Chapter Seven

Ashara jumped and nearly screamed the next morning when I popped in beside her at her teller’s window. She suppressed the scream, though, managing to hold it down to a gasping squeak.

“You okay?” the teller next to her asked.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I just almost dropped this.” She waved the wad of paper in her hand. The other teller nodded and went back to her own work. Ashara’s cash drawer was open and she was counting money, her fingers flying over the ten-key pad to her right, then clicking across the keyboard in front of her. She moved so quickly I could hardly follow what she was doing. Numbers scrolled across the screen of the computer monitor to her right.

“So where did he turn off the main road last night?” I asked Ashara. She studiously ignored me. Not that she could answer me directly, what with the other teller standing right next to her.

Time for Twenty Questions.

“Did he stay on the main highway?”

Ashara nodded as if bobbing her head to some internal music.

“Doesn’t I-20 cross that highway?” I asked. She kept bobbing her head, fingers dancing across the two keyboards, numbers running down the monitor.

“Did he go past the interstate, then?” I asked. Her head-bob turned into a shake. No, then.

“Did he turn left or right?”

Ashara’s head stilled completely. Oops. Yes or no questions only, I reminded myself.

“Left?” No movement.

“Right?” A bob of the head.

“Could you get back there?” Another head bob.

Not that I was sure I wanted her going back out there alone. Really, what I wanted to do was go check the place out myself. But I was stuck in town.

“So what time do you get off work?” I asked Ashara.

Her hand stilled, and then her fingers popped up off the keyboard.

“Four?” I asked.

She nodded.

Four o’clock. That was hours and hours away. I practically hummed with frustration. “Can’t you get off work any earlier?”

Ashara went back to shaking her head.

So I left Ashara and went to explore the rest of the bank.

Small-town bank branches are boring. There’s not much to them, really. But I did practice exerting my combo hand-mind tug on physical objects.

This time when I moved up to Ashara from behind, she didn’t react at all.

“Yes, ma’am,” she was saying into the microphone.

“You have a nice day.” The woman in the car outside the window smiled at her and pulled away.

“You know,” I said conversationally, “I just figured out how to open safe deposit boxes.”

Ashara turned to me, her eyes wide. I could see her trying to determine some way to talk to me without her coworkers overhearing.

“Oh, don’t worry;” I said cheerfully, “I closed them all up again. But I think I’m getting better at moving things.” I popped open her cash drawer, just to demonstrate. She slammed it shut again.

“Quit that,” she hissed out of the corner of her mouth.

“What was that, Ashara?” the other teller asked.

“Nothing,” Ashara said calmly. “Just a cough.”

“We could make a fortune,” I said. “Ashara Jones and Callie Taylor, bank robbers. Of course, it would be a short career, since I can’t leave Abramsville. And they’d probably catch us. Or you, anyway.”

Ashara sighed, tilted her head, and looked at me.

“Hey, Ann,” she said to the other teller. “I’m going to go grab a quick bathroom break while it’s quiet. Cover for me?”

“No problem,” said Ann.

She turned and surreptitiously waved her hand for me to follow her. We walked into the ladies’ restroom and she finally turned to face me head-on.

“Go away,” she said. “I’m trying to work here.”

“But we need to figure out what to do next.”

“Look, Callie,” she said, and then she stopped. “You know what? I think I liked it better before I knew your name. I liked you better as White Ghost Lady.”

“Yeah, well, I do have a name. Callie Elaine Taylor. I may be a ghost, but I’m a real person, too.”

Ashara sighed. “Okay, Callie Elaine Taylor,” she said.

“Why don’t you go do something useful while I’m working?

You’re getting so good at moving things, you ought to go back to the music shop and see if you can find anything.”

Ooh. The shop. I’d gotten so excited about finding the man that I’d forgotten about the shop. “Okay,” I said, nodding eagerly.

“Come back at four,” Ashara said. “I’ll talk to you then.”

* * *

The music repair shop was much as I remembered it, except that this time it was full of people. It hadn’t occurred to me that Rick’s shop would continue operating with Rick in jail awaiting trial, but apparently, his employees were keeping things running in his absence.

I moved in through the front door this time since I didn’t have Ashara with me. A young, blond, bearded man stood at the front counter, bent over the case polishing some piece of metal—it looked like it might belong to a trumpet or something.

I drifted past him—he never looked up—and into the back room. The workbenches were occupied by three people working on instruments. One young, thin man was carefully sanding a piece of wood. He had a violin propped up in front of him. A second man, this one burly and broad and red in the face, worked a small soldering iron against two pieces of metal. I had no idea what that was for. And finally, an older woman with grey-streaked blonde hair carefully tapped against the dents in a trombone.

But one bench stood empty. The one the man had taken something from the night before. I stood in front of it, staring down at the array of things in front of me. Some of them were clearly tools. Others were clearly parts of musical instruments.

And yet others held no meaning for me, jumbles of metal and wood and glue. I ran my eyes across it again and again, inventorying the items. None of them seemed to have any bearing on Molly’s murder.

And then I glanced down at the small trash can beside the bench. There, inside it, lay a small piece of piano wire. It looked just like the wire the man had used to kill Molly.

I’d watched a lot of television in the past few months.

I’d seen just about every episode of CSI. Twice. And I knew that if this was from the same spool of wire used to kill Molly McClatchey, a lab could match the cut ends. And I knew that if it had anyone else’s DNA on it, it might cast doubt on Rick’s guilt.

What I didn’t know was how to get it out of the workshop. I mean, I could pop open drawers, turn bolt locks, and make bells ring, but all of those things were short-term events. And they took a lot out of me. I didn’t think I could get the wire out of the trash can and all the way to Ashara.

Certainly not with all these people around.

Just then, the bearded man from the front of the shop walked to the doorway of the workroom.

“Excuse me,” he said, “but I can help you?” He had a deep voice, deeper than I would have expected.

I continued staring into the trash can, trying to figure out how to get it to the police. Everyone else looked up at him.

“Nope,” the woman said. “I’ve almost got this damn thing straightened out.” The rest of the repairmen went back to work.

The young man shook his head. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said, moving into the room, “but you can’t be back here.”

“Ha, ha,” said the woman, not looking up from her trombone. “Very funny, Stephen.”

Stephen looked at her, then shook his head again, his eyebrows knitted in confusion. He took several more steps into the room.

That’s when I realized that he was talking to me.

I looked at his face, my eyes huge.

“Can I help you?” he asked again. His colleagues looked up again.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” the burly man asked irritably.

“Oh,” I said. “Yes. Actually, you can help me. Let’s go to the front.” I scurried out of the workroom before poor Stephen had time to say anything else. No need to make his colleagues think he was totally crazy.

Once we were in the showroom again, I glanced around to make sure no one else was within earshot.

“Whose workbench was that?” I asked.

He stared at me suspiciously. “Why do you want to know?”

Good question.

“Well,” I said hesitatingly, “I’m a friend of Rick’s. And Molly’s. And I don’t think Rick did it.”

“I don’t either,” Stephen said.

“So I was just wondering if there was anyone who might have something against either of them.”

“You know, the police have already been here and asked all those questions,” Stephen said.

“What did you tell them?”

“Who did you say you were again?” Stephen asked.

“A friend.”

He just stared at me.

I sighed.

“My name is Callie Taylor. I’m a friend of Rick’s. I really am just trying to help.”

“So why do you want to know whose workbench that is?”

I thought about it for a second, then took a deep breath and said it. “Because there’s a length of piano wire in the trash can. If it’s from the same spool that killed Molly, the police might be able to do something with it. Maybe they could prove it wasn’t Rick.”

Stephen’s eyes narrowed. “Really?”

I shrugged. “It’s worth a try.”

Stephen headed back to the workroom.

“Don’t touch it!” I called out after him. “Just bring the whole can!”

He nodded in acknowledgment.

He came back in, staring down into the trash can. “So what should we do?” he asked.

“Maybe call the police?” I suggested.

“Yeah. Good idea,” he said. He picked up the phone.

“So, whose bench is it?” I asked again, just before his fingers touched the number pad.

“Jeffrey McClatchey,” he said. “Rick’s brother.”

* * *

I left the shop while Stephen was on the phone with the police. No need to get him thrown into a mental ward for talking to The Woman Who Wasn’t There.

But I did stick close by. In fact, I slipped into the back seat of one of the two police cruisers that had shown up. I wanted to see what they did next.

In the meantime, I thought about what kind of sicko Rick’s brother would have to be to strangle Molly and then cut her up like that. At least the sick fuck who’d killed me had been the “Stranger” in Stranger Danger. I hadn’t ever seen him before that awful night when he’d grabbed me.

After about half an hour, the cops came back out of Rick’s shop.

“We’ll take this to the lab in Birmingham,” one of them said, waving an evidence bag. “Why don’t you two go back to Jeffrey McClatchey and see if he’s changed his story any.” Two of the other policemen nodded and headed toward their patrol car.

The other patrol car.

Dammit. I wanted to see Jeffrey McClatchey. Besides, I couldn’t go to Birmingham even if I wanted to.

I slid across the seat, out of the car, and dove through the back-passenger door of the other police cruiser just as it pulled out from in front of the store. I sat up in the back seat and looked out the window to see Stephen staring at me, his eyes enormous and his face as white as a—well, not ghost, ’cause I’m not especially pale. Let’s go with sheet. A white one. Not a floral printed one.

I guessed that he had seen my little non-corporeal cruiser-switching act.

I would have bet almost anything that he was heading back to the workroom to ask his co-workers about the woman who had been looking at Jeffrey’s workbench.

Poor guy.

I sat in the back of the patrol car, unsure whether or not to hope that Jeffrey McClatchey was the killer. How awful that would be for Rick.

I also spent some time hoping that if it was McClatchey, the police cruiser wouldn’t go outside the city limits and leave me popped back into the middle of the downtown square.

But I really didn’t have enough time to hope much of anything at all for very long, because after a few moments, the patrol car pulled into a brand-new subdivision on the edge of town. The houses all had brick facades and siding on the sides.

Nice, but not extravagant. If this was where Jeffrey McClatchey lived, he was doing well, but not as well as his brother. Rick and Molly lived in a huge remodeled Colonial-style home. Then again, this was small-town Alabama, not Dallas. Houses in Dallas were much more expensive.

I followed the two cops up to the front door, glad that they weren’t able to see me. The taller of the two rang the doorbell, and after a long pause, a man in his mid- to late-thirties answered the door. He wore sweatpants and a t-shirt, and his hair stood up in the back, as if he had been asleep. His eyes were rimmed in red.

My shoulders slumped, but I wasn’t sure if it was in relief or disappointment. This was not the man who had killed Molly McClatchey.

“Yeah?” he asked, scratching his chest through his t-shirt.

“Mr. McClatchey?” The taller officer spoke first

“Yes.” Jeffrey McClatchey stared at the cops through slitted eyes.

“May we come in for a moment and talk to you?”

“I’ve already told you everything I know,” he said. He sounded almost belligerent.

“There have been some new developments and we’d like to discuss them with you,” the shorter officer said.

McClatchey sighed and opened the door wider. “Okay. Fine. Come on in.”