Read Haunted Guest House Mystery 03-Old Haunts for Free Online Page A

vacationers—and after spending enough years in town, you knew which was which—picked through the Jersey corn and tomatoes, and even the occasional peach.
    I started my quest for vegetables I’d theoretically put in a salad for dinner tonight, knowing full well that I almost never cooked and would probably end up ordering a pizza. But I’d made a New Year’s resolution to reverse that trend, and it was only seven months into the year. Time to begin.
    “I see watermelon,” Jeannie said, and before I could suggest that lugging one around might be problematical, since she was pretty much already smuggling one under her belt, she was off to check out the possibilities.
    “I guess it’s just you and me,” I told Phyllis.
    “Sorry,” she replied. “I was just out for the walk. Gotta get back to the office. Stop in sometime, and bring in Melissa. She’s almost ready to start delivering papers.” And she, too, vanished before I could protest. I was starting to wonder if I had properly showered that morning.
    I started looking at some bunches of broccoli. That’s a good vegetable—green, with vitamins and beta-carotene and things like that. High intake of broccoli is also said to lower the risk of some aggressive cancers.
    See? Wikipedia is good for some stuff after all.
    The problem was, I would be making a salad for just Melissa and myself, and these heads of broccoli were tied together in bunches of two, and each one was quite large. This was, in short, more broccoli than I would probably need in the next six months. But the ties were strong, and I wasn’t sure that Mrs. Pak, the grocer, would mind if I removed them.
    But my dilemma was eclipsed when I heard a deep voice very close to my left ear. “I have a knife,” it said.
    I drew in a deep breath and tried to remember if under such circumstances it was better to scream or to fall to the floor in a dead faint. Unconsciousness was definitely leading when I turned to see a man next to me. A large man.
    A very large man. In a black leather biker jacket and dark sunglasses. And a mustache, which was both a little retro and a little menacing at the moment. I summoned what little voice I could find, but decided not to scream. A man with a knife could move before anyone could get to me in this crowd.
    “I beg your pardon?” I squeaked. Oh, like you would have come up with something more defiant.
    “I have a knife,” the man repeated. He raised what looked like a very effective blade attached to a black handle. “If you want me to cut through the bands on that broccoli.”
    “Oh. Oh!” The idea that my life was in fact not in immediate danger was just starting to leak through to my reasoning center. “Is it okay to do that?”
    The man took the broccoli from my hand, rather gently I thought, and severed the thick ties on the vegetable with what appeared to be no effort at all. “They want to sell the broccoli,” he said. “Are they going to argue with a paying customer?”
    “You’re clearly from out of town,” I told him. “Mrs. Pak is not to be reckoned with.”
    “Trust me,” he said.
    Sure enough, when I brought the newly liberated broccoli to the cash register, which Mrs. Pak herself was operating, there was absolutely no drama at all. “Two fifty,” she said. I provided the cash, she provided a bag, and everyone’s view of the transaction appeared to be favorable.
    “Thanks for the help,” I told the man, who was no longer brandishing his lethal-looking knife.
    “No problem.” He extended a hand. “I’m Luther Mason.”
    I took his hand. “Alison Kerby.”
    Luther nodded. “I know.”
    “You know?” What the hell did that mean?
    “I’ve been following you since you left the Chronicle office,” he said. Suddenly, my new friend seemed menacing again.
    “Look, don’t take this the wrong way,” I said, “but you’re scaring the living daylights out of me. Why would you follow me to the greengrocer?”
    Luther’s eyes seemed to