Maegan was mostly presentable when I tucked my cock away and zipped my pants. That’s when I noticed the cum splatters on the hardwood floor from after I pulled out. Maegan followed my gaze then hooked the sweater she’d dropped on the floor with her foot and dragged it over to wipe up our spill.
“Dry clean only,” she whispered. “This is going to cost you, buddy.”
We hauled ass to the kitchen to wash our hands and get a drink to quench the thirst we’d worked up before the guys came knocking on our door.
“How do I look?” Maegan asked.
“Thoroughly fucked.”
“So do you.” She gave me a quick kiss then headed back toward the door while I stayed in the kitchen.
I’d never had such an intense desire to smoke a cigarette in my entire life, not even after surviving harrowing gunfights with enemy combatants when we were ambushed in Fallujah. Jesus. The lady not only stole my heart, she wrecked my universe. I fucking loved every second of it.
I smiled when Maegan threw open the door and exuberantly greeted Lyric and Memphis. And by greeting, I meant she demanded to know what else Lyric learned.
“Mae, can we at least let the fellas in before you interrogate them, or are you planning on withholding their dinner until they talk?” I asked. It would just be the four of us for dinner because Andy was working late to finish a construction project and Milo had drag queen rehearsals for an upcoming charity event at Queen City Divas in Cincinnati.
“I guess you guys can come in,” she grudgingly said, “but no dessert until you talk.”
Lyric was hesitant to say much since he wanted to avoid upsetting her again, but he agreed to answer her questions since it was her home and her ghost. Okay, he said it was her home, but we both knew Anthony was her ghost too.
“Do I want to know?” she asked, sounding uncertain.
“She wants to know,” I told Lyric. I knew she wouldn’t sleep if she didn’t find out everything he knew, or at least suspected.
I will say this about Lyric Willows; he was a man who didn’t settle for wild guesses. He slowly and methodically explained everything he had learned, making sure to emphasize what was supposition versus facts he could verify with articles or documents he found online. Maegan gasped when she heard the EVP recording they’d made the night before. Anthony hadn’t spoken in complete sentences like, “Hi, my name is Anthony Bliss, and I’m the ghost living in your attic.” He answered Lyric’s questions with single-word responses. He confirmed he was Anthony and when asked what happened to him, he said, “Asylum.” The only complete sentence he spoke was when he asked where Wallace was. Then Lyric set down a photo showing a man who looked identical to Wallace Bennington standing outside a building with a Blissview Hotel sign on the front. I couldn’t see his face because it was turned away from the photographer, but Lyric showed pictures of the two men side by side and everything about them from their height to the unique way they stood told me I was looking at a picture of Wallace Bennington in San Francisco. Furthermore, the horse on the other end of the reins was Anthony Bliss’s horse, Starlight.
“Oh my God,” Maegan said softly. “You think Melanie Bliss had him committed because she found out about his plans to leave her? There’s no way Anthony sent Starlight with Wallace if he wasn’t planning to go too. I’m surprised the horse wasn’t in the formal family photos.”
“That’s what I thought too,” Lyric agreed.
“What about the asylum angle?” Mae asked.
“We’ve searched for anyone in the family trees, or even a friend of the family, who would’ve had the authority or connections to have him committed,” Memphis said. “So far we’re coming up with a big miss.”
“What about someone bribing a person in charge at a facility? Let’s be honest here, the doctors and administration at a lot of the asylums were not good people. For enough money, I could see them slipping a man in without a proper judiciary ruling.”
“Damn,” Lyric said, whistling between his teeth. “I didn’t consider that.”
“I’ll look into that angle while you’re in San Francisco,” Memphis said.
“San Francisco,” Maegan and I said at the same time.
Lyric told us he was flying to San Francisco in the morning to meet with the concierge of The Golden Gate Bridge Inn, formerly the Blissview Hotel. He said it was rumored the concierge position had remained in the same family since the hotel was first built, and he hoped to find out the stories passed down through the generations. It was a good strategy, and we were eager to find out what he learned.
I hadn’t agreed with Maegan’s opinion about the hamburgers and hot dogs until I tasted her smoked pulled pork for the first time. “Can we have this every week?”
“Next week, I’ll show you what I can do with beef brisket.”
“Okay,” Lyric and Memphis both said. It was nice to know that Lyric might still be around a while longer. The way Memphis blushed while looking at him was too adorable for even me to miss. There was something special going on between the two men.
After dinner, Lyric and Memphis went upstairs to fire up the video cameras and conduct another interview with Anthony. I loaded the dishwasher while Maegan put the leftovers inside the refrigerator. She gasped suddenly, and I knew she saw the pastry box I stashed inside before she got home.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“A little something to celebrate our anniversary.”
Maegan spun around with wide eyes. “What?”
