Nine Lives (Lily Dale Mystery #1)(23)

Bella sighs. “All right, then, I guess I’ll get a cab back and—”

“A cab? Around here?” His laugh isn’t unkind, but it’s yet another reminder that she’s a stranger in a strange land. “You’d have better luck flagging down a flying carpet.”

“Yeah, well, with any luck, there’s a magical genie on board, because I could really use three wishes right about now.”

“If you find him, send him my way. I have a couple of wishes of my own. Come on, I’ll drive you. Where are you going?”

Most people—where she comes from, anyway—would have asked that question before offering the ride. Around here, she’s noticed, people are so friendly that they don’t seem to balk at being inconvenienced by total strangers.

First Doctor Bailey, in the midst of an after-hours emergency, helped her with a stray cat. And Odelia—well, she’s a godsend. After settling the Piersons into their third-floor room, she turned her attention back to helping Bella. She called the service station, talked to Troy the mechanic, and offered to lead Bella over there in her own car.

“That’s all right, I’m sure I’ll make it,” she said—na?vely, as it turns out. “But Max is talking about a boy named Jiffy—”

“Jiffy Arden.”

Okay. So he was a real kid and not . . . imaginary. Or . . .

There’s no such thing as ghosts, Bella reminded herself as Odelia went on to explain that Jiffy’s real name is Michael.

“But there are two other Michaels in the Dale, and he loves peanut butter, and the nickname stuck.”

Jiffy. It could have been worse, Bella thought. Skippy . . . Peter Pan . . .

But it sure could have been better.

“He’s a sweet boy. His mom is renting the house next door to me for the season,” Odelia went on, limping briskly around the Rose Room, opening all the windows to let fresh air billow through the screens, “and I thought it would be nice for Max to meet him, so I invited him to breakfast. They hit it off, just like I thought.”

Bella didn’t know what to say to that. Should she be grateful that Odelia is looking out for her son or infuriated that Max has yet another reason to beg to linger in Lily Dale?

Moot point now. She agreed to leave Max and Jiffy playing Candyland on the porch at Valley View Manor while Odelia kept an eye on them and waited for additional guests to check in.

“We’ll be hitting the road as soon as I get back,” she reminded her son before she left.

Engrossed in navigating toward Gum Drop Mountain, Max merely shrugged.

He’s going to be thrilled when he finds out we aren’t going anywhere for the next couple of days.

Maybe she’s just a tiny bit relieved herself. She was so emotionally drained after leaving home that she isn’t yet prepared to see Millicent again. Their previous encounter—at the funeral—was a blur of grief and her mother-in-law’s usual histrionics. Lily Dale will provide a convenient reprieve so that she can get herself together before the next phase of their fresh start.

“Do you know where Lily Dale is?” she asks Troy.

“Sure, it’s only a few miles down the road. I have a pickup truck, so we can load everything into the back.”

“Everything?”

“I noticed your car’s pretty full.”

“Oh, right.” Somehow, she’d forgotten about all her worldly belongings stashed in the car. “I’m in the middle of a move.”

“I figured. You probably don’t want to leave your stuff here for a few days . . . or do you?” he asks, seeing the look on her face.

Hmm. Her overnight bag and Max’s are back at the guesthouse.

“I’ll leave it,” she decides. “It’s only a few days, right? And I’ll be close by, so if I need something”—like a tent or a vase?—“I can always come get it.”

“Sounds good.” Troy grabs a set of keys from a wall hook. “Are you staying with Odelia Lauder?”

“No, next door.”

“At the Taggarts’? Or Leona Gatto’s guesthouse?”

“The guesthouse. So you . . . know it?” And do you know about Leona?

“I do odd jobs during the slow season, so I get around. I did some painting for Leona last month. I read in the paper that she drowned a few days ago. I was sorry to hear it. She was a nice lady—and she was terrified of water. She couldn’t swim.”

Bella wonders if there’s anyone in a fifty-mile radius who isn’t aware of that fact.

Troy moves the hands of the cardboard clock sign hanging in the window, indicating that he’ll be back in an hour. “It won’t take me that long to drop you,” he says as he locks the door after them, “but I might as well grab lunch while I’m out.”

“Are you the only one working here?”

“Now I am. It’s a family business, but my dad passed away last year.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. It’s lonely without him. I miss him every day.”

Those words resonate as Troy leads her around behind the concrete block building, past a padlocked restroom door, a Dumpster, and an old bicycle pump. A red pickup truck sits in a sunny patch of tall grasses and orange wildflowers.

He opens the passenger’s side door and gestures for her to climb in. “I asked Odelia if she could put me in touch with him—you know, through a reading,” he says casually, before going around to the driver’s side.