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A good kind of certainty to have, I supposed. Before I could reply, though, she continued.

“Sometimes people can sense the presence of a ghost very briefly, the way Jude did. This isn’t the same as the gift you and I have, though. It’s a moment of contact that the spirit has to initiate and is gone almost immediately.”

In a way, I was glad to hear that. I certainly didn’t want to diminish Jude’s experience in any way, but I’d also found myself wondering if he was some sort of long-lost cousin, and that was why he’d been able to see Maria Ortega’s ghost right after she died.

Well, except for the part where Hazel claimed that only the Cosgrove women had the gift and the men were simply carriers and nothing more.

Anyway, it sounded as if Maria was the one who’d reached out to Jude, and that followed what Hazel had just told me, so I thought I understood the concept well enough.

“And some ghosts do move on eventually,” Hazel said. “I have a feeling Father Frank will be ready to leave this plane once he knows the wheels of justice have been set in motion.”

All the more reason to prove the identity of his murderer. With that settled, the priest would at last be able to move on to his just reward.

“That’s good to know,” I said. “But Mack is still hanging around because the bootleggers who killed him were never caught.”

“Exactly.” She paused, and a small smile touched her lips. The color today was a little darker, something I thought was Revlon’s Cherries in the Snow, but I couldn’t be completely sure. “As for me, I stayed because I knew you would need my help.”

“You did?” I asked, staring at her in surprise.

“Yes. I stayed for the work, and right now, you’re the work. Someday, I’ll go when you no longer need me, but that day isn’t here yet.”

My eyes wanted to sting, and I blinked. More than ever, I wished I could hug her and tell her how much it meant to me that she’d stayed, that she’d known I’d need someone to guide me through this strange new existence.

Then I gave her a watery smile and said, “I’m really glad you’re here, Hazel.”

She smiled as well. “I know, Lorelei.”

I got ready quickly and then headed down to Marsh & Hollow a little before ten, knowing Jude and I would have a solid couple of hours to work on our plans before I had to begin my shift at the bar. It seemed he’d already gotten started, because he was standing at the antique counter near the front with a yellow legal pad open in front of him and a cup of tea gently steaming off to one side. Flannery was sitting about a foot away, tail curled regally around her as she watched him work.

“Tea?” he asked as I came in.

“No, I’m good,” I replied. I’d already had coffee that morning, and right then, I just wanted to dive into the work as quickly as possible.

“Okay,” he replied. “But just let me know if you want some later on.”

“Will do.”

And then we got to it, writing down what we already knew so we could branch out from there.

We knew that Father Frank had been hearing something weighty from Meg Lindley for at least eight months, and it seemed as if the pattern had intensified in the last couple of weeks before his death. And we also knew that Wes Lindley had sealed the connecting door at the bar around two years ago, at Hazel’s request.

“The break-in came only a few hours after you came to talk to me last week,” Jude went on, pen moving quickly across the paper. He had nice handwriting, heavy and flowing, and I was glad he was the one doing the writing. Anything I wrote by hand looked like chicken scratches. “You told me that Diane Lindley seemed to be purposely keeping you away from Meg, and Father Frank confirmed that Meg was the parishioner who’d been coming to see him.”

“Well, not in so many words,” I interjected. “But it was pretty clear what was going on.”

“Duly noted,” Jude replied, and made a quick note in the margins. “And you think that Hazel might have been about to write down what she’d figured out.”

“Best guess,” I said, because that was all I had. “All I know is that she wrote, Something is different, and that last journal entry predated her death by three weeks. She hasn’t been able to give me a satisfactory explanation as to why she stopped writing in her journal after that.”

A nod, and Jude wrote something else down on the legal pad. But then he stopped there and sent me an inquiring look. His hazel eyes were almost green in the warm morning light that slanted through the big picture window in the front of the store, and I thought I could stare into them forever.

“What we really need is whatever Meg’s secret was,” I went on as I did my best to drag my gaze away. “Without it, we don’t have a motive, and without a motive, we don’t have a clear path to our killer.”

Jude tapped the pen against his chin, clearly mulling it over. Then he said, “Hal Pruitt.”

“‘Hal’?” I echoed, not sure what he was getting at.

“Hal Pruitt was Donald Lindley’s best friend for forty years,” Jude explained. “He sat with him through his last illness, and he was one of Donald’s pallbearers. But devout as I know he is, he didn’t take communion at Frank’s funeral. I noticed that and wondered about it. Hal’s a daily-mass kind of guy. He wouldn’t skip communion lightly.”