Page 59 of The Aura Answer
Aware of the towering Cajun trailing a distance behind her, Evie took the stairs to the second floor where she usually found the spirits of Bertie and Block. Jax had told her that Rhodes had no session at this hour. That didn’t mean the judge wasn’t around.
The courtroom floor was relatively quiet with no juries in session. She opened the janitor’s closet hoping to find Bertie first, even if she had no idea what to ask him. “We found your sketches,” she whispered, hoping he’d appear. “Gracie says the mantel one is lovely.”
“Jeez,” Roark muttered from the rotunda. “Dat’s one hella draft.”
Evie backed out of the closet. Roark of the thick skin hadn’t worn a coat or even long sleeves, all the better to show off his bronzed biceps and tats, she figured. He had his hands shoved in his jeans pockets now.
For good reason.BothBlock and Bertie were glaring at each other in the area where they’d essentially both died. Interesting. Apparently just her presence acted as magnet.
Evie pulled out her cell phone so she could fake talking into it as she approached the freezing energy. “Good morning, gentlemen. Disagreement?”
Roark backed off, standing guard over the main stairs as she took a bench near the railing in the rotunda.
It’s all his fault!Bertie cried.Everyone says so.
Who is everyone?Block countered in obvious boredom.I don’t have to listen to this moron.
“Wait, wait,” Evie cried, keeping her voice low and exerting her mental one. She didn’t want to play the blame game, for whatever blame they were flinging. “Don’t go yet. Is Rhodes in his chamber? Then we have to talk here. Bertie found a drawing of Main Street USA. Do you know anything about that?”
Bertie’s rainbow beamed with pride. He knew what he’d done.
Block’s aura swirled erratically.Big plans. Put us on the map.He swirled into a gray outline of himself facing Bertie’s rainbow.You stole that drawing!
He told me to.Bertie developed a nice bright orange streak.Land needs protecting.
That pretty much sounded like something Toby, the mayor’s son, would say—worried about his danged frogs and not the people being trampled. Translating ghost-speak took a clairvoyant, which Evie wasn’t. “What land, Bertie?”
Toby had protected Witch Hill against his father’s depredations because of some stray frog or toad, and his father had gone to jail in consequence. Surely Layman wasn’t after her family’s frog-infested land? Why would Toby be involved otherwise?
Swamp.He saysswamps are important, but I like houses.
Moron, Block repeated.Swamps should be drained and then you’d have houses! A trailer park would go there! Your mama would like her own trailer, wouldn’t she?
“Wait a minute, wait a minute!” Evie’s head spun. “What swamp? What trailer park?” Even her leapfrogging brain couldn’t put all these pieces together at once.
“Evie? Who are you talking to? What is this about swamps?”
The ghosts vaporized, and Evie was looking up at Judge Satterwhite. Well, if she was a ghost magnet, the judge was an anti-magnet.
Roark had mysteriously disappeared into the woodwork. He wasn’t good with authority.
She pretended to click off her phone. With two spirits draining the battery, it was dead already. “Hi, Your Honor. Is Toby protecting another swamp?”
The judge looked a little grayer than usual. “Wetlands out behind the farmhouse and where the fruit stand used to be. We used to go fishing out there, but the creek dried up. It’s just a watershed in rainy season now, like your family’s pond. Toby has another bee in his bonnet is all.”
“But someone wants to build a trailer park on it?” Evie could just imagine the mosquitoes. But itdidsound like something Blockhead would do. After he’d torn down the perfectly good mobile home park in town for a city parking lot, he’d probably got it in his head to put another on a swamp, believing people would begrateful. Typical.
The judge nodded uncomfortably. “It was mentioned in the discussion of selling my land. I don’t know how Toby knew about it. Was that in his father’s papers?”
“Probably, and you know how Toby is about the environment and his frogs. But Bertie knew about it too. Given what you’ve said about threats...”
On the other side of the rotunda, Judge Rhodes exited his courtroom, and Satterwhite shut up. Instead of heading down the stairs, the younger judge stalked over to join them. “The heatstill isn’t working right. We need to tear down this piece of crap and build a modern courthouse with insulation and real heat.”
Evie wasn’t certain this was addressed to her, but the idea of ripping out the historic courthouse didn’t sit well. She yanked off her knit cap so her hair spilled out, just to make certain he didn’t think she was a plumber. She was starting to wonder about his eyesight. “Global warming, Your Honor. You’ll welcome the cold in years to come. Or you could give the ghosts what they want, they’ll leave, and it will warm up instantly.”
Rhodes stared as if she’d blinked into a magic genie. Or witch. But her orange hair was more clown than witchy. Evie offered her best smile.
“Ghosts?” he asked warily, perhaps sizing her up for a straitjacket.
