A Ghost of a Chance, Cherie Claire [a court of thorns and roses ebook free .txt] 📗

“You okay, Vi?” Joe asks.

Maddox exhales and raises his hands. “It’s all good.” To me, he adds, “Look, I’m not here to arrest you, I just want to know what’s going on.”

I smile confidently because now I’m feeling empowered by friendship. “Do you want me to describe her? Tell you what she was wearing? You can discount it all, I’m sure, because there must be photos of the girls who attended Crescent College and you can easily assume I saw them and made this all up. But I hadn’t seen them before I went in that cave and I saw her. Dressed in a Crescent College uniform. Better yet, do you want me to tell you how she died? Blunt force trauma to her lovely blonde head, although I’m almost sure she was sexually assaulted as well.”

Maddox stops writing. “How do you know all that?”

I lean in close and answer as sincerely as possible. “I don’t know how, but I do. I was always a little psychic but ever since Katrina….”

My former New Orleans native swallows and nods and I’m thankful I don’t have to explain. “And the lake people?”

“Did you find three sets of bones?”

Maddox shakes his head. “Are we unclear about who asks the questions?”

I rub my eyes in frustration. “What did you find?”

He looks at me sternly, no doubt wondering how much he should divulge. “We found two sets of bones, one at the lake side and one inside that hole in the wall like you suggested to the officer who responded.”

“Jesus,” Winnie says.

“There’s another one,” I practically whisper, sliding the beads of perspiration off my glass, anything to avoid that man’s eyes. I still can’t believe I’m saying all this. “I would look at the Cave Spring before you start dragging the lake. But there’s definitely three. And if I’m not mistaken, they were all killed the same way, blow to the head, most likely abused in some way.”

Maddox sits like a statue before me, staring intently. I finally meet his eyes. “I didn’t kill them.”

He rises without a word, returns the notebook to his pocket and places the hat on his head. “Don’t leave town.”

It’s such a cliché that I laugh. Then I realize the tour ends tomorrow. “I think we drive to Bentonville tomorrow to catch our planes home.”

“We’re having dinner at DeVito’s,” Winnie inserts.

I send her a why did you have to say that look and she shrugs.

“I’ll be back,” Maddox says like a scene from another movie and heads out the door.

We both watch him leave when suddenly I think of something. I run through the restaurant until I reach Maddox at the elevator. “The girl at the Crescent Hotel. The one everyone says jumped or was pushed off the balcony and people see her mist around ten-thirty at night.”

Maddox rolls his eyes. “Is this another one of your ghost visions?”

“The guy giving the ghost tour last night said that people see this happening all the time and it’s so real they call it in to the police.”

The elevator arrives and three people get off. Maddox holds the door open. “Yeah?”

“Is it true?”

“How the hell would I know? I don’t believe in that shit.”

“Can you look into it?”

He gazes at me intently and I’m waiting for more questions when the elevator door starts beeping.

“There might be a connection.”

Maddox shakes his head and I’m convinced he’s blowing me off. But when he climbs in the elevator cab, he says, “I’ll see what I can do.”

Just before the doors shut, I think of one last thing. “I think the blond girl in the cave is named Blair Marcus and she was from Dallas.”

The surprised look on Maddox’s face and his attempt to stop the door from closing when he hears this news makes me laugh. The elevator doors clang shut and I’m suddenly staring at myself, which sobers me up. Who are you? I ask my reflection.

I turn to head back to the restaurant when I nearly run into Henry. “Oh hey, Henry.” I’m feeling nervous around him after what transpired the last couple of days.

“Everything alright?”

“Yeah, Madman — I mean Maddox — and I were just going over what happened yesterday at the lake.”

“What did happen?”

Now would be a great time for TB to arrive with an armful of research, something that makes sense. We could all say, “Wow, that’s crazy,” and continue our tour and forget this insanity ever took place. On future press trips, Henry and I would recall this crazy week where a bunch of ghosts showed up and have a good laugh.

But that’s not happening and I’m suddenly frightened. I’ve lost everything and given up a steady income to start my new career and here stands the man who could take it all away. There are other PR agencies that host press trips, sure, but Henry’s established and highly reputable and a bad word from Henry to his tourism colleagues and my travel writing days are over.

I shrug hopelessly. “Wrong place at the right time or vice versa, depending on how you look at it. The police found bones from an old case but I can’t explain how or why I happened to discover it. Honestly, it was pure accident.”

Henry digests this but his countenance doesn’t change. If only he would smile and ease my worries, convince me he doesn’t think I’m in league with Merrill and her tree huggers looking to derail the mayor and lose Henry a client in the process. Instead, he hands me that morning’s newspaper and there I am, plastered across the front page with a headline that reads, “Decades-old crime scene unearthed by tourist.” Of course, beneath that is a story about a new electric plant protest with Merrill and her gang carrying signs that read, “Keep Eureka weird and clean.”

“Wow,” is all I can manage.

Thankfully, Henry changes the subject. “There’s a bad storm coming in. They think they’re going to close the airport in Bentonville tomorrow night so we need to be prepared for plan B. You and your husband have a spa treatment this afternoon but we’re going to switch that out so we’ll have indoor things for you to do tomorrow. This afternoon we’ll do the outdoor attractions. Dinner’s still on at DeVito’s tonight. As for flight changes, I’ll keep you posted.”

He hands me another piece of paper and I look down to find an updated itinerary.

“And Vi,” he says softly, “if you need to go to the police station for anything, just let me know.”

I nod, grateful for his help but my heart never stops beating frantically. “Thanks.”

He turns to leave but I call out. “You don’t have to give us both a spa treatment. TB knows the rules.”

“Don’t be silly,” Henry says, but again, he’s not smiling.

I follow him in silence back to my table where my hamburger labeled the best in Eureka Springs awaits. I’m worried about Henry’s attitude, the Crescent Hotel forced to feel guilty and include TB in practically everything and whether the police think I’ve gone bat-shit crazy.

“Everything okay?” Winnie asks.

“I don’t know,” I answer softly.

“You have to admit, it’s a crazy ass story.”

I look up at my friend who I was hoping would make me feel better but she shrugs as if she’s as clueless as I am. “Now if you had a photo like the ones we saw last night. Something with orbs in them or a lady in the mirror....”

The hamburger is halfway to my lips when the light bulb goes off. Of course! “Winnie, you’re a genius.”

She smiles proudly. “I know. But why this time?”

I pull my camera out of its bag and start flipping through the photos I took yesterday. There’s a long stream of spring photos, starting with the Basin Spring and its lovely park and all the other springs we visited throughout the morning. Finally, I spot the photo I took of the box cave in the side of the mountain, the one located by Eureka Lake. It’s a little fuzzy and I stare hard trying to make out if I snagged a ghost but nothing’s there, really. The ghost of the three girls were by the lake, for some reason, so maybe…. Suddenly, I’m looking at the photos I took of the lake. There are three I managed to capture before screaming bloody murder.

And each one contains a mist hovering over the water.

I look up at Winnie and smile. “Hot damn.”

A relief powerful and uplifting floods my soul. I’m vindicated. I turn my camera toward Winnie and show her the evidence I caught on film — or digital — and she squeals with delight. Joe slides his chair over and demands to know our secrets. We pass the camera over and he starts playing with the zoom, magnifying one of the photos. When he gets it just right, he hands it back to me with a shocked look.

“Wow,” is all I can think of to say. Again.

At this point, Carmine is now over my shoulder, gazing down at the faces of three young coed, each about twenty years old.

He and I shiver at the same time, but I feel a “Way to go” tap on my shoulder. “SCANC,” he says, and returns to his table.

I look again. The photos show only faces above a mist and I see them for who they really were, young women with bright futures, not the bloody mess I witnessed at the lake.

“You have to show that to