Page 51 of The Accidental Ghost

Suddenly, she saw it. “There!” Ralph shouted. “That folder with my name on it. The one with the sketches of fruit on the front.” Ralph paused, looking over the sketch. “Wow, he’s pretty good, that’s an amazingly realistic pineapple.”

Shamus agreed as he held it up to show her. “Yeah. He’s really good. Look at that kiwi, huh? The detail is amazing.”

“Hey!” Nina yelped. “This isn’t a fucking art class. Find what we need and let’s get the fuck out.”

Shamus dropped the file to the desk and opened it. As he’d feared, the first picture was of Ralph’s body, sprawled on the floor of her store, a pool of blood underneath her shoulder.

To her credit, she didn’t make a sound, but Shamus could have lived out his eternity not seeing this kind, compassionate, beautiful woman’s dead body.

“You still okay?” Looking at her face, he searched her eyes to find any signs of distress.

“Hurry up and keep digging,” she insisted with determination. “We don’t have much time before we get caught!”

He continued to flip the pages of the file, skimming the preliminary autopsy report, the pictures of her wounds the coroner had taken.

“There!” she yelled in his ear, making him jump. “Stop there.”

Shamus looked down at yet another picture, this time of a man, but she couldn’t tell if it was who had grabbed her in Hell.

Then he found another photo—one of a dead man with shaggy, greasy dark hair, lying on a sidewalk, a stab wound in his neck.

“Appears the victim, Raphaela Tucci, fought back before she was shot? Suspect got away, but later died of internal injuries,” Ralph whispered, her tone appalled, her eyes wide as she gripped the strands of her necklaces. “What?”

Shamus nodded, still stunned. “You fought back. It says here the pathologist claims the stab wounds the suspect suffered are from a utility knife with your fingerprints on it. They think you were using it to open packages. You fought back, Ralph. You fought back.”

She’d killed someone? The horror of that made her stomach roll. “I…I killed him… I…” Words failed her. It left her distraught.

And then she saw the suspect’s name. The name Drucinda had said before crossing.

Michael.

Chapter

Sixteen

Ralph barely kept from fleeing and finding somewhere to hide, but she couldn’t do that. She’d committed a heinous crime. She had to own that.

Maybe this was why she was half ghost, half whatever she was. Maybe she did deserve to be a screwed-up ghost. Maybe she did deserve to be in Hell—even if, according to the report, it had been self-defense.

“Michael,” Shamus muttered. “That’s the name Drucinda used before she crossed, right?”

She almost couldn’t concentrate on Shamus’s voice for the distress she felt at what she’d done. “It is. But…”

Shamus held up the photos of the man. “Do you recognize him? Is this the guy who grabbed you in Hell?”

Her throat felt like it was going to close up as she squinted and tried to focus. “I can’t tell. It all happened so fast, and the one of him…dead…” She shook her head in frustration. “I can’t tell!”

Shamus dropped the file on the desk and began taking pictures of the suspect and the written notes before he tucked his phone back in his jacket pocket. “We have to get out of here, Ralph.”

“Lovers? You fucking done in there?” Nina bellowed. “I can feel my shit starting to slip. Let’s get it on!”

Shamus tidied up the desk and made a break for the doors with Ralph in hot pursuit.

As he skidded out the doors, he stopped short and headed for Nina.

By then, the police officer was coming out of his bizarre trance. He stared at Nina with a strange look. “Can I help you?”

Nina shook her head, tucking her hair behind her ears. “Sorry. Thought this was the Dunkin’ Donuts. Musta confused our directions.” Then she turned to Shamus and scolded with a frown, “Jesus Christ, sugar plum, how the hell did you confuse a police station with a glazed donut and a Boston cream? Silly goose!” She tweaked his nose playfully before threading her arm though his and leading them toward the exit.

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