“Bizzy, that woman looks just like you,” Emmie says, scooting next to me to take a better look. “But this picture looks ancient.” She squints at the screen. “It says her name is?—”
“My great-aunt Edna.” I gasp again. “I know exactly who she is.”
The sepia-toned photograph shows a woman in her twenties standing in front of what appears to be an earlier incarnation of the Country Cottage Inn. Her dark hair is styled in finger waves popular in the 1920s, and she’s wearing a drop-waist dress typical of the flapper era. But what’s most striking, and most unsettling, is her face.
It’s mine.
Not similar, not reminiscent, but an exact duplicate of my own features, down to the slightly crooked smile and the tiny scar on my chin from a childhood bicycle accident that I definitely didn’t have in the 1920s. So odd.
“That’s...” Jasper seems at a loss for words, a rare occurrence for my articulate detective husband.
“Uncanny,” Leo supplies.
“Downright spooky,” Emmie adds, leaning closer to the screen. “Is this who’s haunting the inn?”
I stare at the image and a chill creeps up my spine despite the warm evening—and not the good kind of chill you get from excellent air conditioning.
“Edna Pahrump died in 1928,” I say slowly, each word feeling heavier than the last. “She was twenty-three. There was some kind of scandal, but my grandmother would never talk about it, which, knowing my family, probably means it involved at least three felonies and a dance number. All I know is she died here, at the inn. That and the fact my mother mentioned there was family lore of her reading people’s minds. They thought she was a fortune teller of some kind. I can’t believe I just remembered that.”
Emmie gasps again. “Bizzy, I bet she was telesensual like you. That must be where you get your gift from.”
I nod as tears begin to well in my eyes. It’s true. My gift is something called transmundane, further classified as telesensual. Thereare other gifts that fall under the transmundane umbrella like seeing the dead, seeing into tomorrow, and even time travel. I guess you could say I got off pretty easy with just the ability to pry into a little gray matter.
“How did you find this picture?” Leo asks as he squints into it.
“I was searching the Baker family archives online, looking for any clues about potential half-siblings my father might have left scattered around New England,” I explain. “I guess when I refreshed the page it went straight to this old newspaper archive feature. It looks like the article this photo came from was about the inn’s grand reopening after a renovation in 1927.”
“Why was your great-aunt at the inn’s reopening?” Jasper asks, his brow furrowing in that way that tells me his mental gears are turning at full speed and probably generating enough heat to power a small appliance. He wants answers, and so do I.
“That’s the thing,” I say, scrolling down to show more of the article with the enthusiasm of someone who’s just discovered buried treasure, or at least buried family drama. “According to this, she wasn’t just attending—she worked here. She was the manager.”
“Just like you,” Emmie whispers, her eyes wide in a way that usually precedes either profound revelations or complete nervous breakdowns.
A gust of wind sweeps across the patio, scattering fallen leaves and sending a ripple through the candle flames on our table. In the distance, the festival lights flicker, too, as if in response.
“Bizzy,” Jasper says slowly, “you don’t think there’s a connection between your great-aunt’s ghost, Heath’s murder, and this mysterious half-sister you’re looking for, do you?”
The kicker is, that sounded completely insane, but in the end, might just be true.
“I don’t know. I was wondering that, too. But right now, I’d like to think about something concrete, like that phone. Did you ever get into it? And what about those fingerprints?” I ask, because when your sister starts mentally stockpiling ammunition and your family tree resembles a crime scene, regular detective work feels like a vacation.
“No to the phone, but my men are on it. And as for thefingerprints.” Jasper’s chest expands. “It had a clear set of prints, but they didn’t match anyone who belonged to that club. I don’t know what to think.”
Secrets, sisters, and scandals buried deep in the past are all swirling together like ingredients in one of Emmie’s more complicated recipes. And here I am, nearly a century later, running the same inn where my doppelgänger great-aunt worked, finding bodies with the same regularity that other people find loose change in their couch cushions.
History has a funny way of repeating itself at the Country Cottage Inn, and apparently, so does the Baker family’s talent for attracting murder, mystery, and general mayhem. Some families pass down heirloom jewelry or secret recipes. We pass down supernatural abilities and an uncanny knack for stumbling into crime scenes.
As the sun dips below the horizon, and the ocean turns a steely gray, I can’t shake the feeling that all the answers I’m looking for—about my sister, about Heath’s murder, about the ghost—are converging, drawing together like moths to a flame.
Or a killer to their hunting ground.
CHAPTER 21
Halloween night arrives like a sugar-crazed toddler—loud, unstoppable, and trailing glitter everywhere.
The Country Cottage Inn is as festive and haunted as can be as all of Spider Cove seems to have shown up for the Fright Night Halloween Spooktacular, probably because there’s literally nothing else to do in a town this size on Halloween night unless you count sitting at home watching horror movies and eating fun-size candy bars meant for trick-or-treaters.
And speaking of which, Jasper and I have already ripped through three bags we purchased from the local big box store. It’s not like we could resist. I bought pallets of them for the festival and for the guests at the inn. And they make a great meal replacement in a pinch—so much so that I have a feeling I’ll bepinchingall the way until Valentine’s Day. Sure, it’s not nutritional, but it gives me energy and, believe me, at this stage of the game, energy counts for something—and almost everything.
