Page 23 of Crazy Spooky Love

“Ah. Miss Bittersweet.” Donovan Scarborough stalks into the hallway and greets me tersely as I walk into it too. “Anything to report?”

I shake my head. “Nothing concrete as yet; although I’m following up on a couple of promising lines of investigation.”

There’s no way I’m going to tell him about the Scarborough brothers with Fletcher Gunn in earshot. Not that I’m ready to tell him anything yet anyway; I’d like to have some more private time in the house before I disclose anything I’ve found out so far.

“That sounds horribly similar to the other chap,” Donovan barks, irritated. “What is it with you mystics? You’re not on a bloody day rate, you know.”

I’m insulted by his rudeness, but also gladdened to hear that Leo is still no further along with things than Iam.

“Will you be here long?” I say, trying to sound diplomatic. “I can always come back later.”

Donovan shrugs. “Up to you. I’m doing a piece for the press about the house being featured on TV, keeps the buyers interested if they think it’s a hot property.”

I give Fletch a skeptical look. “And of all the reporters in all the world, they just happened to send you?”

He shrugs. “Coincidence, huh?”

Coincidence, my arse. He’s probably pitched this piece to his editor specifically so he can keep an eye on what’s going on here at Scarborough House.

Douglas saunters into the hallway like a movie star onto a set and winks at me. “Would the journalist like to hear my views, do you think, Miss Bittersweet? I’m sure the intrigue would help sell papers.”

I shake my head slowly, avoiding eye contact as I’m the only living person in the hallway who knows he’s there.

Douglas strolls behind Fletch and flicks the back of his neck.

Fletch doesn’t flinch, exactly, just wipes his palm down the back of his head as if he felt the air displace.

He glances over his shoulder to check the door is still ajar, and his analytical expression tells me that his black-and-white brain is happy to have found the source of the draft.

“This is fun.” Douglas grins, amused. “What’s this one’s name?”

“Fletch.” It slips quietly from my lips, and I regret it instantly because Fletch looks up at me, surprised, and when I don’t elaborate he flips his palms up and shrugs as if to say, “What?”

“Sorry,” I mumble, trying to ignore the fact that Douglas is now circling Fletch, taking in everything from his deep-blue shirt with obligatory rolled-up cuffs to his slightly inappropriate-for-work jeans, and boots that could do with a polish.

It’s a look that once again makes him seem caught halfway between business and pleasure, and one I’m trying very hard not to appreciate.

I watch them for a second. They were born a century apart, but it strikes me that they would likely hit it off under different circumstances.

They both have that uber-cool-guy thing going on, that picked-first-for-the-team look that you just can’t fake.

I can easily imagine them having a beer and watching the match with much macho backslapping.

I’m disturbed by the fact that I’m enjoying this little fantasy, considering one of the guys can’t drink because he’s dead and I’d usually be throwing a beer over the other, rather than drinking it with him.

Hot-cheeked, I decide to get out of there.

I doubt if there’s much I can learn about the house from listening to Donovan Scarborough’s sales spiel, so I head toward the staircase.

“Actually, I think I left something upstairs last time I was here. I’ll just quickly nip up and grab it, then I’ll get out of your hair. ”

Scarborough shrugs, unconcerned, but Fletch watches me with too much interest for my liking. I leave them chatting in the hallway and slip up the stairs, pausing on the landing to get my bearings, and then head up the second staircase, to the attic.

As expected, I find Isaac up there again, this time gazing out of the window.

“You didn’t bring any books,” he says. “I watched you climb from that bizarre-looking van and you didn’t bring any books.”

“I have them in the bizarre-looking van,” I whisper quickly, pulling a small notebook and pen from my pocket. “I couldn’t really come in laden with things while your nephew is downstairs, couldI?”

Isaac huffs in distaste. “He’s not my nephew.”

“What?” I step closer, confused.

“My family blamed me and then disowned me, remember? Well, that works two ways. I disowned them too.”

I hear weary decades of bitterness in his words.

“I want to help you, Isaac,” I say quietly. I cross the room to sit on a dusty wooden dining chair opposite him. He watches me as I lay the notepad down on the rickety side table next to his chair and then place a new pen on top ofit.

“If I’m going to search for a murder weapon, I need to know where to start. Make a list for me? Anywhere you can think of, you must know most of this house’s secrets after all of these years.”

He laughs, but his eyes are fixed on the middle distance and I get the impression that his mind is miles away. “They were like chalk and cheese growing up, those boys, both in looks and in attitude.”

I nod, hoping he’ll go on and wishing it wouldn’t seem rude to make notes as he speaks. As it is, I sit on my hands and concentrate hard in order to commit his words to memory.

“Douglas and Lloyd?” I don’t really need to say this because who else can he mean, but I throw it in to keep Isaac talking.

“One lived for sport, so the other automatically had to hate it. One had his nose forever buried in a book and the other read only under duress. One adored the stage, the other couldn’t hold a note. Introvert, extrovert.” He shakes his head at the memory. “That’s just the way they were.”

I don’t need Isaac to elaborate for me on which was which. Any man who gets caught for eternity in a smoking jacket is clearly given to theatrics.

“They were a couple of years younger than you, weren’t they?”

I know this is true because I’ve studied their family tree. Isaac nods and twists his slim hands in his lap. I wish he didn’t look so generally unloved and unkempt, it makes me want to buy him a comb and a good dinner, even though he would have no use for either.

“Two years,” he confirms. “I was always the outsider, always separate. Isaac and the twins. Isaac and the boys.” He huffs softly at the memories. “I was a little boy too.”

How I’d love to be able to pat Isaac on the knee right now, anything really, to show that I’m listening and I understand.

“It’s unusual for twins, isn’t it?” I say. “Generally you hear only about their similarities, not their differences.”

“Hard to put my finger on even one similarity,” he says.

“Did you get along with them?”

I force my voice to be ultracasual, even though I am really keen to hear Isaac’s opinion of his brothers.

“Again, I was different from them,” he says, shuffling his feet on the dusty floorboards beneath his threadbare armchair. “More serious, our mother always said.”

“And were you?”

Isaac shakes his head. “It was difficult to compete with them. Lloyd was always so theatrical and demanding, and Douglas was the blue-eyed boy who could do no wrong in our mother’s eyes.

” He looks up at me for a few moments, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he can actually hear the cogs moving in my head, casting him as the jealous, overlooked sibling who finally snapped.

“Don’t play the amateur sleuth again, Melody, jumping to obvious conclusions.

I may not have liked either of them all that much but I didn’t kill Douglas. ”

“I didn’t think that,” I say. I totally did.

“Anything you can think of, note it down. I’ll be back later today hopefully, tomorrow at the latest. Your nephew…

” I pause and then correct myself. “ Donovan is pushing for this to be sorted out soon, even though he doesn’t really have a clue what he wants sorting. ”

“He’s Lloyd’s great-grandson. I’m afraid that makes him genetically predisposed to being a theatrical buffoon.

” Isaac laughs without humor and I notice the slight shake to his hands as he reaches for the notepad and pen I’ve put on the side table.

“I’ll have a think about that list,” he says, and with a heavy sigh he leans his head back and closes his eyes.

“I’m glad you’re here, Melody. Resolution has been a long time coming. ”

I watch him rest, and I hope like hell I can unravel this tangled web.

This isn’t about making the house salable.

It’s about three brothers trapped in time by a crime that’s gone unsolved for over a century, about unlocking the real reason they’re imprisoned here in limbo when they should be long gone.

In the past I’ve encountered plenty of ghosts who were more than happy to hang around; look at my grandpa.

He’s as happy as a pig in muck to be eternally bound to his bedroom and to my gran, but that isn’t what’s going on here.

The Scarborough brothers are unhappily tethered to the house on Brimsdale Road because of their unfinished business, and none of them will know a day’s peace until it’s sorted.

When I first set foot inside this house there was a distinct staleness to the air, a lazy malevolence borne from years of not being able to communicate with the living aside from terrifying them.

My arrival, and undoubtedly Leo’s too, must have been like a shot of pure adrenaline for the brothers.

We could see them, and we could talk to them, and because of us there is renewed energy in the house today, a sizzle of potential in the air.

“I’ll try to come back later for that list,” I murmur, and even though ghosts can’t sleep, I pick my way across the cluttered floor as quietly as I can.

As I step out of the room and pull the door closed behind me, I hear a creak on the attic stairs and Fletch joins me on the little upper landing.

“Talking to the fairies again?” he asks, his hands shoved into his jeans pockets.