The Perfectly Proper Paranormal Museum (A Perfectly Proper Paranormal Museum Mystery) (8 page)

ten

At lunch, I closed
up the museum, putting a
We’ll be back at …
sign on the door, and drove to the Wine and Visitors Bureau. Faded grape vines twined up its low brick walls, and a small “educational” vineyard stretched off to one side for visitors to explore.

I strolled past the wine barrel in the lobby and veered left at a placard advertising wine tasting classes:
Every
Sunday at 3:00! Sponsored by the Ladies Aid Society!

In the tasting area, a handful of tourists bellied up to the bar, swishing wine in their mouths.

A woman slid down the counter toward me. “Are you here for a tasting?”

Regretful, I shook my head. No drinking on the job. “No. I’m with the Paranormal Museum. I was told you had one of its spare keys?”

She pointed to an open door. “Ask at the office.”

I nodded and wended my way past displays of
T-shirts
and corkscrews and purple wine goblets to the open office door.

A plump woman in a fuzzy gray sweater scowled at her computer screen. I rapped my knuckles on the door frame.

Her head jerked up, and then she smoothed her expression into a smile. “Can I help you?”

I edged past open boxes filled with posters for the upcoming wine festival. “I’m Maddie Kosloski, temporary manager of the Paranormal Museum. Adele said you had one of its spare keys?”

“Ah, yes.” She rummaged through a desk drawer and lifted out a small key ring. “I’m a little sorry to hand it over, but I suppose it’s for the best. Er, has Adele decided to keep the museum open?”

“For now. Why?”

She pried the key off its ring and leaned over the desk to hand it to me. “Oh, no reason. There does seem to be a strange synergy between your museum and the wineries. Chuck, the past owner, used to joke that after a round of spirits, tourists wanted to experience the real thing. I tried to explain that ‘spirits’ refers to distilled liquor, not wine, but he wouldn’t let go of the joke.”

I had noticed a high percentage of museum visitors with glowing cheeks and noses. Synergy indeed.

“Chuck was a faithful sponsor of our winery map.” The woman tapped a stack of folded papers. “And the Paranormal Museum is on it as a result. I do hope Adele plans to maintain the tradition.”

“Things are in flux right now, but I’ll be sure to let the future owner know. That said, we are running low on maps at the museum.”

She gave me a stack. “Take these. They’re free for all our sponsors.”

“Thanks for managing the museum during the interim. I know it wasn’t your job.”

She waved her hand, dismissing the idea. “Oh, it’s our job. Like it or not, we have to stick together. People come to your museum and stop at the wineries, and vice versa. I know not everyone in town likes the museum, but I have to admit, I enjoyed it. Though several of our volunteers
flat-out
refused to work there again with all the weird stuff going on.”

“Weird stuff?” Something fluttered in my
mid-section
.

She tugged her gold necklace. “Strange sounds. Cold drafts. Things moving around. Of course, there’s no such thing as ghosts. I told them it was a combination of the construction next door and their imagination. But let’s face it. You’ve got some strange exhibits. And if I did believe in demons, I’d swear that African mask has got one.”

African mask? I tried to remember seeing one and failed.

“And now that Christy Huntington has been killed there, the museum’s haunted reputation can only get worse. Not that I think a ghost killed her. But I can’t say I’m all that surprised that someone did.”

“Oh?” I put the maps in my messenger bag.

“That woman overcharged me on a trust. I guess someone had to pay for her designer clothes and fancy car. But my friend paid one thousand dollars for her trust, and I paid Christy six. It was criminal! I complained to her, and she basically challenged me to sue. At that moment, I wanted to …” She pressed her lips together.

“‘Let’s kill all the lawyers’?” I quoted.

“
Henry the Sixth
!” She clapped her hands together. “You know your Shakespeare. Though I suppose if every lawyer got killed for overcharging, we wouldn’t have any left.”

“Mmm.” I had no idea what the going rate for a trust was, and guessed it depended on how complicated you wanted to make it. But six grand did seem like an awful lot.

The woman’s eyes narrowed. “You know, we’re looking for another actor for our Shakespeare in the Field series this summer. Are you … ?”

“No, no. I can’t act my way out of a paper bag.” I backed out the door. Shakespeare in the cow pasture was more like it. It was a lovely pasture, and they’d built a little stage of sorts, but a cow pasture was still a cow pasture.

I thanked her and drove back toward the museum, stopping at a taqueria. Standing at the counter, I ordered a burrito and waited. That quiver in my stomach surely had been hunger, not unease. Ghosts in the museum. Ha!

I emerged from the restaurant,
foil-wrapped
veggie burrito in hand. A familiar figure passed me on the sidewalk, stopping me in my tracks.

“Herb?”

He glanced over the shoulder of his dingy beige windbreaker and broke into a run.

“Wait!” I chased him down the street, passing a dog walker. One of her shelties dodged in front of me, and I tangled the leash. She shouted at me. Ignoring her, I disentangled myself and plunged on, flattening against a brick wall to avoid a woman with a stroller.

Herb dodged around a cinderblock building, and I piled on the steam. I rounded the bend into an alley. Aside from a neat line of garbage bins, it was deserted. Herb had vanished.

Wheezing, I braced my hands on my thighs. Herb was skinny. He’d probably run track in school. I had not.

A battered yellow VW Bug blasted down the alley in front of me. I ran to the end of the block, but by the time I rounded the corner, the VW was a fading speck in the distance.

Something warm dripped down my fingers. I’d crushed my burrito into an hourglass shape. Green sauce oozed from the edges of the aluminum foil onto my hands.

Stomping back to my pickup, I swaddled my burrito in napkins to staunch the bleeding and drove back to the museum. I devoured it at the counter, ignoring the cat’s hopeful looks.

“It’s vegetarian,” I said when his plaintive mews turned to yowls. “You wouldn’t like it anyway.”

GD sniffed and leapt onto the rocking chair, curling into a ball.

Tossing the foil into the waste bin, I busied myself with the inventory and a steady stream of visitors. Maybe the wine had lowered their resistance to the museum’s high ticket prices. But even at ten dollars a ticket, I couldn’t see how the museum could pay the rent and its owner’s salary.

The bell over the door tinkled.

Detective Slate walked in, wearing a rumpled black blazer and an absentminded expression. He nodded vaguely, his deep brown eyes seeming to see past me, and came to a halt in the spot Christy’s body had lain. I shivered, remembering that moment when it had felt like he’d looked inside me.

The cat raised his head, staring at the detective, fascinated.

He stood there a long time, looking at the floor, saying nothing. Then he paced in a slowly widening circle. GD sprang from the chair and stalked his
black-loafered
heels.

A pimply teenager emerged from the Fortune Telling Room.
Wide-eyed
, he tiptoed to my desk and whispered, “Is he a medium or something?”

“Or something,” I said. “Best not to disturb him.”

“Gotcha.” The teenager leaned against the counter to watch.

The detective turned on his heel and disappeared into the tea room. With a sigh of disappointment, the teenager left.

I pretended to read my inventory binder, pencil poised above the paper as if on the verge of making a notation. We’d been cleared to open the museum and tea room. And I had tidied up, shifted things about since the murder. What was the detective searching for? I loosened my grip on the pencil and wiped my damp hands on my jeans.

Finally, detective and cat emerged from the tea room and came to stand in front of my counter. “Did you find Herb?” Slate asked.

“Not yet. I saw him in town earlier today, but he eluded me.”

“Eluded?”

“He might drive a yellow VW Bug.”

Slate raised an eyebrow. “Might?”

“I was chasing him down the street—”

“You were what?”

“And then I lost him and an old VW blasted past. I think it was Herb.”

The detective shook his head. “I know Adele’s your friend and you want to help her. But do me a favor and don’t chase down any more suspects.”

“But I can’t find his name on any of the receipts. Oh, I heard that Michael St. James had a real fight with Christy last week at the Bell and Brew.”

“Mmm.”

“The owner, Jim, told me about it.”

“Hmm.”

“I don’t suppose you can discuss Adele’s case,” I said.

“No.”

Feeling foolish, I fumbled for something to say. “What about a closed case?”

His brows rose. “A closed case?”

“Cora McBride.” I pulled the photograph from beneath the inventory book. “This portrait is an exhibit in the museum. She died in prison for the murder of her husband—a local crime.”

“What year was the murder?”

“Herb told me 1899, though I haven’t been able to confirm that yet. The photo was taken in the 1890s. Or is it a daguerreotype?” I really needed to learn more about these exhibits.

“It’s a photo. Daguerreotypes were replaced with simpler processes during the Civil War.”

“Oh. Are you a history buff?”

Slate shrugged. “A Civil War buff. One of my ancestors fought in the United States Colored Troops.”

“You’re kidding. So did one of mine.” I shook my head. “I mean, not in a black regiment. In a Pennsylvania regiment. Though I don’t know if he saw any action …” I trailed off. What had we been talking about? Oh yes, Cora. “Anyway, I’m trying to flesh out my exhibit card on Cora. The Historical Association told me the court records from that era were in your basement. In the police department’s archives, I mean.”

“The archives aren’t available to the public.”

That didn’t seem fair, since the public paid for them. “Isn’t there a way to get permission? Or find someone in the archives who can help me?”

Slate smiled crookedly. “I’ll ask the clerk if there’s anything on that case in the files. If there is, I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks.”

The cat meowed at his feet.

“What’s with your cat?”

“GD’s either waiting for you to leave a tip, or he thinks you’re haunted.”

“GD?”

“Ghost Detecting.”

Rolling his eyes, Slate left.

I liked him better than his partner, who seemed to have an irrational dislike of me. I rubbed the back of my neck. Surely she’d grown past her high school “issues” and was only being tough on us because it was her job.

I never could figure out why she’d chosen me as her high school punching bag. I’d been kind of nerdy as a kid—so had Adele and Harper, for that matter. We hadn’t been part of the cool crowd or the jocks. And once high school was over, we’d fled for the farthest colleges that would accept us. I hadn’t seen Laurel since.

The minute hand on the clock over the door edged closer to five o’clock. Near enough to quitting time, I decided. I shut the museum and aimed for home, driving beneath the cement arch that welcomed people to the downtown, past a residential section, and through the vineyards. The lowering sun set the gnarled vines on fire.

Shane sat on the steps to my garage apartment. The outside light made a halo of his golden hair. He huddled in his leather bomber jacket, his hands wrapped around a mug of coffee—from my aunt, I guessed.

Furtively, I looked around. Not seeing her, I got out of the car and approached my brother. “Hi, Shane. What’s up?”

“I dropped by to see if you could come to dinner at Mom’s tonight.”

I imagined the scene—the dining room table laden with food from my mother’s favorite restaurant and spiced with questions about my job hunt. “I told her I’d stop by next week,” I hedged.

He shrugged. “She’ll be disappointed, but I’ll tell her you’re busy.”

Ah yes, I’d forgotten the lashings of guilt for dessert. “Next week isn’t that far away.”

“So what are you doing that’s so important?”

“Tonight I’m researching an artifact.”

“Is it possessed? Haunted? Demonic?”

“Just … interesting.” I edged past him.

He rose, following me up the stairs. “By the way, I may have a lead on a job for you at San Francisco Airport. They’re looking for someone to work the VIP circuit. You know, when VIPs arrive, help them get through in style while avoiding the press.”

I couldn’t imagine anything more vomitous than
glad-handing
a bunch of spoiled celebrities. My blood thrummed. “Thanks. But I’m not interested.”

“Why not? You’d be great for it. You’re worldly, sophisticated, can handle yourself. It would be interesting.”

“Not to me. I hate airports. They smell funny.” I jammed the key in the lock. “Did Mom put you up to this?”

“What?” He pressed his hand to his chest. “No. A friend of mine works at the airport and asked if I knew anyone. I wanted to give you the right of first refusal.” It was an echo of Herb’s words, and my irritation rose.

“Thanks for thinking of me, but I have to refuse.”

“I don’t see what you’re so mad about, Mad.”

“Why do you think I would want to go from managing my own projects to chasing after spoiled celebrities? I used to start up banks.” I guess that was my ego talking, but I liked having some independence and authority. Leaving the keys dangling in the lock, I turned and leaned against the door frame. I crossed my arms over my chest.

“Why would you want to go from managing millions to managing the local paranormal museum?”