Page 54 of My Blind Date is a Ghost

I shake my head. “I ignored the signs.”

“Ignored the signs that he was going to poison you?” Sophia asks.

“No,” I say. “But the signs that he was unhappy. Or at least, just how unhappy. I knew he wanted more than to be a schoolteacher. That he had dreams of moving to Philadelphia. I had hoped that he would settle. That he would realize that our simple, stable life in Mystic Cove was enough. But I never would have guessed that my life was in danger. That he would kill me to get what he wanted. Does anyone here know what happened to him after his death? Did he at least become a bigshot politician?”

“Umm…not exactly,” Sophia says, pulling some papers out of her folder. “It took some digging, first to find out what happened to Edward Barnes and Elizabeth Crowley, and then to track down their descendants.”

She lays the papers out in front of us. One is an advertisement, showing Edward running for office. “He moved to Boston first. He ran for office there, as state representative, but he was soundly beaten. After that, he and Elizabeth moved every couple of years. It seems that he was looking for areas with low or no political opposition.”

“He only ran in places where he would be unopposed?” Beckett asks, and I can tell he’s trying not to laugh.

“Yes. But even in those places, he often could not secure his party’s nomination,” Sophia explains. “He did win a few races, but only at the local level. He was never sent farther than a state’s capital city, Boston, Charleston, places like that. He never made it to Philadelphia, or, later, to Washington D.C.”

“And Elizabeth was with him all that time?” I ask.

Sophia shakes her head. “Not exactly. It seems the moving around took its toll on her and their marriage. They never divorced, but she eventually moved back to Mystic Cove without him to raise her children. She had family here, after all, and her children were witches, so they would have more support here.”

“So, who are her descendants today?” I ask. “Are they members of the Barnes family?”

“No,” she says, pulling out what looks like a family tree. “She kept her maiden name, and she only had daughters. So, the daughters married into other supernatural families in Mystic Cove, mostly witch families. Today, the line has dwindled quite a bit, mainly to the Clarke family.” I can see Sophia’s hand shaking as she points to this part of the family tree.

“Sophia, what’s wrong?” I ask her.

“Jerome Clarke and his now-wife, Hailey, used to torment me when we were at school together.”

“They were recently banned from the coven after they attacked Sophia when the coven met to recharge the lay lines around Mystic Cove,” Jacob explains, rubbing his wife’s back.

“Sounds like they would have an excuse to try and use dark magic,” Beckett says. “Do you think they are trying to get revenge on the town? Can they use the energy from someone like Cora for that?”

Jacob rubs his chin. “According to Dante, the most evil people are those who betray others, especially those they love. Therefore, people who are killed by those they love are the most wronged, the ones most likely to carry anger, hurt, and sorrow to the afterlife. So, yes, in theory, someone like Cora would carry a lot of energy.”

“But I didn’t know I was killed by my own husband until right now,” I say.

“The Clarke’s don’t know that,” Jacob says.

“But how would they know about Cora at all?” Beverly asks. “It was Jeremiah Holland who was blamed for Cora’s death, not Edward. No one knew she was poisoned.”

“No one but Edward,” Beckett says. “And possibly Elizabeth. She could have been in on it.”

“And they could have told their children,” Jacob says. “It could have been passed down in family lore. It might be in the family Book of Shadows.”

“Then let’s go,” Beverly says, jumping up.

“Go where?” I ask.

“To the Clarke family home,” she says. “Either they are the people trying to capture you are they aren’t, but there’s only one way to find out.”

CHAPTER 23

BECKETT

“Wait,” I say, being the responsible detective I am.

Everyone, even Cora, had already been heading out the door, but they all stop and look at me.

“You can’t just go barging into someone’s house. That’s trespassing and breaking and entering.” I feel like I am explaining the law to a bunch of third-graders. “I’m pretty sure we don’t even have enough cause for a warrant. We need to find actual evidence that this family, the Clarkes, are even involved in this.”

“People doing dark magic in secret aren’t likely to leave much evidence lying around, are they?” Jacob asks, clearly annoyed at me putting the kibosh on their merry band of pitchfork-wielding villagers.

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