Juniper wiles, p.4
Juniper Wiles, page 4
He hands the phone to me and Jilly leans in close to have a look.
All it says is: Tell Nora that Palmer is back.
“Nora being—” the clerk starts.
“Rohlin’s teen detective,” Jilly says before he can finish.
He nods. “I don’t know who Palmer is.”
Jilly turns to me.
“He was the Big Bad in season two,” I say. “I can’t remember which book he also appeared in, but he died in the season finale.”
“So,” the clerk says, “this is a message to a fictional character about another fictional character?”
“Apparently,” I say. “Why would he send a message for Nora to you?” I hesitate before I add, “Unless you’re a big fan, too?”
“All I know about the character is what Ethan told me.”
“Maybe it’s some kind of code,” Jilly says.
We both look at her.
“Well, it makes more sense than what—” She looks at the clerk, waiting for him to fill in his name.
“Nick.”
“It makes more sense than what Nick said.” Suddenly she gasps and grabs my arm. “Unless it’s a message for you.”
Nick looks lost.
“When he was bugging me at the Half Kaffe,” I say, “he acted like he thought I was Nora. He wanted me to take a case.”
Nick shakes his head. “That’s crazy. Jesus. You think you know somebody…”
Jilly nudges me with her elbow.
I sigh. “Maybe he just got confused,” I say, “because I played Nora on the show.”
His eyes open wide. “Really?”
Happily, he doesn’t ask for an autograph or if we can take a selfie.
“So do you know what any of this means?” he asks.
“Not a clue,” I tell him.
“But we’re going to find out,” Jilly says. She glances at the clock on the wall behind Nick. “But right now we have to get to the soup kitchen.”
“Let me know what you find out,” Nick says.
I’m still holding his phone. I go to his contacts and enter my name and cell number.
“Or you can call me,” I say. “I mean, us.”
Damn it. And now I’m blushing again.
Nick smiles. “I will.”
Jilly takes a business card from the holder on the counter.
“Nick Burns” she reads. “Do you own the store?”
He shakes his head. “My uncle does. I just manage it for him.”
“Well, it was nice to meet you, Nick,” Jilly says, pocketing the card. “Come on, Bobo. You’ve been a very patient boy.”
The pup has collapsed at her feet. Now he jumps up, tail wagging madly, head going back and forth as he looks from Jilly to me.
“Don’t, you know, get caught up in anything dangerous,” Nick says. “Maybe you should take what you know to the police.”
“We will,” Jilly assures him. “We’re super-conscientious that way.”
As if, I think. But I let it ride.
“Bye, Nick,” I say and I follow Jilly out the door.
I find myself wishing I could have met him under circumstances where I don’t seem quite so crazy, but like most things in the world, we don’t get to choose our circumstances. We just have to muddle through as best we can.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that room was made for Bobo at the shelter while we joined the other volunteers getting ready to prepare and serve lunch. I am surprised that he lies patiently in a corner on a folded blanket for a couple of hours after Jilly explains to him why he has to chill. She talks to him as though he can understand every word. That’s not so strange. I get the sense that most pet owners do that. But I’ll bet not many pets actually seem to get what’s being said to them the way Bobo does.
It’s mid-afternoon before we’re walking back to the house on Stanton Street. One of the things I love about this street is the succession of giant oak trees that line either side of the pavement. Bobo loves them too and has to stop and sniff at every one, often leaving little pee messages for other dogs.
“So you don’t watch any TV?” I ask Jilly.
She shakes her head. “Not really. I don’t watch movies much either—at least not on a computer. I don’t use an e-reader.” She smiles. “I hardly go online.”
“How can you live in this era and hardly go online? Even I do email and lurk around on the socials.”
“I don’t have to. If I need to use the internet, I just ask Saskia since she pretty much is the internet.”
I have no idea what that means.
“After my accident, I couldn’t paint for the longest time,” Jilly explains. “I could barely get around. The only art I could make was digital, where I pretty much painted a pixel at a time. But I prefer messy art. Charcoal on my fingers. Paint slopping about. And I like my books to be paper, to have pages and not need to be charged just so that I can read them.”
“You have a music system in the studio. That’s kind of technological.”
She nods. “But I only play vinyl on it. I like the fact that the musicians figured out a story and you have to listen to a whole album to get it.”
“Most albums don’t tell a story.”
“Oh, but they do,” Jilly says. “Or they used to. There was a reason why one song followed another. Their relation to each other told a story. Or at least they should.”
“You’ll have to show me.”
“I will. But you know, you should get used to Luddites. I’m pretty sure Nick’s a bit of one. Did you see that Rolodex?”
“Nick’s not interested in me. After the way we carried on, he’s got to think we’re delusional crazy women—especially me.”
Jilly grins. “Right. He remembered you from a gym from two years ago. That hardly seems disinterested.”
“Except that was before we went all Looney Tunes on him.”
“He got the text from a ghost, not you.”
“I suppose. But I doubt he’ll ever call.”
She produces his business card from her pocket and offers it to me, held between two fingers. “You could always call him.”
I hesitate for a long moment before I take the card and stow it away in my own pocket. “I’ll think about it.”
We wait for Bobo to finish whatever’s got him so fascinated with yet another tree, then move on. At this rate it’ll be dark before we get to Bramleyhaugh.
“Now we need to decide what to do next,” Jilly says. “Do we contact Emma Rohlin first, or Ethan’s boyfriend Edward?”
“Or,” I say, “we could get those prints signed. You know it’s only going to take a few hours.”
Jilly shakes her head. “If I do that, someone will just find something else that just has to be done before the festival.”
I smile. So there’s a method to her madness.
“Maybe we should follow Nick’s suggestion,” I say, “and bring what we have to the police.”
“There’s no point. They can’t deal with ghosts and ghostly texts. And it’s not weird and dangerous enough for the Spook Squad.”
“The what?”
“The Spook Squad—you know, what everybody calls NPD’s Paranormal Investigations Task Force.”
“That’s a real thing?”
Jilly nods. “The professor used to consult for them. Christy still does.”
We follow Bobo to the next tree.
“So what do they investigate?” I ask.
“Supernatural goings on.”
“And a ghost wouldn’t count?”
“Well, not a benign one. If a phenomenon doesn’t present a danger to the public, they leave it alone.”
“Um, somebody got murdered.”
“This is true,” she says. “But we don’t know that Ethan’s death was supernatural, and that’s their bag.”
“I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”
“Why not? Magic’s all around if you take the time to pay attention.”
“Magic.”
She nods.
A hundred little comments over the years suddenly rearrange themselves into a new configuration in my brain.
“So when you talk about hobs and Faerie, and Lyle being a werewolf…”
“I’m being literal.”
“Stop,” I tell her. “You’re making my head explode.”
“You’re the one who talks to ghosts,” she says.
“One ghost. If that’s what he was.”
“He was.”
I give her a dubious look.
“But still,” she says.
I look into those sapphire eyes.
“But still,” I agree. “He probably was.”
There’s music playing when we step inside the house. Jilly lets Bobo take the lead and the pair of them immediately head up the stairs in the direction of its source.
“The prints!” I call after her.
“Yes,” she calls back over her shoulder. “Someday your prince will come. Or you could go find him.”
I shake my head and follow her up the stairs.
We find the pickup band Geordie’s put together for FaerieFest rehearsing in the second floor parlour. I remember there used to be just as many books in here as in every other room, but we hauled them all out to make a rehearsal space for Geordie’s various musical endeavours. What was once a crowded library, badly lit and dense with furniture, is now a welcoming open space that’s more often than not filled with music.
There’s a circle of chairs in the middle of the room where the musicians are sitting. More chairs are set up along a couple of the walls. Instrument cases are everywhere. As are instruments. They’re hanging from the walls and leaning up against chairs. Fiddles, mandolins, banjos, guitars, ukuleles and a couple of bodhrans. An old upright piano fills one corner. Beside it is a small table with a big fat pot on it holding dozens of whistles and flutes. Under the table is a doumbek and a couple of other hand drums. In the other corner is an old sideboard, the top of which has been repurposed to hold a stereo and some recording equipment. The body of the sideboard is stuffed with records. The overflow leans against the walls on either side.
Geordie grins at us around the whistle he’s playing, his fiddle and bow across his lap. Beside him, his bandmate Amy Scanlon is also playing whistle. She has her pipes on her lap. Next to them are Meran Kelledy and Lesli Batterberry playing Irish wooden flutes. Both have green streaks in their Pre-Raphaelite hair. Jilly claims Meran’s are natural, but please. Across from them is Miki Greer on button accordion and my own Tam on guitar. I don’t know a lot about Celtic music, but he sounds like he’s fitting right in.
The music is joyful. Maybe it’s a jig, could be a reel—I can’t tell.
Jilly sits happily in one of the empty chairs and coaxes Bobo to dance on his hind legs in front of her. He keeps it up for a few measures, but quickly gets bored and drops to all fours where he shakes himself vigorously from head to tail before settling down under her chair. He may be bored, but I’m not. I have the mad urge to twirl around the room like an unwinding spool. Instead I sit beside Jilly and bounce a little in my seat.
No prints get signed that evening. On the plus side, no one talks about Nora Constantine or ghosts, either.
“I think I’m spending too much time at Bramleyhaugh,” I tell Tam as we’re walking home.
He gives me a puzzled look. “Why’s that?”
“It’s just…you know how they’re always joking about faeries in the garden and how the people in the Rookery—” I nod to the tall gabled house we’re passing. “—can turn into birds, stuff like that?”
“That’s just Jilly,” he says. “Hang around her long enough and you’ll start believing you can see things, too.”
“It’s too late for that. I’m seeing things when I’m not even with her.”
“What kinds of things?”
“That guy I told you about yesterday—the one in the Half Kaffe who was convinced I was the real Nora Constantine?”
“I remember.”
“Turns out he was a ghost.”
Tam stops dead. “He was a ghost? And you didn’t think that bit was interesting enough to add to our conversation yesterday?”
“I didn’t know then. I found out this morning that he died a few days ago.”
“Wait,” Tam says. “You mean the guy they found in the park last night?”
I nod. “Ethan Law.”
“And you’re sure you saw him?”
I give Tam another nod. “And it’s not just me. I met a guy this morning who got a text from Ethan today—again, long after he died. Not only that. He sort of knew Ethan and said that Ethan had a bit of a Nora fixation.”
Tam starts walking again and I fall into step beside him.
“That’s just weird,” he says.
“I know. And now Jilly’s got us playing detective to find out what his story was and why he was killed.”
“Tell me you’re kidding.”
“I’m not.”
Tam stops again. “Somebody killed that guy, Joon. You shouldn’t be messing around with this. It’s too dangerous.”
“Tell that to Jilly.” I hold up a hand to forestall any more discussion about what’s dangerous and what’s not. “We’re getting off the topic. The point is, if a ghost can be real—and I’m damned convinced it was—then what else might be? Jilly told me the other night that Lyle’s a werewolf. What if he really is?”
Tam shakes his head. “Come on, Joon. There’s no such thing as werewolves,” he says and starts walking again.
“Tell that to the girl who’s seen her first ghost. Maybe I should get a birder’s book, except it’ll be for supernatural creatures. I can check ghosts off my life list straightaway.”
Tam doesn’t say anything for a half block.
“Hello?” I say. “A little feedback here? What do you think?”
“Well, first off, don’t take Jilly so seriously. Her imagination mingles with her art, that’s all. And I’d stop playing detective before you end up like Ethan.”
“And let whoever killed him get away?”
“Of course not. The police will handle it.”
“Except they don’t have our intel.”
“So go to them and share what you know.”
“Right,” I say. “Go to them and, when they ask what I know, I can tell them I saw his ghost. That’ll go over well.”
I put my fingers through my hair as I realize I’m turning into Jilly—arguing for the continuation of what we’re doing.
Tam pretty much copies my gesture without thinking about it. “This is messed up.”
“Tell me about it.”
“You need to be careful.”
“We will be,” I assure him.
But I’m thinking of Ethan’s text to Nick. Tell Nora that Palmer is back.
A shiver whispers up my spine.
Bret Palmer. The scumbag who pretty much reduced Nora’s life to tatters and then almost killed her.
The fictional Bret Palmer, I remind myself.
Tam breaks my train of thought. “So, you think Lyle is a werewolf?” he asks.
I shrug. “Jilly says he is. Like you said, could just be Jilly being Jilly.”
“Yeah, but it would explain so much.”
“What do you mean?”
“Dogs always freak out around him. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been walking with him and Mona, and some dog pulls away as far as his leash will stretch to avoid him.”
I remember Bobo’s reaction last night.
“Seriously,” I mutter. “My head is going to explode.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Let’s pretend today never happened.”
Except then I think of Nick. Maybe I should give him a call, like Jilly said.
“On the plus side,” I say, “I met a nice guy today. His name’s Nick and he runs Burns’ Books.”
“I’ve been in there. They’ve got a great sheet music section. Is he the one with the Buddy Holly glasses?”
“That’s him.”
“He seems like a good guy. Did you give him your number?”
I nod. “And I took his business card.”
“You should totally call him. What’s the worst that can happen?”
I don’t know if it’s because Tam’s a musician, good-looking, or maybe both, but he’s a bit cavalier about meeting girls because they’re forever approaching him. He’s not full of himself, just unfazed, and he’s always upfront about how much his music means to him—he’s basically married to it, if we’re going to be honest—but he’s still left more than a few disappointed would-be girlfriends in his wake. It’s not that he’s mean, or that he doesn’t have a good heart. It’s that he lives in a constant state of distraction for everything except for music and that is not good boyfriend material in anybody’s book.
“Joon?” he says.
“No promises,” I tell him. “But maybe I will.”
3
Wednesday
“You know what the real problem is?” Jilly says over breakfast the next morning.
We’re in the Deer Mouse Diner on Lee. For some reason Bobo is allowed to lie on the floor under the table in our booth.
“We’re not actually detectives?” I say.
Jilly waves that off. “We’re not quippy. All the best detectives are quippy. Were you quippy on your TV show?”
“Is that a real question or do you just like saying the word ‘quippy’?”
“A bit of both,” she admits.
“All the best detectives are fictional,” I tell her. “The writers give them all those snappy lines. I’m just like everybody else. I don’t think of the perfect thing to say until the moment’s already passed.”
“I think we should practice being more quippy.”
“And that will help us how?”
Jilly laughs. “We’d be stylin’. Isn’t that enough?”
I have to laugh along with her.
“So who do we talk to next?” Jilly asks. “The author or the boyfriend? Or maybe we should have a séance and talk directly to Ethan.”
