Ghost Writer - Pandora Pine Page 0,52

house?” Cope thought he remembered hearing something about a young woman.

“The only thing I’ve been able to find was the death of Geneva Beecher in 1917. According to the article I read, the young lady jumped to her death from the widow’s walk.” Jude shivered.

“We need to speak to Peg Waller,” Cope said out of the blue. The woman experienced the haunting firsthand. Aside from being able to tell them what actually happened to her, she might be able to tell them how Brooks Stanhope connected to the house.

“The woman living at The Beecher House who was experiencing the hauntings?”

Cope nodded. “The husband said his wife wasn’t able to join us the day we went out to see the house. I wonder about that.”

“Wonder if he called us on his own or if he kept her out of the house on purpose?” Jude was off the bed and grabbing his notebook from the nightstand. He started jotting down notes.

“Yes. Both. I think it’s more likely he kept her away from us, but why?” Cope realized there was something bigger going on here than a simple haunting, with a ghost who slammed doors in the middle of the night.

“Marc said only his wife was bothered by the haunting. Why the hell wouldn’t he want her to see and speak to us?” Jude stopped pacing. His hands were fisted on his hips. “His reasoning didn’t make sense then, and it doesn’t make sense now.”

“Obviously, the husband is hiding something from us. Something about the haunting, about the house, about their relationship? I don’t know.” Cope was out of options. “I didn’t like the way he talked about his wife’s mental health. We need to see and speak to her for ourselves.”

Jude walked back to the bed. He sat on the edge, picking up Cope’s hands in his own. “You know what we need to do first, right?”

Cope nodded. “We need to grab your laptop and do a search on Brooks Stanhope.”

“Yeah. As much as I don’t want to find an obituary for him, we need to know the circumstances around his death and more importantly, when it happened.” Jude’s weary dark eyes held a hint of sadness.

Jude was right. Having Brooks’ death date would certainly narrow the playing field. So far as Cope knew, Brooks could have died anywhere from 1941, when the typewriter was manufactured, to 1991 when Jamie Hale experienced his haunting. Fifty years was a huge chunk of time to investigate.

“I’ll be right back.” Jude pressed a kiss to the side of Cope’s head.

Before Cope could call him back, Jude was gone. He stood up from the bed and walked to the bureau with Wolf’s baby monitor. The baby was sleeping on his back with his favorite blanket, a gift from Running Eagle, clutched in his left fist. He’d wanted to keep the monitor on his nightstand, but after the first night when Cope watched their son sleep instead of catching forty winks himself, Jude had moved it far enough away so they could hear the baby, but not be stuck staring at him all night.

“Okay, moment of truth.” Jude climbed up on the bed and set the laptop in front of them both. He opened the lid and pulled up a fresh browser window. More slowly than he usually typed, Jude entered Brooks Stanhope. His finger hovered over the Enter button for a few extra seconds before pressing it and holding his breath.

Several thousand results popped up on the screen. There were pictures of smiling happy men of every age, along with stories about a particular Brooks Stanhope hitting the homerun that won the Little League World Series back in 1996 for a team from Wisconsin and another man of the same name who won a blue ribbon for a pig at the Indiana State Fair in 2014.

“Shit,” Cope muttered. “We’ve got way too many results to go through.”

Nodding, Jude added the word “Massachusetts” to the search bar and hit enter again. This time there were only several hundred results. With shaking fingers, Jude added the word “obituary.” His hand hovered again over the Enter key before he hit it.

“Only a handful of choices.” Cope let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.

One by one, they slowly read the obits in order. With only one to go, so far, none of them were the Brooks Stanhope they were looking for.

“This is it.” Jude clicked on the final result. “Missing Local Man Finally Laid to Rest.”

“Missing?” Cope