Free Nine Lives: A Lily Dale Mystery by Wendy Corsi Staub Page B

guest myself, but I think that Odelia can—”
    “Steve! Eleanor!”
    Odelia comes limping across the lawn as if summoned by the mere mention of her name—and who knows, maybe that’s precisely the case, considering the circumstances. Chance trails behind her, belly swaying just above the grass.
    “Odelia! What happened to your leg?” Eleanor asks as Steve descends the steps to take the older woman’s arm.
    “Oh, it’s nothing. I just took a spill.” She brushes off the help, gripping the railing tightly and joking about her clumsiness as she makes her way up the porch steps to greet Eleanor with a warm hug.
    “I can see that you’ve all already met, but I’ll do the formal introductions. Stephen and Eleanor Pierson, meet Bella Jordan.”
    Noticing that Odelia has once again used her nickname, Bella shakes their hands. She’s about to excuse herself to go find Max when Odelia asks if she’s told the Piersons about Leona.
    “No, I was about to . . .” About to send them over to Odelia’s so that I wouldn’t have to break the bad news myself.
    “Tell us what?” Eleanor asks.
    “What about Leona?” Steve looks from Odelia to Bella and back again.
    Odelia sighs. “There’s no easy way to say this. I’m afraid she’s passed on.”
    Eleanor gasps, clasping her hands to her mouth with a jangle of gold bracelets. “But I just talked to her last week!”
    “It was very sudden.”
    Steve settles a protective arm around Eleanor. “What happened?”
    As Odelia explains quickly about the freak accident, he shakes his head grimly.
    Tears fill Eleanor’s eyes. “She was always afraid of the water. She couldn’t swim.”
    “How do you know that?” Steve asks.
    Odelia answers for his wife. “I’m guessing everyone does.”
    Even I know it, Bella thinks.
    “It’s a good thing we got here so early in the day.” Steve takes the car keys out of his pocket, and Bella notices a keychain imprinted with the comedy and tragedy masks dangling from the ring.
    That makes her think of her own key ring, still safely tucked under her pillow upstairs. She hopes.
    “We can go over and see if we can get a room near Chautauqua and see the play tonight,” Steve tells his wife, “and then head back to Boston first thing in the morning.”
    “What do you mean?” Eleanor asks.
    “We’ll go to the Cape, like we had talked about. It’s been years since we’ve been there, and you said yourself you miss it.”
    “We can’t get a place on the Cape at the eleventh hour on a holiday weekend. And probably not tonight near Chautauqua, either.”
    “Maybe there will be a last-minute cancellation. If we can’t find a place to stay, we’ll just go home and do some day trips.”
    “You have a place to stay,” Odelia speaks up. “Right here.”
    Steve blinks. “But we can’t stay here if Leona isn’t . . . if she’s . . .”
    “Of course you can. She would have wanted business to go on as usual, and you know how meticulous she was about keeping notes. I know exactly which room you prefer and it’s all set for you. No feathers. Allergies,” she adds for Bella’s benefit.
    “Leona always took such good care of us.” Eleanor smiles through her tears. “Thank you, Odelia.”
    Leaving them to get checked in and settled, Bella heads upstairs to find Max in the train room. He’s wearing only underpants and fishing through his open duffle bag on the floor. “Do I have a purple shirt, mom?”
    “Purple? I don’t think so, no. Why?”
    “That’s Jiffy’s favorite color.”
    Jiffy again. The ghost kid.
    She doesn’t really believe that, of course.
    “Listen, Max . . . I don’t think we’re going to have time for Candyland this morning.”
    He looks up, crestfallen. “But I told Jiffy I’d be right back!”
    “I’m sorry, sweetie.”
    “I don’t want to go!”
    “I know, but we have to.”
    “Why?”
    “Because this isn’t . . . this is just . . . it’s a place where we stopped to