“I’m sixty-five. What do I care about my figure for?”
Ruth shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. Seems Mr. Hodges might like you a little smaller.”
“Who’s Hodges?” I said.
“Owns the bookshop. It’s haunted, you know. Most of the stores are.”
“Except the bed-and-breakfast,” I said.
Ruth and Alice exchanged a look. “It’s supposed to be ghost-free,” Ruth said, “but we don’t believe it.”
“Yeah, there was something fishy about the Storm family,” Alice seconded. “Old Mr. Storm—the grandfather, not the father—he was a real piece of work.”
Ruth raised her hand. “We’re getting off topic. Blissful wanted to talk about a spirit—Lucky Strike, is it?”
I took a bite of cookie. “That’s good shortbread.” It was. It melted in my mouth, leaving a buttery residue on my tongue. “I could eat these all day.”
“I do,” Ruth said.
“We all know you have a high metabolism,” Alice snapped. “There’s no need to brag about it.”
“I wasn’t bragging.”
Alice mumbled, “Right.”
“Anyway, I’m looking for Lucky. I need him for, um, reasons. He’s very smart and totally good at evading folks. No one’s ever been able to catch him.”
Ruth fixed an eye on me. She stared so hard I felt that she was seeing all the way to my soul, or at least my stomach. “And why do you need him?”
“Because he does things like cause blackouts. He’s dangerous. Word is he’s gearing up to do something else—something big. I need to find him before it’s too late.”
Okay, so the gearing-up part was a bit of a stretch. I didn’t have any intel that pointed in that direction, but I did need Lucky and therewasno telling what the ghost had listed next on his agenda. Cause a crack in the Tennessee Aquarium? Poke a hole in a dam? The sky was the limit with this guy.
“The two of us are amateurs,” Ruth said. “We want to capture ghosts for our own reasons. We’re not bounty hunters.”
I finished the cookie and brushed crumbs from my fingers. “And what reasons are those? Why would two women want to capture spirits?”
Ruth shot Alice a look. Alice ran her fingers tenderly over the rope. “My daughter died when she was very young. I’ve always wanted to communicate with her. Talk to her. Oh, there were charlatans who said they could help me reach her, but I didn’t believe them. I thought—in a town full of ghosts, why can’t one of them be my daughter?”
My gaze switched from Alice to Ruth. “I still don’t understand.”
“I felt that if we could catch a few of them, one of the spirits would know her—know my Donna.”
“Oh, so you wanted to play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon?”
“Who?” Alice said.
“Never mind. What I’m saying is, you figured you capture enough ghosts, one of them will eventually lead you to your daughter, where you’ll get to find out if she’s at peace?”
Alice’s eyes were wet with tears. She knuckled them away. “Right.”
I nodded. “Where’s she buried?”
“Here. At the Oaks Cemetery.”
I threaded my hands and leaned forward, keeping eye contact with Alice. “I tell you what—you two ladies help me, and I’ll see what I can do about your daughter. I’ll see if I can help you reach her. I can’t promise anything, but I should be able to help—if she’s around.”
Ruth refilled her glass of tea. “And why can you help? What can you do?”
