Ghost Detective by Scott William Carter

Author:Scott William Carter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ghost, afterlife, private investigator, portland, sixth sense, grimm, ghost detective
Publisher: Flying Raven Press

Chapter 16

After sending Frank Warren packing, I worked my weedy lawn furiously until the bright light of morning faded into a cloudy afternoon. A bank of menacing storm clouds gathered in the distance, blocking where I knew Mount Hood would show its craggy face on a clearer day. The temperature, already cool, dropped precipitously. When my anger had reached its peak, I tossed the hand shovel in the bucket and went in the house searching for Billie. Mrs. Halverson, the old woman who’d died the previous winter, was out in her white terrycloth robe and pink slippers at the mailbox, waiting for the postman. Unlike the old days, she couldn’t get the mail anymore, but she was still there every day, rain or shine.

Even if she could get the mail, it wasn’t her house. Her niece, who’d inherited the place, had sold it to young man who worked for Intel. He often didn’t collect his mail until the box was overflowing, a point of pride for him and a fact that I knew drove Mrs. Halverson crazy.

As soon as I entered, I heard the slap of paint hitting canvas coming from Billie’s studio. I washed my hands in the kitchen, downed a cold drink of water, and gobbled up the rest of the ham sandwich I had left from yesterday, the whole while making as much noise as possible—banging cabinets, slamming the glass down, thunking the drawers closed with unnecessary force.

Billie didn’t come out. I wandered to her doorway and found her intently painting a still life of a cow skull in the middle of a fruit basket. A pair of tangerines filled the eye sockets of the skull. She was barefoot and dressed in paint-spattered overalls and a red plaid shirt rolled up at the sleeves, her jet-black hair tied into a tight ponytail with a rubber band. She had a bit of black paint on the end of her nose.

Leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, I watched her silently. I liked to watch her work, though I didn’t take any pleasure in it now. The walls were filled with her recent paintings, mostly different kinds of animal skulls in slight variations of the same still life. When Alesha stopped by shortly after Billie and I returned to the house, she saw nothing but blank canvases hanging on the walls—I put a new sheet on Billie’s easel when she said she was done—and a matching still life that consisted of a small white table covered with a white tablecloth and nothing else.

“Good weeding?” Billie said finally.

“Just swell,” I said.

She looked at me, paintbrush paused mid-stroke. “Something wrong?” she asked.

“No. Why?”

“You just sound … on edge.”

I shrugged.

“You’re scowling,” she added.

“No, I’m not.”

“You’re most definitely scowling.”

I shrugged again. She studied me with the same intense focus she applied to her paintings, then turned back to her work. I watched a while longer, the knot in my stomach growing, then left her alone. I banged around the kitchen some more, not sure

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