As Hodges walked off, I flipped over the card.
“What’s it say?” Ruth dipped her nose over my shoulder.
“Some guy called Axel Reign. Strange name.”
“What’s stranger is how Hodges was acting about him.” Ruth glanced over her shoulder at the bookshop owner. “Do you think this Axel guy has the same clairvoyant powers you do?”
I shrugged. “No clue. But there’s one way to find out.”
Alice peered at it. “Are you going to call him?”
I fanned myself with the card as I debated it. “For a murder that’s forty years old, I might have to. But there’s something I need to do first.”
Alice’s eyebrows curled into question marks. “What’s that?”
I shot her a secretive smile. “Open up a box.”
NINE
Ididn’t get a chance to open the box at Southern Ghost Wranglers. Actually I made up an excuse so I wouldn’t have to open it in front of Alice and Ruth because to be honest, I didn’t know how to work the equipment that was inside.
So I took the box home and was greeted by my friendly neighborhood spirit, Susan Whitby.
“It is like, totally cool to see you, Blissful.”
I unwrapped my scarf and draped it over a chair. No, I was not going to win the Neatest Housekeeper of the Year Award. I often draped clothes on chairs and things because—well, if you really wanted to know the truth, sometimes I was lazy.
Besides, it was only me in the house, and I had more than one chair. The others might feel lonely and neglected if I didn’t drape inanimate objects over them.
“Susan, where’ve you been?”
“Oh, out and about.” She lounged on my couch, filing her nails and drinking a ghostly can of beer.
“Can you even taste that?” I nodded toward the can.
“Nah, I just like the way it looks.”
Susan Whitby had been murdered in the eighties, and she dressed to prove it. She wore brightly colored clothes, giant red earrings, blue eyeliner and teased her hair to the sky. She smacked gum like it was nobody’s business and used awesome words and phrases likerad,gnarlyandgag me with a spoon.
She was a hoot.
“What’ve you been up to, Blissful?”
I set the box on a table. “I’ve been investigating the old Gambrell house. Seems there’s a nasty spirit in there who wants to screw with me.”
Susan didn’t say anything, which was not normal for her.
“Susan? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
Another long stretch of silence filled the room.
I plopped onto a chair that had a habit of poking me in the tush with its ancient springs. “Ouch.” I leaned on one hip. “Out with it, Susan. What did I say?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“Susan,” I growled. “If you don’t tell me, I’m going to hide all my nail polish from you.”
