The Ghostly Grounds: Malice and Lunch (A Canine Casper Cozy Mystery—Book 3)

CHAPTER ONE

Marie was sitting in what Madame Agnes referred to as her den

.

It was really nothing more than a dimly lit parlor within a basic suburban home. Unlike the other two mediums she’d tried, there wasn’t an overabundance of candles and incense. There was no chanting, no mantras, no Ouija boards.

She appeared to be an older lady, maybe nearing sixty-five, and she exuded the sort of warmth and charm that made Marie assume Madame Agnes was a grandmother. Her face did not contain many wrinkles, but the ones that were there seemed deep, though they disappeared slightly when she smiled.

Marie, not knowing what to say, cleared her throat.

“So,” Marie began, “you are a…clairvoyant?”

Agnes rolled her eyes at the term.

“That’s what the sign outside says,” Madame Agnes said. “But that’s just because people know what that means. What I am, dear, is a psychic telephone between the living and the dead.”

Madame Agnes sat on a plush pillow on the floor, in front of an ornate coffee table. Marie, at Agnes’s request, was sitting in a very comfortable love seat. Her black hair was up in a ponytail, the angles of her face in plain view. It was a face that, despite a few stresses, felt much brighter than it had three or four months ago.

“Are you okay, dear?” Madame Agnes asked.

“Yes,” Marie said.

It was true; this was the most at ease she had ever felt in meeting with a medium in the hopes of trying to finally determine the truth about her mother. Six months ago, if someone told her she would be meeting with a medium and actually thinking it would work, she would have laughed her rear end off. But she had experienced quite a bit in the past several months and now, she was pretty sure not only that ghosts existed, but that humans (and dogs) could maybe even interact with them.

“You look worried,” Madame Agnes said.

“Do I? I’m actually not. And maybe

that’s

what’s worrying me.”

“A very natural reaction when you have accepted some of the more unbelievable things about your world.” She spoke with tones that hinted at wisdom, not in a cheesy fortune cookie way but with that same grandmotherly kindness.

Marie had found Madame Agnes through a very peculiar chain of people. It had started with the daughter of one of Robbie Dunne’s employees at the Red Reef Diner. Marie had stayed as polite as possible when she told the young lady that her services weren’t quite what she was looking for; the young lady had, in fact, been borderline psychotic and had asked for a live chicken as part of her ceremonies.

More hesitant searching had led her to Madame Agnes, an on-point clairvoyant working in the small town of Juniper Mills, Rhode Island. It had all led to this: Madame Agnes closing her eyes and slightly tilting her head. Marie was very interested to see how things would play out. Agnes had asked for no money and no big details about her life. All Madame Agnes really knew about Marie was that she had moved to a coastal town after inheriting a house from her great-aunt, and that she was looking for answers. Honestly, Marie felt rather bad. She had sort of set a trap for Madame Agnes. For Marie, the tell would be if Agnes just assumed she was looking for answers about her great-aunt.

So it shocked her when Madame Agnes tilted her head in confusion and, with eyes still closed, asked: “So…there’s a dog involved in all of this. I know that might make no sense, but I am getting an overwhelming sense that there is an animal wrapped up in your search. Not a cat, but something bigger. A dog, for sure.”

Absolutely stunned, Marie nodded her head. “Yes, that’s right.”

She rubbed away the goosebumps on her arm. This was the real deal. Sure, it was spooky, but it was also exciting to think that she might get some answers—that she may be in the presence of someone who had a more intimate knowledge of the other side than even Brendan Peck.

Madame Agnes seemed rather confused over this but forged on. “The dog…you were not expecting it. It was not yours originally. I sense that and I…hmmm… This house you are living in. You think there are spirits there, yes?”

“Well, it’s sort of complicated. There may have been, but not anymore.”

Again, Madame Agnes seemed perplexed over this. “I sense…many spirits intertwined with your life. Lots of turmoil in your life that these spirits are only complicating further. But I also sense…”

Madame Agnes paused here. The silence that followed lasted nearly fifteen seconds. She looked almost worried when she continued. “You have almost

welcomed

these spirits in. They are becoming part of your life…”

Marie crossed her arms and rubbed them, still battling off the chills that passed through her. She felt vulnerable suddenly, as if this Madame Agnes was literally peeking into her soul.

“So tell me, what is it you want to know?” Agnes asked.

“I want to know what happened to someone from my past. Someone I assumed was dead.”

She felt guilty, still laying the trap. But so far, she figured it would be nothing for Madame Agnes to overcome. Everything so far had been scarily accurate. She was more than fine with using some planned trickery if it might help her to find out the truth about her mother.

Madame Agnes nodded slowly, taking a deep breath. There was just the tiniest bit of dramatic flair to the action, but Marie let it slide. Compared to some of the other things she had encountered in trying out the two other mediums, Madame Agnes was pretty much normal.

“I sense…I sense that your great-aunt has indeed moved on. She misses you very much.”

This quickly took the proverbial wind out of Marie’s sails. Of course, it did not prove that Agnes was a fraud like the others, especially since some of the stuff she had touched on had been downright eerie.

“She is at peace, and trusts that you will find peace as well. She knows you will take good care of her home. A home that I sense is often filled with visitors.”

More vague comments. All Agnes would had to have done to find out about her so-called visitors was to Google her name and find that she had altered Aunt June’s house into a bed-and-breakfast.

Yeah, but how about the other stuff she hit right on the head?

she asked herself. Actually, she wasn’t sure if this was her talking to herself or not; that nagging voice that insisted there was something to all of this was starting to sound a lot like Brendan. Besides, it was a good point. As far as she knew, she’d done an exceptional job of keeping her little ghost-cleaning side gig a secret. Brendan and Posey were the only ones who knew about it; and even after five total cleanings now, she trusted them both more than ever.

“The only true help I can offer,” Madame Agnes said, “is to tell you to be careful who you trust. These spirits that you cling to—that I sense you almost

chase after

—can often cause people to do deceitful things. I am getting a warning of sorts, urging you to not get too comfortable with these things, or the past will repeat itself.”

And with that, Agnes was apparently done. She opened her eyes and rocked back and forth a bit. She blinked her eyes as if coming out of a brief nap. While Marie honestly had nothing against the woman, it did feel like more of the melodramatic, though.

“I’m sorry,” Agnes said, leaning forward. She took a sip of her tea, a strong-smelling brew that made Marie think of pine tar. “You look disappointed.”

“No, not really,” she said, a little dishonestly. “You for sure named some things there was no way you could know, but I think I was looking for a very specific answer.”

“Ah. I see. If you give me more details, perhaps I can find more information.”

Marie almost told her; she almost admitted that she was looking for information about her mother. But one of the many warnings Brendan had given her about psychics, clairvoyants, and all other manner of mediums was to not divulge too much. The really good ones could fabricate information that

seemed

mind-blowing on the surface but was really just the result of piecing together certain trivial details of the clients’ lives.

“No, I don’t think so,” Marie said. “But thank you for your time.”

“Of course,” Madame Agnes said, getting to her feet. “Now, if you’ll follow me to the kitchen, we’ll have more tea and take care of payment.”

Marie followed along, not sure if she felt she had wasted her money or not. However, when she stepped into the more well-lit hallway toward the kitchen, she got her answer. She was wearing her white pull-over, one of the comfier long-sleeved pull-overs she had. It had started to get a little chilly at night on the coast, causing her to break out warmer clothes.

In the light of the hallway, Marie noted the few stray hairs on the left sleeve. They were not brown, like hers. Instead, they were short, black, and wiry. Too wiry to belong to a cat, for sure—making it what was clearly dog hair.

That’s how she knew about the presence of a dog,

Marie thought.

That’s how she knew about Boo.

She felt almost betrayed, but more like a fool than anything else. Still, she paid up without any complaint and left Madame Agnes’s house with no answers. As she headed out of Juniper Mills and back north toward Port Bliss, Maine, Marie started to wonder if this search for the truth about her mother was even worth it. Her mother clearly did not want to be found—she did not want to know anything about her daughter or the husband who had died nine years after she had left.

Three strikes and you’re out—that was the idiom everyone lived by, right? So far, she’d tried three mediums, and they’d all turned out to be frauds.

As far as she was concerned, that was the end of the search.

Besides, it wasn’t as if she didn’t have enough weird stuff already going on in her life. And it was a life she was getting used to—a life she was rather eager to get back to as she drove through the night back toward Port Bliss.