Page 13 of Crazy Spooky Love

“Umm, actually, I rather think not, old boy.” Douglas raises his eyebrows.

“Miss Bittersweet is the first living human I’ve spoken to since 1910, and let’s face it, she’s more charming than either of you two.

” He pauses and looks my way with a conspiratorial twinkle in his eye, and I can’t stop the small answering smile from tugging at the corners of my lips.

He’s calling me charming? He’s so sweepingly charming that I cannot help but feel a little bewitched by him.

“Introductions all round, at least? Where are your manners?” He shoots a derisive look at his brother then speaks again.

“So tell me, Miss Bittersweet. Who is this delightful creature?”

He nods toward Marina, who right this second is concentrating on picking yellow paint off her thumbnail.

“This is Marina Malone, my oldest friend,” I say. In response, she looks up and waves her fingers.

“And Artie Elliott, my…” What is he, exactly? “My assistant,” I finish. Artie nods quickly, a nervous smile on his lips as he rotates his head as if he’s doing neck stretches, desperate to ensure he doesn’t miss anyone.

“I’m a trainee ghost hunter,” he says, earning himself a dig in the ribs from Marina. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Scarborough, Mr. Scarborough and, err…” He consults his notebook. “Mr. Scarborough.”

His explanation does nothing to improve the atmosphere in the room.

“Ghost hunter?” Lloyd looks down his nose at me, and Douglas emits a rumble of laughter. “Here we go again. Remember that priest they sent once, Isaac? All of that chanting gave me quite the headache.”

“Right,” I say, trying to get things back on track. “So now you know who we are and why we’re here. Maybe you could tell me why you’re all still here?”

“Oh, now this could get interesting.” Douglas grins, crossing his long legs. “You first, boys, I insist.”

He doesn’t seem especially respectful of his older brothers, and they, in turn, seem equally intolerant of each other.

I look toward Isaac, because Lloyd rubs me up the wrong way.

“I’m the eldest,” Isaac says, finally.

“And I’m the baby.” Douglas can’t seem to stop himself. “Forever twenty-one, thanks to one of these good fellows.”

I frown, shocked by his revelation. “Are you saying that one of your brothers caused your death when you were just twenty-one?”

“I never harmed him.” Isaac stands, angry all of a sudden.

I look at Lloyd for his response.

“Well, I certainly didn’t plunge the knife into his back. He was my twin brother, for God’s sake.”

I can’t hide my surprise, and I look from Douglas to Lloyd and back again. They’re obviously unalike now as Lloyd lived to be a fair age but, even so, I can’t imagine how they were similar even as young men. “You’re twins?”

“Fraternal,” Lloyd snarks, and his tone tells me that it was a question that must have been leveled at them often when they were alive.

“And therein lies the problem,” Douglas says, returning to his story. “I didn’t see which of them it was and neither will admit to it, so I’ve been hanging around here ever since.”

“What year did it happen?”

“1910.”

Douglas Scarborough has been stuck here for well over a century.

“It’s been more than well-documented that Isaac was responsible,” Lloyd sighs.

“Not that well-documented that I ever went to jail for it though, was it?” Isaac spits his words out.

“I didn’t lay so much as a finger on that boy, but I paid for his death my whole life.

Faced with the choice of having to blame one of us, our parents chose me, because the idea of one twin killing the other was so untenable.

That fabled special twin bond suddenly became all too convenient for you, didn’t it, Lloyd?

Those acting lessons came in useful, after all, there was even talk of him being institutionalized for his own safety.

My mother fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

I may not have been sent to jail, but I was punished, all right.

I was unceremoniously cut from this family like a gangrenous limb. ”

“Oh please.” Lloyd sighs, theatrical and dismissive. “Not the gangrenous limb line again, Isaac. Change the damn record, will you?”

The two older brothers stare each other down, and Douglas lifts his hands in the air in a gesture of defeat.

“So now you see what I’ve had to live with all these years, Miss Bittersweet.”

“Please, call me Melody.”

“And you must call us all by our Christian names too.” He shoots Artie a look so withering that I’m glad he’s oblivious. “All that ridiculous Mr. Scarborough nonsense.”

“Thank you, Douglas.” I feel absurdly shy saying his name. “That’s helpful.”

Isaac runs his hand over his steel-gray hair to smooth it back. “What exactly is your remit here?”

“Well, as I said, Donovan has plans to sell the house, and he mentioned that everyone who comes over the threshold has been…how can I put this delicately? Terrified out of their wits by you guys?”

“I’m not terrified,” Artie pipesup.

Douglas reaches out and picks up a book from the coffee table and chucks it at Artie, who jumps back into the sofa and covers his face with his arms as Marina’s hand shoots out and snatches the hardback in midair.

She narrows her eyes in the general direction the book came from.

“Play nice, ghouls, or I’ll fetch the ghost vacuum out of the van and suck you all up.”

Artie sits back up and takes the book from Marina, glancing down at the cover. “I read this at school. I didn’t like it.” He places the book on the coffee table. “I like it even less now.”

I hide my smile as he resumes his pose with his notebook and pen and looks at me, ready.

There’s something about his cheerful, matter-of-fact delivery of lines that I very much enjoy; he has a natural, unassuming comedy about him that you could easily overlook.

“So, getting back to the matter at hand,” I say. “Donovan Scarborough is understandably concerned that he’s going to lose his buyers for the house if we can’t get to the bottom of why you’re all still held here.”

“Well, I was murdered here,” Douglas chips in. “I think that gives me rights.”

“Not by me,” Isaac snaps. “And I’m not leaving until someone proves it.”

It’s slowly becoming clearer to me what’s going on. There’s a whole load of unfinished business here. I look toward Lloyd, even though I now have a fair idea of why he’s still here.

“And you, Lloyd? Why are you still tethered to the house?”

“Lord only knows,” he says, curling his lip.

“I never liked the ruddy place anyway, millstone around my neck. Bloody unfortunate to have had my heart attack right there, looking out of the French doors. I was dead before anyone even noticed. Knew I’d died for sure when these two showed up like the world’s worst reception committee. ”

Isaac folds his arm across his chest and huffs. “No way you’re leaving until the truth comes out.”

“And you died when?” I ask, tucking Isaac’s statement away to think more deeply about later.

“August 1971.”

I relay the date to Artie as I do the math. Wow. Lloyd died fifty-four years ago and he was the last of the brothers to go. That’s a heck of a while to be stuck together like this. No wonder they’re all so testy.

“And you three have been here ever since?”

“As I said, the three musketeers.”

I bite my lip at Douglas’s glib words. “Except it’s hardly ‘all for one and one for all’ if one of them murders you, is it?”

He grins, outwitted, and looks as if he’s about to say something equally pithy, but before he can he freezes, eyeing the doorway. Within a couple of seconds all three ghosts disappear into thin air, leaving us alone in their sitting room.

“Is this a private séance or can anyone join in?”

The fact that Marina and Artie both swivel at the sound of a new voice in the room assures me that it’s a living, breathing human rather than yet another of Scarborough House’s ghostly inhabitants.

I groan, and if I was given to stamping my foot in temper, I’d do it right now, because it’s not just any human who’s walked in unannounced. It’s Fletcher goddamn Gunn.