Blue Dahlia

think like she does. We talked about this before, Stella, and I’ve been thinking back on it. The only times I remember feeling anything angry from her was when I went out with men now and again, when my boys were coming up. But I didn’t experience anything as direct or upsetting as this. But then, there was nothing to it. I never had any strong feelings for any of them.”
    “I don’t see how she could know what I feel or think.”
    But the dreams, Stella thought. She’s been in my dreams.
    “Let’s not get irrational now,” David interrupted. “Let’s follow this line through. Let’s say she believes things are serious, or heading that way, between you and Logan. She doesn’t like it, that’s clear enough. The only people who’ve felt threatened, or been threatened are the two of you. Why? Does it make her angry? Or is she jealous?”
    “A jealous ghost.” Hayley drummed her hands on the table. “Oh, that’s good. It’s like she sympathizes, relates to you being a woman, a single woman, with kids. She’ll help you look after them, even sort of look after you. But then you put a man in the picture, and she’s all bitchy about it. She’s like, you’re not supposed to have a nice, standard family—mom, dad, kids—because I didn’t.”
    “Logan and I hardly ... All he did was read them a story.”
    “The sort of thing a father might do,” Roz pointed out.
    “I ... well, when he was reading to them, I was putting the bathroom back in shape. And she was there. I felt her. Then, well, my things. The things I keep on the counter started to jump. I jumped.”
    “Holy shit,” Hayley responded.
    “I went to the door, and in the boy’s room, everything was calm, normal. I could feel the warmth on the front of me, and this, this raging cold against my back. She didn’t want to frighten them. Only me.”
    But buying a baby monitor went on her list. From now on, she wanted to hear everything that went on in that room when her boys were up there without her.
    “This is a good angle, Stella, and you’re smart enough to know we should follow it.” Roz laid her hands on the library table. “Nothing we’ve turned up indicates this spirit is one of the Harper women, as has been assumed all these years. Yet someone knew her, knew her when she was alive, knew that she died. So was it hushed up, ignored? Either way, it might explain her being here. If it was hushed up or ignored, it seems most logical she was a servant, a mistress, or a lover.”
    “I bet she had a child.” Hayley laid a hand over her own. “Maybe she died giving birth to it, or had to give it up, and died from a broken heart. It would have been one of the Harper men who got her into trouble, don’t you think? Why would she stay here if it wasn’t because she lived here or—”
    “Died here,” Stella finished. “Reginald Harper was head of the house during the period when we think she died. Roz, how the hell do we go about finding out if he had a mistress, a lover, or an illegitimate child?”

sixteen

    LOGAN HAD BEEN IN LOVE TWICE IN HIS LIFE. HE’D been in lust a number of times. He’d experienced extreme interest or heavy like, but love had only knocked him down and out twice. The first had been in his late teens, when both he and the girl of his dreams had been too young to handle it.
    They’d burned each other and their love out with passion, jealousies, and a kind of crazed energy. He could look back at that time now and think of Lisa Anne Lauer with a sweet nostalgia and affection.
    Then there was Rae. He’d been a little older, a little smarter. They’d taken their time, two years of time before heading into marriage. They’d both wanted it, though some who knew him were surprised, not only by the engagement but by his agreement to move north with her.
    It hadn’t surprised Logan. He’d loved her, and north was where she’d wanted to be. Needed to be, he corrected, and he’d figured, naively as it turned out, that he could plant himself anywhere.
    He’d left the wedding plans up to her and her mother, with some input from his own. He wasn’t crazy. But he’d enjoyed the big, splashy, crowded wedding with all its pomp.
    He’d had a good job up north. At least in theory. But he’d been restless and dissatisfied in the beehive of it, and out of place in the urban buzz.
    The small-town boy, he thought as he and his crew finished setting the treated boards on the roof of a twelve-foot pergola. He was