“It’s an invention Michel came up with,” Gilley told her, realizing that if he explained what the Super Spooker Smasher really was (an improvised tennis racket strung with magnetized wires), she’d catch on that we were dealing with something pretty intense—aka dangerous.
“What kind of invention?” Mrs. G. pressed.
“One that compresses the electromagnetic frequency of any ghost we come across,” Gil replied easily. I had to hand it to him; the explanation was both accurate and a bit misleading.
“Why would you need to do that?” she asked next.
“If they’re in a heightened state, Mama, it calms them down.”
I almost laughed. By “heightened state,” Gilley really meant “about to kill us,” and “calms them down” was code for “squishes them like a bug.”
“Ah,” said his mother with a nod, and I swore everyone else in the car breathed a sigh of relief.
Mrs. G. chatted with us amicably for the rest of the ride and at last we arrived at her home, a lovely sprawling ranch with a stone facade, black-stained trim, and the most gorgeous garden both in front and back. Mrs. G. loved to get her hands dirty, and nothing gave her greater pleasure than playing in her massive gardens. That love showed, because everywhere I looked, flowers were bursting with blooming joy.
The scent of gardenia, a favorite of mine, hung heavily in the air, as dozens of monarch butterflies flittered drunkenly on the fumes while feasting on the coral blooms of butterfly weed, purple coneflower, and blue salvia.
For a moment I stood at the entrance of the walk leading up to Mrs. G.’s and simply allowed myself to drink in the scene with all its beauty and heavenly scent. In that moment I felt the softest touch on the edge of my energy and I knew my mother was close. She had loved to garden too, and it was one of the things that had made me feel especially close to Mrs. Gillespie in the early days after I’d lost her, a time when I was so broken and muted with sadness. Back then, Mrs. G. would pick me and Gilley up from school and bring us here to help her weed or water or feed the gardens, and held within such a gorgeous nurturing setting, I’d felt a semblance of security and peace that no other place at that time could have possibly afforded me.
I’d also felt my mother’s presence almost constantly here. She seemed to know how much I missed her and needed her close, because her spirit floated on the edge of my energy for many months after she passed. I always felt it the most clearly right in these gardens.
“Em,” Heath whispered, sidling up next to me on my left. “Your mom is like, right behind you. I think she’s trying to hug you.”
I laughed and also felt my eyes mist. It was incredible to me that I should be so lucky to have found someone like Heath, who understood more than anyone else ever could what it was like being a medium, and also who freely gave his impressions to me when I most needed a confirmation. “I can feel her,” I told him. “She used to be a regular here.”
He grinned, but then his smile faltered. “Your mom has an urgent message for you.”
The second before Heath had spoken, I felt a shift in the ether around us, as if Mama had gone from being playful to super serious in the span of an instant. “What is it?” I asked, turning to face him.
Heath’s eyes shifted to the right, as if he were listening to someone next to him. “She says that something’s going to happen soon that will change how you feel about her, but she wants you to remember the love you feel for her right now, because she’s giving it back to you tenfold. She’s afraid you’ll turn away from her—”
“What?” I interrupted. “That’s crazy. I’d never do that. She has to know that.”
Heath frowned, and I felt he was trying to communicate that to my mother, but for some reason she was still pushing back. “She says the truth will come out, and it could change everything.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what she means.”
Heath focused on me again. “Neither do I. But she keeps insisting that this truth has the potential to change the way you feel about her.”
I let out a small laugh. The idea was so absurd. “Nothing could ever make me change the way I feel about Mama.” Heath shrugged. He had no answers. I tried a different tack. “Does she say anything about what truth I’m supposed to be looking for? Is it about Daddy?”
Heath’s gaze shifted to the right again. “No. It’s about . . .”
“What?”
“The sound man?” Heath had spoken slowly, as if he was trying to translate what he was hearing inside his head.
My breath caught on his words and I felt all the hairs at the back of my neck stand up on end. “You mean, the Sandman?”
He blinked. “Yeah! The Sandman. I think that’s what she’s trying to say. Do you know what she means?”
“No. But in the OBE I had at the Porter house, my mother as a little girl had mentioned that the spook terrorizing her was called the Sandman.”
“Whoa,” Heath said. “She won’t give me any other details. She just keeps telling me that we need to be very careful of him. And also that she loves you very much.”
I felt my mother’s energy from behind again, and this time she enveloped me in a bubble of love, which was her version of a hug. I drank in that feeling for the long moment it lasted, and then it vanished.
“She’s gone,” Heath said.
We were left to simply look at each other, both of us wondering what the heck Mama was talking about.
“Are you two still out here?” Mrs. G. said, peeking at us from the front door. “Come on, y’all! I’ve made up some lemonade and a few snacks for us to eat on the back porch. If you two want any, you’d best hurry. Gilley’s already through his first helping.”
Heath and I grinned and nudged each other before heading inside.
Before joining everyone out on the back porch, I claimed to need a visit to the powder room and instead I called Boston. “How’s Georgia?” Teeko asked by way of hello.
“Beautiful. Sunny and eighty degrees today.”
“And?”
I grinned. We both knew her question hadn’t been about the weather. “And it’s nice. Daddy seems really happy with Christine, who is a genuinely lovely person.”
“Oh, good!” Teeks said. She would never admit it to me, but I knew she wanted very much for me to get close to Daddy. She’d been very close to her father until he’d died of lung cancer quite suddenly the previous fall while we were off in Europe shooting Ghoul Getters.
Teeks and I caught up with each other for a bit before I casually said, “Hey, before I forget, I need a favor. Can you please go to my place and dig out our bubble vests from the front hall closet?”
There was a pause, then, “Your bubble vests? You mean the ones you wear on ghostbusts?”
“Those are the ones,” I said, trying to keep my voice nice and light. “Also, in that same closet you’ll find a duffel bag with our Ghoul Getters logo on it. I need that and everything that’s in it.”
“Is that it?” Teeks answered, and I knew that although she was playing it cool, she was dying to ask me why I wanted her to ship my ghostbusting equipment down South.
To her question I replied, “Almost. On the top shelf you’ll see about a dozen spikes. If you could put those into the duffel, along with the weird-looking tennis racket with the metal strings, I’d really appreciate it.”
There was another pause. This one nearly ten seconds long. “Sounds like you’ve got one hell of a spook on your hands, M.J.”
“That we do.”
“How bad is it?”
I shuddered again. I’d been doing a lot of that lately. “Not as bad as that thing that destroyed your patio furniture in New Mexico, but probably every bit as wicked as Hatchet Jack.” I was referring to two of the spooks that Teeko was personally familiar with.
&nbs
p; “Yikes. You sure you don’t need a magnet grenade launcher or anything?” she said with a chuckle.
I laughed too. That was funny to imagine. “Naw. What we have in that closet should be good enough. I need it to get here as soon as possible though, Teeks. I mean, I know it’s a lot to ask this late in the day, but can you find a way to overnight it to us?”
“Well, if I head there right now, that should be doable,” she said. “John and I are leaving at nine tonight for New Zealand.”
I slapped my forehead. “Ohmigod! I totally forgot about your big trip! Do you have time to do this?”
“For you, girl, I’ll make time,” she said.
I wished I could reach through the phone to hug her, because I knew my favor would most certainly be a hassle, but Teeks had always come through for me. It’s just how she rolled. “Remind me to take you to the spa as soon as you get back,” I told her. “My treat.”
“I’ll look forward to it. But I should probably go now if I’m going to make FedEx with your stuff by five.”
“Wait! Let me give you my credit card number—”
“Pay me back when you get home,” she said easily. I wanted to hug her again because I had a feeling it was going to be a few hundred bucks to ship all that heavy equipment overnight to us. Still, I knew there’d be no way to argue with her, so I accepted her offer, made her promise to keep the receipt, then gave her Mrs. G.’s address here in Valdosta.
As I sat down to some lovely treats that Gilley’s mom had prepared for us, I winked at Heath and gave him a thumbs-up to let him know I’d made the call and our stuff was on the way. However, about a half hour later I got a call on my cell from Teeks. “Hey, girl!” I answered cheerfully. “That was fast. Did everything get sent off okay?”
“No, M.J., there’s a problem. I can’t get the key to work.”
I gulped as the realization hit me that Teeko had the old key to the lock on my condo. Heath and I had changed it—twice—to stop Gilley from just walking in on us, and I’d never given Teeks the new key. I explained all that to her and begged her forgiveness for wasting her time. “It’s fine,” she said easily. “Don’t worry about it, but, M.J., I’ve got to go meet John for dinner before we head to the airport. Can you call Mama Dell?”
“Sure,” I told her, not wanting her to worry, even though Mama D. and her husband were currently making their way down to North Carolina to visit with family, and I only knew that because I’d had to board Doc, my beloved parrot, at the local aviary when he would’ve much preferred Mama Dell’s company while we were away. “Now, you have a fantastic time on your vacation with John!”
The second I hung up, I said, “We’re screwed.”
After I’d explained what’d happened, Gil said, “What’re we supposed to do without any of our equipment or protection?”
“Maybe we can hit a hardware store and pick up some spikes?” Heath said. “And somewhere around here we should be able to find some magnets.”
Mrs. G. set down her drink and said, “Oh, you three! I told you I had a solution for you. Now, come inside so I can show you the surprise.”
We followed dutifully after Mrs. G. and she led us straight to the guest room, where Heath and I were staying. Opening the closet, she pointed to the top shelf and said, “Heath, would you please pull that big box down for me?”
He did and she directed him to set it on the bed. Then we gathered close as she lifted off the lid and parted some tissue paper, and there she revealed a bright green, yellow, and vivid orange plaid fishing vest. “Ta-da!” she said, pulling it out and holding it up for us to see.
All three of us took a step back. “Um . . . wow,” I said.
“Whoa,” Heath said.
“Oh . . . my . . . God!” Gil said, and I braced for whatever insult was about to come next. But he surprised me when he grabbed the vest out of his mother’s hands and exclaimed, “It’s gorgeous!”
“Oh, you really like it?’
Gilley immediately put the vest on. It sagged a little on him and he reached into the pockets to pull out several thin magnets. “Mama!” he said. “This is awesome!”
Heath and I stood side by side with wide eyes and I secretly hoped that in that big box there was only one fishing vest.
It wasn’t our lucky day. Mrs. G. reached back inside the box and pulled out another two brightly colored vests. “I was going to give these to y’all right before you started filming the next season of your show. Gilley said that some of your locations were too hot to walk around in those down vests, so I thought a fishing vest might be a good alternative.”
Heath and I pushed giant smiles onto our faces and tried our best to look grateful and thrilled. Truth be told, the fishing vest was a fantastic alternative to the sometimes sweltering heat of the down vests, and it had ready-made built-in pockets to store plenty of magnets. The only problem was the ungodly awful plaid.
“Can you believe these were on sale down at the sporting goods store? I mean, who could pass up such a gorgeous pattern?”
“Mama, they’re perfect!” Gil sang, and he paraded around in his vest while he secretly flashed me a mocking smile because he knew Heath and I were struggling to appear delighted by Mrs. G.’s gift.
I was so tempted to tell him his butt looked fat in that vest, but managed to hold my tongue and instead said, “Thank you so much, Mrs. G. These are great.”
“Yes,” Heath said, slipping his on with slightly wooden movements. “Oh, and they fit too.”
Mrs. G. clapped her hands. “Well, I had to guess on the sizes, but I knew you were a little taller than my Gilley.”
I held in a chuckle. Heath was nearly a half a foot taller than Gil. “Well, it was so thoughtful of you,” I told her. “And they will definitely come in handy when we go back to the Porter house.”
“But what about weapons?” Gil asked. “And meters and monitors. I mean, there’s no way we can do a full-fledged ghostbust without the rest of our equipment.”
I sighed. “For now, we’ll have to plan a trip to the hardware store for magnets and spikes, and make do with that.”
Gil nodded in agreement, and I wondered if he wasn’t a bit too enthused by the fact that if he had no equipment with which to monitor Heath and me from the car, he’d be kept well away from Porter Manor.
The rest of that evening we were busy wrapping things up from that afternoon. Gilley made a call to the shop where our van had been dropped off to give them the insurance claim number and coordinate with the insurance adjuster when our van would be looked at. In the meantime he also rented us a four-door SUV. I was happy that he’d rented us something roomy because Gilley could be stingy when it came to saving a few bucks. A few years back when he and I had vacationed together in the Florida Keys, he’d rented us a car so small and so slow that I thought it must’ve been purchased by the rental company from a few clowns at the circus.
While Gilley was dealing with our transportation, I bit the bullet and called Christine. My call went straight to voice mail, so I blurted out a short message for her to call me and left it at that. I knew I could’ve called Daddy and asked him to pass the phone to Christine, but I just didn’t have the energy to hear him ask me why and then grill me for details once I told him about visiting Porter Manor. Where Daddy was concerned, I was still a bit of a chickenshit.
At ten we all turned in for bed, and I hadn’t heard back from Christine, but decided not to worry about it. I was almost too tired to think.
The next morning I woke up to the smell of fresh coffee and cinnamon buns. Heath was still asleep and I didn’t want to wake him, so I slipped out of the bed and, after donning a sweatshirt, hustled down to the kitchen for some gooey goodness. At the kitchen door I inhaled deeply. “My God, Mrs. G., that smells like heaven!”
“Oh!” she replied. “M.J., you startled m
e half to death!”
“Sorry,” I said quickly, moving forward to give her a giant hug. I’d missed Mrs. G. more than I’d realized.
She hugged me back, then shooed me into a chair before pouring me some coffee and handing me a plate for the buns already on the table. “Best eat quick before Gilley wakes up,” she said with a grin.
I reached for a bun, took a bite, and closed my eyes to savor the wave of buttery, fluffy, sweet goodness that played like a beautiful symphony across my taste buds. “These buns should be outlawed,” I told Mrs. G. “It’s gotta be a crime to make anything this good.”
Mrs. G. laughed delightedly. “Oh, Mary Jane,” she said, reaching over to squeeze my arm. “If you think that’s good, just wait until you try my peach cobbler tonight!”
I smiled, but there was a part of me that inwardly groaned. Heath and I were currently training for a marathon in the fall and we’d both sworn to eat nothing but healthy meals during our training. Then again, I’d been eating super healthy for a few weeks now, so I figured a few days off the regimen wouldn’t hurt much. Especially if I kept up the training. And then I realized that I should’ve gotten out of bed and gone for a run, especially since I was having an eight-hundred-calorie breakfast. It’d take me nine miles to burn that all off.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Mrs. G. said, and I realized I’d lapsed into silence while I worked through the algorithm of miles/cinnamon buns.
“Your new kitchen is gorgeous,” I told her, admiring the open floor plan she’d chosen when she redid her kitchen—a recent and much needed update, as the old one, dominated by the avocado cabinets, appliances, and even the countertop, had dated back to the early seventies.
By contrast the new kitchen was something straight out of Elle Decor, with gleaming white windowed cabinets, a gorgeous smoky gray granite countertop, a large central island, Wolf appliances, and the addition of a huge bay window, which had expanded the breakfast nook and gave tons of morning light to the room. Mrs. G. beamed with pride. “It was expensive but worth it,” she said. “My next project is to get rid of all the old carpet in the house and replace it with something more modern. Did you know they make tile that actually looks like wood flooring?”