Free Sketch a Falling Star by Sharon Pape

that Preston’s name was an alias.
    “This case just gets more and more interestin’,” he’d said, almost licking his chops like Hobo at dinner time hoping for a windfall of steak.
    Rory had to bite her lip to keep from laughing at the image that came to mind. The marshal didn’t have much tolerance for being the butt of jokes.
    Hobo dropped the ball at Zeke’s feet with a bark, clearly requesting that he throw it. Chuckling, the marshal focused his energy, scooped up the ball and sent it burning across the yard, causing Rory to wonder if there was any rule against ghosts pitching in the major leagues. She watched Hobo joyfully bound after the ball. Six months earlier, she would have taken all bets against the two “men” in her life ever getting along. Now the three of them were like a family, albeit an unorthodox one. A family complete with arguments and slamming doors. Of course, she was pretty much the only one who slammed them. Zeke generally just disappeared in a huff, and Hobo had to rely on barking his displeasure, since he lacked an opposable thumb.
    “Clarissa claims her son had a lot of enemies,” Rory said. “She’s absolutely convinced one of them used the flood to conceal his murder.”
    “So I’m not the only one who thinks fate might have had a helpin’ hand that day.”
    “Which doesn’t automatically make you right,” Rory pointed out. “Clarissa could be crazy as a loon.”
    “You’ve seen evidence to that effect?”
    “You mean during my one and only conversation with her? Not really, but we didn’t talk for more than a few minutes and not under the best of circumstances. Her son’s casket was only a few feet away.”
    When Hobo returned with the ball, he dropped it in front of Rory as if he were making an effort to be fair and alternate between them. As she bent to pick it up, she heard the house phone ring. She’d forgotten to take the handset out with her and had to run inside to answer it. She knew Zeke would be all right without her as long as it wasn’t for more than five or six minutes. After that he’d be snapped back into the house as though he were tethered to a temperamental bungee cord. If that happened she could depend on his grousing about it for days. In spite of how hard he’d tried to push that particular envelope, he hadn’t met with any real success. His ability to travel or stay outside the house without Rory seemed to be an immutable boundary, and Rory prayed it would stay that way.
    She made it back outside just under the wire to find Zeke talking to Eloise Bowman. For a quiet neighborhood, things could sure change in the blink of an eye. Warning Zeke about the latest addition to their neighborhood had been the next topic on Rory’s agenda, but Eloise had beaten her to it. From what Rory could tell as she flew out the kitchen door, so far things were under control. They might have been any two neighbors in any American town who’d stopped to chat on a lovely spring day. But, of course, they weren’t. One of them was a ghost, and the other a stroke victim with extrasensory abilities.
    Eloise looked somewhat more presentable than she had the day Rory first met her. The tufts of white hair had been combed flat against her head as if someone had tried to tame them into a style but eventually gave up and settled for making them neat. She was wearing shapeless, green polyester pants with a purple tee shirt tucked into the elastic waistband, like a toddler who’d insisted on dressing herself and didn’t know how to coordinate colors. This time her feet weren’t bare but clad in sneakers. Given her proclivity for escaping from the Bowman house, it seemed to Rory that another type of footwear might make better sense.
    As she came up beside Eloise she heard her saying, “You need to learn how to forgive yourself, Ezekiel.” Her words were solemn, nothing little-girl-like in her tone. This was the Eloise who’d warned Rory about the impending trouble on her