A chill rides through me. I saw this picture last night and had the same spine-tingling reaction.
The three of them sit huddled beneath a maple tree with its leaves curled and dried.
Must have been fall.
Heather is in the middle with her golden curls falling over her shoulder. The two brunettes are flanking her on either side. Aileen looks as if she were caught laughing, and there’s an innocent exuberance about her. Rachel is squinting a bit, and there’s a tough girl vibe she’s giving off. I glance to their sweatshirts, all of them dark, all of them with something embroidered in bright yellow across their chests. I lean forward to get a better look. “Leeny, Hezzy, and Roxy. Huh,” I muse. “Those must have been their nicknames for one another. Cute at best, cliquey at worst.”
Fish belts out a gargling yowl as she dips her nose close to the page. What’s it say beneath their names?
I squint hard down at the page. “It looks like a line or a squiggle.”
Sherlock whimpers and growls. I would have beat Fish to the squiggle if I could have seen the page myself.
Fish snorts. Dream on, fuzzy.
“Maybe if I take a picture of it with my phone I can enlarge it.” I do just that, and it takes less than five seconds for me to magnify it. “Post Vitam?” The letters look uniform across each of their sweatshirts.
Sherlock gently lands his front paws over the table, trying to get a better look.
He gives a soft bark. Is that English?
“I don’t think so.” I quickly look up the words and my phone spits out a slew of links for the Latin language. “It’s Latin,” I say, clicking into a site that promises to translate it. “It says afterlife.”
No sooner do the words leave my mouth than a strong breeze blows every granule of salt right off the table.
“Oh my God.” Fish flies off my lap as I snap the book shut and bury it in my tote bag while Sherlock enters into a barking spree that doesn’t seem to have an end.
The three of us speed out of the café and into the humid afternoon as the day quickly melts to evening. The left side of the beach has been roped off for the production crew, and the tourists are all standing at the boundary line snapping pictures of all of the paraphernalia that goes into moviemaking magic.
Georgie and Juni run up, dressed in blush pink dresses with white carnation corsages, and I’m not sure what’s stunning me more—the fact I just had another bona fide ghostly encounter or the fact these two look as if they’ve just escaped their senior proms, emphasis on the senior.
“Let me guess,” I say. “You got a two-for-one deal at the Sew Lovely Bridal Boutique?”
Juni belts out a hacking laugh. “Nope, no deal for me at the dress shop, but it turns out, Faith and Kiki got a good one. They picked up these numbers for us and we’re being featured in the movie’s big finish.”
The sound of a woman pitching a verbal fit cascades over the cove and the three of us turn to the right to see Camila in that—well, humiliating, for lack of a better term— wedding gown. Her upper torso is an ode to the eighties, and from the waist down she’s got the girth of a runway that can easily accommodate a 747.
Georgie snickers. “Someone isn’t happy with their wedding dress.”
Juni grunts, “More like wedding mess. With that train wreck on, the killer will practically be doing her a favor when they take a cleaver to her back.”
Sherlock brays with what sounds like a laugh. I wish Jasper were here to see how she’s carrying on. Is it wrong that I’m thrilled she’s no longer in our lives?
Fish meows. She’s not gone yet. I don’t know why, but I sense trouble. I’d watch my back if I were you, Bizzy.
Sherlock gives a caustic bark. Don’t you worry, Bizzy. I’ll watch your back for you.
“Thank you,” I mouth his way.
Georgie leans in. “Any more freaky encounters with the other side?”
I told Georgie and Juni about my ghostly meet and greet yesterday in Heather’s bedroom with the self-lighting wicks.
I give a little nod and spill the salt myself on what just went down in the café.
The two of them gasp at what they hear.
“We better make this quick.” Juni cranes her neck in the direction of the set as the production team scurries to and fro as they ready the scene.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Is all this talk about ghosts giving you the willies?”
“Nope.” Juni lifts her bosom with her hands. “It’s giving me the hots. I need to hunt down my ex and see if he’s up for a wild night of hot ghost-inspired lovin’.”
Georgie grunts, “How about sharing some of the ghostly affection?” She needles me with an accusing look. “I’ve got a room in my cottage for a poltergeist or two. Once you solve the case, you tell those girls to head over to my place. We can play strip poker until the wee hours, and I’ll even let them cheat. I’ve got a backlog of horror movies on my DVR and we can laugh at all the lousy special effects. We’ll have a haunted ball.”
“Speaking of special effects”—Juni hitches her thumb back to the set—“Kiki has a vat of blood she’s working on. It looks as if they really plan on destroying that dress Camila is wearing.”
My curiosity piques. “Sounds as if a good time will be had by all today. I’d better go check it out. Have fun on set, ladies. I’ll be watching you.”
I take off near the shoreline where the production team is buzzing around like a busy hive and run into Jane Olsen first. Her dark hair is slicked back as if she just took a swim and she’s wearing a thin blue sundress.
“Jane,” I say. “Did
