After slowing the car to make the turn onto the long graveled driveway leading up to Evelyn’s place, I stopped to gawk at all the decorations. “Wow, do you think she went a little crazy this year?” I asked Grams, my grandmother on my father’s side, who’d accompanied me and was sitting in the passenger seat, her dark cinnamon eyes even wider than mine.

When it came to Halloween, Evelyn had to be one of the holiday’s biggest promoters. Besides holding a huge invitation-only party in her home every year, she’d also urged the city council to sponsor a haunted house.

The number of tourists who’d drive long distances to pay for a tour always amazed me. The place wasn’t really a house, nor was it haunted. It was actually an old warehouse building on the outskirts of town that the council had converted to use for various events throughout the year. And when it came to having events, Cumberpatch was well-known for celebrating a plethora of them.

Numerous festivities meant numerous committees, which my mother Caroline continually volunteered me for. Not that I’d ever complain, especially when helping meant bringing a large amount of business to the Mysterious Baubles, my family’s shop.

Since our activities were diverse, my parents insisted we carry a wide selection of items, including souvenirs, pirate paraphernalia, and my mother’s special herbal remedies. Thanks to my father and his obsession with the supernatural, we even had several aisles dedicated to paranormal items. The things on those shelves that I found odd and sometimes scary were always popular with our customers.

Selling items wasn’t the only thing our shop offered. For as long as I could remember, Grams made sure everyone knew she had dreams filled with premonitions and warnings about the future. She enjoyed adding a melodramatic flair to every story she told. It was probably why the tarot readings she offered at the shop were so popular.

Evelyn was an avid enthusiast, even more so after her husband Daniel passed away five years ago. When she was too busy to visit the shop for her readings, Grams made trips to see her.

A last-minute call to reschedule a reading was the reason for our current excursion, that and the two large cardboard boxes filled with the supplies she’d ordered from our shop for her upcoming Halloween party. Supplies my grandmother had graciously, and without asking my permission first, volunteered me to help deliver.

Grams giggled and pressed her face closer to the window. “There must be more decorations because last year I remember being able to see part of her lawn.”

“Now that you mention it, I think you’re right.” I pressed on the accelerator, moving slowly to get a better view of the displays. It appeared as if Evelyn had found a holiday catalog and ordered all the items on every page. I'd seen some of the stuff in previous years, like the groups of lighted plastic pumpkins with hay bales as backdrops.

Evelyn had two life-sized witches and a scarecrow sitting together on an extended bench. A ghost the size of a hulking football player hovered between two trees, the air keeping it afloat supplied by a compressor.

Grams was right. If there was any dead grass underneath the elaborate displays, it was difficult to see.

Evelyn, or maybe Gary, the guy who maintained her property, had taken the time to string blinking lights with alternating orange and black bulbs around the posts supporting the canopy over her single-step porch. Her party was less than a week away, and with the number of decorations she’d displayed in her yard, I could only imagine what the inside of her house looked like.

Although I enjoyed helping Evelyn out and participating in the celebration, I’d never been much of a believer in the supernatural. Up until recently, I was the type of person who needed to see something for it to be real. I hadn’t seen anything closely resembling the paranormal and refused to admit it even existed. At least not until a surprise birthday present from my father, Jonathan Spencer, had zapped me with extraordinary powers and introduced me to the world of spirits. Ones that only I could see and converse with.

After parking my car next to Evelyn’s near the front of her white two-story house, I glanced at the door leading into the main foyer. It was partially open, and dead leaves carried by the breeze littered the few ceramic tiles I could see of the entryway’s floor. “Grams.” I touched her arm to pull her attention away from unsnapping her seat belt. “Does Evelyn normally leave her front door open like that?”

Grams paused to look up. “That’s strange. I know she was expecting us, but she’s never left the door open for any of my other visits. Maybe she stepped outside and forgot to close it.” She shrugged and released her belt.

My grandmother might not be concerned, but I certainly was. Something was wrong; I could feel it, and so could every nerve in my body. They were pulsing with dread by the time we got out of the car.

I hoped my senses were mistaken, yet urgency drew me toward the door. I ignored the boxes we’d brought for Evelyn in the trunk and headed for the house. I could always retrieve them later once I’d confirmed that everything inside was okay.

The wind picked up, chilling the air. It swirled around me, seeped through my jacket, and made me shiver. Maine had been experiencing cooler days for weeks now. It wouldn’t be long before the weather got colder and our occasional rain showers transformed into snow flurries.

Evelyn might be nearing sixty, but her memory was sharper than some adults half her age, and I’d never witnessed any signs of forgetfulness. With each step, I contemplated reasonable explanations of why the door would be open. Reasons that didn’t involve anything suspicious or dangerous. “Why don’t you wait here, and I’ll check it out first.” I gripped the strap of my purse tighter and took another step toward the entrance.

For an older woman, my grandmother could move fast. I hadn’t realized she was so close until she latched on to my coat sleeve and made me jump. “You didn’t seriously think I’d let my only granddaughter go in there by herself, did you?”

“So, are you saying if you had more than one granddaughter, you’d listen to me and wait by the car?” Stress and fear had a tendency to bring out my sarcasm.

She harrumphed and urged me to keep moving. I reached the opening first, but only by inches. I’d been raised with manners, and bursting into the foyer to discover that nothing was wrong might be construed as impolite. I decided that knocking first, then bursting inside would cover any social improprieties as well as any breaking and entering laws.

I reached for the knocker, then pulled back my hand when the red eyes of the gargoyle head started to glow. “What the…?”

“Amazing detail, don’t you think?” Grams asked. “Evelyn had it installed a couple of months ago.”

I couldn’t argue that the detail was great, but amazing wasn’t even close to the word I would’ve used to describe the gruesomely life-like thing. “Sure, I guess.” I remained a foot away in case the knocker was programmed to do more than glow, then stuck out my arm and rapped on the door.

Seconds passed without an answer, so I called Evelyn’s name. When that didn’t work, I got a little bolder and pushed on the door eliciting a long, drawn-out creak. Besides making me shudder, the noise reminded me of every scary movie I’d ever watched where the heroine decided it was a good idea to enter a creepy old mansion.

Logically, I knew the house was old, and the noises were the result of settling. The hairs rising along my spine disagreed, and I wished I’d grabbed more than my purse to brandish as a weapon before heading inside.

As I’d suspected, the Halloween decorations hadn’t stopped outside. Cobwebs and dangling spiders adorned the foyer. Beyond that was a massive room with stairs running along both sides of the wall and joining toward the middle when they reached the second floor. Typically, I’d pause to appreciate the beautifully handcrafted railings and the view of treetops that could be seen through the floor-length windows running along the wall on the upper floor. I was more worried about finding the place’s owner, so admiring would have to wait.

Bubbling noises drew my attention to the right, where a large black and tarnished cauldron with orange smoke pouring over the metal edge sat on the floor. I wasn’t an expert, but the pot looked authentic. If the burning logs underneath hadn’t been fake, I’d have questioned whether or not Evelyn had recently taken up witchcraft.

“Evelyn,” my grandmother called out, concern lacing her voice. “Are you here? It’s Grams and Rylee.”

As if in reply, a heavy thud echoed from somewhere in the house. I didn’t think the hairs on my neck could stand any straighter. Nor did I realize how sharp my grandmother’s fingernails were until she tightened her grip on my arm.

“Do you think that was her?” I asked since Grams had been in the house way more times than I had.

“I don’t think so,” Grams’s voice came out raspy. She pointed toward the cauldron, or rather what was lying on the floor behind it.

I stared at the pair of dark leather shoes with square gold buckles, sitting with the back of the heels on the floor, exposing soles worn from extended use. Seeing the shoes didn’t bother me. It was the legs covered with orange-and-black-striped stockings that were sticking out of them that had me shuddering and gasping, “Oh no.”

I pried Grams’s hand from my arm, then circled to the other side of the pot. Evelyn was sprawled on her side, the hem of her black dress bunched around her knees. She wasn’t moving, and it didn’t look like she was breathing. Wondering if she was alive and how she’d ended up on the floor outweighed any curiosity I had about why she was dressed in a witch’s costume.

It didn’t take much guessing to know from the odd way Evelyn’s body was positioned that there was a good chance she wasn’t going to be getting up any time soon. Probably not ever.

Just to be thorough and make sure I’d assumed correctly, I squatted next to her back and pressed my fingertips against her throat, checking for a pulse. Her skin still held some warmth, but I couldn’t find a trace of life in her vein.

“Anything?” Grams asked, kneeling down beside me.

I didn’t see any blood, so whether or not the cause of her death was natural, accidental, or intentional was hard to deduce. Seeing her body positioned close to the bottom of the stairs suggested her death might have been the result of a fall.

Since Grams and I had no medical certification or any kind of forensic training, figuring out how she ended up here was something the police would have to determine.

“No, I’m pretty sure she’s…” Grams seemed to be handling the situation better than I’d expected, but I still found it hard to tell her out loud that her friend was dead.

“What’s this?” Grams asked, leaning forward to see whatever Evelyn had clutched to her chest.

“Don’t touch anything,” I said too late to stop her from tugging on the object.

“Why not?” She sat back on her haunches, her glare jumping from the urn belonging to Daniel Fulbright to me. “Don’t you think we should put it back where it belongs?”

The last time I’d seen his final resting place, the golden container mounted on a square wooden box had been displayed on the mantle above the fireplace in Evelyn’s library. The room was down the hallway on the left and quite a distance from where she was lying. Why Daniel wasn’t in his ‘special place’ seemed strange. Evelyn protectively clutching his urn seemed even stranger.

“No, I don’t think we should put it back.” I took Grams’s free hand and helped her to her feet. “For all we know, this could be a crime scene. We need to leave the place the way we found it and call the police.”

I’d watched enough mystery shows on television to know the police would check the urn’s metal surface for fingerprints, which now contained several of my grandmother’s. Unless I wanted her to become their main suspect, I’d need to mention how they got there when local law enforcement arrived.

“If Evelyn was here, I know she’d tell us to put Daniel back where he belongs.” Grams wrapped her arms around the urn, and defiantly stuck out her lower lip.

Stubbornness ran in my family. Mentioning the irony of the situation wouldn’t do me any good, but pointing out the obvious, on the other hand, might work in my favor. “Well, she’s not here, so we can’t ask her.” I wiggled my finger at Evelyn, groaning after I realized I was standing next to a dead body arguing about the ashes of another deceased person when I should be dragging Grams back outside and making that much-needed call to the police.

“Are you sure?” Grams asked.

I quickly ran through the denial levels in my head, trying to determine which one was currently motivating my grandmother. It wasn’t until I noticed the mischievous glint in her eyes and had the urn thrust at me that I realized grief had nothing to do with what she was after.