Free Ghost at Work by Carolyn Hart Page B

repercussions, odd incidents that would go down in Adelaide folklore as the peculiar occurrences attendant upon the discovery of Daryl Murdoch’s body in the cemetery one wind-whipped night shortly before Halloween, so be it.
    Below, flashlights crisscrossed the ground. The chief knelt again by the body. “The damn phone has to be here. Everybody stay where you are. Jake, grab me a Maglite.”
    All eyes were on the ground. I made my move.
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    I was learning more and more about my invisible state. When unencumbered by objects, if I were in one spot and desired to be in another, I promptly found myself there. Material possessions required passage through the material world. That is to say, when I was on the branch and resolved that, whatever the risk, I must confer withKathleen, I did not make an instantaneous leap to the rectory kitchen as I had from the rectory kitchen to the crime scene. Instead I swooped from the branch to the rectory and, in consequence, passed over the church parking lot.
    Below me two elderly women were progressing slowly toward a large white car. One leaned on a cane. The other bobbed beside her, speaking in a club woman’s clarion voice. “Absolutely a disgrace that the rector—”
    The ding-dong bell of Daryl’s phone pealed, its shrillness emphasized in the quiet of the parking lot.
    The woman with the cane jolted to a stop. She looked up, startled. “Look, Maisie.” She pointed her cane at the sky.
    The smaller woman’s gaze rose, but, fortunately, I was beyond the bright circle from the light pole. “What?” The voice was loud.
    The older woman bellowed, “Maisie, don’t you have your hearing aid turned on? There was a bell and something flew by right up there.” She gestured with the cane. “It sounded like a cell phone. It looked like a cell phone. Up there all by itself!”
    Maisie looked huffy. Her voice had the loudness of the hard of hearing. “I declare, Virginia, you don’t need to try and fool me with any Halloween nonsense just to make me turn on that fool hearing aid that makes me feel like I’m inside a washing machine. And—Virginia, look over there. All those lights in the cemetery. Oh, my goodness, something’s happened. We’d better go see.” Maisie headed for the path to the cemetery.
    Virginia couldn’t keep up with her short plump friend. Her progress was also slowed because she kept pausing to look back, her face a study in bewilderment tinged by shock.
    I wished I could reassure Virginia. Obviously, she was a woman who knew what she had seen. But I had problems of my own. I waited in the darkness near the trunk of the big sweet gum behind the rectory. At all costs, I hoped to prevent anyone else from glimpsing the phone. I was tempted to appear so I could slip the thing in my pocket. I started to appear, changed my mind. It would be just as detrimental for me to be seen as for the airborne phone. Adelaide was a small town. I would immediately be noted as a stranger and, once seen, an interesting subject for discussion.
    I could imagine the conversations now: “Who was that redheaded woman in the backyard of the rectory Thursday night?” “She was there and then she seemed to disappear. Do you suppose she was visiting Kathleen?” “Did you ask her name?” “I was hurrying toward her and then she was gone.”
    I know small towns. I was positive calls had already begun, spreading word of Daryl Murdoch’s demise to almost every household in Adelaide. Virginia and Maisie wouldn’t waste an instant in sharing the exciting news about a body in the cemetery.
    I dared not appear where I might be glimpsed by anyone other than Kathleen. The best I could do was lurk in deep shadow until I could slip unremarked into the rectory and find her. I was beginning to feel frazzled.
    Suddenly a deep voice boomed, “Bailey Ruth.”
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