you know that,” she said, her hand over the receiver.
“Shirley at the station knows where I am, and that’s all that matters,” Matt said.
“Penny knows you’re here now, come on over and talk to her! Please!” Mae insisted, seeing the stubborn set to his jaw.
Matt cast Mae an evil eye, then rose to accept the receiver from behind the bar. Penny came on the line.
“Yes?”
“Matt, I heard you gave that girl from New York an absolutely wretched time!”
“Penny, I really did no such thing. And how did you hear so fast?”
Matt looked around. Sure enough, Marty Sawyer—Penny’s nephew—who had been watching Carter’s pool game was now nowhere to be seen. He’d slunk out already.
“Matt Stone! There is so much good to be done here! Principal Joe from the grade school was telling me how much the schoolchildren just loved the living history productions we did last summer, and you know as well as I do that you can’t keep that kind of program going if we don’t make sure that the house is entirely safe. And you’ve already agreed that we can let the seance go on.”
“Because even though I don’t believe in such a thing as a ‘medium,’ I like Elizabeth!” he said irritably.
“You’re going to make a tiny percentage off Elizabeth—compared to what Adam Harrison is paying to investigate your property. He usually charges people for his services. Now you know that I personally think that the ghosts are wonderful, but even I’m getting nervous here. Think about poor Clara’s face—and don’t go telling me she bumped into a wall. We need our ghost stories, some of them are so great. Passion, spurned lovers, murders, suicides! But…there’s something not at all right going on as well. Oh, Matt, please! If you really love the house and our history and want to keep the place open, not to mention in the family!—please let this girl come and get started on her investigations, no matter what it is, exactly, that she does.”
He gazed back at the bar. Everyone was staring at them. Penny was speaking loudly. They could all hear. “Penny—you’re right. Murders and suicides. The woman in white who’s been seen floating around the staircase. You know what? It isn’t going to matter what I do—the stories are going to circulate forever.”
“I’ve seen the woman in white,” Penny said stubbornly.
“Penny, you drank half the wine cellar that night,” he reminded her.
“Nevertheless, this is important. Yes, we’ll have stories, no matter what. But you said yourself that you were suspicious that someone was causing some of the ‘haunting.’ How will you ever know, or prove anything?”
“Penny, I am the sheriff. I know a few things about investigating occurrences on my own.”
“Matt, where’s your patriotism?”
“What?” he said incredulously.
“The house is so important. What if someone really gets hurt?”
He almost smiled. It was a new line of attack.
From the table, he heard the sound of David Jenner clearing his throat. “You know, Matt, things haven’t been that great. I could really use the work.”
“Right. You know, we’re not all rich, kind of famous, and born with absolutely legitimate names,” Clint said, grinning with a shrug.
“Matt, maybe you could do us all some good,” Carter told him.
“You won’t have to do a thing,” Penny’s voice said from over the phone wire. “Give Ms. Tremayne my number. And I’ll handle everything. You don’t have to come anywhere near the house if you don’t want to while she’s in it. But first, you go over right now and get her out of that ramshackle hotel where’s she staying.”
“Hey!”
Carter could obviously hear Penny. He owned the ramshackle hotel.
Again, Matt couldn’t help but grin. “Hell, all right.”
“Matt, honestly, you don’t even have to be involved, I’ll do everything, I swear! Dammit, Matt, you’re the one who called Adam Harrison, why are you balking now?”
“Because I expected Adam Harrison,” he said, feeling like a broken record, his temper rising. Impatiently, he said, “I’ll talk to her, Penny.” Then he hung up.
Mae grinned like a kid with a candy bar. “This is so cool—Melody House is getting real live ghost busters.”
“They’re not ghost busters, Mae,” Matt said.
“I’ve got to go to that seance!” Mae said firmly.
“You all really did hear every single word of that conversation,” Matt said ruefully.
A circle of nods answered him. He shook his head. “Hell—I guess I will start answering my cell phone,” he muttered.
“Well…?” Clint drawled. “When are you going to bite the bullet, give that girl a call and convince her that she is welcome here?”
“Soon. But not from here,” he said. He slid his sunglasses back down over his eyes, and strode to the door, taking his hat from a peg on the wall. He twisted his jaw; he didn’t believe in ghosts, spirits, haunts, or the goddamned Easter bunny, and he sure as hell didn’t believe in premonitions.
Still, he didn’t like this.
He shook his head, speaking with his back to the others.
“There’s an awful lot that’s bad in that place’s past,” he said.
He walked back into the sunshine of the day, letting the door slam behind him.
There was silence in his wake for several seconds.
“He’s going to let it happen, Mae, don’t worry, you’ll get to go to a real live seance,” Clint assured the woman still standing behind the bar, and still staring after Matt Stone.
“Yeah, well, it’s not the whole thing with the house that makes him so hostile,” Mae said quietly.
“He just never should have married that bitch from New York,” Carter agreed.
“Redhead, too,” David Jenner murmured.
“Well, living or dead, it’s always people that haunt the living!” Mae said sagely, offering a sad shake of her head. Then she brightened, sounding like a girl about to head for her first dance. “And you bet your butts, gentlemen! I’m going to get to see a real live ghost!”
“Mae, if you see a ghost, the point is, it’s not ‘live,’” Clint said dryly. “But what the hell? Things could get darned interesting around here.”
Thirty minutes later, Darcy was back in
