“Was there a follow-up article providing details of the murder investigation?” Jordan asked.
“I don’t know.” Hattie turned to Frank with a beseeching expression.
He quickly held up both hands. “Forgive me,” he said, his tone cool, “but I have no interest in looking into the murder of the man who allowed me to hang for a crime he knew I didn’t commit.”
“I think it’s a great idea to ask Jordan to solve Michael’s murder,” Charlotte piped up, ignoring Jordan’s quelling glance. “After all, she solved Hattie’s.”
Frank waved a hand dismissively. “She was rather inept, though she managed to stumble upon the solution.”
“But she did solve it, did she not?” Charlotte pressed him before Jordan could form a retort. “Without her, you never would’ve known who framed you for my sister’s murder. So I think we should give Jordan a chance to help us solve Michael’s murder.”
All eyes turned toward her.
A Mexican Martini had never sounded better.
TWENTY minutes later, Jordan settled with a sigh into steaming, lavender-scented water in her claw-foot bathtub. Vanilla candles perfumed the air, casting flickering shadows on the mahogany wainscoting that surrounded the tub. Soft classical music played in the background. She’d turned out the lights so that the cracks in the tile floor weren’t as noticeable. Malachi had his muzzle propped on the rounded edge of the tub, content to let her rub his ears.
Sheer bliss.
She’d managed to convince the four ghosts to table all further discussion of marriage and mayhem until morning. Even Seavey had grudgingly agreed to leave for the night, though Jordan suspected his equanimity wouldn’t hold for long.
“No spectral wedding will be held in this house,” she reassured Malachi. Since the dog’s arrival on her doorstep, she’d gotten into the habit of discussing all important issues with him. His advice was usually far more pragmatic than that of the humans with whom she’d become acquainted.
“Rooooooo,” he agreed now.
“And there’s no way I’m investigating Seavey’s murder.”
“Raaaooow.”
“After all, he’s a sociopath. It’s not like he deserves to know who killed him. And who knows what he’d do if he found out? He could go after someone’s descendant, out of pure spite. I could end up responsible for some poor innocent person’s death.”
Malachi made the supreme effort to lean over and lick her cheek in agreement, then sank back down.
“Precisely.”
Jordan scrunched around in the tub, trying to get her neck positioned more comfortably against the rim. A folded towel hovered in her peripheral vision. With a scowl, she grabbed it and wedged it behind her neck.
“We need to establish some house rules,” she complained. “I deserve privacy in my own bathroom.”
Hattie floated toward the opposite end of the bathtub.
Malachi whined.
Jordan felt like doing the same. “I’m not interested in hearing anything you have to say at the moment,” she told Hattie. “I’ve had a long, stressful day, and all I want is a relaxing soak, then bed.”
Hattie wrung her hands.
“Quit that.”
“It’s just …” Hattie hesitated. “I thought Seavey had murdered me, you see. I’ve maligned his good name all these decades—”
“He doesn’t have a good name.”
“Michael isn’t a bad man. He simply did what he had to, to survive. Just as I did after my husband died.”
Jordan sighed. “I’ll grant you that Seavey probably isn’t truly evil in the tradition of Jack the Ripper, but he isn’t exactly a model citizen, either. And it’s not the same. You intended to run your husband’s shipping business ethically, siding with Frank’s union to provide better treatment of sailors. You were murdered because you only wanted the best for Charlotte. Seavey, on the other hand, murdered for financial gain. And let’s not forget he was blackmailing you into his bed, for Christ’s sake, as a condition for helping you get Charlotte back. Those are not the actions of an honorable man.”
“But he avenged my murder,” Hattie pointed out.
Jordan gave up and stood, wrapping a bath towel around herself and blowing out the candles. “That doesn’t cancel out his other criminal activities.” She shooed Hattie out the door.
The ghost trailed her down the hall and into the bedroom. “I’m merely asking you to look into the circumstances surrounding his death. Maybe he’s right—maybe Eleanor did publish lies to support her editorial position. But I owe him the courtesy of finding the truth.”
“Michael Seavey was the bane of your existence until you died—how can you possibly believe that you owe him anything?”
“Couldn’t you just look into the shipwreck and see if there were any survivors?” Hattie pleaded. “You were so good at understanding the motivations of the people I knew back then, and of understanding who might have been capable of murdering me. Wouldn’t this be similar?”
“What is this? Good ghost, bad ghost?” Jordan grumbled. At Hattie’s confused look, she said, “Never mind.”
Drying the ends of her hair with the towel, she explained impatiently, “First of all, I’m not interested in functioning as an amateur detective for all the ghosts in this town.” She paused, shuddering at the implications of what she’d just said. “And second, in this case, everyone probably wanted Seavey dead—he had so many enemies I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
She rummaged through a drawer, looking for the cotton T-shirt Jase had given her as a belated house-warming present and she’d converted into a nightshirt. The one that stated across the front, in large block letters, REALITY IS JUST A STATE OF MIND.
Hattie wrinkled her nose. “I don’t understand this modern practice of painting comments on your night-wear,” she said. “Or of wearing something to bed that should be worn during the day. Last week, your nightshirt said something that sounded like a local football team. Don’t you have a proper nightgown?”
“They get too tangled—they’re a hassle,” Jordan replied, turning back the down comforter on her bed. “Didn’t you have any slogans back in the 1800s?”
Hattie looked confused.
“You know, like something the president might have said that became a common phrase people used to explain how they felt or how something worked in the world?”
“Maybe,” she replied, but her expression said she doubted it.
“Well, there you go.” Jordan glanced toward the hall. “Where’s Charlotte?”
“Downstairs practicing her telekinesis powers, using them to straighten up the library.”
The relevant word in this instance being “practice.” Jordan closed her eyes. She’d think about it tomorrow, she reminded herself.
Hattie continued to hover just inside the door.
Jordan sighed. “All right, I’ll take a trip out to the historical society tomorrow to see if there are any other newspaper articles about Seavey’s murder or survivors of the shipwreck. If there aren’t, that’s the end of it.”
Hattie sagged with relief.
Of course, the historical society was still closed for remodeling, which meant Jordan would have to ask Darcy to meet her there and let her in. Not a good plan, given how buried Darcy would be with Holt’s murder investigation. And hadn’t she mentioned something about going back out to the crime scene tomorrow?
Alternatively, Jordan could break into the building. Again. Breaking the law was becoming habitual for her—during her last visit she’d stolen materials from the archives, then broken in to return them while Darcy was in the hospital.