Repair to Her Grave Read Free Page B

would wake up with double pneumonia. And I couldn’t help thinking that somehow it all had to do with Jared Hayes:
    With whatever had happened to him. And with what, since to me it seemed clear there was something, he wanted done about it.
    “If Raines isn’t scared and he's already interested, that could be a good thing,” Ellie said persuasively. “It might be, he will come up with something that we haven’t.”
    If Ellie and I were both mad scientists, she would be the one whose laboratory is always exploding. On the other hand, her blithe, no-disaster-can-possibly-befall-me attitude does tend to get results.
    “Maybe,” I allowed. “And I do know those cousins. Probably they wouldn’t send me an axe-murderer, or anything like that.”
    An understatement: all three of them were heavily involved in federal law enforcement. Any axe-murderers they came across would get sent somewhere, all right, but it wouldn’t be Eastport.
    She went on: “Because I’ve been thinking, and it seems to me there are two possibilities to explain the discomfort you’ve been experiencing. One is that your house is haunted. Or two, and this is my clear choice, that your head is haunted.”
    I just stared at her: trust Ellie to boil it all down for you that way. “Haunted,” she said, “by the idea of what happened to Hayes, by your questions and wondering about it.”
    “But…”
    “I know. You’ve experienced … phenomena.” She pronounced the word judiciously, like a physician mentioning an unpleasant side effect. “Only they’re never …”
    Right; like I said. Never flat-out inexplicable.
    “So in your view, it wouldn’t be so much that the house is haunted,” I said, “but that I am. By it.”
    “Uh-huh.” She ate a cherry bit. “And if we’re going to do something about it, we need more information about Hayes. So we can find out the answers to your questions and put a stop to it.”
    She got up, refilled our coffee cups. “And if this Raines person is here to look for Hayes's violin, maybe he can help. That is, if we help him.”
    “Maybe,” I said, still not quite seeing how. “But Ellie, what if he only makes things in this house get more challenging?”
    I didn’t quite see how that was going to happen, either. But lately, anything seemed possible. Out in the street a car started suddenly with the roar of a bad muffler; I jumped about a foot.
    Ellie sighed. “Jacobia, don’t you see it doesn’t matter that things might get worse? For one thing, they might anyway, and for another, you’re already too unhappy. Whatever's going on around here is making you a nervous wreck.”
    She took a deep breath, the kind people take when what they are about to say to you is painful but for your own good.
    “I know you love it here,” she said. “But we’ve got to get this place fixed so you can live here comfortably again, and by that I don’t just mean your remodeling jobs. If we don’t, worst case, you won’t be able to …”
    She stopped, allowing me to reach on my own a conclusion I’d been trying very hard to avoid. But at this point it was obvious.
    “Worst case,” I said slowly, “I’m not going to be able to stay in this old house.”
    “Meanwhile,” said Ellie, breaking the heavy silence that followed my pronouncement, “there's another thing that ought to start concerning you, if it hasn’t already. Isn’t the Eastport Ladies’ Reading Circle meeting in your dining room in”—she frowned in pretended thought—“just five days?”
    “Oh, good heavens.” Like my unexpected house-guest, it was another thing I’d completely forgotten.
    “With,” she went on, twinkling mischievously, “items like silver coffeepots and china teacups? Linen tablecloths, little sandwiches with the crusts cut off, and so on?”
    All that and more: tiny lobster-paste-filled puff pastries. Petit-fours hand-dipped and decorated with candied violets. Ellie is by no means a fan of little sandwiches with