The Ghosts of Tupelo Landing Page 6

  They turned and clattered straight for us.

  “Run,” I cried, grabbing my camera. We scrambled to the door and yanked it open. I spun to the piano. Click.

  The keyboard slammed closed, sending an unearthly collision of sound rolling through the inn as Dale pounded across the porch.

  “I’m Mo and that’s Dale and we need an interview!” I screamed, tossing our business card on the floor.

  And I ran for my life.

  Chapter 8

  Blueprints and Party Plans

  At the top of the driveway’s curve, Dale skidded his bike to a halt. “That was not Harm Crenshaw,” he said. “That ghost is real as we are. Maybe realer.”

  “Right.” I looked up at the gray cloudbanks rushing overhead. “We better get home. It’s going to storm.”

  “Mo,” Dale whispered, clutching my arm. “Over there.” A flash of silver melted into the trees as thunder rumbled across the sky.

  Harm Crenshaw? Again? It couldn’t have been, not this time.

  I looked over my shoulder, at the inn—at a girl in the window—and my heart sputtered. I blinked and the window stared back empty. My mouth went desert dry. “Race you to the café,” I said as raindrops pattered across the drive. “The Colonel and Miss Lana will know what to do.”

  Moments later we dropped our bikes in the café parking lot by a white minivan: Azalea Women. “Don’t breathe a word of this until we get the Colonel and Miss Lana alone,” I warned. “Ghost news will zip through town lightning-fast. Maybe faster.”

  “Right,” he panted as I opened the café door. “Not a word.”

  We stepped inside. “Ghost,” he said.

  Miss Lana and Grandmother Miss Lacy looked up from giant blueprints they’d spread over a corner table. Two Azalea Women by the window stopped drinking tea in mid-sip. Violin music wafted from the jukebox. The air smelled warm and yeasty.

  “Sorry,” he whispered. Sometimes I could kill Dale.

  “He means ghost in the fine print,” I said, very quick. “Old news,” I added for the Azalea Women. “Don’t bother telling it. It’s all over town.”

  The Azalea Women slipped back into conversation.

  The Colonel says loose lips sink ships. Dale’s could sink a fleet.

  “Buon giorno,” Miss Lana said, smiling.

  “Back at you,” Dale said, and leaned toward me. “French?” he whispered.

  “Italian,” I replied, pointing to the Leaning Tower of Pisa salt and pepper shakers center stage of the red-and-white checked tablecloths.

  The Colonel runs the café like a military operation—all polish and precision. Miss Lana prefers a theme. You know who’s in charge the instant you walk through the door. “Come in,” Miss Lana said, smiling. “We’re creating a new spinach lasagna tonight. We’d love to have your opinion, Dale. You’re such a connoisseur.”

  “Connoisseur,” I whispered. “French for know-it-all.”

  He headed for the phone, his sandals slapping against the floor. It was a comforting, real-world sound. “I’ll ask Mama if I can stay,” he said, grabbing the phone. “She’ll probably want me to, with a storm rolling in.” He stepped over something behind the counter. “Hey Lavender. What you doing under there?”

  Lavender? Here?

  I darted through the tables and slid to a halt, my plaid sneakers squeaking against the tiles. “Good afternoon,” I said, hooking my elbow on the counter, very sophisticated. “What a pleasant surprise.”

  He looked up, flat on his back, his shoes braced against the baseboard. “Hey yourself, Mo LoBeau,” he said. He tugged hard at something under the counter, straining until his arm muscles bulged and his face went red.

  Even beet red, Lavender’s fly-apart gorgeous.

  “That should do it, Miss Lana.” He stood up and dropped a pipe wrench in his battered red tool box. “If that fitting gives you more trouble, just call.”

  When Miss Lana wants something fixed, she mostly calls Lavender. She says it’s less trouble than strangling the Colonel. Plus she likes to contribute to Lavender’s car fund. “Tell Mama hey for me,” he told Dale.

  As Dale dialed, the door swung open. Sal and twelve-year-old Skeeter MacMillan, Tupelo Landing’s attorney-in-training, blasted in on a gust of wind. “Afternoon,” Miss Lana said, heading for the milkshake machine. “The usual?”

  “Yes please.” Sal pushed her red sunglasses on top of her head and led the way to a table as Miss Lana scooped ice cream into a metal cup.

  Skeeter ticked opened her briefcase. “Is the Colonel in? I’d like his opinion on a legal matter.”

  Miss Lana popped the metal cup in place. “He’s in the kitchen. But if it’s a legal matter, I hope you’ll wait,” she said as the Azalea Women looked up.

  Miss Lana hit the milkshake machine’s whir button.

  “The Colonel would rather eat maggots than talk law,” I told Skeeter, using the machine’s whir for cover. “His amnesia only lifted a few weeks ago. He’s still sensitive.”

  Skeeter closed her briefcase as the whir died and Dale hung up the phone. In the silence, I could just hear Grandmother Miss Lacy humming a familiar song.

  The hair on my arms rose up like ghosts as I recognized the tune. “Heart and Soul”—the song Dale and me just played at the inn.

  Dale leaned close to me, his eyes glued to Grandmother Miss Lacy. “That song,” he whispered. He gulped. “I hope she ain’t been repossessed.”

  Her melody morphed into another tune. “You mean possessed,” I whispered. “Let’s investigate.”

  He shook his head. “I want to talk to Salamander.”

  Right. I headed for Grandmother Miss Lacy. “Hey, I never heard you hum to yourself,” I said, settling beside her. “How do you pick your tunes?”

  “Oh! Was I humming?” she asked, running her finger over the blueprints. “Forgive me, dear; when you live alone, you find unusual comforts. Take a look at these blueprints, Mo. They’re fascinating.” At the window table, the Azalea Women gathered their rain gear and headed for the cash register, leaving a twenty-five-cent tip.

  I leaned over the blueprints. Salt shakers at each corner kept them from curling like scrolls. “Where’d you get them?” I asked as Lavender sauntered over.

  “Found them in the courthouse,” he said. “Allow me. Here’s the inn, and the main drive. Here’s the shortcut by Red Baker’s place. But look at this,” he said. “A path from the inn to the old store—a path I’ve never seen before.”

  “That’s the old Judas Trail,” she said. “Nobody’s used it since the inn closed. I doubt you can even find it anymore.”

  Dale gulped. “The Judas Trail? No wonder nobody uses it, with a name like that.” He smiled at Miss Lana as she passed the shakes around. “Mama says thanks for inviting me to supper and may I please spend the night. Her headache’s back.”

  Miss Rose gets headaches ever since Dale’s daddy went to jail again. Not because he’s in jail, but because she’s divorcing his sorry self. Miss Lana says even good changes can be stressful. “Of course you can stay,” she said.

  Excellent, I thought. We’ll deliver our ghost news after supper.

  “Hey Dale,” Sal said, taking a package from her satchel. “Your order’s in.”

  Skeeter and Sal started their new business—Skeeter-Bay—the day Skeeter went high-speed. They’ll order anything that’s legal if you pay cash up front plus twenty percent.

  Sal blushed as Dale sat beside her. “Instant Guitar: Three Chords to Fame and Fortune with a bonus section: Songwriting 101. It looks like a great book, Dale.” She tilted her head, her gray eyes soft. “I just know you’re going to be a star.”

  “Thanks,” he said modestly. Dale kills me.

  Lavender pulled up a chair by mine—a gold-star moment in a so-far hideous day. “Where’s the medicinal springs?”
I asked, studying the blueprints. Lavender, who’s between cars, usually smells like motor oil. Today he smelled faintly of sawdust and pine.

  “In the old springhouse,” he said, pointing to a drawing of a small building with numbers clustered on the floor. “Each spring cured a different ill—or not,” he added, tapping a prickle of tiny crosses in the woods.

  “The old cemetery,” Grandmother Miss Lacy said, and a chill skated across my skin. “It’s on a pretty little rise, as I recall. Thousands came here hoping to be healed by the springs. But you’re right: Some of them do rest in that cemetery.”

  And maybe some of them don’t rest at all, I thought.

  “Check out the date,” Lavender said. “Norton Blake renovated the inn in 1938,” he said, “which means the wiring’s too old to be safe. We’ll have to rewire it.”

  “Sounds expensive,” Miss Lana said, her voice tight. She’d already bled her bank account dry to buy her half of the inn. “With the cost of the painting . . .”

  “Don’t worry,” Grandmother Miss Lacy told her. “We’ll be fine.”

  Like I say, Grandmother Miss Lacy’s the richest person in town.

  “There’s good news too,” Lavender continued. “The floors are heart pine, and the windows antique glass. The inn needs a lot of elbow grease and paint, but she’ll be a work of art when she’s done.”

  The Colonel marched in from the kitchen with a box of cups. “Lavender’s agreed to supervise the day-to-day construction on the inn if I head the project,” he told Miss Lana and Grandmother Miss Lacy. “We can start hiring tomorrow—if it suits you.”

  Lavender? At the inn? Every day?

  “Suits me,” I said. “Dale and me got a ton of research to do out there. And I’ll immortalize you in film.”

  At the next table, Sal stripped the paper off her straw. “I’m glad you stuck with your ghost research, Dale. That’s brave. I just hope you don’t go zombie,” she added, holding her arms out and rocking back and forth in her seat.

  “Zombie?” Dale said, his voice quaking. “Can that happen?”

  “We ain’t worried,” I told Sal, and Lavender grinned. Lavender’s grin makes me feel like I can do anything except maybe fractions. “Dale and me already presented our card to the disembodied in question.”

  Dale choked on his milkshake. “We did?”

  “Impressive,” Sal murmured.

  The café door swung open. Queen Elizabeth shot between the mayor’s tasseled loafers, scuttled across the floor, and sprawled at Dale’s feet, panting. “Darnedest thing I’ve ever seen, the way that dog can find you,” Lavender said as Sal reached down to smooth Liz’s ears.

  “She’s psycho,” Dale explained, and Sal snatched her hand back.

  “He means psychic,” I told her.

  Mayor Little smoothed his tie over his round belly. “Happy Friday afternoon, fellow citizens,” he said. He sniffed and took in the tablecloths. “Rome?”

  “Sì,” I replied as the Colonel measured fresh coffee into the coffeemaker. “The spinach lasagna ain’t ready but I can make you a PB&J Italiano. It comes hand-squished flat on the plate or fluffy, with a sprig of parsley on the side.”

  He tossed his rain hat on the counter. “Gratci Mo, but I’m here on business.” He beamed at us. “Have I mentioned the town’s 250th anniversary party?”

  Miss Lana lit up like neon. She loves parties like Lavender loves the scream of tires. “We’ll host it here, won’t we, Colonel?”

  The Colonel sighed. “Probably.”

  “Thanks, you two,” the mayor said, “but I’m thinking full-blown gala. Music, food, out-of-towners. Maybe even the governor. I was wondering about the inn. We have a little jingle in the town coffers . . .”

  “Jingle?” Sal said, looking up from her milkshake. Sal possesses a warp-speed calculator for a brain. She slipped a pencil sharpener from her book bag.

  “Not a fortune,” the mayor warned. “More like a little mad money in my sock drawer. I’m thinking November first-ish.”

  “The inn closed October 22, 1938,” I told him. “It’s on the auction flyer.”

  “Perfect.” He beamed. “October 22 it is.”

  “Of this year?” Lavender said. “Impossible. We have to rewire, patch, paint. There’s no way we can be ready in time.”

  “Production bonus,” Sal said. “If Lavender finishes on time, he gets cash for his car fund.” She fluffed a ruffle. “A tight schedule means extra stress and possible therapy costs. And overtime means extra taxes. Lavender needs a thousand dollars and no penalty in the unlikely event that he fails.”

  Lavender blinked. His blue chambray shirt makes his eyes look even bluer—something he pretends not to know. “A thousand dollars? Are you serious?”

  “Done,” the mayor sighed.

  “I’ll draw up the agreement after I finish my homework,” Skeeter said. She flashed the Colonel a look. “Unless you want to, sir.”

  The Colonel hesitated. For a split second, I thought he would say yes. “Thank you, Skeeter, but no. Carry on.” He headed for the kitchen.

  Sal smiled at Lavender. “We didn’t discuss our fee, but we have a hair dryer smoking up our office space.” Skeeter’s law office is in the storage room of her mama’s hair salon. Sal’s accounting firm occupies a corner desk. “If you could fix it . . .”

  Lavender nodded. “Done again.”

  “We’ll need entertainment,” Miss Lana said.

  “I’m developing DJ skills to defray future law school expenses,” Skeeter said. “I’ll pro bono you as a public service. I think my expenses are tax deductible?” she asked Sal, who nodded. Nobody knows for sure if Sal actually files taxes. Dale and me suspect she fills out the forms for fun, same as Miss Lana does Sudoku.

  “Wonderful. I hope you’ll spin some beach music classics,” the mayor added, slithering his loafers across the floor and shaking his hips.

  “Shoot me,” Dale muttered.

  The mayor twirled, his jacket flying open. “What was that, Dale?”

  “I said I’ll sing,” Dale said. “And play my guitar if I learn it good enough. If anybody wants me to.”

  “I do,” Sal said.

  “Then it’s settled,” Miss Lana said. “This is just what we need to help us focus.”

  “She’s right,” Dale told his brother. “Stress focuses you right up until it sucks your brain dry. Standardized testing taught me that.”

  Mayor Little paused at the door. The wind grabbed the sycamore, sending autumn’s first golden leaves to the parking lot. “No pressure, Lavender,” he said. “But the whole town’s counting on you.”

  “Right,” Lavender groused as the door banged shut. “We’ve got to replace windows, patch the roof, redo the kitchen . . .”

  “And evict a ghost,” I said.

  Everybody laughed except Dale and me.

  Chapter 9

  A Plan of Attack

  “We’ll tell the Colonel and Miss Lana about the ghost straight out and professional,” I told Dale that evening. Me, Dale, and Queen Elizabeth had kicked back in my flat, which some folks mistake for a closed-in side porch with a bathroom stuck on the end. Miss Lana and the Colonel had settled in the living room.

  Our home, which takes up the back half of the café building, overlooks Miss Lana’s gardens and the creek. The café, in the front half of the building, overlooks the parking lot and highway. Like me, the Colonel and Miss Lana each have their own living spaces. Miss Lana’s suite lies across the living room from my flat. The Colonel keeps his quarters, near the kitchen, spit and polish neat.

  I crossed to my Salvation Army desk and opened my top drawer. It sticks.

  “Ghost news is like Band-Aid removal,” I said. I jammed my hand all the way to the back and grabbed a crumpled clue pad, just in case. “It’s best to do it quick.” I peeked into t
he living room. Miss Lana sat in her rocker, reading Historic Hollywood magazine. The Colonel sat at a card table, leafing through a law book.

  “Are they kissing?” Dale whispered. “Because I don’t want to see that.”

  “No,” I said. “And they never will.”

  I hated to admit it, but since the return of the Colonel’s memory, the possibility of romance had occurred to me too. And maybe to him. Last week he brought Miss Lana a scraggly handful of goldenrod, a pale root dangling from the stem. “Sorry,” he’d said, “I’m rusty.” She’d looked like Skeeter’s little sister just bit her. Then she’d laughed and put it in a pale blue Mason jar, root and all.

  I mentioned it to her that night, in her suite, as she brushed out her Jean Harlow wig. “I don’t mean to sound negative, but the Colonel bringing you flowers gives me the dry heaves. Can you make him stop?”

  “He’s just remembering our long-ago engagement, sugar,” she said. “It’s history, but as his amnesia lifts, his truth expands. That shifts my truth a little. And yours too, apparently.”

  Sometimes Miss Lana talks like a fog bank. I do the best I can.

  “This new truth doesn’t suit me,” I’d said.

  She shook Jean Harlow. “The truth is like spandex, sugar. It may not look like a good fit at first, but if you ease into it and wiggle around, it winds up fitting like your skin. Hand me that comb,” she’d said. “Jean’s snarled.”

  Now I looked at Dale. “If they can handle spandex, I’m pretty sure they can handle a ghost. Remember,” I told him. “Act professional.”

  We slipped into the living room, Queen Elizabeth ticking along behind, and settled on Miss Lana’s old curlicue settee.

  She looked up from her magazine. “Paws,” she said. Queen Elizabeth hopped off the settee and stretched out at Dale’s feet.

  “Good evening,” I said, very professional. The Colonel looked up from his law book. “Nice weather if you’re a duck,” I continued, “but Thes says the rain will clear out by morning.”