The Last Reading (Storage Ghost Murders Book 1) (7 page)

Chapter 19

Mae
put her hand out sending a cold shiver up Grace’s arm. “Grace, what is it? I
can feel your sadness.”

Grace
put her plate on the floor. “I’m useless at this sort of thing. I can’t
confront people, I can’t look for clues. I had heart palpitations when I was in
your house uninvited! I should have been asking Quentin where he was at the
time of your death. I was too busy stuffing my face with cake.”

“What
happened in your life to make you have such little confidence?”

Grace
shrugged. “I’m not a brave person, I don’t thrive on adventure. I’d rather be
at home every night.”

“There’s
nothing wrong with that, thousands do it. I’ve travelled around the world but I
was always happiest when I came home and sat in my armchair with a cup of tea
at my side. You’ve got a gift, Grace, you can see people who’ve passed over.
You’re braver than you realise. I’ve put you out asking for help but you
haven’t complained, you just got on with it. Quiet determination is worth more
than reckless bravery.”

Grace
was silent for a moment. “I suppose there is some truth in that. I do like
helping people. But I don’t know how I can help you. I’m at a dead end, sorry,
you know what I mean.”

Mae
waved her hand dismissively. “When you can’t go forwards turn around and look
at where you’ve been, you might have missed something. It’s not just you who’s
trying to work this mystery out, it’s me too, we’re in this together.”

Grace
smiled. “Thanks, you’re good with people.”

“I
know.” Mae gave her a grin. “Let’s go over what we do know. I can’t remember
much about my death but we know I was pushed. We know that someone tried to
find something on my person. What were they looking for?”

“I
thought it was the tarot cards. Perhaps another psychic saw how successful you
were and thought they could have the same success with your cards.”

Mae
nodded. “That’s a possibility. The cards flew towards the curtains and got
stuck in the hem. Then sometime later the curtains, and other things from the
church were put in that storage locker.”

Grace
held a finger up. “Quentin said that Autumn Rose organised the removal of them,
she must have put them in the locker. A lot of people give fake names and then
stop paying the rent, then the lockers go up for auction. I wonder if she did
that.”

“Another
possibility. But don’t forget a mystery bidder bought it and went through the
contents as if they were looking for something.”

Grace
frowned. “I don’t know how our mystery murderer would know about the locker.
They were taking a chance on it coming up for auction.”

“Unless
they were a psychic,” Mae said with a comical wiggle of her eyebrows. “Or
someone could have, what’s the expression? Hacked? Hacked into Autumn Rose’s
computer and cancelled any payments for the unit. The murderer might have been
following her.”

“Oh,
very clever. The murderer got the unit, couldn’t find the tarot cards and left
the unit. I got the abandoned unit. Mae! What if someone was watching me? They
would have seen me go to your house, they might assume that I’d found the
cards. I did have a feeling that I was being followed yesterday. What if the
murderer is watching us now?”

The
two women slowly turned their heads towards the living room window. Grace half
expected a crazed looking mad person to be staring right back at her.

There
was no one there.

“Did
anyone see you at my house?” Mae asked.

“I
saw Brenda but we’ve ruled her out. I mustn’t forget to go and see her later.
And there was ...”

She
was interrupted by a beeping noise.

“Sorry,
that’s my phone.” Grace picked up her handbag and rummaged about for her phone.
It was for ever falling out of the little phone sized pocket on the inside of
her bag. Her hand shuffled between tissues, mints and make-up. She couldn’t
quite feel her phone. “Sorry,” she said again to Mae. She tipped the contents
on to the sofa.

“Ah.”
She picked up her phone. “It’s from Frankie, wanting to know if I’m okay and if
I’m working at the shop tomorrow. I’ll send him a quick reply otherwise he’ll
text me again in a minute.”

Grace
did so and started to put everything back in her bag.

Mae
chuckled. “I saw you collect the business card from the reiki table but I
didn’t know you had so many cards from the other psychics. How many readings
are you planning on having?”

Grace
looked at the cards. “Oh, your postman gave them to me. That’s who else saw me
at your house. Mae, what’s wrong?”

“The
postman, was he a little chap with a big postbag? Cheerful and talkative?”

“Yes,
he told me about the fair at the church.”

Mae
squeezed her eyes shut and began to shake her head. “No, no, no!”

Mae
disappeared.

Chapter 20

“Mae!”
Grace called out. “Mae! Come back!”

Why
had she disappeared? What was the problem with the postman?

Mae
reappeared. “I’m so sorry, Grace. It was the shock, I’d forgotten about Tom, he’s
the postman. How was he when you spoke to him?”

“Happy
and helpful. What has he done?”

Mae
gave a little shake of her head. “He’s a short man with a short temper. I
didn’t see that side of him at first. He was always friendly, stopping for a
chat whenever our paths crossed. He was interested in my work and asked if he
could have a reading. Of course I said yes. I remember the reading, it was so
sad. Because of his size he was constantly picked on at school. It got even
worse when he started work. He pretended that it didn’t bother him but I could
see that it did. I told him to just be himself, try and get out more, make more
friends. He used to spend every night at home, letting that day’s insults get
to him.”

“People
can be cruel, did things get better for him?” Grace asked.

“They
did, or seemed to. He didn’t have another reading but when he dropped some
packages off I managed to have a chat with him. He said he’d started a lottery
club at work. He organised it and went round each department introducing
himself. He said there was always talk of setting up a lottery club but no one
could be bothered to do it. His colleagues appreciated Tom undertaking it.”

“Did
they win anything?”

Mae
sighed. “Something terrible happened, and it’s all my fault. Tom said how great
it would be if there was a lucky ticket and they won a good amount, everyone
would treat him like a hero. I agreed and then I foolishly said I should use my
crystal pendulum to see which numbers would come up that week.”

“You
can do that?” Grace asked, her eyebrows raising.

“That’s
just what Tom said. I regretted the remark straight away, I don’t use my
pendulum for things like that. Tom didn’t believe it could work. Being the
stubborn woman I am I said I would prove it. Oh, what a foolish thing to do!”

“Did
it work? Hang on, I don’t understand, how does the pendulum work?”

“I
wrote out all the lottery numbers on separate bits of paper and put them on a
table. I tuned into the pendulum’s power and then held it over each number. If
it swung one way it meant the number wouldn’t come up, and, well, you can guess
the rest. I saw the glint in Tom’s eyes, it was a glint of greed so I purposely
didn’t give him all the winning numbers. I forced the pendulum to swing over a
certain number when it shouldn’t have done.

“When
I saw him the next week he was beaming like a Cheshire cat. Five of the numbers
that I gave him did come up and everyone in the lottery syndicate won £1000.
You can imagine how pleased they were, they thought Tom was their lucky charm.
He wanted me to predict the numbers again but I refused. He gave me a cold
look, which I hadn’t seen before and walked away. I thought that was the end of
it but a few days later he came to me in tears. I was taken aback and asked him
what the matter was. He said someone at work had a seriously ill child and
needed money to send them to a doctor in America.”

Grace
said, “You believed him?”

Mae
nodded. “He was very convincing. I didn’t think he’d lie. I did another
pendulum swing, still not going for the full numbers, some instinct warned me
not to. He came back the week after saying that the total individual win was
£2000 and everyone was over the moon. I did ask about the poorly child but he
quickly changed the subject and asked for more lucky numbers. I had a sudden
clear vision of him at work, his colleagues were still making fun of him behind
his back, they were using him to get money.”

“Did
you tell him this?”

“I
did. He flew into a rage and said I was lying. He was outside at this time but
he pushed me to one side and ran into my house. I found him in the living room
going through my drawers. Oh, Grace! You should have heard the language he was
using. I was shocked. I ordered him to get out but he kept looking, he was
looking for the pendulum, he wanted to do the predicting himself. I told him it
wouldn’t work but he was like a man possessed.”

Mae
paused and looked down at her lap.

“What
happened next?” Grace asked.

Mae
looked up. “I’m so ashamed but I had to do it. I grabbed a glass paperweight
and hit him on the back with it. I didn’t want to kill him, obviously, I wanted
to stop him. He fell to the floor like a sack of potatoes. I picked him up, it
was like lifting a child, and I threw him outside. I told him I was going to
report him to the Post Office. His face was full of hate. Despite his size he
looked quite scary. He actually spat when he said, ‘You’ll regret this’.”

“How
awful, he doesn’t look the type at all to do that. Did you tell the Post
Office? Why is he still working as a postman?”

Mae
gave Grace a grim look. “I didn’t have time, I had to go to the church, it was
the day of the psychic fair. It was the day that I died.”

Grace
gave a low nod and said, “I think we’ve just found our murderer.”

Chapter 21

Mae
and Grace sat in silence for a while, both lost in their thoughts.

Grace
frowned and said, “Do you think he was at the fair?”

“He
must have been although I don’t remember seeing him. I probably wouldn’t have
recognised him without his uniform. He could have been the one bringing me cups
of tea knowing that I’d have to pay a visit to the toilet eventually.”

Grace
said, “He’s not a big man but it doesn’t take a lot of strength to push someone
down the stairs. He must have been looking for the pendulum when he started
rummaging through your clothes.”

“That
makes sense. He must have been the one buying the locker, maybe he thought the
pendulum had rolled out when I fell.”

“He
was taking a bit of a gamble with that, he paid a lot of money on the chance of
the pendulum being there. No wonder I couldn’t see him at the auction, he’s too
small to stand out from the crowd. Where is your pendulum?” Grace suddenly
gasped. “Don’t tell me you were buried with it? Is Tom mad enough to dig your
grave up?”

Mae
gave a small laugh. “He’s mad enough but I hid the pendulum before I went to
the fair. I had a feeling that he wouldn’t be above breaking into my house when
I was out. Do you remember that box of childhood memories that I mentioned
earlier, when we were talking to Brenda?”

Grace
nodded. “The one on top of your wardrobe? Is that where it is?”

“It
is. I told Tom it wouldn’t do him any good to use the pendulum but ... you
should have seen the crazy look on his face. I didn’t think he was capable of
murder though.”

“Do
you suppose he murdered Autumn Rose too? He could have been annoyed with her,
maybe he demanded winning lottery ticket numbers and she refused? Maybe she
just told him things that she’d found on the Internet about him. He told me
he’d been waiting months to see her, it could have enraged him again when he
didn’t get the information he wanted. Oh! Do you remember Shirley talking in
the cafe? She said something about annoying customers, ones that had even
turned up to her house. That could be Tom too.”

“Sounds
like he’s working his way through all the psychics. Grace, you have to do
something, he might kill again.”

Grace
considered this. “I wonder if he did try to break into your house after you
died. I’ll ask Brenda when I see her.” She looked at her watch. “We may as well
go now. I’ll tell Brenda everything we know. She might have spotted Tom at the
fair, she might have seen something that we missed.”

“Good
idea. We could warn her as well, Tom might be looking at her as his next
victim.”

Grace
stood up. “You’re right, let’s get going.”

A
short while later Grace walked swiftly down the path of Mae’s house, the one
that now belonged to Brenda.

She
stopped in surprise. “The back door’s wide open. It’s not warm enough for
that.”

Mae
said, “Perhaps she’s with a client and they forgot to close the door when they
came in.”

Grace
stepped carefully through the door. There was an eerie silence, the hairs on
her arm started to lift.

Mae
followed her in and paused. “I can feel it too, something’s wrong.”

They
heard a quiet mumble of voices coming from the living room. Grace walked
towards it.

The
door was ajar. Grace peeped through. She could see Brenda kneeling on the
floor, her back was towards her. Grace heard a sob coming from Brenda.

Without
thinking Grace barged into the room. “Brenda, are you all right? Have you
fallen?”

Something
small prodded into Grace’s back. She looked over her shoulder, and down.

Tom
smiled at her, it wasn’t a friendly smile. “Brenda hasn’t fallen, she’s doing a
reading for me. I’m glad you came round, Grace, I’ve got a lot of questions for
you.”

Mae
stood at Grace’s side, a grim expression on her face. “Do whatever he says,
he’s got a gun.”