Ghost Mortem (Ghost Detective #1) - Jane Hinchey

1

My name is Audrey Fitzgerald and this is how I died.

It wasn’t a dark and stormy night. It was a clear afternoon with not a cloud in sight; the sun was shining and all was right with the world. Wait a second, no, it wasn’t. Oh, I got the weather part right, but this story doesn’t start all bright and bubbly, sunshine and unicorns. Oh no! This is the day I died. So no, all was not right in my world.

With such a monumental event looming I would have thought the skies would darken, thunder would boom, and basically the heavens would announce their displeasure that I’d been taken too early, too young, that it was not my time to die. But considering my tendency for clumsiness, I’m not that surprised, to be honest. It’s an affliction I’ve had my entire life and I’ve got the scars to prove it! If anyone were to walk into a closed-door, trip over an invisible bump in the carpet, spill hot coffee all over herself, it would be me.

But I couldn’t live my life wrapped in bubble wrap. Life was to be lived and that meant heading out into the big wide world and facing each day as the blessing it was. Mom and Dad always used to shake their heads and mutter, “It’s a wonder she survived her childhood,” whenever I relayed the latest disaster to befall me.

Being clumsy shouldn’t define you, yet I could categorically attribute my clumsiness as the reason for my being fired from every single job I’d had. Usually, it involved spilling a hot beverage on someone. Typically the boss. On more than one occasion—because they’re not monsters, they’re not going to fire someone for spilling a drink. But after a trip to the ER with burns on your, er, delicate bits from the coffee I’d just spilled in your lap, the word “liability” starts to get thrown around, and rightly or wrongly, I would find myself performance managed out the door.

So my career, such as it was, was as a professional temp. Despite the fact that I’d completed a legal secretary certificate program, had a diploma in business administration and a small business management certificate, I could not hold down a job. Not for long, anyway. Because one way or another I’d screw it up. I’d dropped my fair share of expensive laptops and phones and knocked over vases on reception desks—the water splashing all over the receptionist’s computer is just a given.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not bitter. Not at all. I love temping, I love the freedom and flexibility. It’s the whole try before you buy scenario, and it pays well. But it means buying my own place is out of reach. No bank is going to lend me money without employment stability. I drive a rust bucket of a car. I live in a tiny apartment in a shady part of town. Until I’ve saved up enough to upgrade my car and the miracle of homeownership should befall me, I’m stuck where I am.

The pressure is on from my siblings too. I’m the youngest of three, and at twenty-nine the clock is ticking to settle down, get married, buy a house, have kids. Although I admit the thought of having kids is terrifying because just taking care of myself is a mountain of work already. But I figure if I could find a lovely man to be my husband, he’d make sure the kid was okay, right? Only where do you find them? The decent men? Besides my dad, there is only one other decent man I know, and he’s my best friend, Ben Delaney. And there is no way Ben and I are getting hitched. Just no. We grew up next door to each other and have been besties since kindergarten. We know each other way too well to ever be romantically involved. Ever.

I suppose I’m doing my brother a disservice when it comes to decent men. He’s okay, I guess. He’s the eldest, is married to Amanda—who is younger than me, adding salt into the wounds of singleness—and they have two of the most beautiful children I’ve ever seen. Madeline, who’s three, and Nathaniel, who’s one. Amanda is a paralegal at Beasley, Tate, and Associates, and I briefly temped there while she was on maternity leave. Needless to say, it didn’t end well and caused Amanda a certain degree of embarrassment that her sister-in-law was such a disaster.

Despite being younger than me by