A Murder in Helvetica Bold by Jessa Archer

Author:Jessa Archer [Archer, Jessa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Archer Mysteries
Published: 2019-05-13T22:00:00+00:00

✰ Chapter Thirteen ✰

The rain had slacked off but refused to stop altogether. It dripped intermittently on my walk over to Wren’s house and now continued to drum gently against the windows in her kitchen. I’d been so distracted by Elaine’s dramatic display that I was halfway there before I realized I’d forgotten my umbrella. Luckily the brown hat Wren had given me was in my purse. I pulled it on and discovered that it was quite useful for keeping the rain out of my face. Wren for the win.

“I knew she was lying about something,” Wren said once I told her about my conversation, if you could even call it that, with Elaine. “Or hiding something, at the very least. But you’ve already told Blevins the door was unlocked…”

“And he didn’t seem to care. What I haven’t told him about, however, is this.” I took the diary out of my purse and slid it across the table toward her. “Edith Morton’s diary.”

“Holy moly…where on earth did you get this, Ruth?”

“Let’s just say that Cassie did a little exploring yesterday at the reception after the funeral. Although she swears she found it on accident.” I filled in the rest of the details, and Wren sat back in her chair, staring at the small book.

“Do you think Edith was actually being haunted?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Blevins said she called the station multiple times. Always in the dead of night. And it really doesn’t matter whether I believe it or not. The real question is whether Edith believed, and this diary makes it crystal clear that she did.”

“Well, like I said before, I’m kind of agnostic on the whole ghost thing. Heck, I live in a funeral home, and I’ve never seen one. Never felt the slightest presence. My aunt, on the other hand, swore she saw my grandfather walk into the kitchen almost every morning for the first year or two after he died. He’d go over to the coffeepot and look at it longingly for a few seconds before he faded away.”

“Oh my,” I said, staring down into my cup. “That’s so sad. Could you imagine smelling the coffee, seeing it, knowing it was right there, and you couldn’t have any?”

We were both silent for a moment, and then Wren said, “Poor Edith. If she was being tormented by something—or someone, because I’m still not convinced it was really a ghost—maybe she did jump.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But even if you’re eighty-five, there’s no guarantee that throwing yourself down a staircase—especially from the landing—is going to kill you. It seems equally likely that you’d just break a hip or something, and then you’d be haunted and hurting. Edith might not have been easy to get along with, but I haven’t heard a single person suggest that she wasn’t smart. I don’t believe she jumped, and the fact that someone is even suggesting that she did makes me more suspicious that her death wasn’t an accident.”

“What are you going to do with it?” Wren said, looking down at the diary.

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