Witch at Heart: A Jinx Hamilton Witch Mystery Book 1 (The Jinx Hamilton Mysteries) by Juliette Harper

Author:Juliette Harper
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781943516841
Publisher: Skye House Publishing
Published: 2015-12-03T07:00:00+00:00

18

As we crossed the street, it suddenly occurred to me that not everyone lived and died by cell phone the way Tori and I did. The shop still had a hardwired telephone, which meant there was probably a local phone book somewhere under the counter.

It didn’t even take a minute for me to produce a slender local directory printed on cheap paper and stuffed with advertisements. Thumbing to the “b” section, I ran my finger down the list: Barden, Barker, Barland, Barlow.

I looked up at the ghostly girl I now had to learn to think of as Beth. “Does the name Emily Barlow mean anything to you?”

Beth nodded. “Yes, that’s my mom. Can we go see her?”

It didn’t seem to occur to Beth that she didn’t need me to take her to see her mother. Asking permission and being polite were so ingrained in this girl even thirty years after her death, that striking out on her own was an alien concept.

And that, more than anything else, continued to bug me.

How does a girl like that wind up getting murdered? I found it really hard to believe that Beth’s story would turn out to be anything more than the classic “wrong place wrong time” storyline.

“I don’t know your mom,” I explained patiently. “I can’t just go over there and tell her that her daughter’s ghost is with me and wants to talk to her. She’ll think I’m nuts, Beth, or worse yet that I’m some kind of con artist trying to get money out of her or something. Besides, we don’t even know what happened to you yet.”

Beth took that in for a minute and then pointed at my laptop sitting on the counter by the cash register. “Won’t that tell us?” she asked. “My friend Joey had a Commodore 64, but I think your MacBook is a lot smarter.”

Uh, yeah. Steve Jobs just did a grave spin on that one. But Beth did have a point.

I opened the laptop, went to my browser, and searched Google for, “Beth Barlow Briar Hollow 1985.”

It was odd reading the accounts of a missing girl’s disappearance with the victim herself looking over my shoulder. In life, Beth didn’t just have fun, she was the most popular girl in the Briar Hollow High Class of 1985. She was head cheerleader and the senior class favorite, an accomplished pianist, and president of the school’s Future Homemakers of America chapter.

Beth went missing on a Friday night after the homecoming game -- still wearing the same corsage she’d remembered that morning when she stood looking at the florist’s shop. According to her grief-stricken mother, Beth asked for permission to attend a chaperoned, alcohol-free party after the game.

Witnesses at the party said that Beth went to her car to get her jacket a little before 11 o’clock. It was midnight before her classmates realized she hadn’t come back. Going to check on her, they found the car door open and her letter jacket lying on the front seat. There was no sign of a struggle, and Beth was never seen again.

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