactly what’s going on, but something is turning them into stone. I need to know who, and I need to know why and how to stop it. First, though, we have to find out who. The rest we can come up with after. Right now, I have to save the ones who’ve been turned. I can’t have any more statues out here, or it’s going to be hard to explain this away as a Halloween trick.”