Page 73 of Hold a Candle

He chuckled. “Rhonda was open minded, but skeptical. If she couldn’t see it, she didn’t believe in it.”

“I can no discount the possibilities, but it takes a lot to convince me,” Pauley confessed.

“Even with yer Gramma Caulfield assuring ye that ye just need to dial in?” he teased.

“That’s one phone number I’ll leave off my list,” she assured him. “I’ve no desire to be on talking terms with the deceased.”

“Which is why I’ve avoided haunted places and All Hallow’s Eve,” Jamie assured her. “Until tonight. Simon seems determined to keep pranking me if his words were anything to go by in Kelly Woods earlier.”

“Or maybe it’s his way of telling ye that he is fine and not to blame yerself,” Pauley suggested. “Forgive yerself and move on, mayhap? After all, he was only 10 when he died, he might still be thinking like a kid.”

Jamie was surprised at the wisdom in her words. “I hadn’t thought of it quite like that,” he murmured. “Whenever I think of Simon, I always think of that goofy smirk of a grin. He never thought he was doing anything wrong, just having fun tormenting us all. He was actually super smart and ahead of the kids in his own grade by a landslide. He always said he wanted to create fireworks and stuff when he got older. He loved watching the fireworks.”

On an impulse, Jamie rolled over and picked up the binoculars. Crawling forward, he trained them on Kelly Woods and searched the ground area near the tree where Juice was sitting on the limb.

“What are ye doing?” Pauley asked, crawling up beside him.

“I’m looking for Simon,” he whispered, the skin on the back of his neck crawling as he spoke the words out loud. Would his words give Simon permission to keep haunting him? He shivered. It was still All Hallow’s night, and anything could happen. Finally, he gave up and scooted back into the barn and flopped on his back again. There was nothing out there.

“No luck, huh?”

“Nay,” he replied dryly.

They both jumped when Pauley’s cell phone went off.

***

“HIYA, MICA,” PAULEYanswered the phone, slightly breathless. “Can I put ye on speaker? Jamie is here with me.”

“Aye, he’s going to want to hear this,” Mica replied, his voice tight.

Pauley flipped the phone to speaker. “There, it’s on speaker. Were we right? Did Florence go after Brodie?” she asked in excitement. Her heart fluttered with the anticipation.

“Florence is dead,” Mica replied flatly.

Pauley was stunned. “D-Dead? How? What happened?”

“Cripes,” Jamie swore, sitting up beside Pauley.

“I came to Brodie’s room to wait for her, but she never showed up. There was a code blue for another patient while I was waiting, and when I checked it out, it was Florence,” he snapped.

“W-What happened?” Pauley stuttered.

“She had a massive heart attack about an hour ago. They’ve been working on her, but they couldn’t get her heart started again. Naturally, Wither’s was getting a cup of coffee so he didn’t see anything, just heard the code blue and came racing around the corner to see the nurses headed into her room,” he snarled.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Pauley exclaimed. “A heart attack?”

“The last time anyone was in her room was when the male nurse, Barney, went in to give her a shot for her heart. To help protect her from this happening. Apparently, it didn’t work.”

“Did the lab check her blood?” Pauley asked, thinking fast. “Maybe the medicine was the wrong stuff or something.”

“Nope, the meds are in her blood, that didn’t kill her. They are saying her heart gave out from the delayed stress of the strike. It’s all we have at the moment.”

Pauley blew out a breath and glanced at her watch. It was almost 5:00 in the morning. “Have ye talked to Quinn? Has the raid happened at the docks?”

“Aye, Quinn is here now. They got the drugs being shipped out, but it wasn’t near the haul they were hoping for. And Kelpie wasn’t there, just a couple of his flunkies on the boat. They don’t answer to Kelpie, so they don’t know who he is. Layering. Kelpie, whoever he is, is clever.”

Pauley’s heart sank. “Anything else?”

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