Nine Lives (Lily Dale Mystery #1)(27)

Still holding his breath and counting, Max nods.

“No. It was real,” Jiffy insists. “I was wide awake. Well, I was sleeping, but the wind woke me up.”

The wind . . .

“You were outside in the middle of the night?”

“No,” he tells Odelia, as though that’s the craziest thing he’s ever heard. “I was inside, in my room. I was in bed, but then I got out of bed, and I sat on the window seat and I looked out the window and I saw the pirate.”

“Which night was it?”

He shrugs. “The windy night.”

The night Leona died, Bella realizes uneasily. Does Jiffy know about that?

She senses the wheels turning in Odelia’s mind as she asks, “Which window was it, Jiff?”

He turns and points at the back of the yellow house on the far side of Odelia’s. “The one in the corner.”

It does look out in this direction.

“That’s your bedroom. There’s a window seat right there.” Odelia turns to Bella with a nod. “I know the house well. That used to be my friend Ramona’s niece Evangeline’s room—she and my granddaughter Calla are like this.” She lifts a hand and crosses her fingers.

Face red, cheeks bulging, Max lets out a sputtering breath.

“Thirty-two!” he announces triumphantly. “I can hold my breath for thirty-two minutes! Is that long enough to get the sunken treasure?”

“I don’t think so. How deep is the water there, Odelia?”

Ignoring Jiffy’s question, she asks him one of her own: “What, exactly, did you see out there on the windy night?”

“I saw a pirate walking on the dock. He was carrying a treasure.”

“Do you mean . . . like, a big box or a chest?”

“Yeah. Maybe. I’m not sure. He was facing the other way, but it was heavy. I could tell by the way he was walking. And he threw it into the water and then he left.”

The summer day goes arctic. Goosebumps prickle Bella’s bare limbs and a chill slides down her spine.

“Jiffy? What did he look like?” Odelia’s tone is gentle, almost casual, but her expression is intent.

“I don’t know. I couldn’t see him.”

“How do you know he was a pirate?”

“Because he had on a long pirate coat, and it was blowing around his legs in the wind, and he was carrying treasure.”

“Is there any way it wasn’t a pirate? Maybe it was Mrs. Gatto you saw instead? Maybe she was carrying something out onto the pier?” Bella asks, hoping, praying she wasn’t the object being carried, because that would mean . . .

“Mrs. Gatto?”

“Leona,” Odelia clarifies. “Was Leona the person walking on the pier? Could it have been a woman? Maybe wearing a nightgown instead of a pirate coat?”

Jiffy shakes his head stubbornly. “No. It was a black pirate coat.”

“So you’re sure it was a man?”

“Pirates are men,” he informs Odelia, as if everyone knows that. “Ladies are wenches.”

Under different circumstances, Bella might have grinned at that comment. As it is, she can only edge a little closer to her son, again resting a protective hand on his shoulder.

“By the way, it wasn’t Leona,” Jiffy goes on. “My mom said Leona crossed over.”

Odelia hesitates. “Did she tell you what happened to her?”

“She said she was probably sick. She was an old lady, you know. Older than you, even.” Jiffy pauses and then glances down at Odelia’s cast. “You’re not going to die too, are you?”

“Not if I can help it.” She ruffles Jiffy’s hair. “Why don’t you two run over to my house and get a couple of Popsicles from the freezer? The doors are unlocked.”

“Yay! I get grape!” Jiffy is already making a run for it.

“I get cherry!”

“Wait,” Bella squeezes Max’s shoulder, holding him in place. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“Yes! I want a Popsicle!” Her son—her sweet, obedient child—suddenly sounds like the petulant toddler he never was or the surly adolescent he may one day become.

“We can go with you,” she offers, afraid to let him out of her sight.

“By the time I can make it past the apple tree, they’ll have been to my kitchen and back and finished their Popsicles,” Odelia points out. “They’ll be fine. Truly. I promise.”

She may be a psychic, Bella thinks, but she’s not a mother.

Then again, maybe she is—or rather, was. She did mention a granddaughter.

But she’s not Max’s mother. In the wake of Jiffy’s pirate tale, it’s up to Bella to assess what is and isn’t safe around here.

Still . . .

The house is right over there. And if the boys go, she and Odelia will have a chance to discuss what Jiffy told them. Which is the whole point of the Popsicle offer.

“Go ahead.” She releases her hold on Max’s shoulder, calling after him, “But come right back!”

As soon as the boys are beyond earshot, Odelia turns to her. “I’m sorry about that.”

“It’s okay. I’m just—I worry about him. It’s a strange place.” And getting stranger by the second.