Ghost to the Rescue (A Bailey Ruth Ghost Novel) - Hardcover

An accomplished master of mystery, Carolyn Hart is the New York Times bestselling author of more than fifty-five novels of mystery and suspense, including the Death on Demand Mysteries (Don’t Go Home, Death at the Door) and the Bailey Ruth Ghost Novels (Ghost Wanted, Ghost Gone Wild). Her books have won multiple Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards. She’s also been honored with the Amelia Award for significant contributions to the traditional mystery from Malice Domestic and was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America. One of the founders of Sisters in Crime, Hart lives in Oklahoma City, where she enjoys mysteries, walking in the park, and cats. She and her husband, Phil, serve as staff—cat owners will understand—to brother and sister brown tabbies.

Berkley Prime Crime titles by Carolyn Hart

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 1

Katie Davenport looked up at the stars. Would it make a difference if she asked? After all, she was thirteen, not a little kid anymore, looking up at the night sky and thinking that bright star was listening to her. But still . . . “Star light, star bright, / First star I see tonight, / I wish I may, I wish I might, / Have this wish I wish tonight. Please help my mom.” Katie squeezed her eyes shut. “Star light, star bright . . .”

Paul Wiggins pushed back the stiff cap atop his reddish brown hair. He was a man of his time: thick muttonchop whiskers, a luxuriant walrus mustache, starched high-collared white cotton shirt, heavy flannel trousers supported by suspenders, and a sturdy black leather belt. He turned from the broad window with its commanding view of the rail station platform and silver tracks. A folder rested on the corner of his yellow oak desk. He was rather sure the folder had not been there until this instant.

The folder’s presence reminded him of the power of hopes and wishes that wing their way across starry night skies. He picked up the folder, smiled at a boisterous cover of unicorns, shooting stars, soccer balls, and laptops. He lifted the flap. A dossier contained a photograph of an attractive woman in her mid-thirties with frizzy brown hair and an expressive face. Ah yes, Deirdre Davenport, single mom, struggling author, job seeker. He scanned the facts. Deirdre Davenport was in a tough spot, though not the kind of trouble usually dealt with by members of his department. Still, heartfelt pleas mattered to him. “Star light, star bright . . .”

Slowly, he nodded. He knew the perfect person to send to the rescue.

I welcomed the gentle slap of a swell, quite different from towering waves that crashed over and sank the Serendipity on our ill-fated fishing trip in the Gulf. A steady backstroke carried me through warm salty water toward a beach similar to Padre Island. I took a breath of salt-scented air, then abruptly, as if galvanized, I picked up speed.

I had a sudden bright picture of Wiggins in my mind. Wiggins, the chief of the Department of Good Intentions, dispatched emissaries to earth to aid those in trouble. In my mind, I heard the sounder on his desk amplifying the clack of the Teletype. I reached shallow water and stood. True to my thought, a telegram sprouted in my hand. Breathlessly, I read the message: Your advice and counsel sought. Come at once if possible.

Wiggins is old-fashioned. The fact that telegrams have been supplanted on earth by texts and e-mails is of no interest to him. He sent telegrams when he was a stationmaster in the early nineteen hundreds. He sends telegrams now.

I moved fast, the sudsy, warm water splashing as I went. On the beach my ethereal form appeared in a fetching summer blouse and skirt. No need for towels and such. I simply thought as I wished to be and there I was, red curls shiny as a new copper penny. I waved to gain Bobby Mac’s attention.

He looked across the water and waved in return.

I gestured toward the sky, pulled air deep into my lungs, and managed a creditable imitation of a deep train whistle.

Bobby Mac understood at once, gave me a jaunty farewell salute.

I waved a kiss to my husband. What a man. Bobby Mac is still as dark-haired and handsome as the high school senior who stopped a skinny redheaded sophomore in the hall one day, and said—blunt, forthright, and determined—“We’re going to the prom.” We’ve been going together ever since, good days and bad, happy days and sad. Someday, when we have more time, I’ll tell you the secrets of a happy marriage. Number one? We laughed together. We’re still laughing.

Right now, I had other fish to fry. One of Heaven’s many delights is the ability to go anywhere in an instant. Think, and there you are. I hurried up the steps of a turn-of-the-century redbrick train station. There was no door. As I’ve explained before, Heaven doesn’t run to doors. No one is shut in or shut out.

Heaven?

Do I see an incredulous expression? Hear a cackle of amusement at such naïveté?

It isn’t my role to convince skeptics that Heaven exists, despite my firsthand experience.

Oh yeah? comes a sardonic reply. So who are you and who stamped your ticket to the Pearly Gates?

In a quick thumbnail, I am Bailey Ruth Raeburn, late of Adelaide, Oklahoma. That’s right, late as in dearly departed, though that sounds a little too solemn for me. I prefer happy voyager. That was my attitude on earth as well. As for Bobby Mac, when he wasn’t hunting for oil, he was fishing, and he never met a tarpon he wouldn’t chase. That quest led to our arrival in Heaven when a storm in the Gulf sank the Serendipity. We were on the shady side of fifty when we arrived, but another of Heaven’s delights is the ability to enjoy your very best age. Twenty-seven was a very good year for me, and that’s how I now appear both here and when on earth. I’m a redhead with a spattering of freckles. Green eyes. Slender. Five foot five. A few revelations (not Revelations; that material is more suitable for saints, especially Teresa of Avila, who is as charming as she is erudite; and yes, I do know her. So there!): I love to laugh. I really, really try to follow the Precepts. (More about that later.) I have a taste for fashion.

Fashion. I’d made a quick choice on the beach. I wanted to look just so for my arrival here. I felt like June, the month of daffodils and daisies and dandelions. Yes, dandelions. I love their delicate toppings of fluff. Those feathery crowns inspired my choice of a gossamer-fine pale blue knit top over a white linen tank and white midcalf cotton pants and white wedgies that added an inch to my height. Admittedly, the colors favor a redhead, but I don’t think it’s vain to wish to appear one’s best.

I hurried inside the station.

Wiggins gazed through the window at silver tracks winding into the sky, his genial countenance thoughtful. A thumb and forefinger tugged at his bristly mustache.

“Wiggins!” I caroled.

He looked around, smiled. “Bailey Ruth. It’s good of you to come.” He glanced at a gaily decorated folder on his desk, then at me, started to speak, stopped.

I sensed he was having second thoughts about his summons. Perhaps my costume was too frivolous. Wiggins admires restraint, i.e., he is fond of plain, unadorned—let me be utterly frank—hideously unattractive clothing as an indication of modesty and docility. As Bobby Mac would agree, perhaps too vehemently, docile has never been in my job description. However, Wiggins clearly must perceive a problem calling for my expertise. If, however, my lovely costume was off-putting, I would—nobly—sacrifice for the cause.

With an inward sigh, I transformed my appearance: a prim dull green cotton blouse, a straight khaki skirt, flat black loafers, my tangled red curls drawn back in a bun. My face is rather thin. I hoped I didn’t look like a redheaded ferret. I felt my nose wriggle. Perhaps I’m too suggestible.

Wiggins’s expression remained thoughtful, preoccupied.

The problem, then, wasn’t my appearance.

I thankfully changed back to my summer choice.

Wiggins glanced again at the folder. “Deirdre Davenport is certainly challenged, but perhaps her situation isn’t serious enough to warrant intervention. But that sweet plea by her daughter touched me.”

I looked at him with great fondness. “You are always kind.”

He endeavored to appear stern. “We can’t be everywhere, solve everything.” He began to pace. “I am torn. My resources are limited. Perhaps I am being foolish.”

I avoided saying, Huh?, that favored reply in senior English when I asked a football player to explain the significance of the corrida in The Sun Also Rises. “You know I will be glad to help.”

And, oh, how ready I was for an earthly adventure, though I kept my mien solemn. Wiggins finds a taste for excitement suspect, but, as I always say, why not have fun along the way? It was a motto that served me well in life. And since. Yet I must be circumspect. Wiggins expects his emissaries to be, if not solemn, certainly serious and always to follow the Precepts.

As if in response to my unspoken thought, he gave me a questioning look. “You are always eager to be of help, but this time can you follow the Precepts?”

Was this my cue? Quickly, I took a breath and sang—I have a strong soprano—in a syncopated beat to a version of “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah.”

PRECEPTS FOR EARTHLY VISITATION

   · Avoid public notice.
   · Do not consort with other departed spirits.
   · Work behind the scenes without making your presence known.
   · Become visible only when absolutely necessary.
   · Do not succumb to the temptation to confound those who appear to oppose you.
   · Make every effort not to alarm earthly creatures.
   · Information about Heaven is not yours to impart. Simply smile and say, “Time will tell.”
   · Remember always that you are on the earth, not of the earth.

I squashed words together to get everything in, but I managed. If I’d hoped for a smile, I was left high and dry.

Wiggins’s gaze was stern once again. “You must admit you have difficulty with Precepts One, Three, and Four.”

Appearing was a sore point between us. It wasn’t that I intended to flout the Precepts when on earth, but honestly, sometimes you have to be there.

“Wiggins.” I was solemn, straightforward, and almost believable. “You know I never want to appear.”

After a moment, he laughed, a wonderful, deep roar of laughter. “When I believe that . . . But you are the right person if this task should be undertaken. You are always creative.”

I basked, unaccustomed to fulsome praise from Wiggins.

“And the problem”—he sat in his desk chair, picked up the folder—“is in Adelaide.”

Whoops. I felt like a fast filly on the homestretch. Adelaide, nestled in the rolling hills of south central Oklahoma, was my town. I was sure it was June and there would be wildflowers, delicate blue and pale rose, and the smell of freshly turned earth after a rain, and the swoop of hawks against the dusky night sky. I loved returning to Adelaide. Of course, I still nurtured a faint hope that someday Wiggins would send me farther afield: Rome, Nome, Madrid, wherever. It was a great big world and I was ready. Would he ever have the confidence that I could succeed elsewhere? Perhaps if I acquitted myself superbly in this instance—whatever it was—my horizons would widen.

“Adelaide? Of course I’ll help.” I perched on the edge of his desk. “I’m ready.”

“You were an English teacher. Another point in your favor.”

I was transported to a hot classroom—not much was air-conditioned when I taught—and a clutch of restive football players, sitting, of course, in the back row. I could see them now: Jack, better known as Two-Ton, cadaverous Michael, mischievous Reggie. I’d won their hearts with Sydney Carton.

I took a deep breath and declaimed—and you don’t know declamation until you’ve taught English—“‘It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.’”

Wiggins’s face softened. “Redemption. Always beautiful. Always noble.”

We shared an instant of silence in tribute to love’s power to transform.

But his worried frown quickly returned. “Delicacy. Behind the scenes.”

I placed my hand on my heart. “You can count on me. Delicacy.” I broke into a soothing verse of “Delicado.” I’d loved Dinah Shore’s version. The song was after Wiggins’s time, but he listened with a faint flicker of hope in his eyes.

“‘Handle with care,’” he murmured. “Yes, decidedly so. A young mother, desperate for a job, and desperate as well for inspiration. Could you be inspiring?” He looked at me doubtfully.

“Can I be inspiring?” I crossed my legs. “Why, inspiration is part of my nature.” There was the time I inspired a mass walkout from a city council meeting, but perhaps that wasn’t quite what Wiggins had in mind.

He brightened. “To serve as a muse is a high calling though not the usual task set for an emissary. Think of the muses, Calliope, Clio, Euterpe . . .” He rattled off the names of the nine muses. “Keep them in mind.”

The Teletype suddenly clattered. He swung about, grabbed a pad, made hurried notes.

Outside came the deep-throated wail of the Rescue Express nearing the station. The clack of the wheels sounded louder and louder. The acrid smell of coal smoke tickled my nose, elixir to a spirit ready to rumble. I came to my feet, held out my hand. “Quick. I’ll go.”

Wiggins glanced out the window, knew time was short. He pushed up from his chair, strode to the slotted wooden container near the ticket widow, grabbed a red ticket, gave it a stamp.

I ran out the door, ticket in one hand, a sheet of paper with Wiggins’s notes in the other. As I climbed aboard, Wiggins shouted, “She is seeking inspiration . . . her plight is desperate . . . bank account . . . Do your best . . .”

I stood in the swaying vestibule—on my way to Adelaide, on my way to Adelaide—and tried to decipher Wiggins’s back-slanted scrawl: Deirdre Davenport . . . single mother of two . . . bank account almost empty . . . writes clever mysteries . . . hasn’t sold her last two books . . . must have a job . . . applied for a faculty position at Goddard . . . decision to be announced tomorrow. . . .

I settled unseen on the chair by the desk in a modest hotel room. The joints squeaked as the chair swiveled.

A young woman flicked a puzzled look toward the chair, then gave a little shrug. I liked her at once. Probably mid-thirties. Old enough to have lived and learned and lost. Frizzy brown hair needed a trim but was the color of highly polished mahogany. She had an air of leashed vitality, a woman with too many ideas to consider and tasks to accomplish and destinations to seek to think about herself and haircuts. Her long, expressive face puffed in exasperation with a touch of bitterness. She sat cross-legged on a saggy sofa, a laptop balanced on her knees. A cell phone rested on a coffee table.

A young thin voice talked fast. “. . . not started yet?”

Obviously, the phone was in speaker mode.

“Not yet, honey.” Her tone was cheerful, but her expression was forlorn.

“Mom, don’t you need to sell a book pretty soon?” ...