Anything's Possible!. Judith McWilliams
the newspaper office first.” Cassie decided to start her rumors of ghost sightings there.
“Newspaper?” Dan frowned as she parked in front of a small, redbrick building, trying to decide what the chances of his being recognized by the staff were. Slim, he finally concluded. He had never used a picture with his stories and they’d be highly unlikely to connect Dan Travis who walked in off the street with Leland Travis, Pulitzer Prize winner. Besides, for him to suddenly refuse to go into the newspaper office would be bound to make Cassie suspicious of him. Something he didn’t want to do.
“It’s a pretty good little paper, even if it is only a weekly.” Cassie climbed out of the car. “Ed Veach has run it for as long as I can remember.”
“It must be nice to publish a weekly.” Dan looked around curiously as he followed her into the building. “Just local news, with a minimum of carnage.”
Cassie shot him a curious glance, wondering at the wistful tone in his voice, but before she could think of a way to phrase a question, she caught sight of Ed coming out of the storeroom in the back and hurried over to him.
“Ed, I have something I want to talk to you about,” she said.
He eyed her suspiciously. “Whatever good cause you’re selling raffle tickets for, I don’t want any.”
“I’m not selling anything,” she told him.
Ed opened his eyes in mock surprise. “Will wonders never cease! You’ve actually come to buy some advertising?”
“No, not that either. Ed, this is Dan Travis, who’s a guest at the inn. Dan, this cynic is Ed Veach.”
Ed automatically shook the hand Dan held out. He stared intently into Dan’s face for a long, puzzled moment, and then his mouth fell open. “Say, aren’t you—”
“I’m Dan Travis, an insurance agent from New York City.”
Cassie blinked, taken aback at the tone of Dan’s voice. It had gone from casual pleasantness to... She peered uncertainly at him. For a moment he had sounded capable of... Of what? She scoffed at her imagination.
“Certainly, certainly. My mistake. Insurance, you say?” Ed continued with a knowing smile that made Cassie feel as if she’d missed something. “I’ll bet you use lots of computers in the insurance business, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Dan said cautiously. “I would imagine most businesses these days are heavily into computers one way or another.”
“You may not know this, Cassie—” Ed turned to her “—but we have a school bond issue coming up next month to raise money to buy computers for the kids.”
“That’s nice,” Cassie murmured, having no interest whatsoever in it. She had more than enough to worry about with her aunt’s vacancy problem.
“It occurs to me, Dan, that you might be willing to write a guest editorial for me,” Ed said blandly. “Something along the lines of a businessman telling the voters why it would be a good idea to educate their children to compete in the twenty-first-century job market.”
Cassie blinked, surprised at Ed’s request. Her surprise grew at Dan’s response. Instead of politely declining, as she would have expected, he gave Ed a rueful grin and muttered, “I’d love to.”
“Good. Good.” Ed rubbed his hands together in gleeful enthusiasm. “Now then—” he turned again to Cassie “—if you aren’t selling and you aren’t buying, why are you here?”
“I want your opinion.” She tried to inject an uncertain note into her voice. “Being a newspaperman for as long as you have, I imagine you’ve seen it all, and the most extraordinary thing happened yesterday. I saw something on the back stairs, and then again in the attic.” She shuddered and paused, giving the tension time to build.
“Spit it out, woman,” Ed ordered.
“If I believed in ghosts,” Cassie said hoarsely, “I’d say I saw the ghost of Jonas Middlebury.”
“The ghost of—” Ed sputtered to a halt. “How do you know it was him?”
“Whatever I saw looked exactly like Jonas Middlebury was supposed to have looked, and since he died a hundred and fifty years ago...” Cassie allowed her voice to trail away suggestively.
“Sounds like a ghost to me,” Dan stated calmly.
Ed gave him a scathing look and turned to Cassie. “And if the old geezer died a hundred and fifty years ago, then how do you know what he looked like?”
“They did have writing back then,” Cassie said, hastily improvising. “And old Jonas wrote to his fiancée.”
“You’re saying the inn is haunted?” Ed demanded.
“Nope.” Cassie was very careful not to make any false claims. “I’m merely saying that I saw something very strange that promptly disappeared. Since I don’t believe in ghosts, I’m hoping that you have another explanation.”
Dan studied Cassie’s earnest expression, wondering what this was all about. She didn’t seem to be the kind of nut who believed in the supernatural. His first impression of her—other than the fact that she was one very sexy lady—was that she was intelligent. But claiming to have seen ghosts was not exactly the hallmark of intelligence.
“Could you do a story on it and see if any of your readers have any ideas?” Cassie suggested with a hopeful look at Ed.
“You bring me a picture of your ghost, and I’ll run it on the front page,” Ed countered.
“If I can manage to get a photo, Ed Veach, I’ll sell it to the highest bidder,” Cassie shot back.
The editor chuckled. “That’ll teach me, huh?” He turned to Dan. “You won’t forget that editorial, will you?”
“No, I won’t forget,” Dan threw over his shoulder as he followed Cassie out of the newspaper office. “Is there really a ghost at China View?” he asked as he fell into step beside her.
“I saw something on the stairs.” Cassie stopped in front of the bank. Pulling the deposit envelope out of her purse, she carefully stuffed it into the automatic deposit slot, cautiously checked to make sure it had gone down and then headed across the street to the café, intent on spreading the rumor further.
“And you think it was a ghost?” Dan persisted as he held the door for her.
“I have never believed in ghosts,” she said honestly. “And I see no reason to change my mind simply because I saw something or someone who seemed to be able to disappear at will.”
“Who disappeared?” Annie, the waitress, looked up from the cherry pie she was cutting. “Don’t tell me we got us a little excitement in this place?”
“I don’t think so.” Cassie slipped onto one of the stools at the counter, figuring it would be easier to spread rumors from there than from one of the more-isolated booths in the back. “I’m sure it must have been my imagination.”
“You?” Annie scoffed. “You’re disgustingly levelheaded.”
“Her whole family is,” Bill, seated farther down the counter, offered. “When I was in school with your father, Cassie, he had no more imagination than a garden slug.”
“And your aunt Hannah has an explanation for everything,” Jim, his elderly coffee-drinking crony added.
“Ain’t that the truth,” Annie muttered. “I still remember being in her kindergarten class.”
“You and most of the town,” Jim said. “What does Hannah have to say about what you saw?”
“Aunt Hannah doesn’t believe in ghosts, either,” Cassie said truthfully.
“What makes you think it was a ghost?” Annie