"So, where are you from?" Javier asked as they set to work.

"Chicago. Well, the suburbs, really."

"Really? I've always wanted to go to Chicago. My dad went once when he was younger, and he really liked it."

"Well, I like it. Of course, it's home to me. You said that you're from Texas originally?"

Javier nodded. "San Antonio."

"So you know a lot of cowboys and cattle ranchers, then?"

Javier's only response was laughter.

"That wasn't meant to be funny."

"I know," he choked out between guffaws, "I'm just surprised you didn't ask me about oil barons, too."

"Why? Aren't there oil barons in Texas?"

"Oh, yeah, sure. And there might even be a few in San Antonio, but it's not like that old TV show, Dallas, you know. Most people in San Antonio are just," he paused, "people."

They went back to work for another couple of minutes.

"So," Javier asked, deadpan, "how many gangsters do you know?"

"Gangsters?"

"Sure. You're from Chicago, aren't you?" He let a little humor creep into his tone this time, and Sally could tell that he was putting her on.

"Javier!" she cried, exasperated.

"Well, you deserved that," he argued.

"Agreed."

Another silence descended on them.

"So, how many kids were in your family?" she asked.

"Five. Four boys and one girl."

"The girl was the youngest?" she guessed.

"No. Actually, Rosie's right in the middle. Emilio and I are older than she is, and Gilbert and Enrique are younger. How about your family?"

"There's four of us. Two boys, two girls. I'm sort of the oldest."

"Sort of?"

"Well, I was adopted, so I came to the family last, but I'm older than Jason. He was the eldest, until I came along."

"How old were you when you were adopted?"

"I don't know." She shrugged. "11, 12 . . . ."

"How come you don't know?"

"I don't remember my early years. My biological mother just dropped me off at the hospital one day and never came back for me. Well, at least she said she was my mother."

"Really?"

Sally nodded. They had stopped work and so they sat down on the floor.

"I was in the foster care system for a year, and then the Bradfords came to adopt me. They've been my parents ever since."

"Why'd your mother take you to the hospital?"

"I had a really bad case of pneumonia. They actually thought that I wouldn't survive at first. But I did, and here I am."

"And we're all glad you did."

Sally favored her new friend with a warm smile. They went back and continued working in companionable silence for a while after that.

The silence was broken by Carolyn opening the front door. "Sally?"

"We're in the drawing room, Carolyn!" Sally called out.

Clutching a red-and-white striped bag in her hand, Carolyn walked into the living room. "Oh, my God! You guys have been doing great!"

Javier laughed. "That's not us. It's Sally. She did most of this last night."

"Sally?" Carolyn looked at her tenant.

"Well, I had a lot of energy last night, so I thought I'd get started," she shrugged. "Oh! And Carolyn Hawkes, this is Javier de la Cruz," she introduced her friend to her landlady.

"Pleased to meet you," Carolyn said, as she extended her hand for Javier to shake.

"Well, we'd better get eating before this gets cold. I hope that chicken's OK with the two of you."

"Fine with me." Javier said.

"I'll eat anything at this point!" Sally exclaimed.

Sally ran upstairs and grabbed a blanket, which they spread out on the floor, and sat down on. Carolyn played hostess and served up the fried chicken to her two workers.

As they finished up their lunch, Javier asked, "Mrs. Hawkes?"

"Please, call me Carolyn."

"All right. Carolyn? Are you in the market for another tenant?"

"Why? Do you have someone in mind?"

"Sure do. Me."

"You?" Sally asked, astonished. "You want to move in here?"

"Why not? I like working with my hands, and there's plenty of work to do around here. Plus, it'll give us a little more money to spend on renovations if we pool our resources."

Carolyn looked dubious. "I'm not sure that would be a good idea."

"Why?" Sally asked.

"Well, having a man and a woman living alone here might not be the best thing. . ."

"Jeb'll keep him honest." Sally assured her landlady.

"He's the other thing. Has Javier met Jeb yet?" Carolyn asked.

"Not that I'm aware of. . ."

The two women glanced over at Javier, but he didn't register any recognition of Jeb's name. "All right, what are you two talking about?" Javier asked in a half-joking tone.

"Javier? Do you believe in ghosts?" Sally asked.

"Ghosts? You mean like and the ones my grandmother used to tell me about? La Llorona and all that?"

"La What?" Carolyn asked.

"La Llorona. The crying woman."

"We have one of those," Carolyn said. "Her name's Josette."

"What's she being punished for?" Javier asked.

"Punished? Why do you think that she's being punished?"

"La Llorona is always being punished for something. Most often, it's for murdering her children."

Sally shuddered. "That's gruesome."

"I think that was the point. You see, my grandmother would tell us that La Llorona had killed her children and was punished by having to walk the earth for the rest of time. She hates all children, who aren't hers, and, well, she's supposed to kill any children she comes across."

"And *what* was the point, specifically?" Carolyn asked.

"To make us stay indoors after dark." He grinned at the two women.

"Well, Jeb's not like that. He's not a legend. He's my late husband," Carolyn said.

"You're telling me that this house is haunted by the ghost of your husband?" It was clear that Javier didn't believe her.

"Do you know where he is?" Sally asked Carolyn. When she shook her head, Sally suggested, "Well, I'm just going to have to send him an e-mail and see if he can come by," Sally walked over to her laptop, booted it up, and set to typing.

"Wait. Now you're telling me that you have a ghost who gets e-mail? This is getting just *too* weird."

Carolyn said, with a conspiratorial smile at Javier. "It took me a while to get used to this, too. The e-mail thing, I mean. Jeb's been with me since 1969, and he used to communicate with us using a sort of 'automatic writing.' You would hold a pen in your hand, and Jeb would move it to say what he wanted to say. I've got to admit that since Sally introduced Jeb to the Internet, it's opened up a whole new world for Jeb. He even has a job, now."

Javier wasn't sure if Carolyn was putting him on or not.

"Javier! Carolyn! Come here! I've found him."

When the other two took seats on the floor next to Sally, Sally performed the introductions. "Jeb Hawkes, this is Javier de la Cruz."

{Hi, Javier! :-)} Jeb typed on the screen.

"How'd you do that?" Javier asked.

"Do what?"

"Get the keys to move like that. I mean, it would be pretty easy to write a program that scrolls text like that, but making the keys move -- that's pretty impressive."

Carolyn and Sally exchanged a smile. "It really is my late husband, Javier." Carolyn said.

"Right. Sure it is. All right, Mr. Hawkes, if you're a ghost, you can walk through walls, doors, things like that, right?"

{Yes . . .}

"I'm staying in Room 302 at the Collinsport Inn. I left a book on my nightstand. If you can tell me what it is, I just *might* start to believe you."

A little over a minute later, Jeb came back with his answer. {There isn't a book on the nightstand.}

Javier smirked.

{But there's a hardback copy of The Three Musketeers on the desk.}

Javier's jaw dropped. "How could you possibly have known that?" he asked Sally.

"I didn't," Sally explained, enunciating clearly, as if she suspected that Javier wasn't terribly bright. "Jeb went to your room and saw it there."

Carolyn pulled Sally aside. "How's Jeb going to keep Javier honest if Javier thinks that he's just a parlor trick?"

"Yeah. Maybe he shouldn't move in here."

"Well, would you mind a more visible chaperone?"

"Are you offering to move in here yourself?"

Carolyn laughed. "No. I grew up in this house. That was plenty for me. I was thinking of Beth. She's been after me to let her move in here for *ages,* so she'd be more than willing to chaperone the two of you. And you can do the same for her and Devin."

"Sounds good to me."

"Great! I'll take him to meet David tomorrow," Carolyn noticed that Sally's expression fell at the mention of David's name, "and if David approves, he and Beth can move in on Tuesday!"

Collinsport – Part 31

MONDAY

When the phone rang, Azura answered it. "Chance residence."

"Azura? It's me, Pete."

It took a second for Azura to remember who he was. Then it came to her -- he was the delivery person she had met on the previous Monday. "Hi, Pete! What can I do for you?"

"Well, with Christmas coming and all, I've got a lot of deliveries to make, and I'm running behind. This week's box isn't so big, so I was wondering if you'd mind if I just dropped the box on your doorstep and left?"

"Sure. That'd be fine."

It never occurred to Azura to be upset about Pete's request. She was too excited about the opportunity to examine one of Colin Chance's Amazon.com boxes.

A few minutes later, Azura heard a knock on the door. She opened it and saw Pete's truck driving away from the house. At her feet was a cardboard box with a yellow post-it note on it saying "Thanks! Pete"

Azura stood there and stared at the box for a while, wondering if she should open it. Her curiosity was killing her. She paced back and forth. {Mr. Chance is going to have noticed that Pete brought his books. Am I going to do this or not?}

She went to the desk and picked up a pair of scissors. She contemplated slitting the tape and retaping the box after looking through its contents.

{And if he noticed that the truck came, he might be watching me right now. I'd better not do it.}

She picked up the box and carried it up the stairs. Just as she was about to knock on the door three times, as Pete had done the previous week, she noticed that the plastic envelope containing the packing slip had slit open.

{Should I?} she wondered. She'd noticed that there were no mirrors where she was at the top of the stairs. She gave in to her temptation, reaching into the pocket and pulling out the packing slip.

{French history, Roman history, Economics . . . . Probably just research . . .} Then the name of a writer caught her attention. {Outlander. By Diana Gabaldon.}

She put the packing slip back into its pocket, knocked three times, and went back down the stairs.

* * * * *

Javier, having been approved by David to move into Collinwood, had just finished eating his first dinner at Carolyn's as a member of the Hawkes/Jennings/Bradford family, now the Hawkes/Jennings/Bradford/de la Cruz family, and was finding his place in the general post Monday night dinner cleanup/dishwashing ritual. Sally wandered away from the happy throng, drawn by the sound of a grandfather clock chiming the hour.

"Sally?" Carolyn asked when she caught up to her tenant in a back bedroom of the carriage house.

Sally looked back at Carolyn. "Yes?"

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah. Fine. I've just never noticed this clock here before."

"That's probably because it hasn't been here. It just came back from being cleaned."

"Is this the clock that used to stand in the foyer?"

"Yes. . ." Carolyn was wondering where this was going.

"At the risk of sounding crass, can I ask you what time your Uncle Roger killed himself?"

Carolyn laughed, slightly self-consciously. "About midnight. Why?"

"Was he still . . . there . . . at 4:20?"

"No. David had found him by then." Carolyn placed her hand on Sally's shoulder. "You sound like you're going somewhere with this."

"I don't know if I mentioned to you that I saw your Uncle Roger's ghost once a couple of weeks ago."

"All right. . ."

"I also saw," she pointed at the clock, "this. And it was set at 4:20."

"4:20? Are you sure?"

Sally nodded. "Jeb said that Roger was trying to tell me something, but that all he could get out of him was that he was waiting."

"For?"

Sally shrugged. "I don't know."

* * * * *

Her palms sweating, Azura put the finishing touches to the note she was going to put on Colin's dinner tray. It explained that the packing slip happened to fall out of the plastic envelope (she hoped he didn't know that she stretched the truth a bit on that) and that she noticed that {Outlander,} one of her favorite books, was in that shipment. She ended it by asking him for his thoughts on the book once he finished it, signed it, and put it on the tray for Zoe to take upstairs to her father.

* * * * *

The two women stood looking at the clock for a moment. Then Sally reached a hand out and touched the center of the face of the clock, lightly tracing a line toward the "4."

"4:20," she said. "Both hands pointing toward the four."

"Right?"

"What if the hands are pointing not at the time, but at a place?" She continued the line to the place where the front and side of the clock met. There, among the carvings, one of the pieces of wood gave under her hand.

With a click, a panel in the side of the clock opened, and Sally reached in, drawing out a book. She opened the cover. On the flyleaf was written the words, *The Journal of Joshua Collins, 1796 - 1800*