Secrets of the Specter

I paused when I inadvertently hit my head on a rafter. Ouch! That was much lower than I remembered it being. I sunk to the floor and clutched at my poor, throbbing head, squinting up at the rafter with disgust.

Instead of standing back up, I decided to remain on my hands and knees as I tugged it along. Thank goodness this trunk was made of thick wood, or I’d be worried about damaging the precious contents inside.

I grabbed for the handle nearest to me, then stopped again. One of the floorboards beneath it had popped up ever so slightly. The trunk held down one side of the board like a seesaw, allowing its other end to rise. Only a quarter inch or so. I might not have noticed it, but for the light rising from downstairs.

“No way,” I breathed. Shoving the trunk fully out of the way, I pressed down on the same floorboard with my shoe, then grabbed the raised end and yanked it up.

It lifted right out with far less force than I’d expected to need.

“Holy crow.” I gasped in awe.

Under the floorboard was a little cubby. Not tall or wide, but just big enough to hold a single item. In this case, it was a brown leather folder of some sort. Perhaps a satchel.

I had no idea what it had been called back in its day, but as I unwrapped the leather tie from around the weathered metal button, the leather nearly disintegrated in my hands.

Sucking in a deep breath, I reached into the satchel and pulled out a stack of papers.

“Holy crow, holy crow, holy crow,” I mumbled, even adding a “Scotch bonnet” for good measure.

I rifled through the papers quickly but carefully.

I knew exactly what these were.

In my hands were the missing papers, the same ones Maggie McAllister had died for.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

My hands shook as I held the secret papers that had caused so much strife over the years. Surely, they hadn’t been stowed away in that little cubby this whole time without Aunt Linda knowing about them.

Had she sent me up here knowing I might find them? Or had she hoped to appease my curiosity while keeping them hidden?

I sucked in an excited breath, then scooped the lot of them up and ran downstairs.

I grabbed my cell from the coffee table and dialed Aunt Linda at the shop.

“Hello?” she answered pleasantly.

“I found the papers! Right up under the floorboards in the attic. Why didn’t you tell me you had the secret papers from the Revolutionary War?” I demanded instead of greeting her formally. “This is a big deal!”

“One second,” she said, then her voice became muffled and dropped several notches in volume. “Kim, could you go to the back room and take stock of any wick and colored wax we have? I don’t think we got an accurate count before.”

A few seconds later, she came back to the line, her voice very changed. “I don’t want to talk about this on the phone,” she hissed.

“Well, we need to talk about it, and we need to talk about it now,” I demanded in a harsh whisper, unwilling for her to put me off yet again.

Why was I lowering my voice? There wasn’t anyone with me in the house. Except Ms. Cat, who was currently curled in a ball, asleep in the middle of Aunt Linda’s couch.

“I’ll be home in less than ten minutes,” she said. “Sit tight and wait right there.”

The last thing I felt like doing was sitting tight, considering I had all this balled up energy inside me. But at least I could use this time to read through the papers. Wanting to be careful not to damage the aged documents, I decided to find a pair of latex gloves. Aunt Linda always kept a box under the kitchen sink for handling raw meat or using some of her harsher cleaning supplies. I found the box of disposable gloves right where it should be.

Unfortunately, it was empty.

Darn and double darn. I dug around the pantry, hoping she had a spare box stashed somewhere.

“Mags?” Aunt Linda called from the front door while I was still deep in my search.

I ran out of the kitchen and into the living rom. Ms. Cat had disappeared from her spot on the couch, and now Aunt Linda sat there, patting the cushion beside her.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier,” she said with a regretful smile. “It’s not exactly the easiest thing to bring up in pleasant conversation. Hello, darling. Nice to see you. Oh, by the way, we have a family ghost.”

My mouth fell open. This whole time Aunt Linda had known every detail. She’d known and chosen not to share it with me.

She sniffed and averted her eyes toward her lap. “If you hadn’t seen her for yourself, you’d never have believed it.”

I glanced toward the papers and then back to my aunt. “I’m not the first person Maggie, Sr., has shown herself to?” I asked? For some reason, I felt disappointed. Like my experience had been tarnished, knowing that I wasn’t the only one.

My aunt shook her head. “Nope. We’ve had Maggie and her cat for at least a hundred years. If she haunted anyone before that, they didn’t ever talk about it.”

“Why hasn’t anyone solved her murder?” I asked. “Surely that would help her move on, get rid of her, so to speak?”

Aunt Linda chuckled. “Believe me, it’s not for lack of trying. But our family has been tasked with guarding these papers. And Maggie has haunted us for it ever since. Her and that cat of hers.”

I looked around for Ms. Cat, but she was gone at the moment. “But Ms. Cat is real. I took her to the vet and everything.”

“It seems Maggie’s cat takes over the body of a living cat,” she said. “When our ghost first showed herself to me, the cat appeared as a fat tuxedo with a super long tail.”

I shook my head, too shocked to fully absorb what she was saying. “What’s in the papers?”

She sighed. “Basically, the founder of a prominent local business aided the British. He sold secrets to General Howe. If we bring this to light now, it could ruin the business of a good family. It’s not their fault their ancestor was a turd.”

I stared at her, aghast. “Aunt Linda, it’s not our place to change history. What happened…well, it happened. And Maggie deserves for her story to be told.”

Holding up a hand, Aunt Linda smiled at me. “I know. And I agree. It was a difficult decision, but I decided a very long time ago to turn the papers over… but not until I find Maggie’s final resting place. I want to be able to have someone examine her body. Maybe we’ll be able to find some clues that will point to her murderer.”

“How long have you known?” I asked, shaking my head.

“Since I was in my twenties,” she said. “I never knew why Maggie stopped haunting my mother and moved onto me. She gave your mother a run for her money, too. And then when I couldn’t find her grave and never turned the papers over to anyone, she disappeared for a long time. I don’t know what encouraged her to start haunting you now, after all these years.”

I picked up the satchel and clutched it delicately to my chest. “And there’s nothing in here that would tell us who killed her?”

Aunt Linda shook her head slowly, a forlorn expression crossed her face. “I’ve read those letters dozens of times. They don’t have anything to do with Maggie herself. She was trying to hide them for her brother, end of story.”

“Why is all of this happening now?” I asked.

Aunt Linda sucked air in through her teeth. “I think someone must’ve figured out that we have these papers.”

“Why would you think that?” I asked suspiciously.

“Someone breaking into your house?” She raised her eyebrows at me. “Someone lighting the shop on fire?”

“No,” I said on the wings of an exhale.

“I think someone is trying to find and destroy the papers to prevent you from turning them in to the authorities and forever tarnishing their family’s lineage.” She sighed and got up to wander into the kitchen. When she came back, she had a fresh box of gloves and offered me a pair.

I pulled them on eagerly, and we sat in silence for a few moments while I looked over the papers. The handwriting was difficult to read and the wording foreign to my modern eyes.

When I’d gotten halfway through, the doorbell rang.

“Quick,” Aunt Linda whispered. “Hide them.”

I moved swiftly but carefully, sliding them back in the satchel, which I then stowed beneath the couch.

But it was only Ethan, the same firefighter who had done the initial survey of our shop after the fire. He’d been working with the county fire marshal and the insurance company to conduct the full-scale investigation into the cause of our fire.

“Hi, Ethan. Are you guys all finished with your investigation into the fire?” Aunt Linda smiled as she ushered him inside.

Ethan bobbed his head. “Yes, and I wanted to bring your report over right away,” he said, then paused to suck in a deep breath. “I went to the shop first, but Kim told me you were here.”

I hurried over. “Why are you in such a rush? Is everything okay?”

He frowned and glanced down at the floor. “Hey, Mags. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but we’ve determined that the fire was set intentionally. We found some traces of accelerant where the fire originated, and, well, that’s pretty irrefutable.”

I let out a strangled gasp as Aunt Linda sank to the couch and clutched her head.

“It’s not like we think you did it,” Ethan assured us. “We’ll tell the insurance company as much, too. But I’d be careful if I were you. Someone clearly has it out for you.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Ethan handed Aunt Linda a stack of stapled papers and gave her a minute to flip through them.

“The long and short of it is that we found Isopropyl alcohol all over the place. Not just where the fire originated, but throughout the store, too. Some of it was still there, completely untouched, thanks to how quickly you managed to put the fire out. Whoever set that fire intended for it to be far more damaging than it actually was.”

I gaped at him. “Someone came in and placed accelerant all around the store? How did I not notice any of that?”

“Most of it was inside candle jars and placed among your displays. The lids were either removed or cracked so that when the fire started, it would be able to feed on the alcohol. They were all cleverly hidden. Someone planned for this, probably for a while.”

Staggering backward, I sat on the couch and clutched at my stomach. Someone was trying to hurt me. To hurt us. All because of these ancient papers I hadn’t even known existed until about a week ago.

I had to get back to my house, to see if Maggie would come to me again and help straighten out this giant mess. And I still needed to get back in touch with Dr. Wes, to figure out where he’d been during and just before the fire, to find out whether he had an alibi for the night someone had broken into my house and set off the alarm.

Ethan apologized, then took his leave. I was right behind him.

Linda looked so frail, so broken-hearted, sitting there all by herself in the middle of her huge sofa. I gave her a big hug, then yanked her toward the door with me.

“You need to go find some way to distract yourself from all of this. Get back to the shop and work if you must. This whole spy thing has been a problem for two hundred years, and it’ll just have to be a problem for a few more days while we figure out what to do.”

“You’re right,” she answered as she fished her keys out of her pocket. “We’ll figure out what to do, and we’ll do it together. Just like we always have.”

We hugged once more, and then Aunt Linda left. I got all the way to my car before I realized that I’d almost forgotten the most important piece of this whole puzzle.

The satchel.

Snagging it out from under the couch, I managed to tuck it away in my oversized duffle that I had brought to spend the night at my aunt’s. I did a quick search of the house but couldn’t find Ms. Cat anywhere. Somehow, I knew she would make her way to me again when she was ready.

And sure enough, Maggie and Ms. Cat were both already waiting in my living room when I returned home.

“I found the papers,” I announced.

Maggie’s eyes widened as they drifted toward my duffle.

I sat down beside Ms. Cat and stroked her soft, white fur. “Are you Shadow?”

She meowed loudly, making me chuckle. “I guess so. Hello, Shadow.”

I pet her a few more times then pulled out the leather satchel and presented it to Maggie.

She floated closer; her entire image flickered with a bright white light. This was what she’d been waiting for, and now she could hardly contain her excitement.

“Maggie,” I cautioned. “We still don’t know who killed you. I’m going to figure out the best person to turn these papers over to, but that doesn’t exactly solve your dilemma.”

She smiled at me with wise, knowing eyes, and I desperately wished she could speak to me, to tell me exactly what I needed to know. “That letter, the one you gave me on the night we met, telling me your name and asking for help. Can you communicate like that again?”

She shook her head and frowned. No, then.

“Why? Did it take all the energy you had to write the letter?” I ventured.

This time she gave me the tiniest nod.

“It was on parchment from your time. Have you had it all this time?”

She nodded.

“Why didn’t you just write who killed you on the letter?” I asked.

Several blinks. She didn’t know how to answer me.

Oh. Oh! “You don’t know, do you?”

A fat, glistening and transparent tear tracked down her cheek.

“That’s it,” I whispered. “You can’t tell me, and you couldn’t tell any of the people who came before me, because you don’t know.”

Shadow jumped on my lap, purring.

With a sigh, I headed upstairs and got on my computer, searching for the appropriate place to go and turn in the papers that my family had hidden for these many long years. The world deserved to know the truth about the key players from our country’s founding war. History sometimes needed to be rewritten.

Our heroes weren’t always as heroic as we made them out to be.

I settled on a museum in the next town over. It was a popular tourist attraction and touted itself as having the largest American Revolution collection in the state of Georgia. Pretty impressive.

“Okay,” I said once I’d decided. When I turned my desk chair around, Shadow and Maggie both waited for me, silently watching to see what I’d do next.

They’d been waiting for over two hundred years. I’d done all I could, and I’d still only solved half the mystery. What would Maggie do now? Would she one day appear to my daughter, if I had one?

“We’re taking the papers here.” I showed them the map on my web browser. “It’s closed already for the night, so I’ll have to head in tomorrow.”

Maggie cocked her head like she’d never seen a computer screen.

“Surely, in all your haunting, you’ve observed time changing and the inventions of this century?” I asked.

She looked at me like… was that a sarcastic look from the stoic, unmoving ghost? I nearly laughed out loud. She’d given me some shade, for sure.

After studying the information on the screen, Maggie floated back and nodded once.

Then she disappeared.

I headed downstairs with Shadow close at my heels. I had the papers figured out, but how could I possibly solve the rest of this mystery?

With a sigh, I started making a sandwich for my dinner and then put out a bowl of food for Shadow. “I’m going to have to get used to calling you Shadow and not Ms. Cat,” I said as I scratched her head. She eagerly tucked into her food.

My phone rang, distracting me from my sandwich. It was Angie.

“Mags,” she yelled as soon as I took the call. “I just got a call from the alarm company.”

“What?” My stomach filled with dread. Nothing had happened here. Could that mean…?

“Aunt Linda’s place is on fire,” Angie shouted in a panic. “They called you first, but you didn’t pick up. I’m next on the emergency contact list, so even though I live far away, they called me. Can you call me back once you know everything is all right?”

“I’m going now,” I said, leaving my sandwich and racing for the door. The alarm company would’ve called the fire department before calling me or Angie.

“Hurry, Mags,” she replied. “I can’t get ahold of Aunt Linda. I’m really worried about her.”

I ran to my car, breathing raggedly, desperation clawing at my throat.

She was at the store. Not at home.

I’d seen her leave just before I had, and I’d only been home for half an hour, tops.

She wouldn’t have had time to drive back home before the fire started. Unless she only pretended to leave for my benefit.

Oh, gosh.

Please be okay, please be okay.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Aunt Linda!” I screamed as I parked down the street from her house. Even from this distance, I could see the massive tongues of flame reaching for the sky and the billowing smoke that spoke of disaster.

I ran toward her house, pumping my arms and legs as fast as they could move.

Officer Don blocked me with his body, then caught me before I could peel up the driveway toward the house. “You can’t go in. It’s not safe.”

I beat my fists against his chest as I attempted to wriggle free from his grip, but he was too strong. “My aunt is in there,” I cried.

“If she’s in there, our men will find her.”

“Please,” I wailed, giving up the fight. “Please let me go!”

“Mags!” my aunt shouted from the yard across the street.

I spun in Officer Don’s arms and saw my dear, sweet aunt sitting on a stretcher while a pair of medics examined her.

He let me go, and I sprinted across the street to the rig where Aunt Linda now sat with an oxygen mask strapped across her face. They’d also wrapped her in one of those silver blankets.

Yanking her into my arms, blanket and all, I hugged her tight. “Oh, my gosh, I was so worried.”

“It’s okay. I’m okay.” Her voice came out muffled as tears rolled down her cheeks. “I had just gotten home. There wasn’t even an explosion or anything. It just went up in flames. I don’t…”

I pulled back and searched her watery eyes for answers. “After what happened with the shop, this has to be arson, too.”

She nodded, and together we watched in silence as our ancestral family home turn to ashes.

So many memories.

So much history.

All gone.

“The papers,” she whispered beneath her large plastic mask. “Now we’ll never be able to bring Maggie’s history to light.”