style="font-size:15px;"> “You may not know this, Cassie—” Ed turned to her “—but we have a school bond issue coming up next month to raise money to buy computers for the kids.”
“That’s nice,” Cassie murmured, having no interest whatsoever in it. She had more than enough to worry about with her aunt’s vacancy problem.
“It occurs to me, Dan, that you might be willing to write a guest editorial for me,” Ed said blandly. “Something along the lines of a businessman telling the voters why it would be a good idea to educate their children to compete in the twenty-first-century job market.”
Cassie blinked, surprised at Ed’s request. Her surprise grew at Dan’s response. Instead of politely declining, as she would have expected, he gave Ed a rueful grin and muttered, “I’d love to.”
“Good. Good.” Ed rubbed his hands together in gleeful enthusiasm. “Now then—” he turned again to Cassie “—if you aren’t selling and you aren’t buying, why are you here?”
“I want your opinion.” She tried to inject an uncertain note into her voice. “Being a newspaperman for as long as you have, I imagine you’ve seen it all, and the most extraordinary thing happened yesterday. I saw something on the back stairs, and then again in the attic.” She shuddered and paused, giving the tension time to build.
“Spit it out, woman,” Ed ordered.
“If I believed in ghosts,” Cassie said hoarsely, “I’d say I saw the ghost of Jonas Middlebury.”
“The ghost of—” Ed sputtered to a halt. “How do you know it was him?”
“Whatever I saw looked exactly like Jonas Middlebury was supposed to have looked, and since he died a hundred and fifty years ago...” Cassie allowed her voice to trail away suggestively.
“Sounds like a ghost to me,” Dan stated calmly.
Ed gave him a scathing look and turned to Cassie. “And if the old geezer died a hundred and fifty years ago, then how do you know what he looked like?”
“They did have writing back then,” Cassie said, hastily improvising. “And old Jonas wrote to his fiancée.”
“You’re saying the inn is haunted?” Ed demanded.
“Nope.” Cassie was very careful not to make any false claims. “I’m merely saying that I saw something very strange that promptly disappeared. Since I don’t believe in ghosts, I’m hoping that you have another explanation.”
Dan studied Cassie’s earnest expression, wondering what this was all about. She didn’t seem to be the kind of nut who believed in the supernatural. His first impression of her—other than the fact that she was one very sexy lady—was that she was intelligent. But claiming to have seen ghosts was not exactly the hallmark of intelligence.
“Could you do a story on it and see if any of your readers have any ideas?” Cassie suggested with a hopeful look at Ed.
“You bring me a picture of your ghost, and I’ll run it on the front page,” Ed countered.
“If I can manage to get a photo, Ed Veach, I’ll sell it to the highest bidder,” Cassie shot back.
The editor chuckled. “That’ll teach me, huh?” He turned to Dan. “You won’t forget that editorial, will you?”
“No, I won’t forget,” Dan threw over his shoulder as he followed Cassie out of the newspaper office. “Is there really a ghost at China View?” he asked as he fell into step beside her.
“I saw something on the stairs.” Cassie stopped in front of the bank. Pulling the deposit envelope out of her purse, she carefully stuffed it into the automatic deposit slot, cautiously checked to make sure it had gone down and then headed across the street to the café, intent on spreading the rumor further.
“And you think it was a ghost?” Dan persisted as he held the door for her.
“I have never believed in ghosts,” she said honestly. “And I see no reason to change my mind simply because I saw something or someone who seemed to be able to disappear at will.”
“Who disappeared?” Annie, the waitress, looked up from the cherry pie she was cutting. “Don’t tell me we got us a little excitement in this place?”
“I don’t think so.” Cassie slipped onto one of the stools at the counter, figuring it would be easier to spread rumors from there than from one of the more-isolated booths in the back. “I’m sure it must have been my imagination.”
“You?” Annie scoffed. “You’re disgustingly levelheaded.”
“Her whole family is,” Bill, seated farther down the counter, offered. “When I was in school with your father, Cassie, he had no more imagination than a garden slug.”
“And your aunt Hannah has an explanation for everything,” Jim, his elderly coffee-drinking crony added.
“Ain’t that the truth,” Annie muttered. “I still remember being in her kindergarten class.”
“You and most of the town,” Jim said. “What does Hannah have to say about what you saw?”
“Aunt Hannah doesn’t believe in ghosts, either,” Cassie said truthfully.
“What makes you think it was a ghost?” Annie demanded.
“I didn’t say it was a ghost,” Cassie said. “Just because I saw something on the stairs...”
“Something?” Jim peered at her. “This ain’t no joke you’re playing on us, is it, Cassie?”
“Absolutely not!” The conviction in Cassie’s voice was unmistakable. It was certainly no game, she told herself, quieting her conscience. Her aunt’s livelihood depended on this charade.
“What about you?” Bill asked Dan. “Have you seen this ghost she’s talking about?”
Dan looked into Cassie’s hopeful eyes and felt a curious twisting sensation in his chest. Despite his horror of manufacturing news, he couldn’t quite divorce himself from whatever fantasy she was so carefully creating. And it wasn’t as if it were really news, he decided, appeasing his conscience.
“Well, I’m not sure I actually saw anything. Not exactly,” Dan said slowly.
“Well, what exactly?” Annie leaned over the counter.
“I heard something outside my room, but when I opened the door...” Dan paused.
“Yeah?” Jim demanded.
“I caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye, and when I turned, it had disappeared. And there was this smell.”
“What kind of smell?” Annie’s faded blue eyes widened in delighted horror. “Like something out of the grave?”
Cassie blinked. This was getting out of hand. She certainly didn’t want anyone associating China View with corpses.
Dan
