A Ghost in Time (Destiny Bay Cozy Mysteries Book 3) by J. D. Winters Page A

Go slower. Don’t risk an accident.’” Her voice was trembling. She shook her head and she looked so lost. “Life has harsh consequences for carelessness.”  
    I grabbed her hand and held it. “Bebe, Bebe, it’s not your fault.”
    She looked at me, her eyes dull. “Then whose fault is it? I’m the one who caused the death. Why is that not my fault?” She grimaced and took a deep breath. “If I’d been driving slower, if I’d been watching better…”
    “She was in the middle of the road, right? You hit her before you even saw her, right?”
    She hesitated. “I don’t know about that. It’s such a blur. I just don’t remember.”
    “Did you…did you give a complete statement at the station house last night? Were they satisfied?”
    She looked at me, her eyes so troubled. “Were they satisfied? I don’t know. I don’t think so. They kept saying there was a mirror on that turn. Why didn’t I see it? It was a clear night. The mirror is set at the side of the road and angled so that I should have been able to see the middle of the road around the bend in front of me. I should have seen her.” She shook her head slowly. “And I know that. I’ve driven up there before. But I didn’t see her. I didn’t see the mirror. I just…I don’t know. Maybe I was so mad at the things she’d said to me on the phone I just wasn’t seeing anything. Or maybe I did see her and…”   Her voice broke. “And maybe I wanted to hit her.”
    “What?” That horrified me. “No! Never! I don’t believe it.”
    She shrugged and her eyes filled with tears. “I was pretty angry,” she said simply, her voice shaking. “I just don’t know.”
    We talked a bit more and then began the run home. We ran back through more of the Miyaki fields, all gorgeous and fresh. The colors were blinding and the scent was intoxicating. For just a second or two, I wondered if this was what heaven smelled like.  
    But still, I was sick at heart. For some reason, I’d known this wasn’t going to be as cut and dried as it had seemed at first. There had been a sense of unreality from the beginning. I didn’t believe Bebe had hit Star on purpose, not for a moment. But I did wish she had a clearer memory on just what happened.  
    And the mirror—I’d seen that mirror, noticed it as I came up, just before rounding that corner. It was huge and showed a large chunk of the road ahead. How could Bebe have missed seeing it? That didn’t make any sense at all.  
    Bebe was like a different person—unsure of herself, constantly on the verge of tears. And what seemed to bother her most right now was the fact that Sami still hadn’t shown up. He was her big baby and she couldn’t stand to think of him out there in the cold, cruel world, maybe in trouble, maybe trapped and unable to head for home.  
    Bebe went off to her room to try to get some sleep before lunch. I knew I needed sleep too, but I also knew there was no way I could get any until I felt I had a handle on this thing.  
    Barnaby, our visiting parrot, was shrieking his head off, cursing at the top of his lungs. Luckily his parrot voice was almost undecipherable, so the words tended to fly off into nowhere and do nothing, but it did make an annoying amount of noise. I went out to see what the problem was. He seemed upset, but I couldn’t drill down to a cause, so after trying to reassure him for a few minutes, and getting nothing but grief for my trouble, I got the big blue tarp and threw it over the aviary to settle him down. It seemed to do the trick pretty quickly.  
    When I turned around, Aunty Jane was there, digging in the dirt around the herb garden.  
    “Hi there sweetheart,” she said. “Your pretty boy policeman was here looking for you a bit ago.”
    “Really? Did you tell him where I was?”
    She gave me a properly dismissive glance. “You know I don’t talk to people like him. He can’t see me.”
    “Really?” I dropped down onto a garden bench near