The Tessa Randolph Collection, Books 1-3 by Paula Lester (good short books .TXT) 📕

mouth to agree—why not have a beer she didn’t have to pay for? But before she could say the word, a movement near the ceiling a few feet away caught her attention. She whipped her head around to focus on it. Sure enough, Chet Sanborn’s spirit hovered there. When he saw her looking at him, he flew toward the kitchen. “I, uh, I gotta go!”

“Rain check,” Ricardo called after her.

She dashed after Chet.

While he had the benefit of flying over everyone’s heads—he even went right through a woman’s hat—Tessa had to go around people.

When Chet’s semi-transparent form disappeared into the kitchen, Tessa hesitated, then groaned. She plowed through the swinging door after him. The ghost headed straight toward the back door with Tessa barreling along behind him. She dodged one of the cooks, who swore at her.

“Wash out your mouth, Louie,” she said out of habit.

She caught a glimpse of Frank’s shocked face looking at her from his tiny office tucked off the corner of the big kitchen, but she didn’t slow down. Tessa hit the easy-push bar handle of the back door and burst out into the alley. The irony wasn’t lost on her. She’d been so happy to avoid the stinky back entrance, and there she was anyway, trying to breathe through her mouth to avoid the horrible odor. It smelled like week-old buffet, a bit sweet and a lot sour.

Dusk had fallen, and Tessa stumbled to a halt so she didn’t run into something as her eyes adjusted to the dimness. She looked around wildly, heart pounding as she worried that she’d lost her mark again. But she caught a glimpse of him heading out of the short alley into the employee parking lot and raced after him, cursing the fact that she was wearing heels.

When she hit the parking lot’s asphalt, Tessa considered removing the shoes and running in bare feet, but she knew that would risk cutting herself on glass or worse. Keeping a neat employee parking lot wasn’t Frank’s strong suit. He preferred to focus on the front of the restaurant and even that was iffy at times.

Chet’s spirit slowed and spun around as though checking to see if the reaper was still after him.

“Stop!” Tessa couldn’t shout as loudly as normal because she was already out of breath. “I just want to talk to you for a minute.”

Chet shook his head. He looked almost solid for a second, but when he turned and the light from a nearby street lamp hit him, his form was semi-transparent again. “You want to send me to the great beyond. I can’t go. Not yet.”

“Why?” she crowed after him. “It’s the next stage in your journey. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“I’m not afraid. I just need to tell my son I’m sorry.”

Tessa took a few steps forward, but the spirit flitted backward an equal distance. “Your son? Mark?”

The ghost nodded.

“But he killed you. Didn’t he? He was arrested this afternoon.”

“No,” Chet argued. “That isn’t right. My boy would never do that.”

Tessa used the moment of distraction to edge forward again. “When I talked to Mark, he seemed pretty angry with you.”

Sanborn reached up and scratched a spot in the ring of hair, just like he’d done routinely when he was alive. Tessa wondered if ghosts had itches or if they just retained the habits from their living days. “I didn’t say he didn’t have a right to do it. I just said he didn’t.”

“Then who did?”

Sanborn’s spirit made eye contact with Tessa. It caused a chilly feeling to run up her back. He shrugged. “I don’t know. I had a lot of enemies. I owed a lot of people money and didn’t play by the rules. Even the rules of criminals.

“But my boy is innocent. And I’m just not ready to go.” In the blink of an eye, Sanborn dove into the street light’s pole and was gone.

Tessa growled and clenched her fists. She hung around for ten minutes watching the orange glow of the light, figuring Chet would have to come out eventually. But her stomach started grumbling, and with another groan of frustration, she turned back toward the restaurant.

Maybe she could still get Ricardo to buy her that beer.

Chapter 12

THE NEXT MORNING, TESSA was dragging. She had a blister on each heel from the stupid pumps. And that morning, she’d stepped in cat puke—of course Pepper had the gall to look innocent.

Seriously, how hard was it to find an out-of-the-way, easy-to-clean spot to bring up a hairball? But, noooo. The cat had to leave it right beside the bed where Tessa was sure to place her first footfall of the day.

Oh, and she hadn’t caught Chet Sanborn’s spirit, so the world was probably going to end soon. When it did, it would be entirely her fault.

Talk about a bad week.

That’s why she headed into the office on a Saturday. She couldn’t sleep, and the four walls of her apartment had seemed to be closing in on her. Or maybe it was the air there, threatening to constrict her throat.

Tessa had to find Chet Sanborn’s spirit before it was too late. But at least she knew why he was still here. He wanted to tell Mark that he was sorry. And he probably wanted to know who had killed him—if it wasn’t Mark. Tessa realized she’d like to know that too.

Tessa needed her space to cool off and think.

The office was abandoned when she got there, so Tessa spent twenty minutes figuring out how to work the industrial-size coffee maker. In the end, she had to make a full pot, so now there was enough coffee for her to avoid sleeping for about a week.

But coffee hadn’t even helped break her bad mood. She was on her second cup and sitting at her desk when even those four walls felt more confining than her apartment’s. On a whim, she went into her mother’s office to have a look around. Cheryl