A Trunk, a Canoe, and all the Barbecue: A Jess and Libby Paranormal Cozy Mystery (Afterlife Issues Book 2)(Paranormal Women's Midlife Fiction)

A Trunk, a Canoe, and all the Barbecue A JESS AND LIBBY PARANORMAL COZY MYSTERY AFTERLIFE ISSUES BOOK TWO A.W. HARTOIN Contents Also by A.W. Hartoin Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Also by A.W. Hartoin About the Author A Trunk, a Canoe, and all the Barbecue Afterlife Issues Book Two Copyright © A.W. Hartoin, 2023 Cover designed by MiblArt This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Also by A.W. Hartoin Afterlife Issues Dead Companions (Afterlife Issues Book One) A Trunk, a Canoe, and all the Barbecue (Afterlife Issues Book Two) Old Friends and Fedoras (Afterlife Issues Book Three) coming soon Mercy Watts Mysteries Novels A Good Man Gone (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book One) Diver Down (A Mercy Watts Mystery Book Two) Double Black Diamond (Mercy Watts Mysteries BookThree) Drop Dead Red (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Four) In the Worst Way (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Five) The Wife of Riley (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Six) My Bad Grandad (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Seven) Brain Trust (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Eight) Down and Dirty (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Nine) Small Time Crime (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Ten) Bottle Blonde (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Eleven) Mean Evergreen (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Twelve) Silver Bells at Hotel Hell (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Thirteen) Short stories Coke with a Twist Touch and Go Nowhere Fast Dry Spell A Sin and a Shame Stella Bled Historical Thrillers The Paris Package (Stella Bled Book One) Strangers in Venice (Stella Bled Book Two) One Child in Berlin (Stella Bled Book Three) Dark Victory (Stella Bled Book Four) A Quiet Little Place on Rue de Lille (Stella Bled Book Five) Her London Season (Stella Bled Book Six) Paranormal It Started with a Whisper Young Adult fantasy Flare-up (Away From Whipplethorn Short) A Fairy's Guide To Disaster (Away From Whipplethorn Book One) Fierce Creatures (Away From Whipplethorn Book Two) A Monster’s Paradise (Away From Whipplethorn Book Three) A Wicked Chill (Away From Whipplethorn Book Four) To the Eternal (Away From Whipplethorn Book Five) For Maddie The best daughter and cover consultant Chapter One Glum ghosts are the worst. Okay, maybe not the worst in the grand scheme of things. Compared to floods, famine, and various catastrophes, living with a grieving ghost isn’t so bad, but for me, in my little corner of the world, #8 Elizabeth Street in St. Sebastian, it was the worst. I sat at my new desk in my office, working away on my laptop and trying to ignore Leo Pereyra’s presence. He tried to be discreet, I’ll give him that, but I can always tell. First of all, I was home alone, in a manner of speaking, and our cat, Poptart, wasn’t with me. He was a social cat who would normally be curled up in the cushy bed I’d put on the desk for him, but he wasn’t. And then there was the smell. When Leo’s upset, he puts off the odor of cigarettes. I have a sensitive sense of smell, and it was there in my office. Just a whiff. Try as he might, Leo couldn’t control the smell of his distress. Smells bother me. I needed to concentrate. I’d landed a temporary job as a claims adjuster at Eric Otto’s company, and I needed it. We needed it. My best friend Jess’s husband, Hal, died almost four months ago, and his brother held up Hal’s insurance money for self-serving reasons and my divorce was going nowhere, so my settlement would not come in anytime soon. If I could prove myself invaluable, maybe, just maybe, Eric would keep me on, but I just couldn’t focus. The claim in front of me was important. The report, the numbers, and the people were important. They needed me to be accurate and fair. I stopped typing. “Can’t you just go visit Tank, Eric, or Darren?” Silence, but the cigarette smell got just a tad stronger. “Seriously. You’re distracting me. The Clancy family needs this money, like yesterday.” Nothing. “Their house burned down. They lost everything.” More cigarettes. I closed my laptop and put my head down on it. “Please, Leo.” “I’m not doing anything,” he said. “You’re here,” I said. “Oh.” His voice reeked of sadness and regret. “It’s not you exactly.” “Sounds like it is,” said Leo. “You don’t want me around anymore.” I sat up and turned around. “You may as well be visible. You’re obviously here.” There was a pop and Leo Pereyra, the handsomest man not alive, stood in the far corner of my office. He wore his funeral attire from when he was a living mortician, a black suit, white shirt, and black tie. Since he’d found out that his stepson, Patrick, murdered him, he wore it all the time. That was what he’d been wearing when he died, but ghosts weren’t trapped in the place, clothes, or condition that they died in. He could wear anything that he’d worn in life, from Halloween costumes to swim trunks, anything. Before he’d found out, Leo had worn a lot of different things. My favorite was what he called his tutoring outfit, a grandpa sweater, jeans, and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. I didn’t mind the mortician getup. It was his job, and he was darn good at it, but now he wore it in grief, and that wasn’t