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Either way, the laugh was happy.
I eased my fingers out of her and twirled her around for a morning kiss, which she gave me, willingly.
“Well, good morning! We made it through the night, so I guess that means you’ll be in the casket for the race, Luna?” I heard Bram say from somewhere behind us. “I hope I’m not disturbing anything.”
We broke the kiss, and she said, “No. Not at all. And yes, I’ll be sitting inside the casket for the race.” Then she kissed me once again, softer this time, like she was happy with what just happened between us.
“Well, don’t let me stop you two,” Bram teased, but I caught the awkwardness in his voice.
She pulled out of the kiss and poured a cup of coffee from the full pot, adding sugar and cream. Then she turned back to Bram and said, “We’re already done, and it was spectacular!”
She sashayed out of the room with Bram standing there watching, his jaw on the floor.
“That’s our girl,” I said and followed her out.
Bram never moved.
Luna 6
“Okay, so from what we can figure out from her diary, Carrie Ann isn’t a Stoker. She’s a Darling, and we only have one Darling in town, Henrietta Cruz. Her maiden name happens to be Darling,” I told Vince as we sat together in front of my laptop in my tiny apartment on Moon Street, the main street that ran down the center of Cricket. I’d taken over the lease from Connie Manners X about a year or so ago and thought I’d get sick of the place because it was so damn small. Instead, I loved it. It was centrally located, and I could walk to all my favorite restaurants and my favorite pie shop, Sweetie Pies. Then there was my favorite bar, Last Call, only a few steps away.
I didn’t think I’d ever move.
“How do you know that so fast?” Vince asked as he sipped the hot herbal tea I’d made for us. He was more of a coffee drinker, but all this research called for something to keep us calm, like peppermint and chamomile tea, which I stockpiled.
“It’s part of what I do for a living. It’s my job as a researcher. Of course, AI will probably replace me, but for now, I can still help almost anyone find what they’re looking for. I’m better than a detective and much faster than looking things up yourself.”
Vince knew I’d worked for a research company, Boyd Research, out of San Francisco, but when they laid me off during the pandemic, I started my own company, Luna R & D. I workedmostly for authors now, helping them with their books, or with marketers trying to find better ways to market a product. I made more money on my own than I ever did working for someone else. I just didn’t know how much longer I could do this with AI learning everything so fast. In the next couple of years, a person could have access to anything simply by asking the right questions.
“I always knew what you did for a living, but I never really saw it in action before. You found her maiden name in less time than it takes me to find a Vegan restaurant in a new city, and I’m good at sorting out restaurants.”
“That’s because I’ve been doing this for a while. Like since I was eighteen, when I wanted to know more about our town. Oh, and look, Henrietta was born in Sweet Whiskey, where her parents and grandparents lived. Her grandparents are Sven and Chantel. They came from Sweden at the turn of the century. Sven was a gold miner for a time, then he opened a store and sold mining equipment. Smart man.”
“What did you say the woman’s name was?” Vince asked, and my heart fluttered in my chest.
“Fucking Chantel Darling… the woman Carrie Ann thought was her real mother. Holy shit! We found her! This is amazing!”
“No, we didn’t find anyone. I’m merely here for mental support. You found her.” He rubbed my back like he always did when we sat next to each other, but this time, it felt more intimate. More sexy. Like this back rubbing might turn into something much more.
I tried to ignore his touch and focused on the mission. “I wonder if I can find any information on Chantel’s children?”
“Yeah, like was one abducted?” His back rubbing shifted to the back of my neck. Oh yeah, way more sexy.
I turned to him, smiling now, while still doing my best to ignore his touch. “Wow, Sherlock, who knew when we starteddown this road of de-ghosting your B&B, we’d be solving a crime?”
“Not to mention stacking more crimes on my family name.” He sounded as if he might be making light of it, but I knew he and his family wouldn’t like any more shit piled on the name Stoker. They already had a poisonous couple in their history. We were about to add kidnapping to their already sinister past.
“There is that.” I turned to him. “Are you sure you want to go public with this information? It could cause your family all sorts of problems. You could even lose Stoker House in the process.”
“I don’t think anything can be worse than murder, but maybe I’m wrong about that. The house never really belonged to Carrie Ann’s parents, anyway. The paperwork I have for it says it belonged to my double-great grandfather, and he rented it to Carrie Ann’s horrible parents or rather captors. I can’t wait to hear her real first name. I have a feeling once we know it, everything will change for her and me.”
“I hope so. And what about the smell of roses? Is that Carrie Ann or some other ghost? Then there’s that malevolent laugh we all heard last night. Who owns that? It can’t be Carrie Ann. The voice was too deep. Maybe Carmen, her abductor? Or even her horrible father. I couldn’t tell whether it belonged to a man or a woman, could you?”
Even talking about that laugh gave me chills, or were my chills caused by Vince, who now brushed my ears with his fingers.
“That was creepy as fuck,” Vince said. “I didn’t like it. Gave me a fucking panic attack. Made me want to burn the whole place down and plow over it. Like that voice belonged to pure evil.”
I turned to him and saw that his eyes had turned red and had watered. My heart broke for him on so many levels. He’d been working so hard to get the place restored, and now, not only didwe have one ghost, but we had two, maybe three. And this latest one tried to burn me last night with the exploding fireplace.
