Liam delivered another smile that somehow managed to look threatening. “We wouldn’t dream of it, officers.”
Chapter Seventeen
Harper burst into the shop the moment Natalie unlocked the door the following morning. “Oh my God. I came the moment I heard the news.”
“Really?” Natalie frowned. “The Mudville gossips are slacking.” She would have thought the news of her interrogation by the New Haven Police Department would have reached Harper in minutes. Not the following day.
“Are they really taking Lionel’s body away?”
“Oh, that news. Uh, yeah. It looks that way.” Natalie nodded.
“When?”
“I’m not sure. I’m guessing soon.”
“I know I’m new to this ghost stuff, but if they take his body, won’t his ghost go too?”
“That’s how it’s worked so far.”
As soon as Albany Medical College approved it and Carson could arrange for the coroners to come get him, Lionel’s spirit would be headed to Morris, New York.
“Natalie, we have a contract. A deadline. How are we going to finish the book without Lionel?” Harper asked, looking panicked.
Natalie noticed Harper was using the word we a lot. It was Natalie’s name on that contract. But it made her feel a little better knowing Harper was there for her.
“So I’ve had some time to think about this.” Specifically, all night long when Natalie couldn’t fall asleep. “All the research is there for our reference. The book itself is basically written. The work we were doing was just Lionel being nit-picky. I think we can whip it into submission shape quick. We’ll just finish it on our own without him.”
“Nit-picky? And there will be no whipping it into shape quick, as you say. Nothing shall be done to my book without me!” Lionel declared.
Once again a ghost had snuck up on her. Natalie really wished she could put a bell on these spirits.
One thing was certain. Lionel wasn’t happy with their plan.
The jangling of the bells above the shop door heralded another visitor.
“Natalie, are you here?” Alice, well under five feet tall, announced her support as she rushed between the maze of bookcases in the center of the shop.
The effect was that of a disembodied voice until Alice herself appeared.
“Oh, hey, Harp.” Alice greeted Harper then turned her attention back to Natalie. “Natalie, thank God. I heard all about it.”
Having learned from her interaction with Harper, Natalie wanted clarification. “What did you hear, Alice?”
“That the Feds—” Alice began.
“The police,” Natalie corrected.
“—charged you with murder—” Alice continued.
“Questioned me,” Natalie interjected.
“—and the only reason they didn’t haul you away in handcuffs is because Liam roughed them up until Carson had to pull them apart.”
Natalie didn’t have words. It was like playing a game of telephone, where the original message gets twisted beyond recognition through repetition.
“There’s the Mudville gossip mill at its best for you.” Harper shook her head. “Alice, Liam wasn’t even involved. I heard Natalie was so brilliant in her own defense—with words, not fists—that the police had to walk away. They had no evidence to arrest her. At least that’s what Gabe and Millie told me.”
“Closer but still not quite what happened,” Natalie commented. It seemed ghosts could be unreliable narrators just like the livings.
