If Catfish Had Nine Lives(52)

            “Right. How?” Gram asked as she peered at the picture through some reading glasses she’d put on.

            “I don’t think I should tell you,” Joe said. “Not yet.”

            “Why not?”

            Joe shook his head some more.

            Gram sighed. “Okay, but when?”

            “Let’s get the last two letters delivered, and then I’ll tell you.”

            Gram looked at me and Jake. “Okay.”

            “Jake,” I said. “Joe somehow knew Astin but he doesn’t think he should tell us how until we get the last two letters delivered.”

            Jake blinked. “Well, that’s inconvenient.”

            That was the first I’d ever heard Jake say something less than flattering about the ghosts.

            “I know, but it’s how they work,” I said.

            I wanted to protest, I wanted to bargain; I even wanted to threaten not to look at one other letter until Joe told us how he knew Astin. But it would have done absolutely no good. I would have made a ruckus and then Gram would have calmed me down and told me to go ahead and read the next letter.

            “Let’s get to it, then,” Jake said.

            “Could we dim the light, Jake?” Gram asked.

            “Certainly.” Jake hurried back to the switch on the wall and dimmed the light enough that the live humans could still see each other and the ghost became dimensional enough that I thought I’d be able to hold and read the letter without too much effort.

            Gram inspected Joe. He blinked away the trance that Astin’s picture had put him in.

            I tried not to be irritated by Joe’s unwillingness to tell us how he knew Astin Reagal. I tried to look at it a little differently; before that moment, we truly didn’t know that there was any connection between Joe and Astin. Now we knew. More would be revealed. And the coincidences actually might have more substance.

            “Here,” Joe said with a shaky voice as he handed me another envelope.

            I took it as Gram squinted at Joe, though she didn’t say anything. This letter was smaller than the first one and tinged more yellow.

            “Can you see the letter in my hands?” I asked Jake.

            “No.”

            I held it, noting its substance, though not its texture. “It doesn’t have a full address, just a name—Alicia Zavon—and Broken Rope. Wait, Alicia Zavon. I know that name. Jake?”

            “If it’s the Alicia Zavon I’m thinking of, and I bet it is—how many could there be?—then she’s definitely one of our legends. She killed her husband.”

            “Even I know this one,” I said. “Alicia Zavon and her husband were old—very old for the time. In their seventies, I think?”

            Jake nodded.

            I continued, “And one day she ‘up and got teered of him hittin’ on her with his fists,’ so she loaded up his shotgun, put it to his back and marched him downtown, and shot him in front of everyone.”

            “There’s more,” Jake said.

            We all, including Joe, looked at Jake.

            “Alicia fell victim to the town’s biggest legend. Her rope broke.”

            “Ah,” Gram said. “That’s such a bizarre occurrence, and it happened more frequently than I think anyone would have imagined. I don’t know if our ropes were poorly made or if we were just cursed to fail at hanging criminals.”