“I’m sorry I asked.” I shake my head in amusement.
Dusty looks over at me and does a double take, blinking slowly and tilting her head. “Er, Tristan, you’ve got something stuck to you, did you know?”
“Dusty, this is Delores Abernathy. She came home with me and Danny last night.”
“You two are all kinds of freaky.” Dusty clucks her tongue, staring at the spectral barnacle currently attached to me.
“Gross, but no.” I pick up my now cold coffee and take a sip with a grimace before tossing it down the sink and rinsing the cup. “We went to the care home yesterday.”
“That wasn’t the plan.” She frowns. “You said, and I quote, ‘make yourself scarce so I can spend the next twenty-four hours nailing my incredibly hot boyfriend.’”
“I’m pretty sure I didn’t use those exact words.”
“So I’m paraphrasing a smidge.” She purses her lips as her gaze once again deviates to the little old lady who is still attached to my side and is once again humming to herself. “So what’s with Old Mother Hubbard?”
“Danny and I went to the care home yesterday to spend the day with my dad because he was having one of his good days. While we were there, Mrs Abernathy passed away, only I’m pretty sure she didn’t pass of natural causes.”
“Murdered?”
I nod. “Looks like. She has markings on her nails that indicate heavy metal poisoning, most likely arsenic.”
“Jesus, what is this? 1842? No one uses arsenic anymore, darling, it’s so passé.”
“Tell that to Mrs Abernathy’s murderer,” I reply. “Anyway, Mrs Abernathy followed me home, and I’m pretty sure she’s not going anywhere until we either solve her murder or resolve her unfinished business.”
“Can’t you just ask her?” She turns to the old lady. “Delores, honey? What do you need to go into the light?”
“You can’t just ask her,” I interject. “She probably doesn’t know who killed her and besides, she’s got Alzheimer’s.”
“What? Still?” Dusty blinks and I nod. “She’s locked in a death cycle?”
“That would be my guess.”
“I guess that’s one more tick in the probably murdered column,” Dusty ponders.
“There’s one more thing.” I chew my bottom lip. “When I was in the care home yesterday, I had the strangest feeling I was being watched.”
“Tris, darling, you probably were being watched, and by at least twenty different people. It’s a dementia home.”
“No, that’s not what I meant.” I shake my head, trying to figure out how to explain the cold trickling feeling down my spine. “Just before we discovered Mrs Abernathy had died, I saw a… a shadow.”
“A shadow?” Dusty repeats slowly. “I’m guessing you don’t mean Hank Marvin.”
“No, a shadow, a blacky smudgy thing.” I make a weird indecipherable gesture with my hands. “It was hovering above the ground and looked like a kind of weird cloak hovering in the air. I couldn’t see its face because it had a hood drawn up and it was thin… insubstantial. Like smoke. It hovered outside Mrs Abernathy’s room and then floated inside and disappeared.”
“That is some freaky-arse shit right there.” Dusty’s eyes widen.
“Have you ever seen anything like that before?” I ask.
“No, thank god.” She shakes her head. “We could always ask Bruce or Evangeline Crawshanks, though. When she’s feeling helpful, she’s a goldmine of spiritual information. It’s catching her in the right mood that’s the trick.”
“It might be worth a shot. But first I have to get to the mortuary so I can do Mrs Abernathy’s post-mortem.”
“Oh fun,” Dusty says dryly. “I’ll just wait here for you, or better still, I’ll meet you at the bookshop.”
“Stop thinking with your dick.” I roll my eyes. “Bruce has a job to do too, you know.”
“I am aware of that,” she answers primly. “I’ll be helping him out.”
