Overview

Some secrets should stay buried.

Ghost hunter Verity Long is no stranger to scandal. In fact, it seems to follow her around like her pet skunk, Lucy. But Verity is as shocked as anybody when a town relic discovered in a time capsule unleashes a torrent of secrets that lead to murder.

Trouble is, the only residents in Sugarland who know the truth behind the scandal also happen to be very dead themselves. With a killer on the loose and a town in crisis, Verity braves a side of Sugarland she’s never seen before. From a booby-trapped haunted mansion to a run-in with the spirit of Sugarland’s most notorious blackmailer who may hold the key to setting mob ghost Frankie free…for a price.

But when a live killer gets an inside track on Verity’s investigation, will she live long enough to give up the ghost?

Excerpt

Verity is investigating a murder and Frankie is being…Frankie. When they stumble on a ghost with a secret.

The ghost of Rowena Jones glared down at me, her mouth thin with displeasure. Her cheeks were hollow and her eyes sunken into the bone.

I stared at her, trying to make sense of what she’d just said. “If your sister’s ghost is grounded, she’s somewhere here in the house. Or at least on the property, right?”

That’s how it was for Frankie at my house.

“She was.” Rowena clutched the whiskey bottle she’d snatched from Frankie. “Until one day, she escaped. I don’t know how.”

Hold the phone. “She ungrounded herself?” I managed.

Frankie shrieked.

“Yes,” Rowena smashed the bottle on the floor. “She did. I don’t even know how I grounded her, but the diabolical twit did it. She got away!”

“Oh my word,” I said to Frankie, who looked like he needed to start breathing into a paper bag. “Do you know what this means?”

“It means I can smoke and drink and live and do whatever I want,” he said, bracing his hands on his knees. “I’m gone! I’m out of here!” He gasped. “I can be out on Main Street, robbing an armored truck quicker than you can say, ‘Freeze, mister!’”

Not yet. But for the first time, I had hope that we could actually set him free. Now we just needed to find Rowena’s dead sister.

She had to know what she’d done to escape. She was cunning. She was smart.

She was gone.

“Oh, we’ll get her,” Rowena said, as the shards of the broken bottle flew back together, bringing the whiskey with them as they formed back into a whole bottle in her hand. “She’ll come home one of these days. She might even have a little rage of her own built up, and she’ll think she can take this place away from me. She’ll try. Mark my words.”

“I’m sure that’ll be lovely,” I said, my mind still spinning. But I couldn’t wait for Rowena’s sister to brave her way back. I had a murder case to solve. And unlike Rowena, I didn’t have all the time in the world.

“She loves Old Rip Van Winkle,” Rowena said, glaring at the whiskey bottle as if anything connected to her sister was rotten.

“It must be tasty,” I said automatically. It had sure gotten my ghost in the stealing mood. Although he never needed much help. But we had to return to the matter at hand. “Do you have any idea where your sister might be now?” I asked, just to be sure.

“Yes, but it’s not like I can drag her home,” she ground out. “I’m not that strong.”

“Maybe I can track her down,” I said, glancing at Frankie. “If you tell me where she is.”

“Yeah,” the gangster said, straightening, “That’s Verity’s talent. She can…bring ghosts different places,” he added, lying like he was born to it. Which he probably was. “I didn’t want to come here today, but voila.”

The ghost’s forehead furrowed. “She bent a gangster to her will?”

“I’m Frankie the German,” he informed her, as if she should know his name. “Men fear me. Women love me. Verity…is in a class by herself.”

Rowena stared at him, as if deciding whether or not she should team up with a live girl and the ghost who’d tried to steal her Old Rip Van Winkle.

To be fair, she was right to be suspicious. Frankie wouldn’t know the truth if it bit him and I had no intention of delivering some poor ghost to Rowena to be tortured again, no matter what kind of person either one of them had been in life.

Rowena frowned and drew up to her full height. “Don’t cross me,” she warned.

“We’d never,” I vowed.

“Except when there’s Old Rip Van Winkle in the mix,” Frankie added. “Then I can’t promise anything.”

Maybe it was that bit of honesty that snagged her.