back and the chair sighed beneath me, echoing my disappointment. Was that what Ben McCulloch’s antagonism was about? The fact that Aunt Hyacinth wouldn’t sell? Ninety percent of the world’s conflicts were about property, what someone had and what someone else wanted.
“This is a bit of a letdown, Uncle Burt.” I talked to him out of old habit. “I just think if you’re going to be a jackass, you should be original about it.”
But what was all that ranting about ghosts on McCulloch property, then? I tried to sort through my anger-muddled memory of what Ben had said. Something about a ghost, an easement, a bridge—
I heard a car out front, but the dogs didn’t bark, or even stir in their slumber. That meant Phin had arrived home. Just as I’d been thinking of ghosts. Logic said it was coincidence, but the Goodnight part of me said not to be so sure about that.
4
phin bounded into the workroom, a forty-four-ounce soft drink in one hand and a reusable shopping bag in the other. She started talking without any greeting, which was normal, but her words tumbled over each other in excitement, which made me very nervous.
“Hey, Amy! Guess what.”
With most people, “Guess what” was a rhetorical opening statement, but Phin clearly expected me to take a stab at clairvoyance. I raised my eyes to the ceiling and sighed loudly. “You’re late and you don’t bother to answer your cell phone.”
She waved off my tacit rebuke. “That’s not a guess, that’s self-evident.”
Subtlety really was wasted on her. I eyed the Route 44 in her hand and the straw clamped in her teeth. “It is also evident you have forgotten my cherry limeade.”
“Oh.” Guilt flashed on her face. “Sorry.” She held out the cup. “Vanilla Coke? There’s still a lot left.”
“No thanks.” I’d written the drink off as a loss an hour ago. “So what kept you? Extraterrestrials landing at the supermarket?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” She plunked her shopping bag beside the rest of her mess and announced, “There’s a ghost on the neighbors’ ranch.”
I sat up so fast the dogs jerked out of their snooze.
“What?”
“They have a ghost on their prop-er-ty.” The last word was broken like she was spelling it out for a moron.
I ignored that—it was my fault for not saying what I meant, which was, Really? Ben McCulloch wasn’t just making up things to be mad about?—and concentrated on the part that had my heart tap-dancing against my ribs. “You didn’t go over there, did you?”
“Where?” Phin asked. “ ‘Over there’ is a relative adverb phrase, Amy, and not much use without—”
“Onto the McCulloch prop-er-ty,” I interrupted. Jeez Louise, sometimes I was sure she could only be that obtuse on purpose.
“Why would I go there?” she asked.
“To look for the ghost.”
“Without any equipment?” Her tone implied that I’d suggested she go snow skiing in a bikini. “Of course not. Besides, it’s still daylight.”
At just past midsummer, dusk lasted until almost nine o’clock, which let me breathe again. I still had time to make sure Phin didn’t do anything stupid. “How did you find out about this ghost?”
“In town.” She stabbed the straw into the ice at the bottom of her cup. “Everyone is talking about it.”
That was what Ben McCulloch had said. Everyone was talking about the ghost, and it was making his life difficult. My brain spun, trying to fit this information into a very fragmented picture. “Then why didn’t we hear about it before this? And why didn’t Aunt Hyacinth say anything?”
“We haven’t been off the farm in days.” Phin dismissed the question with a shrug. “And Aunt Hy had a lot on her mind before she left.”
The memory of my aunt on the porch, Mom waiting in the van, rushed back again. I guess there had been something she forgot to tell me. As for not going into town, that was true, too. And even if I’d watched the local news—which wasn’t local at all, but out of Austin—that wasn’t the type of thing most channels would carry except at Halloween.
“Do you think it’s an actual ghost,” I asked, “or just a legend?”
“It could be either,” said Phin. “Or both—a minor paranormal event that gossip has blown up into a full-fledged haunting.” She shook the ice in her drink and went on conversationally, “There is a sad lack of firsthand accounts. Mostly hearsay and anecdotal evidence. Nothing even to say what kind of apparition, if it’s a will-o’-the-wisp, or a woman in white, or what. Since