The Other Side - J. D. Robb [136]
Two
“You knew it, you ninny,” came another voice from the doorway where Aunt Odelia, short and plumpish with pink cheeks and wild curly blond hair—and much, much younger than M.J. remembered her—was entering the room from the hall, drawing with her the wafting aroma of fresh-baked apple pies. “Imogene and I told you before you died. We said, ‘Crossing over to the Other Side is a royal pain in the ass’ . . . unless you know what you’re looking for.”
“Which none of us do,” said a third voice, again behind M.J., who turned to see her aunt Imogene sitting on the Chippendale tea table, doily and candy dish in her lap. “And now you’ve got this dear girl trying to remove things from the house and planning to tear the place down when you know perfectly well she can’t until we leave.”
“How old are you?” M.J. asked of Imogene, whom she’d only seen in pictures as a sad, dour-looking woman.
Her aunt smiled and wrinkled her nose in a cute, impish way. “As you’re seeing me now, you mean? In my late twenties, I think. I was a looker, wasn’t I?”
“And now you’re a ghost. The three of you are ghosts.”
They all seemed to think about the term and weighed it against the way they felt.
“That’s such a generic term, don’t you think?” her mother asked, looking as she always did—expecting better of M.J. “What about specter or apparition?”
“I’m fond of ghoul myself.” Odelia giggled.
“There’s a list of things you could call us, dear, but the facts are these: our bodies are no longer alive, and the rest of who we were can’t leave this house until we find what we lost here.” Imogene had a plain way of speaking, which M.J. liked.
“Which is?”
“Well, that’s just it.” Odelia giggled again. “We have no idea. If we knew what we were looking for, we could have turned this place inside out eons ago, found it, and moved on. We need your help.”
“Mine?” She felt the blood drain from her face and sweat pop out on her forehead. “No way. First off, I don’t have the time for this, and secondly, I don’t think I believe in ghosts . . . or whatever you prefer to call yourselves. I’m leaving.”
“Sorry.” Mr. Brown rushed into the room, huffing for breath, with a wide-beam emergency flashlight in his hand. “Never fails that when you want something it’s always on the bottom. Here ya go.”
Stymied for a second, M.J. took the flashlight and aimed it at the tea table . . . and the aunt thereon.
“Tell me what you see, Mr. Brown.”
“The table you want me to send to someone in Florida.”
“Wait a second, wait a second.” Odelia called out, rushing toward her sister—with steps, not floating as one expected of a ghost. “I love being in the spotlight. Shine it on me, dear.”
“Anything else, Mr. Brown?”
“The thingy and the dish on top?” He cast her a sidelong glance and looked back. “And a lot of dust.”
“Really, darling, do you think we’re going to let just anyone see us?” her mother asked. “In this particular state of disarray?”
“Did you hear that, Mr. Brown?”
“What’s that?”
M.J. sighed and shook her head. “Let’s just get the table and get out of here.”
They both stepped up to the table. The closer M.J. got, the stronger Odelia’s scent became, until she wanted apple pie so bad her salivary glands overflowed.
“Please move aside,” she said to Odelia, and Mr. Brown sidestepped a few inches to be directly across from her.
Taking the edge of the table in four places they tried to lift it. It didn’t even quiver.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked Imogene, her voice cross and frustrated.
“Trying to move the table,” Mr. Brown snapped back.
“I’m sitting as hard as I can,” Imogene replied with a grimace and a grunt.
“I want this table.”
“I get that. But it seems to be stuck to the floor.”
“Not you—” She stopped herself. If not him, who? “Okay.