Little Ghost Lost (Destiny Bay Cozy Mysteries Book 5) Read Online Free PDF Page B

care of a young ghost?”
    She rolled her eyes. “You take her back,” she muttered, getting monotonous. “Until then, put her out in the yard. She don’t need to be coddled. She’s not… not….”
    Not alive? Even Aunty couldn’t say the word. I felt a small surge of triumph. She was feeling something for this waif too, wasn’t she?
    Maybe, but she was definitely restless. She didn’t want to stay in that room. I could feel it. So I gently coaxed Mandy to lean against a pillow and got up to go out with Aunty.  
    “No words of wisdom?” I said as we walked through the kitchen. “No warnings to keep my door locked against her in the night?”
    She made a grunting sound as though she’d about had it with me. I still had on the jacket I’d worn all day and as we walked, I felt something hard hit against my hipbone. Slipping my hand into my pocket, I felt the glass box I’d put there at the Pennington House and I pulled it out.  
    “Oh Aunty, look at this. I saw it in the trash at the old house and for some reason, I just had to have it. I just love the way this enamel rose lies in that swoosh curve against the glass.” I held it out for her to see. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
    Aunty had stopped dead. If a ghost could turn pale, that was exactly what she did. Reaching out, she barely touched it and then she stared at me. “You found this in da kine trash?” she said hoarsely.  
    I nodded. “In one of the bedrooms. Someone had begun pulling things apart in there and this was in a large trash bin with old notebooks and curtains and that sort of thing.”
    Aunty shook her head, a look half way between fear and wonder on her kindly face. “Your mother had a box just like that,” she said softly. “I remember it so well. I never knew what happened to that box. I always thought she took it with her when she left. But how could it get here?”
    Suddenly I was short of breath and tingling all over. How indeed? And how strange that I had felt such a strong pull toward it from the very beginning.  
    Aunty Jane still looked fearful. “Put it on the counter,” she said. “Let me see it in the light.”
    I did as she asked and she examined it from all sides. I watched her, still excited about the box. But little by little, common sense calmed me down. After all, it was probably one of many such boxes produced in the twenties. There was just no reasonable way it could have anything to do with my mother. I was pretty sure Aunty Jane had made it up anyway.
    She looked up at me as though a light bulb had just gone off over her head.  
    “That’s it,” she said. “That box is the little girl’s place holder. That’s why she came here with you. You took her place holder.” She gave a short, barking laugh, as though it was quite a joke on me. “Now you’re stuck with her,” she said. “Too bad.”  
    And she was out the door.  
    I turned and went back to the bedroom and looked at Mandy. Jane was right. Now she was my responsibility. The first thing I should do is get the ground rules settled and probably start limiting her TV time.  
    But then I caught myself and almost laughed. I had to be logical and practical about things. Mandy wasn’t going to grow up and go to college. She wasn’t going to have a career or need study time. If she wanted to watch a little TV, let her.  
    Okay. So much for that. We weren’t going to have to fight over TV time.  
    I went back out to the kitchen and looked at the enameled box, turning it in my hands. It was beautiful, probably an antique. But surely there were hundreds just like it all over the world. Just because it looked like something my mother had owned didn’t mean a thing. I set it down and left it there, drawn back to the bedroom with the little ghost watching television.
    But I knew I was going to have to leave her in the morning. I had to go back to that gloomy old house and it gave me the willies just thinking about it. I needed help. I picked up my