Free Hanging by a Thread by Monica Ferris

wasn’t like that, not as if he came especially to speak to me. You see, I was walking up Water Street from the Minnehaha ticket office—I volunteer there four days a week when the boat is running,” she explained. “Anyway, it was near the end of the season and I’d stayed late to do some bookkeeping and restock the racks of sweatshirts, so it was after dark. The weather was pretty much like it is right now, wind and all, and there wasn’t another soul on the street. I stopped in front of the bookstore to turn my umbrella right side out, and noticed they had replaced the broken front window. I stood there a minute because my eye was caught by the display of Jim Ogland’s Postcard History of Lake Minnetonka. That book has such a nice cover. And then I saw someone in the store. A man.”
    “Was he all bloody and awful?” asked Bershada hopefully.
    “No. Or at least it was so dark, I couldn’t see much detail. The wind died down suddenly and my umbrella came to its senses, and then I saw someone move. At first I just thought someone was in the store, an employee. But then I realized there was only that dim light burning at the back, the one they turn on as they leave for the night, so then I wondered if I was seeing a burglary in progress.”
    “That would have been enough for me,” declared Emily. “There are lots of things just as scary as ghosts, and burglars are one of them.”
    “You’re right, and I should have run away, but I was so surprised, I just stood there, gaping. Suddenly, the man stooped down, and I thought he’d seen me, but then he straightened up again. I couldn’t imagine was he was doing. It was dark in the store, and I wasn’t even sure I was seeing someone. He was over beside the checkout counter, near the wall and halfway behind that rack where they keep the finger puppets, or used to. He moved, kind of glided, away from there and went behind that couch they have for browsers. He was standing sideways, and I could see his silhouette against the light, and suddenly I recognized Paul Schmitt. He was standing still, head down, like he was praying, or waiting for something. Then he turned away—and all of a sudden he was gone, like he melted into the shelves. I couldn’t think what he was doing in there. I had been thinking, it’s a burglar, I should go call the police, but I couldn’t get my feet to move. Now I recognized Paul Schmitt, that nice man from church, not some unknown burglar. Then I thought about Angela, and I was embarrassed, like you get when you see someone doing something and he thinks no one is looking. I wondered if he wasn’t paying a private visit to the scene of his wife’s death.
    “That made me feel embarrassed to stand there staring, so I got my feet back under control and walked away.”
    “You should have called the police,” said Alice.
    “And told them what? Any story I tried to tell them would sound ridiculous. I went on to the Lucky Wok and had some of their moo shi pork for dinner and then walked home.”
    “Weren’t you scared to go home?” asked Godwin. “I mean, you live alone and all.”
    “No, not at all, because I didn’t know it was a ghost I’d seen. I was tired and went to bed before the news, so it wasn’t till the next morning I heard that he’d been found murdered in his house. And when I thought about it, it seemed to me that I saw him in the store right about the time that someone shot him.”
    “Ooooooooh,” breathed Bershada, and they all looked thrilled down to their toes—except Alice, but she didn’t say anything.
    Emily said, “I suppose he went there to gather up his wife’s spirit and take her with him to the afterlife.”
    “Well, I don’t recall hearing any reports that Angela’s ghost was seen in the bookstore,” said Comfort. “Do you?”
    “Well ... no,” said Emily. “But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t there. Maybe she knew he was going to follow her into the spirit world and kind of hung around