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

leave my poor, heartbroken husband and live on my own.

That particular guilt hits hard and I’ve had enough. I pick up the phone and interrupt her. “What do you want, Mom.”

I think she gets it, or is heading to that serious guilt place and will start admonishing me for talking to her with that tone. Thankfully she gets it, but adds on the guilt anyway. “Am I bothering you?”

“Yes, Mom, as a matter of fact, I have to be somewhere. You could have asked me that in the beginning.”

“I’m sorry, are you late for your spa treatment?”

How does she know this? Then I remember, she’s been bugging TB all week. I don’t care. I don’t need to explain my job one more time. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I am. Now if you will excuse me….”

She’s not giving up that easily. “Will I see you when you get back? The family’s getting together Friday night at the house. You know, the one with the tree in the roof.”

My mother’s house had a pine tree snap in two and fall through the game room. She had to replace the roof, the game room floor and its walls of damp sheetrock that experienced water damage from the rain pouring through a very small hole. The repairs happened all within a month after Katrina because my poor mom was “devastated” by the experience and bugged the shit out of her insurance agent. Meanwhile, everyone I knew with water to their ceilings — including me and TB — were still waiting for the Allstate man with his good hands to arrive.

“Fine,” is all I can manage. “I’ll see you there.”

I’m about to hit the end button when she cries out “Wait. Have you seen your Aunt Mimi?”

This stops me cold and I pick up the phone. “What about Aunt Mimi?”

“She lives up there. Where you are right now. If you’d have called me back, you would have known this.”

I had heard Aunt Mimi was in an assisted living facility in Branson, but I never put the two together. Was Branson that close by?

My mother answers that question. “She’s about an hour away in that horrid town, Disney World for middle America. How anyone would want to visit, let alone live in Branson is beyond me. But I know she’d love to see you.”

I’d love to see her too, but I’m on a press trip, not a vacation, and having to explain that one more time is about to send me over the edge. I’m now five minutes from breakfast so I take a deep breath and assure my mother I will look her up, write down the number and make a hasty goodbye. Of course it takes longer than I realize because my mother has to update me on her job situation — she’s working as an adjunct professor in Baton Rouge until the universities in New Orleans get on their feet and the hour drive is about to kill her — and I’m late so I grab my purse, my camera and run for the elevator, realizing I have no earrings on and my socks don’t match. Could this morning get any worse?

Why did I have to ask that, I think, as Richard enters the elevator in his running shorts and starts telling me how he just exercised for an hour and the trouble with Americans today is they’re lazy and eat too much and expect the rest of the world to pay their healthcare bills. “La, la, la” I sing inside my head to drone his diatribe away.

When the doors of this pitifully slow elevator finally open I make a dash to the dining room. I’m almost there when I catch a handsome man to my left — yes, I’m easily distracted by good-looking men — and I find Madman casually leaning against the concierge desk laughing with Kelly as if they’re old friends. I don’t know why I’m jealous since I’ve written this self-centered man off my list, but he’s talking to this stranger with more animation than he ever offered me and we worked together for years, not that he remembers.

I walk up gingerly and the two keep laughing but now Kelly notices me. “Vi,” she says, touching my arm and laughing again. “Your socks don’t match.”

The two enjoy the mistake, although it’s more of the laughing with you kinda chuckle and not the high school you’re-so-stupid laugh, but it bites just the same. I look down and smile, shrug, assure them it’s all in fun. I wink. “Yeah, well, had a romantic night and it was rough getting up this morning.”

This takes the winds out of their sails and I wonder if we’re really not still in high school. Kelly decides to say her goodbyes and heads off to breakfast. Madman sobers and becomes the man I know him to be, all business. “Have a minute?” he asks.

We head to the fireplace couch that’s beginning to get on my last nerve and sit, while he pulls out that stupid black book. He doesn’t waste time. “I called that librarian this morning and she said the Diocese did send three orphan girls to the college but they never heard from them again. In the words of the guy she spoke to in Little Rock, it was like they disappeared.”

I should feel happy that I’ve been vindicated but I’m tired and aggravated so all I do is nod.

“So it looks like someone may have been preying on these girls.”

Ya think? So glad you came up with that.

“Might be the same person who killed Blair Marcus.”

Wow, aren’t you the smart one. I need coffee, I think. I stand, ready to head over and fulfill my caffeine quota. “So we’re done?”

Maddox looks up surprised. He wasn’t expecting me to write him off so quickly. “I thought you’d be pleased with this information.”

I smile sarcastically. “Already knew it. Remember?”

He rises and we stand eye to eye. “Oh yeah, ghosts.”

The way he says it, you know he doesn’t believe. “All this information you just uncovered,” I say using quote marks with my fingers for “uncovered.” “I told you yesterday so forgive me if I’m not impressed that you validated what I already knew.” I can’t believe I talked to him that way but I’m done with letting people push me around.

I turn to walk to the dining room but he catches my elbow. “Any ideas who it might be?”

Are you kidding me? I look at him as if he’s sprouting three heads. I’m about to give him a choice piece of my mind when I hear Henry calling from behind me that we’re ready for breakfast and a local chef from town will be discussing the town’s culinary scene.

“The college’s groundskeeper,” I tell Maddox against my better judgment. “I think he’s your man.”

Maddox nods. “Where are you going to be later?”

I don’t want to see this man ever again, although curiosity will make me check up on the case to see what they turn up. I’m about to say that we’re leaving today to return home, when Henry pipes up behind me, “We’ll be at the tea house for lunch, then hopefully heading out to Bentonville and flights home, if the rain doesn’t stop us.”

I’m disappointed that my last meal on my once beloved virgin press trip has to be tainted by this man yet again, but how much information can police uncover in a morning? I turn towards breakfast and pass them both without looking up, heading for that cup of coffee that may make this morning more bearable.

When I enter the dining room, the chef has already launched into her culinary talk and Winnie motions for me to join her at her table. I grab a cup of coffee from the buffet bar and sit down, slurping down the java like a five-year-old.

“Where’s TB?” Winnie whispers.

After a significant amount of caffeine enters my bloodstream I answer. “He went home.”

Winnie gasps. “In this weather?”

I gaze out the windows that overlook the hotel’s gardens and the mountain slope that dips toward town. Trees, plants and even shrubs blow frantically as if the hand of Katrina sweeps through. I can’t see more than one hundred feet ahead for the low-lying clouds and rain and the wind exhales so hard the windowpanes rattle, as if demanding entrance into our warm, dry oasis.

“Shit” is all I can manage to say.