“I didn’t mean for you to stay home and babysit me,” Heather told Danielle after she discovered Danielle and Walt had planned to go shopping before she called to ask if she could hang out. Heather sat on the parlor sofa with Danielle while Walt sat across from them, silently reading a book.
“Hey, it’s okay. I don’t blame you for not wanting to stay home alone with all that’s happened since yesterday,” Danielle said.
“Like you pointed out earlier,” Heather began, “just because Olivia was with Betty an hour before we found the body doesn’t mean Olivia had anything to do with the murder. But the fact she denies being with her when I saw her, and she looked right at me… we were looking straight into each other’s faces, and now she pretends she wasn’t with Betty. And to go to such an elaborate means to establish an alibi. One that’s obviously bogus. If she wasn’t involved in the murder, what is she hiding? She is hiding something.”
“Are you certain the quilt jacket Olivia wore when she came over here to pick up the keys was the same jacket you saw her wearing when she was with Betty?” Danielle asked.
“Yes. Same fabric, same pattern. If it’s not the same jacket, then Olivia’s twin bought the same one.”
“I don’t think that’s the case. When Olivia stopped here to ask if she could use our Wi-Fi, I commented on her jacket. She told me she made it herself. Sounded like it’s a one of a kind. She said nothing about there being two of them.”
“I knew it! Well, as soon as the chief gets those videos from the airline, that should prove what I’m saying was true. There was no way she was on that plane. I know what I saw,” Heather insisted.
“The fact that she broke into Marlow House when we were gone doesn’t make me feel terrific,” Danielle said. “If she’s not the killer, she witnessed something. There’s no other reason to lie about being with Betty before her murder unless she was somehow involved.”
“Exactly!” Heather agreed.
Walt closed his book and set it on his lap. He looked at Heather and Danielle. “I think it might be a good idea for me to go over to Heather’s with her so I can have a little chat with Bella.”
Heather looked at Walt and narrowed her eyes, wondering why he would want to talk to her cat. “You suspect Olivia was in my house, too?”
Walt shrugged. “You weren’t home at the time. And frankly, considering it was you she ran into when she said she wasn’t in town, makes me wonder why she would break into our house instead of yours.”
Heather frowned. “That doesn’t make me feel terrific.”
Walt gave Heather a weak smile. “Sorry.”
“I can understand why she might break into Heather’s, but why break into our house?” Danielle wondered.
“Thanks a lot! If I wasn’t going to have nightmares about this, now I am sure to!” Heather grumbled.
The doorbell rang.
Walt left Danielle and Heather in the parlor while he answered the door. When he returned, Brian was with him.
“How did it go?” Heather asked Brian after he walked into the room.
“It was interesting,” Brian said before taking an empty seat and recounting his conversation at the Hammonds’ house.
“How did they explain the phone call?” Heather asked after he got to the part of the visit where Becca vehemently denied calling Betty, yet they found the call on her cellphone.
“Her husband, Dave, suggested it was a butt call,” Brian explained.
“That sounds like a lame excuse. What are they hiding?” Heather asked.
Brian shrugged. “Perhaps nothing. Dave showed me a gas receipt from their trip. The gas station was a good thirty minutes from here, and according to that receipt, they were pumping gas at the same time the call was made. According to both Becca and Dave, she had been in her purse, trying to find their credit card that had fallen out of her wallet. Since her cellphone was also in her purse, it’s possible during that time she accidentally called Betty and never realized it. Betty obviously answered the call. After realizing it was a butt call, she simply hung up. It’s happened to me before.”
“Yeah, me too,” Heather reluctantly agreed.
“But didn’t Josephine say Betty got a call before she left?” Danielle asked. “I thought that was the only call on her phone for Friday morning.”
“It’s possible it was a butt call and also the call Betty was talking about,” Brian said.
“How do you figure that?” Walt asked.
“According to Eden, Betty felt bad about the estrangement with Becca. Maybe she got that call from Becca, thinking she was extending an olive branch, and decided to go right over to her house,” Brian said.
“If it was a butt call, Betty would know. I can see Becca accidently making a call when getting in her purse. But someone had to hang up, and it wouldn’t have been Becca if she didn’t even know she made the call. Unlikely she also accidentally ended the call. Betty would have been the one to hang up, and that would mean she knew it was a butt call,” Danielle said.
Brian nodded. “True. But Betty might have also seen it as an excuse to rush over there, under the pretense of checking to see if everything was okay, since Becca had tried calling her.”
Danielle shrugged. “I suppose I can see that happening.”
“Have you found any connection between Betty and Olivia other than Olivia going to work at the library? Did they have a history?” Heather asked. “If Betty went over to see Becca and instead ran into Olivia, was there something between them?”
“During Olivia’s interview, she claimed she had never met Betty. And according to Josephine, Betty wasn’t part of the interview process, so she hadn’t met Olivia during any of the video conference calls. However, when Joe was interviewing Olivia, I was in the room next to the interrogation room with the chief, watching. I don’t care what Olivia claims. She recognized Betty when she looked at that photograph. Yet it was more a look of surprise. I’ve been giving it a great deal of thought,” Brian told them.
“If she was responsible for Betty’s death, and the police are interviewing her, why would she look surprised when shown the photograph? Wouldn’t she expect them to show her a picture of the victim? And then show no reaction, like she had never seen her before,” Danielle asked.
“Exactly.” Brian nodded.
“What are you suggesting?” Heather asked.
“I’d say Brian is suggesting that our neighbor recognized her from the photo. That she was with her an hour before her death, but she didn’t realize Betty had been murdered, yet for some reason she doesn’t want anyone to find out she was here during that timeframe,” Walt suggested.
With a frown, Heather looked from Walt to Brian. “Is that what you’re saying?”
Brian shrugged. “Something like that.”
The next moment, snow fell from the ceiling.
Danielle looked upward. “Thank God!”
“It’s about time,” Heather said.
“This could be helpful,” Walt added.
Frowning, Brian looked at the three, confused. “What?”
“Eva’s coming,” Danielle explained. “And hopefully Marie’s with her.”
The next moment, the two mentioned spirits appeared in the parlor. Eva, once a silent screen star with an uncanny resemblance to Charles Dana Gibson’s Gibson girl, made a dramatic entrance. She floated down from the ceiling while snowflakes swirled around her, drifting to the floor, where they disappeared.
Marie, the image of a woman in her eighties—a slightly younger version than she had been at the time of her death—appeared with no fanfare, already standing in the parlor while Eva floated downward.
“Sounds like you missed us,” Marie said after Eva stood by her side and all signs of snowflakes disappeared.
“A lot has happened since yesterday,” Danielle told the pair.
Brian sat quietly and listened while Danielle filled the spirits in on what had been happening the last two days, with Heather and Walt occasionally adding bits of information.
Now sitting on imaginary chairs, the two spirits listened. Finally, Marie asked, “Are you sure she’s not a ghost?”
“You mean our new neighbor?” Heather asked.
“If she could be at the airport one moment and here the next,” Marie said, “that would explain a lot.”
“You are forgetting Joe, Brian, and the chief all saw her,” Danielle reminded her. “And do spirits photograph? There were the pictures of her, reportedly taken after she landed in Portland.”
Marie shrugged. “Well, anything is possible.”
“I shook her hand,” Walt added. “When we first met, I shook her hand. It was solid.”
“While it is possible for a spirit to appear as a living being, even to give the illusion of having a solid body, I doubt that’s the case here,” Eva said. “I don’t believe she’s a spirit from what you tell me. Sounds to me like there’s something nefarious underfoot.”
“Perhaps we should check her out ourselves,” Marie said.
Danielle nodded. “I think that’s a great idea.”
The first thing Marie noticed when arriving at Pearl’s old house, its new owner didn’t flinch when the snow fell from the ceiling. Nor did she blink when Marie and Eva suddenly appeared before her. Instead, the woman, who they assumed was Olivia, sat on a folding chair and looked as if she were in deep thought, silently gazing across the room, looking right through the two ghosts.
Eva glanced around the sparsely furnished room. “What happened to all Pearl’s furniture?”
“The trustee donated it to a woman’s shelter,” Marie explained. “Adam didn’t feel they would get more for the house having it furnished, especially considering how dated Pearl’s things were. He felt it would show better without it.”
“Oh,” Eva muttered, giving the room one more glance. She turned her attention back to Olivia, who sat on the chair.
Marie walked closer to the woman, stopping inches from her. Still, the woman did not flinch. Marie reached out and waved a hand in front of her eyes. Once again, no response. Curious, Marie used her energy to tweak the tip of Olivia’s nose.
“What the…!” Olivia shrieked and leapt to her feet while grabbing her nose and rubbing it.
“What just happened?” Eva asked.
Marie giggled and told Eva what she had done.
“Tsk-tsk, Marie, was that necessary?” Eva scolded.
Marie shrugged. “I wanted to confirm she’s a living human and not a sneaky spirit pretending she’s unaware of our presence.” While neither a spirit nor a living human could see Marie manipulate her energy, only a living human could feel a pinch from that energy.
“I suppose you have your answer. She is very much alive,” Eva said.
Marie nodded. “I agree.” She watched a confused Olivia nervously circle the room, still holding onto the tip of her nose. Glaring with disgust at where she had been sitting moments earlier, Olivia walked from the living room to the kitchen, the spirits trailing behind her.
“There is something familiar about her,” Marie noted.
“You’ve seen her before?” Eva asked.
“I’m not sure. There is something about her. I can’t put my finger on it.” Marie cocked her head slightly while studying Olivia. Something rang. But it was not a phone. Marie watched as Olivia walked to the counter and picked up an iPad. She opened it.
“What’s that?” Eva asked.
“It looks like someone’s calling Olivia,” Marie explained.
Eva frowned. “That doesn’t look like a telephone. It’s certainly much larger than what Danielle uses.”
Marie chuckled. “It’s an iPad. I think someone’s FaceTiming her.” The next moment, they heard a voice on the iPad say, “Hello, Olivia!”
Resting her hands along the outer edge of the kitchen counter, Olivia looked down at the now open iPad lying on the tile surface. A woman’s smiling face looked up at her from the iPad’s screen.
“Hi, Shanice,” Olivia greeted her.
“I just wanted to check on my baby sister. Find out how you were doing.”
“I’m not really doing much. I wish my things were here so I could start unpacking.”
Marie moved closer to the counter, focusing on the caller, who now asked Olivia questions about her new house. After studying the caller for a few moments, recognition dawned.
“I know who Olivia Davis is!” Marie exclaimed. “Or should I say, who Olivia Mallory is.”