Ghost Mortem (Ghost Detective #1) - Jane Hinchey Page 0,61

Chrysler. Not to mention the speakers, and the GPS, and the cruise control and integrated Bluetooth. Ben had critiqued my driving and basically stressed the entire drive to the facility, but now I was alone I got to enjoy the ride, and enjoy it I did, with the volume cranked and the windows down—did I mention they were power windows?—I was almost happy. Until I thought about the source of my happiness and then my mood quickly soured. I loved the car. What I didn't love was the fact that I only had it because my best friend had died. I was going to have to find a way to reconcile these emotions before they messed me up.

Instead I concentrated on what Bill had said, about Ethel Hill and her nephew. Of course, it could have been the ramblings of a man suffering from dementia, but what if he had a brief moment of clarity? The doctor had told me that Alzheimer’s is a common cause of dementia and brief moments of clarity could happen, only it wasn't a frequent occurrence and those flashes were simply that—flashes. He'd warned me that Bill's life expectancy would be cut short due to his illness. The average was six to ten years, and Bill had been living with this for more than three, possibly longer because it went undiagnosed for a period of time. Shaking away the maudlin thoughts, I connected my phone to the Bluetooth in the car and called Mom.

"Audrey, love, everything okay?" she answered on the second ring.

"All good, Mom. Hey, I have an odd question. Is Brett Baxter Ethel Hill's nephew?"

"Why, yes, he is."

Boom! I had my answer. I slapped the steering wheel. Now it made sense. Ben took Brett's case as a favor. It was a bullshit case, but I bet Mrs. Hill pressured him into it.

"Are you driving?" Mom intruded in my thoughts, reminding me she was still on the line.

"Yeah. I went to visit Mr. Delaney," I told her.

"How's he doing?" I filled Mom in on my visit with Ben's dad and we chatted until I arrived back at Ben's. Parking the car in the garage, I let myself into the house. While talking with Mom I'd come up with a sort of plan. I needed to get Mrs. Hill talking and the best way to do that was to get her to make the first move. If I knocked on her door and started asking questions she'd probably slam the door in my face. How to get her to make the first move? Annoy her.

Step one, reverse my oil leaking Chrysler onto the driveway and leave it there—on the pretense of accessing the gardening tools hanging on the rear wall of the garage. Step two, start gardening. I was reasonably confident that whatever I attempted to do gardening wise, Mrs. Hill would have an opinion on it. And it would be that I was doing it wrong. I was the first to admit I did not have a green thumb, and I didn't want to ruin Ben's beautiful garden, so I picked the simplest thing. Rake the lawn. Despite it not being fall and there were no leaves to rake, I set to with the rake, dragging it across the grass. Sure enough, the curtains twitched in the window next door and minutes later she was out the front door and crossing her front lawn. I bit back a smile.

"You should smile more, dear. You don't look like you're enjoying gardening," she said.

"But I'm not." It wasn't entirely true. This was the first time I'd done anything in the garden since I'd lived at home almost ten years ago.

"And it shows, dear. And if you look like you're not enjoying it, well"—she glanced around then leaned in to faux whisper—"it makes it look like you can't afford a gardener."

I straightened, leaning on the rake. "But I can afford a gardener," I pointed out.

"That may well be the case dear, but this"—she waved a hand at me—"screams poverty." I stiffened at the thinly veiled insult. Yes, my jeans weren't designer label, and my T-shirt was from Target. So what? And how she collated me doing the gardening to mean I was poverty-stricken was beyond me.

"Actually I'm glad I got you." I smiled sweetly. "I was hoping to ask you about your nephew, Brett."

She blanched and clutched her pearls. "I have nothing to say about that boy." With that, she spun on her heel and disappeared into