Hauntings of the Heart Read online

  Hauntings of the Heart

  Joselyn Vaughn

  Contents

  Untitled

  Untitled

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  About the Author

  Hauntings of the Heart

  by Joselyn Vaughn

  Published by Clean Reads

  www.cleanreads.com

  * * *

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are fictitious in every regard. Any similarities to actual events and persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used. Except for review purposes, the reproduction of this book in whole or part, electronically or mechanically, constitutes a copyright violation.

  HAUNTINGS OF THE HEART

  Copyright © 2016 JOSELYN VAUGHN

  ISBN 978-1-936852-65-9

  Cover Art Designed by AM DESIGN STUDIO

  For Joe and the Koffee Kuppe Writers who kept me from hitting the delete key when I was ready to give up.

  1

  “My client is prepared to make it worth your while.”

  Minnie Schultz rolled her eyes and shifted the phone against her shoulder. She’d received offers to sell her bed and breakfast before, but this was outrageous. She traced the six zeroes the attorney had quoted on her notepad until there were indents in its cardboard backing. One million dollars.

  She stood by the window overlooking her little garden. She’d planted pumpkins this year for Wendy; they were going to pick one to decorate this afternoon. In all her seventy-four years, she’d never found a place that felt so much like home. She wouldn’t give up this small bit of heaven for any amount of money.

  “The Lilac Bower isn’t for sale,” Minnie said for the fourth time in their conversation. “Why won’t you tell me who you represent?”

  “The buyer wishes to remain anonymous for the time being,” the lawyer said.

  That puzzled her even more. Who would pay a million dollars for a bed and breakfast? It certainly wasn’t worth that much. Sure, she did a good business during tourist season, but things certainly slowed in the fall. Any meager profit she’d made had gone right back into maintaining the three-storey Victorian. New driveway, new furnace, new bathroom fixtures. Mark, her nephew and personal handyman, had a list as long as her arm of needed repairs, not the least of which was a new roof and an air conditioning system. A million dollars could only be a joke.

  “Well, if your client is serious about this offer, they can come and talk to me in person. I’m not interested in selling anyway, but I’m certainly not interested in dealing with someone who won’t say who they are.”

  “I’ll pass on your message. We’ll be in touch.” The lawyer disconnected.

  Minnie tossed her phone down. It slid across the kitchen counter and fell on the floor. The battery case fell out again. She sighed and rubbed her forehead, bending to pick up the phone and the battery that had rolled under the edge of the refrigerator. After clicking the pieces back together, she put the phone in its charger and returned to the grocery bags covering the kitchen island.

  Calls like that always upset her. She’d finally found a place she could call home, a place where she could reconcile all her memories, and someone wanted to take it from her. She wouldn’t sell. She’d saved up the money to pay cash for it, had labored through five years of renovations, installing new bathroom fixtures, restoring hardwood floors and crown molding, and removing purple paint from every surface inside and out. There was still work to do, but the rooms were finally shaping up as she’d envisioned them, and she wasn’t going to give up now.

  Not even for a million dollars.

  She set to work sorting the groceries and organizing them by cupboard and shelf, then putting them away. As she worked, her mind traveled over the conversation with the attorney. It was the largest offer she’d received. She had to be crazy to turn it down, but she didn’t feel a bit of regret. The Lilac Bower was where she was meant to be.

  * * *

  Gordon Anderson dropped his fedora on the worn Formica counter in the Carterville Register of Deeds office. He pressed the bell labeled ‘ring for service’ and waited.

  An empty office chair sat in front of shelves of files and ledger books on the other side of the counter. Some of the books appeared a hundred years old, and one of them held the records of his family’s downfall. Events he planned to rectify, if only to ease his mother’s final days.

  A woman with unnaturally auburn hair approached the reception area from behind the shelves. It had been long enough since she’d been to the beauty shop that a half-inch of white glared out from her roots. She placed a stack of manila folders on the counter and evaluated him over her half-rimmed glasses. She wore a cream blouse with a large silk bow at the collar and light blue polyester pants. Dust smudged her sleeves where the folders had rested.

  “May I help you?” she asked, brushing at the marks.

  Gordon leaned against the counter. The woman seemed familiar, but he didn’t know anyone around here that old. Then he realized she was probably the same age he was, probably one of his friends. He’d been gone too long. He guessed, “Maybelle?”

  The woman flushed slightly. “Yes.” She paused and he could feel her dissecting the wrinkles around his eyes. “Gordon Anderson?”

  He smiled. She did recognize him, but he couldn’t judge the tenor of her voice. Pleasantly surprised, or mildly disgusted? “It’s been quite a while,” she said. “What brings you back to town?”

  “I couldn’t resist seeing your lovely face again.” A little charm wouldn’t hurt. It might keep her from grabbing a broom to shoo him out of the building. Who knew what rumors had been spun about his father and his family? The truth certainly couldn’t have remained a secret this long.

  “You never spared me a second glance when we were younger.” She twisted a loop of the bow around her finger.

  “Perhaps I was remiss in my attentions.” He cringed inwardly. Probably spreading it on a little too thick.

  She snorted. “You only ever had eyes for one woman. The whole town knew it. Everyone was surprised when you two didn’t make a match of it.”

  Myself included, he thought. But she had rejected him when he’d needed her most.

  “We thought you’d come back from the Philippines together,” Maybelle prompted. She leaned across the counter, waiting for Gordon to spill all the gory details.

  Well, Maybelle certainly hadn’t changed in fifty years. She was still the busybody he remembered, hoping to get the scoop on all the news in town. How many people had she told about the Anderson family turmoil? Was he wasting his time here? He hoped a vague reply would deter her efforts. “Nothing happens quite how we expect it.”

  “Ain’t that the truth?” She patted her hair. It didn’t move. Gordon doubted a hurricane would disturb it.

  When he didn’t respond, she tried another tactic. “Will you be in town long?”

  “If everything works the way I hope, yes.”

  “A permanent relocation?” Maybelle twisted and leaned against the counter with her other hip. She pic
ked up a pen and tapped it against a clipboard.

  She was trying to nail him down. He didn’t want everyone to know his business just yet. If the townspeople had become hostile to his family after learning the truth, there was no reason to continue. Moving his mother to an unhappy environment wouldn’t ease her turmoil. Gordon had been too young to know how to take care of his family and protect them from the horrible gossip surrounding their circumstances.

  He didn’t know if he’d succeeded. After his father’s death, they’d never returned to town. His mother’s health couldn’t have borne it. By the time she’d stabilized, his sisters were established in college and he’d been locked into a new life.

  “Depending how things work out,” he hedged.

  “It would be good to have you back.” Maybelle shook the files she’d been carrying into a neater pile and thumped them on the counter. “Now, how can I help you?”

  “I’m interested in looking into the title history of a property.”

  Maybelle nodded. Her eyes narrowed, and she gave him a slow once-over. “I bet I can guess which one. There’s a ten dollar fee for copies of a title history.”

  He winced at the insinuation he might not be able to afford such a “steep” fee. Some of the details of the foreclosure must have emerged. Gordon reached for the money clip in his pants pocket. His lawyer had already paid for a copy, but he was hoping he could get a little information out of the clerk by speaking with her in person. Maybelle would know all the information not written in the title history. He might be able to charm it out of her. Ten dollars would be a small price to pay.

  He extracted a crisp bill from the clip and slid it across the counter. Maybelle eyed it, and then him. She arched an eyebrow. She was stringing him along, trolling for tidbits he wasn’t willing to share. “Which property?” she finally asked.

  The address still rattled smoothly off his tongue.

  A smile touched Maybelle’s lips. “Just as I thought.” She disappeared into the shelves, returning a few moments later with a stack of green leather ledgers, the spines of each progressively more worn. She opened the bottom one and turned some pages. “Here.” She turned the book so Gordon could read.

  The typewritten text seemed so plain as it noted the simple transfer. It was exactly as he had engineered it. One little line hid all he had lost. That line had changed the direction of his life.

  He tightened his lips and flipped the page. It was in the past. He couldn’t change it. He could only move forward and restore what he could.

  Maybelle waited. He didn’t comment; he closed the book. She slid the next ledger off the pile. She thumbed through the pages, licking her fingers to catch the paper. “Here’s the next transfer.” She paused for Gordon to read the names. “They cut down all the lilacs around the porch.”

  Gordon tried to hide his grimace. “That’s too bad.” He and his mother had planted those lilacs. The plants had flourished, and the scent had gagged them with its intensity when the flowers bloomed. His mother had loved them, and christened the house the Lilac Bower.

  “The place didn’t seem right without them, but then they planted the hydrangeas and those lovely rhododendrons. They are so beautiful when they bloom. I can’t get mine to flower. I’ve tried every kind of fertilizer, but no luck.”

  Gordon cut her off. “How long did they live there?” He wasn’t interested in Maybelle’s lack of green thumb.

  Maybelle reached for the next book. The cover crackled as she opened it. “Oh, they only stayed a year. His job transferred to Arizona and they moved. The house didn’t sell right away. It sat empty for a couple months, then the owners rented it out. Trying to make some money on their investment, I guess. Renters are never a good idea for a house like that.” She flipped a couple pages. “This couple was next.”

  Gordon glanced at the name. It didn’t mean anything to him. He was hoping Maybelle’s narrative would give him some clue about the current owner, something he could give to his lawyer.

  “They’re the ones who converted it to a bed and breakfast.” She pushed her glasses up on her nose and pointed to another section of the record. “1985. I can’t believe it’s been so long. They couldn’t seem to make a go of it; they sold soon after. This couple did a little better, scraped along for almost fifteen years. In the end, they were getting too old to keep it up. Funny, they were younger than Minnie is now and she’s doing fine. Of course, Mark is a wonder with all that handyman stuff…”

  He hadn’t been paying much attention to her rambling until she’d said Minnie’s name. “Minnie?” he repeated, hoping he’d heard Maybelle correctly. She’d followed it so closely with “Mark.” He hoped he hadn’t just heard what he wanted to hear, twisting the sounds into his preferred name.

  Maybelle’s eyebrows quirked. She reached for the newest-looking book. While the covers of the other books had dulled and their edges had flaked away, this one shone. Maybelle flipped the pages, watching Gordon. She glanced down, turned two more pages, then adjusted the book for Gordon’s perusal. His gaze slid to where her fuchsia fingernail pointed.

  “It says ‘The Lilac Bower, Inc.’”

  “You’re looking for her, aren’t you?” Maybelle folded the book closed and tucked it under her arm.

  He wanted to grab for it. There had to be more information there. He’d been looking for the property owner of his childhood home; he hadn’t come searching for Minnie. That window had come and gone long ago. He’d made choices that were…not really choices at all. What else could he have done? His sisters had needed a mother. His mother had needed a nurse. And Minnie…well, she’d ostracized him as he’d expected the whole town would.

  Despite it all, though, he wanted to see her. If he was honest with himself, he’d hoped he would run into her on the street, or in the gas station, or at the diner. Solely to find out what she’d done in the intervening years, of course. He knew the spark between them was long dead. For all he knew she was still in the Philippines, or Africa, or Indonesia—one of the places they’d dreamed about visiting together. Gordon stared at the paper. “You said Minnie? She’s the owner?”

  “Well, technically Minnie is the president of the corporation.” Maybelle glanced over the top of her glasses, then hefted the book and carried it toward the copy machine. “I’ll get a copy of this for you.”

  His mind was bouncing all over the place. Minnie. His heart pounded. The memories of all his travels to see the places they’d dreamed about. He’d always hoped he’d stumble across her in a cantina in Buenos Aires, or disembarking from a mission plane in the Philippines. He’d never considered finding her in his old home.

  Emotions he’d long thought dead flowed to the surface. Minnie had been his oxygen once, and losing her had been like living in a backwards Claritin commercial. Everything had gone from bright and clear to cloudy and bleary. After a while, he’d gotten used to it.

  If his father had told the truth, it would have been humiliating, but Gordon would never have lost Minnie. They would be living at the Lilac Bower together. He could rectify that now. He could see her. She was only blocks away. His luck was changing. He felt like skipping.

  It briefly crossed his mind that getting all he wanted couldn’t be this easy. But he’d worry about it later. Seeing Minnie now was as important as finding water in the desert. He thanked Maybelle as he ran out the door, almost leveling a woman who was entering.

  Maybelle called after him. “You forgot your copy.”

  He dashed back and snatched the paper from Maybelle, crumpling it and stuffing it into his pocket.

  “And your hat,” the other woman said, tossing him the tan fedora. Gordon caught it and slapped it on his head.

  He couldn’t miss this chance.

  2

  Minnie had just shelved the final box of macaroni when one of her favorite voices asked, “You have cookies, G’ma Minnie?” Her two-year-old niece, Wendy, skipped into the kitchen, followed by her father, Mark.

  “
You don’t need any cookies, Miss Wendy,” Mark said in the fatherly voice Minnie had been hearing from him more and more. He tousled the little girl’s brown curls, dislodging a pumpkin-shaped barrette. He placed a worn red toolbox on the floor and tried unsuccessfully to resituate the small clip to keep her hair out of her face. After a moment he gave up and tossed the barrette onto the counter.

  “Oh, Mark, she can have a couple. I just got back from the grocery store.” Minnie reached for a package of Oreos with orange filling and tore open the plastic wrap.

  “No. No! Not those!” Wendy swatted the package. “I want G’ma Minnie cookies.” She jabbed her finger at a Cheshire-Cat-shaped cookie jar on the kitchen counter.

  “You can have one,” Mark relented. He showed her one finger to emphasize the number.

  Minnie dutifully extracted one cookie from the cat and presented the chocolate-marshmallow confection to Wendy.

  The trouble she’d gone through baking them yesterday had been entirely worth it. Wendy’s grin stretched from ear to ear, and Minnie fell a little bit more in love with the girl. Wendy snatched the cookie, murmured a quick ‘thank you,’ and nibbled on a corner. She started to head for Minnie’s TV room, but Mark caught her and spun her back toward the kitchen table.

  “In here until that cookie is finished.”

  Wendy hitched up her denim jumper, which had pumpkins appliquéd on its hem, and scrambled into the breakfast nook. After spreading an orange napkin on the table in front of her like she’d seen Minnie do at teatime, she munched the cookie. Mark’s daughter always made her wonder what might have been if she had come home early from the Peace Corps. Would she be watching her own granddaughter now, instead of her grandniece?

  Mark addressed Minnie. “So, what’s the problem?”

  “The Jacuzzi in suite two is leaking again. There are water spots on the ceiling below.”