Free Morgan James - Promise McNeal 01 - Quiet the Dead by Morgan James

to the trust; though I have a strong sense it is most certainly connected. That being said, I don’t believe you sent the doll.”
    “My mother does?”
    I nodded yes.
    “Well, I didn’t,” he replied firmly. “She is not my favorite person and I have to say I would not choose her for a friend, or a mother for that matter, but not this.” He pushed the box away and towards me, “No, not this, this is sick. I may be a little twisted, and who wouldn’t be with Becca for a mother, but I don’t send murdered dolls to people.”
    “I believe you, Paul. I really do. Help me think this through. Is there anyone else associated with the trust that would want her to stop making waves? Anyone else who would benefit if you kept control of the trust?”
    He narrowed his eyes in concentration and thought for a moment. “I don’t know. I really don’t. I don’t have any children, and with my lifestyle, I’m not apt to have. Who else could benefit? I can’t imagine. As I told you, I didn’t know about the trust until Grandfather died and I still know very little about it. Mitchell must have asked me a thousand times about it, how much it was worth and all that. I told him I didn’t know, and I really didn’t until you told me.”
    The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. “Mitchell?”
    “Yes, Mitchell. He of the Troy Donahue good looks. I met him when we did The Fantastics at the theater. He was wonderful, good voice, the audience loved him, and he did dye his hair for that, by the way. He moved in with me shortly after the show finished. I thought the relationship was going to be THE one, well it wasn’t. Almost from the start it was one thing after another, a little lie here and a big lie there. As you saw, we fight a lot. He’s left before, several times, and we’ve made up—not this time. I’m not taking him back this time. This time the lie is just too big to forgive.”
    I waited and let the silence grow, hoping Paul would fill in details about Mitchell’s lie. He didn’t. Finally I moved on. “I understand Paul. I’ve kissed enough frogs to know the princes are few and far between.” His smile was sad and resigned. “Let me ask you something else, if I can,” I continued. “Not that it has anything to do with the trust; it’s just that as a person who is interested in the paranormal, I am curious.”
    He eyes brightened. “Oh, you mean Grandmother’s ghost. Isn’t that wild? I thought I saw her several times during the months after I moved here. In fact I told Mitchell about it. Shortly after he moved in with me, whatever it was went away. I realize now it was probably just this old house, and the play of shadows through the oak trees.”
    “Where did you see her?”
    Paul stood up and waved me to follow. “Come on back to the bedroom and I’ll show you. Though, mind you, now I don’t think I saw anything except shadows.”
    We went back to the foyer, and then up three steps to the left, turned down a hall and then into a large master bedroom on the rear of the house. He stood before three nearly floor to ceiling windows facing the rear yard and pointed. “Down there, towards the creek. Do you see the crumbling stonewall, the old gristmill parapet I told you about? See where the wall comes across the creek and almost touches the side of the house? All three times I thought I saw her, she was walking on the wall, headed away from the house, and then disappeared across the creek.”
    I followed his direction, looking out to the yard, beyond a stand of low-armed oak trees, to an old wall, a narrow expanse of eroded stone and concrete, pockmarked and spongy from the relentless assault of upstream water and sand. It seemed a punctuation point drawn from the house outward. The sight of it drew a shiver from the base of my spine to my hairline. I could see it did, indeed, extend out into Howell Creek, the creek Paul’s grandmother was left hanging over, and the creek of my dream. “When you say