Page 19 of Cadaver Lab: Mind Over Murder

Her brows shot up. “Something like what?”

“Like whispering,” he admitted.

“Ah, ha! I told you.”

“And this is exactly why I didn’t want to tell you.” He stood.

“No. Wait. I’m not saying I told you so, like that. I’m just saying, I heard it too.”

“And we know it’s not Gabe messing around?” he asked.

“It couldn’t have been the night of the meeting. He was at the community center already when I heard it in your lab. When did you hear it?”

“Yesterday morning, right before Carson came to question me.”

She shook her head. “Gabe was here with me and Harper then.”

“And he didn’t enlist one of his ghost friends to do it?”

“I mean he could have, to try to scare me, but not you. You can’t hear any of the ghosts except Gabe and Millie and only when they’re together.”

“You’re right.” He looked unhappy with that answer.

The scientist in him no doubt wanted definitive, concrete answers. But his world, where his girlfriend saw ghosts, rarely provided definitive anything.

As Liam obviously was procrastinating going to the lab to work on his creepy brain, Natalie glanced at the time.

One hour until she had to unlock the shop door and face customers...while trying not to puke on them. Or wonder who was whispering in Liam’s lab. It was a lot, considering.

Today might be a good day to call in Jules and see if she could work. Maybe just for the morning shift. She should charge Alice for Jules’s wages since the peyote hangover was all her fault.

“Natalie!” Gabe running at full speed through the back door of the apartment while tugging Millie behind him startled her out of her misery. “The sheriff came to get Harper!” he announced, sounding out of breath even though she wasn’t sure ghosts actually breathed.

“Because of Pompous Doug?” she asked, trying to wrap her head around the ramifications of this new information.

“Carson actually arrested her?” Liam demanded. He’d heard too as Gabe clutched Millie by the hand.

Gabe shook his head. “No. Not Carson. The head guy. The mean one.”

“It was the sheriff. That’s what makes us think it’s serious,” Millie explained.

That did sound serious. Natalie may have had numerous run ins with the deputy, but never the actual sheriff.

“It can’t be over Doug’s heart attack. Do you know for sure that’s what this was about? And was she actually arrested or just brought in for questioning?” Liam asked, looking at the totally wrong spot as he tried to direct the question to the ghosts who were still invisible to him.

Gabe sat in a kitchen chair, pulling Millie into his lap. “That’s the strange part. He said it had something to do with a car accident.”

“A car accident?” Natalie repeated, deciding she’d better sit herself.

She did, setting down the mug of the currently unappetizing coffee. She braced both forearms on the table for support since remaining upright was challenging.

“I definitely heard him say Harper had caused a car accident,” Millie said.

“When?” Natalie sucked in a breath. “Oh, no. She didn’t drive last night while we were tripping on peyote, did she?”

“Alice drugged them again,” Liam explained for the benefit of the ghosts in the room who weren’t at the meeting last night.

“Yeah. We heard. Stone’s been ranting about it for the past twelve hours,” Gabe told him. “And no, it wasn’t last night and she wasn’t driving. From what I can tell, she had to mail a package this morning, so she got up early and walked to the post office.”