Page 11 of Ghost Town Boogie

On a slow day like today it reminded her of the sleepy town where she’d grown up.

During their meandering walk they passed two artists galleries, a trendy looking bar, and a restaurant that would open soon. The candy shop was still closed, but the window display… yum. A shuttered shaved-ice truck was parked in front of a tiny turquoise house. Knick-knacks, jewelry, and clothes decorated one boutique window. Dawn’s Radiance had been here a couple of years; it looked interesting. They took a turn, and finally came to antiques. Treasures Past was painted on the front window, the words scrolled the width of the glass in a fancy font.

Colt opened the door for her, and Anna stepped inside. It didn’t look different from any other antique shop. The tables were crowded with breakables. A few ancient pieces of furniture had been pushed up against the walls. If there was a flat space, it was covered with some old something. Vases, lamps, crystal bowls, figurines.

A No Food or Drink Allowed sign hung on the front door, and there were others just like it spread throughout the room, hanging or sitting on tables. And no wonder. She couldn’t imagine the mess a spilled shaved ice would make in this place.

Colt had suggested the antiques store, but he didn’t seem to like it much. His shoulders stiffened the minute they walked through the door. He glanced around the space, grimacing and muttering. She supposed only the mention of a cinnamon roll had forced him out of his depot on this beautiful morning.

A tall, pretty redhead emerged from the back room. Hmm. She didn’t just walk, she sauntered like she was walking a red carpet. Maybe this was what had called Colt out of his comfort zone, rather than Anna and her offer of cinnamon rolls. The woman who ran the place, Nicole he’d said, was a stunner. She might not even be thirty, though it was hard to tell. Her red hair was long and perfectly styled. She wore tight jeans and a simple blouse that hugged her impressive curves. Weren’t women who ran antique stores supposed to be old and gray-haired and obsessed with the past?

Nicole smiled at Colt. It was a wide, genuine smile. Her body language changed a little; shoulders back, head cocked to one side. She liked him. And why not? There was plenty to like. He was a nice guy in a world where there were too few, and he wasn’t bad to look at, either.

She could not be jealous of Cold Heart, not after all this time. Maybe being home made her revert to her fourteen-year-old self. Maybe the stress of helping her mother get ready for the big move was causing a mental break.

Anna reminded herself that Colt was the past, like this cluttered antiques store. He reminded her too much of her missing brother, the silly girl she’d been, the family that had been shattered by Jack’s desertion. They’d tried to move on, to pretend things were normal, but their small family had never been the same after her brother left. Her father, in particular, had grown more and more withdrawn, even angry. Her mother had eventually become housebound, waiting for her son to return even after everyone else had given up, terrified that he’d show up one day and she wouldn’t be there.

Anna declared to herself, then and there, that once she got her mother moved to Florida she’d never return to Seawolf Beach.

There was no reason to.

Nicole Woodward had taken over Treasures Past for her ailing mother a couple of years ago, and she’d immediately made it her own. She was active in the Seawolf Beach Business Owners’ Association and enthusiastically participated in planning the annual music festival. She was doing such a good job that even though her mother had recovered, Nicole stayed on. Her mom stopped by now and then, but she enjoyed semi-retirement. She loved the casinos down the road in Biloxi, and could be found there at least three days a week. If Nicole wasn’t feeling well or if there were a lot of tourists in town, if the older woman was feeling bored and just needed something to do, if Nicole took a long-weekend vacation with friends, Mama Woodward was here.

Colt hated the antiques store. Damn, but some spirits were attached to their stuff. He’d recoiled at the idea of a garage sale, but this…

Again, if there were rules to this game he didn’t know them. Not that he hadn’t spent a lot of time on various search engines looking for helpful information. There were plenty of answers out there, they just weren’t at all accurate.

For a pretty penny he could have a private session with an expert who’d show him the way. In his search he’d spent far too many hours on the internet, scouring websites that claimed to have all the answers. He’d run across quite a few who, for a price, could tell him all he needed to know about the afterlife. Yeah, like that wasn’t a scam. He could tell from what little info the scammers offered free that they were full of shit.

He reluctantly learned as he went. A dozen years, and he still didn’t know much. A handful of ghosts had been pulled into the depot. Looking around Treasures Past, it was obvious that some followed their junk wherever they went. Others seemed to be held near the site of their deaths, that had been his experience, but here there seemed to be exceptions. At least twenty spirits that he could see, and probably some he could not, made the crowded space even more so. They hovered over tables filled with old crap, or lounged by or on top of antique furniture. He wasn’t claustrophobic, but…

Nicole and Anna introduced themselves while Colt studied the ghosts who studied him. Anna explained her situation, and Nicole offered to stop by the Miller house after closing to take a look.

It was possible Jack hadn’t died nearby, as Colt had assumed. Maybe he was attached to some object – or worse, person – and if it left the house so would he. There were too damn many maybes.

He wanted to forget that he’d seen Jack’s ghost; he wanted to put aside all the questions that plagued him. If Jack had died nearby, why had no one found his body? Anna said he’d last been seen in New York, five years ago. Something niggled at his brain. His phone had been in New York. He’d sent a nasty text but no one had actually seen him, or heard him tell his family to bug off. No phone call, no final face-to-face confrontation with the family he claimed to hate.

He didn’t like where those thoughts led him.

Yes, these ghosts were attached to their stuff and he had to keep that in his mind as a possibility, but Colt was almost certain Jack had died in Seawolf Beach. His body might be buried nearby, but that wasn’t a requirement. Maude was buried in a family plot a good twenty miles away, but she’d passed on in the Seawolf Beach retirement home, which was too damn close to Hart’s Vinyl Depot.

Jack was dead, he’d died nearby, and Colt didn’t dare tell anyone what he knew. He needed evidence, and there was only one way to collect it. He was going to have to talk to his old, dead friend.

There was another option, one he’d embraced earlier. He could let it go. As far as Anna and her mother knew, Jack was living the good life somewhere else. Why not allow them to go on believing that? They’d moved on; they were happy. At least, happy enough…

But maybe Jack wouldn’t be stuck here if his family knew he hadn’t abandoned them without looking back.

Fuck.

Colt couldn’t get out of Treasures Past fast enough. As soon as Anna and Nicole ended their conversation, he headed for the door. Next stop, the good bakery.

Over cinnamon rolls and coffee that was better than his, in a bakery where there were currently no ghosts, he asked Anna in a conversational way how she’d been. His mind had been wandering all morning, and he didn’t like where it had taken him. He didn’t want to think about Jack, ghosts, the mysteries of life and death. A normal conversation would be a nice change of pace.

“Good, I guess,” she answered after a short pause.

“You guess?”

She smiled. “I love Nashville, I do, and I have a good job. But…”