Page 46 of Crazy Spooky Love

“I was only joking about the gherkins,” Artie says bright and early the next morning, stashing his lunch in the cooler Marina staggered in with five minutes ago.

She’s approached the idea of a road trip like a true Italian: food first. There’s enough food in there to throw a street party when we get to Hull.

“Where’s Lestat?” She checks around the floor for the dog.

“I’ve just settled him down in Mum’s kitchen with his bed, his bowl, and a note saying I’ll pick him up tonight. I was too chicken to ask them to babysit in advance in case they said no and we had to bring him with us.”

I go through my rucksack one last time. Artie’s mum has come up trumps on the evidence side of things; he arrived this morning armed with a clutch of photocopied birth certificates, printed photos, and newspaper details from the time.

I haven’t had time to go through it all but it’s more than I could have hoped for; I can only pray Isaac’s grandson is convinced too.

“This is exciting!” Artie’s eyes gleam as we load the stuff into Babs, who was returned on schedule, as promised, quietly so as not to disturb the neighbors, and, chiefly, not to rouse my family before we can belch off toward Hull in a cloud of smoke.

Artie’s right: My stomach is full of nerves and apprehension, but also the tantalizing prospect that we might just pull this off.

There are so many things that can go wrong, this plan has more holes than a watering can, but alongside all those possible pitfalls is the possibility that everything could go right.

When I think of it that way it suddenly feels like I’ve taken up gambling; I just hope the house wins in this instance.

Scarborough House. I don’t want to see it knocked around by a faceless corporation intent on bleeding as much money as they can out of every square inch of the place.

It needs to become a gorgeous, noisy family home again, and for the family who’ve lived in it so unhappily for decades finally allowed to rest easy.

We’ve been on the road for over an hour and we’ve hit the morning snarl-ups.

To the untrained eye we must look like we’re on holiday or going to some kind of geeky fan convention in our tricked-out van; all three of us are wearing sunglasses, and Babs is still sporting her pretty Hawaiian garland hanging from the central mirror.

She’s doing a valiant job, backfiring and juddering every now and then like the flatulent old girl she is, but we’ve got music thanks to Artie’s phone and the sun is warming the cab and our cheeks.

The mood inside Babs, however, is anything but carefree, because I’ve just relayed the contents of Agnes’s final diary to the others.

“So Lloyd did do it after all,” Marina says, shaking her head. “The Scarborough brothers aren’t aware yet that you know, are they?”

“Nope. They will be before the end of the day though, all being well.”

“Poor Douglas,” Artie says softly. He’s developed quite a soft spot for the youngest brother. “Do you know why Lloyd did it?”

I shake my head. “Not yet.” I’m really hoping we find out the answer to that question before the end of the day too.

“Has this case really only been three weeks long?” Marina sighs, cracking open a bottle of water. “It feels like about six months.”

She’s right, I feel the same way. But my head has been so completely stuffed full of the Scarborough family history that I’ll almost miss them when the case wraps up.

The Scarborough I’ll miss least of all is the only living one I’ve met.

I don’t like Donovan Scarborough one little bit, which is another reason it feels as if we’re racing against the clock.

If his buyers back out before they sign on the dotted line, I seriously think he’s crazy enough to hire a digger and take a wrecking ball to the house himself.

Hull, when we finally get there just after 11:00 a.m. , seems to meld into the monochrome skies overhead. It’s slate gray and determinedly uniform as we leave the motorway, the kind of urban, concrete jungle that typifies most industrial cities around England.

Marina has her phone out for GPS. She has the voice set to this really bossy woman who always sounds as if someone has just royally pissed her off—I’m not convinced she’ll send us in the right direction if she’s in the mood for mischief.

“Can’t you choose a different voice for this? David Attenborough or someone like that, somebody with a bit of gravitas and authority?”

“I like her,” Marina says, defensive. “She’s always shrieking at me.”

“And that’s a good thing?”

“You know my family. We shriek and shout at one another. It’s our way. The original setting sounded like Darth Vader, and you know how I get with scary movies.”

“ Star Wars is not a scary movie,” I say, making the universal sign for loser on my forehead at a load of guys leering at us from a minibus in the next lane.

“It so is.” Marina shivers. “That outfit gives me nightmares.”

Marina is so fierce most of the time, her fear of scary movies is almost cute.

“Feel the Force,” Artie growls, making Marina shiver.

“Lestat likes her. He rolls on his back whenever she yells,” she says, as if the dog’s opinion is anything to put stock in. “I don’t think Darth Vader would be a fan of Lestat.”

“No one is a fan of Lestat,” I say. “I’m not. You’re not.”

“I am,” Artie chimes in, in Lestat’s defense.

“Good. He can come and live with you, then.”

Artie makes his “well, that’s rather difficult” face. “It’s Pandora. She’s territorial. It said ‘unsuitable around young children and best kept as an only pet’ on the tank when we bought her.”

“What he means is she’d probably eat Lestat,” Marina says, matter-of-fact as always.

Artie nods. “She’d have a good go.”

I let myself imagine it for a second, a Lestat-shaped bulge in the python’s belly.

It’s not as satisfying as I’d hoped, which in itself is cause for concern.

Please God, don’t let me go and get attached to Lestat; he’s my deadly rival for Nonna’s biscuits, my bed, and my slippers, not to mention he got to third base with Fletcher Gunn before I did.

I haven’t said a word to Marina about what happened between Fletch and me last night.

It isn’t as if it came totally out of the clear blue sky; the tension has been twanging between us since, well, forever really, but usually at a safe enough distance to not get burned.

These last few weeks have been on a whole new level.

He’s slid under my skin in every way possible, I can feel him in my bloodstream and my bones.

My cheeks flame at the memory of him on top of me last night, Zeus-like with the velvet star-studded sky as his backdrop.

I didn’t see lightning bolts, but it wouldn’t have surprised me one bit if I had.

I’ve parked the whole thing in the back of my head to revisit once the case is over.

I just don’t have the bandwidth to think about both today.

I’m rescued from the disturbing possibility that I’m developing feelings for Fletcher Gunn by the GPS yelling at me to get off the motorway sharpish at the next exit.

I switch off all dog-related thoughts and give my full attention to steering Babs safely through the back streets of Hull in search of Isaac Scarborough’s grandson.

“Remind me how we’re gonna play this?”

We’re sitting in one of those out-of-town shopping-center car parks eating Nonna’s Italian banquet while we go over the plan. We’ve checked out the house; it looks to be a fairly innocuous, narrow-end terrace in a tall, gray Edwardian row.

“Let me do the talking,” I say, wiping my chicken-greasy hands on a thick white cotton napkin. I’m speaking mostly to Marina, because Artie isn’t likely to contribute much around strangers whereas she might get riled if they don’t believe a word we say.

“I’m expecting them to take some convincing,” I say, laying the groundwork.

“I mean, think of it from their point of view. We’re a bunch of ghost hunters turning up in Babs, which puts us firmly at a disadvantage from the outset.

Then we’re going to tell them that I see ghosts, that Richard’s dead grandfather would like to meet him, and that if they could drop everything and come back to Chapelwick today it really would help us out a lot.

Oh, and we’re going to try to resolve his great-uncle’s murder while we’re there too.

” I pause to draw a breath and reach for a bottle of water. “It’s pretty out-there.”

“Good job we didn’t bring Lestat,” Artie says, eating an individual tiramisu with a silver spoon; it’s that kind of cooler. “He might have tipped them over the edge.”

“Because ghost hunters, messages from beyond the grave, and murdered uncles aren’t enough to do that,” Marina deadpans, and I groan and scrub my hands over my face.

“It’s going to come down to what sort of people they are,” I say.

“Coming from the background I have, I know that there are two types of people in this world. Open-minded ones and closed. You guys, for instance, are open-minded,” I say, by way of example.

“Fletcher Gunn’s mind, on the other hand, is closed to any such possibilities.

He sees the world in black and white—he point-blank refuses to look up at the whole gorgeous rainbow that’s there over his head because he’s so bloody determined that he’s right and I’m wrong all of the time.

He sticks rigidly to his small and perfectly formed beliefs even though they put him at direct loggerheads with me, which makes anything other than combustible sex out of the question. ”

Marina narrows her eyes at me, and Artie rummages in the cooler then hands over a little chocolate bar in silence.

I break a bit off and suck it, letting the sugar slide into my veins and sweeten my mood again after my mini Fletch-rant.

It’s like he’s flashing his headlights inside my brain trying to get my attention, despite my resolution to park him out of sight for a while.

“I’m just saying that if their minds are too closed, then we’ll be better off getting back in Babs and heading back to Scarborough House sooner rather than later.”

Marina gathers all of the used plates, cutlery, and rubbish together and packs it into the cooler, and then we all look at each other with nervous, excited eyes.

“Come on then,” I say, turning the key in the ignition.

“Here goes nothing.”