I nodded, scribbling her comments down on my ragged notepad. “What did you do after that?”
“I saw a frog and I wanted to catch it to bring it back to Mommy. My mean old brother told me to come back. I bet he thought I couldn’t catch it. So I tried my best to catch ‘im, but he was really fast. Then I woke up over there.” She pointed to the tall oak tree a few feet from where we stood by the lake, where police tape had been stretched across the bank.
“Is there anything you want to tell your mother or your brother?”
The little girl nodded. I suppressed a sigh. This meant I’d have to get the address of the family, and the police were pretty stingy with those sorts of details. Maybe I could find another way to get her to see them. The funeral, perhaps. Much easier to access and far less suspicious to look for.
“Can you remember your last name?”
Linda’s face scrunched in thought. “Nu-uh.”
Great. No last name. This case was going to take even longer than I thought and I was already short on time. Three days left to deadline.
I took a deep breath, dispelling the disturbing thought. “Okay, I’ll tell you what—why don’t you go play on the playground until I come back and then we can go see Mommy. Does that sound good?”
She beamed. “Mom’ll be so proud that I caught that frog. Bye, Jordan!”
The ghost scampered off for the abandoned playground, which was off-limits until the investigation was over. I stuffed my notepad in my grey duster and shoved my hands in my pockets, walking in the opposite direction. The park was only a block or two away from the nearest newsstand, where I might be able to find the child’s last name. What a loss, though. The kid was so cute she could put little orphan Annie to shame.
I paid a few dollars to a man at a newsstand and collected a handful of papers, searching through the obituaries one by one for her name. It wasn’t until the very last one that I found a matching picture: Linda Margaret Hamilton, age 7, died August 5th, 2010. Loving daughter, wonderful sister, and family jewel that will never be forgotten. Funeral services held Sunday, August 8th at Wm. J. Rockefeller Funeral Home, Inc., 165 Columbia Turnpike, Rensselaer, N.Y at 6:00PM.
Good news for me. I could get her there and be home before any of my shows came on. The wind picked up around me so I buttoned up my duster, heading back in the direction of the park where I had left her. Surely no one in Albany, New York would think it odd to see a black girl in shades talking to a jungle gym. Normal people couldn’t see ghosts. They were lucky that way. Ghosts are terrible nuisances once you notice them because they are always on the look out for someone to help them. As far as I knew, there weren’t others like me. To put it mildly, my situation was decidedly unique.
“Linda?”
When I turned, I discovered the new ghost had achieved a limited amount of solidity. She was hanging from the monkey bars. When I called her, she hopped off of them without hesitation. My hands shot out to catch her out of reflex, but she slipped right through them, sending a cold shock up my spine. I hated the tingly feeling of dead souls against my skin.
“Yep?”
“I’m going to come back on Sunday afternoon and take you to Mommy. Is that okay?”
She nodded. “Are ya gonna come visit before then?”
I winced. “Well, I am a little busy, but I’ll come see you if I can. Be good, alright?”
“Okay!” She giggled and started back on her climbing, blissfully unaware of anything else. At least the dead had that going for them. She was just a ghost child so she retained her early behavior. Other ghosts I’d met weren’t nearly this cheerful.
I waved and headed back in the direction of the city to catch the bus. I noticed a brown-haired guy smiling at me as I walked past the bench he sat on. He was my age at least with strikingly attractive features, so much so that I found it odd he was paying any attention to me. Did he know me or was he just friendly? Either way, I flashed him a brief smile and kept going. Shame, though. A couple years ago, I might have stopped for a chat, maybe asked him to grab a cup of coffee with me. If only I had a life that didn’t involve taking care of dead people.
Night had folded in around the edges of the city by the time I trudged back to my crappy apartment after solving Ming-Na and Ron’s cases. The rent was cheap because it was in a lousy neighborhood, wedged between a liquor store and a barbershop. Lucky for me, it was on the bus line so I didn’t need a car. Work was only a fifteen-minute ride so it all balanced out pretty well. It would probably be more depressing if I weren’t so used to it.
I opened the door to the apartment to find an obscenely tall blond man standing in front of my kitchen counter, stooped over the red leather book that had been on top of the fridge. A year ago, this would have been a strange sight. I didn’t even bat an eyelash—just tossed my keys next to the book and shrugged out of my duster.