“Missouri Anna Winston!” the young man proclaimed as the horse turned in place, impatient to get back to running.
The man’s voice made me think he was more a boy than a man. I looked even more closely at his face, but it too was smudged with dirt and he was moving around too much for a thorough inspection.
“Hey,” I said, trying to get his attention only and no one else’s. “Hey.”
He looked down at me. “You can see me, hear me?”
“I can. I’m Missouri’s granddaughter.” I looked around. Fortunately, the new ghost was the only one paying me any attention.
“That’s amazing. Good to meet you. I’m Joe,” he said.
“Joe who?”
“I don’t have any idea,” he said with a laugh. “Just Joe.”
“Betts!” a voice called from somewhere behind me.
“Miz!” Joe said.
Gram had emerged from a crowd that was gathered in front of the Jasper Theater. She wore jeans and a red and blue Ole Miss T-shirt.
“You okay?” I said. I performed a quick visual inspection. There was no blood marring the red and blue. She looked unharmed, but not unharried.
“Fit as a fiddle that needs to be restrung,” she said. “It hasn’t been a fun morning.” She looked up. “Hello, Joe. It’s always good to see you, but you’ve picked an interesting day to visit. Come along, let’s see if we can find a place to talk without all this commotion.”
But our efforts were thwarted.
“Miz, Betts, come help,” another voice said.
It took a second to realize that the voice was attached to Stuart, the owner of the shoe repair shop I’d intended to go to before the ghost appeared. He was older than Gram, and I’d noticed that his short stature had gotten somewhat shorter lately. He was leaning out through his front doorway and signaling for us to come over.
“Sorry, Joe, we’re going to have to confer later,” Gram said.
“But, Miz, the letters? We’ve only got a few more,” Joe said.
“Sorry. We’re busy. Meet us back at the cooking school later.”
Evidently, Joe thought his letter emergency was more important than the ruckus that was still going on in real life, but the ghosts were typically fairly self-involved. He harrumphed and then disappeared.
Gram sighed and shook her head at me. She didn’t need to remind me how annoying she sometimes found our otherworldly visitors.
“Here we go again?” I said.
“Something like that,” she said. “Well, I like Joe, but now’s just not the best of times. Come on, let’s see what Stuart needs.”
We hurried off the street.
Chapter 3
“I have a couple ladies in here, and I’m particularly concerned about one of them,” Stuart said as he held the door open.
“Do they need medical attention?” Gram asked as we hurried past him.
“I don’t know, but no one is answering any phones anywhere. I saw you two and hoped you’d have a better idea of what to do. I’m not prepared for damsels in distress.”
If someone other than Stuart had used those words, it might seem like they were attempting a joke, but damsel in distress was still a contemporary phrase for the gentle, quiet man who spent most of his waking hours sitting at his back worktable either fixing shoes or crafting leather belts, which were selling at a brisk pace to both visiting tourists and Internet customers.