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

“What English teacher?” Merrill asks.

I grab her hand and lead her down the hall to the room where the historic photos are kept. I scan the wall until I find the right one. “There,” I announce, pointing to the photo of the English class winning the literary award. “Is that him?”

She leans in close to the photo, studying it hard, then pales. “What is my grandfather doing in that picture?”

Now I’m really confused, because the mayor knows about this photo, acted proud when she mentioned the literary award. Surely, being cousins, Merrill would know this as well?

“He was the English teacher here?” Merrill’s looking at me for more information, but what I got from this photo came in a vision.

“Obviously.”

Merrill shakes her head. “I never knew this.”

“Did you know that his name was James Cabellero?”

This rings a bell for her eyes grow large. “I’ve seen that name before but I can’t remember where. But my grandfather’s name was James Leatherwood.”

That name rings a bell with me. “Like the park outside of town?”

She nods. “But the park wasn’t named for my grandfather.”

“You think this is really the same man.”

Merrill takes another long look at the photo. “I’m positive. Besides, it says so under the photo.”

Now I look closely and sure enough, beneath the photo reads: “James Leatherwood’s English class after receiving the top regional award in creative writing.” There’s a list of the girls in the photos and Lauralei Thorne is one of them.

I sit down on a nearby couch, feeling vindicated for the second time that day, but it’s not enough and really, I’m as confused as ever. “I’m positive he and Lori — or Annabelle — knew each other. Knew each other well.”

I explain my visions and how Lori has appeared to me in the room, how she and James had seemed close friends. I leave out the part about her showing me what might have been a baby, no use freaking out Merrill more than necessary and really, I have no idea what that means. But I do ask, “Was there something romantic between them, you think?”

Merrill pulls her hand through her hair and the locks fall softly about her face. Even with all that natural gray, her sublime countenance presents a younger appearance. “I don’t know. And I don’t think my mom knows either.”

Here comes the tough question. “Do you think he had anything to do with those girls’ bodies that were found?”

Merrill looks up and meets my gaze but we say nothing. The answer feels all too real.

Just then TB passes in the hallway, sees us sitting there and bounds into the room with a huge grin. “You won’t believe the day I’ve had.”

He’s excited, bursting with some news, so I move over to give him room on the couch. Before he sits down I make introductions and Merrill offers that warm handshake to him (I can tell for TB instantly brightens).

“Merrill’s grandfather used to teach here,” I tell TB.

“Wow. That’s awesome. Maybe you can help us with a few questions, then.”

Merrill sits taller, her eyes glistening. “I hope so.”

TB’s smile grows until he shows some teeth; he’s super excited and it’s the first time I’ve seen him this happy since LSU won the College World Series. He pats the pile of papers in his lap. “I found lots of great information.”

“Where have you been?” I ask him.

“Right down the street is this awesome building. It’s a library of sorts although it’s got a longer name, like after some rich guy or something.”

“The Carnegie Library,” Merrill says sweetly. Again, I’m thankful she doesn’t treat TB in a patronizing manner like so many others. And yes, that includes me.

“That’s it,” TB says enthusiastically. “Very cool place. Built right upside the mountain and the inside’s got this cool fireplace and you can go up these stairs to where more books are kept.”

“So what did you find?” Unfortunately, I’m not as patient.

“The librarian there was very helpful. I told her what I was looking for and she and I went through all these old records, articles from old newspapers from the 1920s and the college yearbooks.”

This gets my attention. “College yearbooks?”

“Yeah!” He pulls a bunch of papers from his stack and hands them to us, half to Merrill and the other half to me. “So this college that was here was pretty well known. At one point the college president was putting ads in newspapers that bragged about the school having students from thirty-nine states. They even had an amazing basketball team that played other schools all over the south, even though it was just girls.”

For that comment, I pinch TB on the arm.

He flinches, staring at me. “What?”

We look at the pages in front of us, copies of old yearbooks with photos of girls in basketball uniforms, a bowling league and various pages of senior portraits.

“It wasn’t cheap either,” TB continues. “We found an article about the school taking in a couple of scholarship girls, at least that’s what they called them; they were orphans from Little Rock. For the most part, the college was full of smart, accomplished girls who came from money.”

Flipping through the pages I didn’t see anything I recognized. Until I got to the basketball page and there she was, our blond goddess in a school uniform, if you could call racing around a basketball court in a skirt a uniform. I point to the spoiled blond with a penchant for “townies.” “That’s her.”

We all lean over and look down on Blair Marcus, but I’m the only one who knows who she is.

“Her who?” TB asks.

“She was the girl I saw in the cave two days ago. The one whose bones they found.”

“You saw this girl in a cave?”

I start to grind my teeth, that after two days TB remains clueless as to the cave debacle but Merrill stares at me wondering what the hell I’m talking about too.

“I saw this girl deep inside Sycamore Cave by Beaver Lake,” I tell them both. “She was wearing the school uniform and had blood on her head, appeared like she didn’t know she was dead.”

“Oh, so it was a ghost,” TB points out.

“No, sweetheart, she was time traveling from the 1920s.”

Merrill grimaces and I mentally kick myself. I don’t mean to be sarcastic to my boyish husband, but his simplemindedness gets the best of me sometimes and I’m still smarting from Maddox’s accusations. “Sorry, yes, it was a ghost. And the cops showed up and found old bones there.”

Merrill reads the inscription, moving her finger across the page to match the name with the position in the lineup. “Blair Marcus.”

Those damn goosebumps return when I hear her name spoken aloud but TB sits up straight, a big smile again on his face. “I know this girl! She won the basketball scholarship. She was some big deal in Dallas.”

“Marcus,” Merrill muses. “Wonder if she’s related to that family.” When TB and I gaze at her questionably, she adds, “Neiman-Marcus.”

“That’s a department store, right?” TB asks.

Merrill smiles graciously. “A very rich department store.”

“But that wouldn’t make sense,” I say, considering the consequences. “If the heir to a fortune like that went missing, the whole world would have known.”

TB proudly pulls out some other pages from his treasure pile. “Maybe not the whole world, but this part of it did.”

He hands us several articles, mostly from Texas newspapers but a few from Little Rock. Blair’s formal photograph graces most of them, sitting on top articles about a missing girl from Crescent College.

“Wow,” Merrill says, picking up one of the articles. “I never knew about this.”

TB leans back cocky on the couch, stretching his arms behind us both. “The librarian said the same thing. One day she was cleaning up a back room and she found these old articles. They were tucked inside an old chest, hidden beneath dusty volumes of government crap. She said if she hadn’t been the overly curious sort, she never would have found them.”

“But this must have been big news,” Merrill says.

“Not for the college,” I add. “This is the kind of thing that can ruin an educational institution. Maybe there was a concerted effort by the townspeople and the school to keep this quiet. The college was a way to keep this old building going in