Nine Lives (Lily Dale Mystery #1)(42)

Now, steepling his fingertips beneath his gray beard, he asks Jim what’s holding him back.

“I’m just not sure it’s something I want to do. Kelly wants me to, but—”

“It was your idea to come here in the first place.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean I—”

She talks over him, telling the others, “We were on our honeymoon in Niagara Falls—we were married at the end of October, so it was around Halloween, and Jim came across an article about Lily Dale in a local newspaper at the hotel.”

“Was it one of those hokey pieces that make it sound like a cross between Ghostbusters and a haunted hay ride?” Bonnie asks her.

“How’d you guess?”

“Same thing every Halloween. Most reporters don’t even try to help people understand what goes on here.”

“No, but at least it inspired us to make a day trip to check it out. Even though it was off-season, a few of the mediums were in residence, so we decided to get readings. You know—as a lark. That’s how we met Leona. She told us things she couldn’t possibly have known, right, Jim?”

His right isn’t quite as wholehearted this time.

Fritz seems to notice as well. “What kinds of things did she tell you, Jim?”

He opens his mouth to answer, but Kelly does it for him: “She gave him a message from his college roommate. He’d passed away a few months before our wedding. He was supposed to be our best man.”

“What was the message, Jim?” Fritz emphasizes the name, and this time, Kelly takes the hint and lets her husband answer.

“She just said Barry—that’s his name—wanted us to know that he was sorry he’d missed our special day.”

“Did she mention him by name?”

“Not exactly.”

Kelly jumps back in. “It was definitely Barry. Leona said the name might be Harold or maybe Harry and that he was young and he’d died suddenly and instantly. It was a car wreck. She was right.”

“That happens all the time with names,” Eleanor contributes. “Sometimes the medium just gets the first letter, sometimes a name that rhymes.”

Fully awake now, Opal is nodding. “When Leona first connected with Mother, it wasn’t by name, and it’s a good thing.”

“Why is that?” Bella asks.

She has a feeling, judging by their expressions, that the other regulars have all heard this before—if not last summer, then last night. The St. Clair sisters tend to repeat themselves.

“Mother’s name was Ann and so was her mother’s, and our other grandmother was Anna, and so were two cousins.”

“All of them are in Spirit,” Ruby says with a nod, “so we’d never have known it was Mother if Leona had just given us her name. Instead, she told us she could smell Mother’s signature perfume, and we just knew it was her.”

“What was it?”

“Jean Nate,” Opal reports.

“It used to drive Papa wild,” Ruby adds candidly.

Bella fights the urge to grin—and to point out that many women of a certain age wear the scent, which can be found on any drugstore shelf. If the sisters want to believe that Leona was channeling their mother, well then . . . where’s the harm in that?

Fritz asks them, “So for you, hearing the medium mention your mother’s perfume was a greater confirmation than her name would have been.”

“Oh, yes. That and the Clark Gable business,” Ruby adds.

Bonnie says, “Now that was really something,” as the Piersons and Tooklers nod their agreement and Bella raises a curious eyebrow.

Fritz asks the obvious question: “What Clark Gable business?”

When Ruby responds with an utter non sequitur—“We’re from Akron, you know”—Bella grasps that the sisters are merely senile. Obviously, the others are humoring them.

“Clark’s hometown was a stone’s throw away,” Opal elaborates. “Mother had a torrid affair with him when she was young, before she met Father.”

Hmm. Maybe they aren’t senile. Or maybe they are—as it’s difficult to imagine Clark Gable romancing a homely woman doused in Jean Nate.

“And Leona knew about that?” Fritz asks. “Did she mention Clark Gable by name?”

“Of course she did.”

“That’s some validation.”

Yes. Much stronger validation than Jean Nate, Bella has to admit.

“I’ll be interested in hearing all about your experiences, good and bad, if you’re willing to go on record for my book,” Fritz says, looking from the sisters to Bonnie, the Tooklers, the Piersons, and even Bella. “Without Leona’s input, I’m going to have to start from scratch in some aspects of my research.”

“She was helping you?” Bonnie looks surprised.

At his nod, Eleanor comments, “That’s funny. In all the years I’ve been coming here, I’ve never heard her say one nice thing about the press.”

“That’s because when they write about Lily Dale, they don’t get it right. I’m going to, and Leona knew it. She wanted to help me, and she gave me access to everything.”

He may be writing about the Dale and trying to “get it right,” but Bella notices that Fritz uses past tense when he speaks of Leona.