Page 53 of Crazy Spooky Love

I hear a deathly rattle coming from Lloyd as realization dawns, and I brace myself because I sense what’s about to happen just a scant couple of seconds before it does.

He stares at me and gapes as if he has something more to say and then, suddenly, violently, he shatters into a million razor-sharp shards.

It happens like that sometimes. Urgent and angry, as if he’d boiled in his own temper and vitriol and detonated from the inside.

It’s not a nice thing to see, and I look away and close my eyes until it’s over.

When I open my eyes again, Douglas has moved closer tome.

“Are you okay?” His eyes search my face, concerned for me rather than himself. It’s easy to see why everyone found him so easy to love.

I nod, and a lone tear rolls down my cheek, because he’s going now too, only this time it isn’t ugly or violent or hideous.

A shimmer of color glows warm and welcoming around him, as if he’s walking away into sunshine to take his place on the cricket pitch.

Just before I lose sight of him altogether, he presses his fingers against the back of his hand and smiles that dashing smile that must have melted the heart of every girl in town, Maud included.

I press my fingers to the back of my hand too, and I know it’s fanciful, but I think I can feel his kiss there as he disappears.

I close my eyes for a second and swallow down the scald of tears in my throat, then I open them again and turn to Isaac. “That just leaves me then,” he says with a small, sad smile, and I gaze at him with a heavy heart.

“It does,” I say. I wish I could take his hands in mine and say farewell properly. “Safe onward travels, Isaac.”

“Thank you so much, Melody, for everything,” he murmurs indistinctly. Or perhaps he said it clearly, but he’s fading so fast I can barely hear him. I just manage to catch his last word before he vanishes completely.

“Priscilla.”

I gaze at the empty space he’s left behind, and I hope hard that he finally finds peace at last with Priscilla and their son, Charles Frederick.

It’s a good couple of hours before the police leave.

They walked into the scene to find Donovan Scarborough snoring and covered in blood, Leo still being tended to by the fluttering hands of the creepy twins, and Fletch scribbling furiously in his notebook and snapping videos on his phone.

His favorite shot was of Donovan Scarborough throwing a punch at the police officer who tried to rouse him and subsequently being thrown in the back of a police car and driven off with sirens blaring.

Jojo and Richard left not long after, headed for the local hotel they’ve booked into with a promise to catch up again in a day or two when we’ve all slept and caught our breath.

Who knows what will happen with the knife now—I’ve turned it over to the police, and at some point I’m no doubt going to have to go and give them a detailed statement.

The fate of Scarborough House hangs in the balance too, but in the end, that was never the point.

What mattered to me was piecing together the history of a family fractured by jealousy and lies, and doing my level best to bring the Scarborough brothers’ story to its necessary end.

As is often the case in life, even in death, what really mattered was love.

Marina and Artie head off and climb wearily into Babs, and before I follow them I turn back to Fletch.

“Thank you for coming to my rescue,” I say, almost shy, which is ridiculous, given the things we’ve done together in the last twenty-four hours.

We’re both grimy and blood-splattered, like actors at the end of a blockbuster disaster movie.

Marina might go weak for the classic rom-coms, but I’ll always make the case for Die Hard as the best Christmas movie.

Right now Fletch is my John McClane without the grubby vest, and do you know what I want to do more than anything else?

Marina would be impressed, because, yippee-ki-yay, I want to swoon.

“You know me, Ghostbuster,” he says, brushing my tacky hair from my cheek. “Anything for a good story.”

I laugh softly. I don’t really know him well at all, but maybe one day I will. “I should go.”

“Me too,” he says, holding up his notebook. “Scoop to file. Might even make the front page.”

“No rest for the wicked,” I say, and then because he deserves it and I need it, I stand on tiptoes and press my lips against his.

It’s been a weird day—terrifying at turns and astonishing at others, but the thirty seconds I spend kissing Fletcher Gunn by the garden gate still count as the most electrifying of all.

He holds me, and then he smooches me exactly like that blockbuster movie ending dictates he should.

His mouth is warm and firm, and he cups my head in his hand when he all too briefly slides his tongue into my mouth.

“I was wrong the other night when I told you you’re trouble,” he says. “You’re worse than that. You’re a fucking calamity.”

I like it when he swears at me, it just makes him sexier. I wasn’t wrong the other night when I said he was lethal. He should come with a health warning. He presses his mouth fleetingly against my forehead and then steps away fromme.

“Get in your ridiculous van and go home, Bittersweet, before I throw you in the back of my car and kidnap you forever.”

I mean, come the hell on. He’s so inappropriate he makes my head spin, but he’s like my own personal catnip.

Bitternip? I don’t think I can be held responsible for any of my actions around him, he’s too much…

he’s too much everything. I stare at him, speechless, and he puts his hands, his warm, reassuring hands on my shoulders.

“I won’t pretend to understand four-fifths of what you did back there, but it was pretty fucking impressive all the same. Now go. Get some sleep, you’ve worked hard today.”

That’s the closest I’ll ever get to acknowledgment from him about what I do, so I take the compliment for what itis.

“I probably won’t let the dog crap on your face anymore,” I say.

He laughs, then shrugs as he heads toward his car. “Don’t change on my account.”

“I like you sometimes too,” I whisper, probably too quiet for him to hear, because I’m not entirely sure I want him to.

This push-pull thing between us is wildly sexy but absolutely ridden with potential for disaster.

I’ve escaped the clutches of doom several times today already—I probably shouldn’t ride my luck any further this afternoon.

Starting the engine outside Brimsdale Road for the final time, I glance up at the attic window. It’s empty, as I’d known it would be, and I hope that Scarborough House will one day be filled with the laughter and chaos of a new family. It deserves its happy ending.

Marina rummages through the detritus in the cooler and produces three still-cold glass bottles of limonata. Cracking off the lids, she hands them down the line until we all hold one, and then she proposes a toast.

“To our very first job well and truly done.” She raises her bottle and we touch ours to hers.

“I don’t think he’s likely to pay us,” Artie frowns, but I just laugh.

“Sadly for him and luckily for us, Glenda Jackson had him sign a cast-iron legally binding contract. He wanted the ghosts gone, and as of this afternoon, they’re gone. I think that counts as upholding our end of the bargain.”

Marina raises her bottle again in salute. “To the unsinkable Glenda Jackson.”

I take a welcome slug of Nonna’s limonata, and then, for what feels about the hundredth time today, I’m choked up with emotion.

“We did it, didn’t we?” My voice catches in my throat. “We actually bloody did it.”

“Today Brimsdale Road, tomorrow the world.” Marina squeezes my hand. “Now pull yourself together and drive us home.”

I don’t think there have been many times in my life when I’ve felt luckier or looked forward to the future more.

I might have an oddball family, a hellishly complicated love life, and the world’s most annoying pug, but I’ve also got the best friends in the world and a business with my name over the door. Marina’s right. It’s time to go home.

“Well,” Artie says, as Babs backfires loudly when I pull away from the curb. “That’s another day at work I can’t tell my mother about.”

It’s been two days now since it all happened, and I’m slumped at my mother’s kitchen table. I’ve just eaten my own weight in waffles and bananas with Nutella, and I’m finally starting to feel more like myself again.

I watch as my mother pretends to begrudge Lestat the waffle she’s cooked especially for him. That’s just her way; she’s incredibly generous but she doesn’t like people to see it. A thought strikes me, and once it does it’s so obvious that I wonder why I didn’t realize it earlier.

“Mum, did you send me a gift in the mail?” I say, sipping my coffee. She has the most wonderful library of rare reference books in the shop and she knows how much I covet them. I’ve probably read them more often than she has, and that’s a lot. “A book, perhaps?”

She pauses, caught out, and then she rearranges her features and looks at me as if I’m still five years old.

“Who do you think I am, Santa Claus?”

Gran sighs and shoots my mother a look as if she’s still five years old, then pushes yesterday’s newspaper across the table toward me with a knowing nod and a teacup of champagne.

I glance at the clock and then shrug, pushing my coffee aside even though it’s only midday. “It’s five o’clock somewhere, right, Gran?”

It made the front page, of course. They’ve run with the image of Donovan Scarborough trying to land his fist on a policeman’s jaw, and scandalous, attention-grabbing headlines about murder and intrigue on Brimsdale Road.

Fletch’s copy is accurate, and the historical details of the unsolved murder are juicy enough to carry the front page without any reference to the complicated story at the heart of the matter.