Then it appeared we had our man. I shot the ladies a look that suggested we were finished, and rose.
“Thank you for your time, Brownie. You’ve helped us a lot. We should be able to put Jinkins’s spirit at peace. Then the other ghosts should be able to safely depart this place.”
She reached for Maisie, who plopped onto her mother’s lap. Brownie stroked the girl’s soft blonde curls. “Thank you. I never thought we were in trouble. The lady would appear sometimes, but I don’t know. I mean, I guess we were in trouble. All the banging. I just never thought we would be harmed. It was horrible to deal with and needed to be stopped. I never considered it was my own relative doing it.”
I smiled weakly. “Hopefully we’ll be able to put it all to rest soon.”
She scooped Maisie from her lap and rose to follow us. “You know, it’s funny. There’s one other thing about Jinkins.”
Ruth had opened the door, and we stood in the hall. “What’s that?” I said.
Brownie smiled whimsically. “It was rumored that there was a lot of money hidden somewhere in the house. I’ve never found any, but my aunt would say that if there was money, Jinkins would come back from the dead to claim it, you could be sure of that.”
As we walked toward my truck, Pepper slid up beside me. “You think there’s treasure in there?”
I tucked a strand of violet hair behind my ear. “If there is, that might be why Jinkins hung around.” I winked at her. “Maybe we can ask him tonight when we open up theSpiritusand send him to Hades where he belongs.”
EIGHTEEN
We reached Southern Ghost Wranglers a little while later. Stuffed and suffering from a sugar crash thanks to all the shortbread, I plopped down onto a chair and sank into the pleathery texture.
“I’m ready for a nap,” I announced.
“I hear you.” Pepper swept by, her crimson hair trailing behind her. “I could use about twenty winks and then get back to work.”
Ruth sat behind the desk and picked up the phone. “Some of us have work to do scheduling ghost investigations.”
“It’s been a slow week, Ruth.”
“Speak for yourself, Blissful. It’s only been slow for you. We’ve gotten lots of calls, but since big bad Mr. Hudson is taking all your attention, I’ve been putting them off.”
“How do y’all make money from this?” Pepper said.
“We don’t,” I answered. I closed my eyes for a moment. “I have some savings and Alice sells the booties but we haven’t charged anyone for our services.”
“It doesn’t seem right.” Alice picked up her crochet needle and wound thread around it. “We see people when they’re very vulnerable. You can’t charge them for that.”
“Right,” Ruth chimed. “You can’t walk in and say, ‘It’ll be a hundred dollars per ghost, thank you.’”
“Though plenty would pay it,” Alice said.
“I’m sure they would.” Ruth thumbed toward me. “Only Blissful doesn’t want to charge them.”
I curled my fingers into the armrests. “Listen, this is a dream come true for y’all. When I first met the two of you, all you wanted was to catch ghosts. Now you get to investigate real hauntings. Isn’t that supposed to feed your soul or something?”
“It feeds something,” Ruth said, “mainly my anorexia.”
“You live off a pension,” I shot back. “You have two of them. Two. Social security and your teacher’s union. I don’t want to hear it.”
Ruth rolled her eyes.
Alice hummed something. I pointed a finger at her. “Do you have something you’d like to add?”
“No, I do not,” Alice said.
“Good.”
“Only that if you ever decide we can charge a little, I don’t think fifty dollars is too much to ask for a once-over of a house and to try to coax the evil spirits out. It would at least pay for our rent and utilities.”
