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Mavis is either jogging with Coco or designing her next outfit. It’s hard to believe how much the two of them have grown in the past six months.”
    “Mavis has shrunk, remember? Okay, okay, I know what you mean. It’s Ida who worries me, though. She and that doctor spend too much time together, if you ask me. I know they’re more than just friends. Ida keeps telling me that, but I don’t believe it for one minute.” Lowering her voice and looking around, Sophie continued, “She simply cannot be without a man.”
    Since the fire at The Informer, Toots had been so involved in its cleanup and rebuilding, getting the paper ready for production without revealing to Abby that it was she who’d purchased the failing rag—not to mention the time she’d spent searching for the perfect home—that she’d hardly given much thought to Mavis’s and Ida’s activities. “I think we all need to have a sit-down to catch up with one another before something happens.”
    “What do you suppose will happen, Toots? Think one of us might get laid? I’d bet my last dollar Ida and the good doctor are doing the dirty.” Sophie laughed when she saw the look of disgust on Toots’s face.
    “Your mind is always in the gutter, Sophie. I swear, you haven’t changed since seventh grade. I can’t recall a single conversation in which sex didn’t pop up at some point.”
    “Pop up? Is that a Freudian slip, Toots? Or sheer coincidence?” Sophie teased.
    Toots huffed. “See? You find a sex connection in everything I say. Seriously, what are we going to do about my…visitors? I want them, it, whatever, out of here. Or I’m going to commit myself to the nearest nuthouse. Tell me what one does, Sophie. How do you go about ridding your home of a ghostly presence?”
    Toots poured the rest of the brown sludge in her cup, then added a large splash of milk and more sugar. “Want more? I’ll make another pot real quick.”
    Sophie shook her head. “Let’s go sit out on the deck, in case the girls come downstairs and creep up on us. I just don’t trust Ida, although I don’t quite know why.” She fretted. “She’s always been such a damn sneak. I wouldn’t put it past her to try and sell your ghost story to The Enquirer or The Globe.”
    Grabbing her cup, Toots laughed and followed Sophie onto the deck. Even though it was summer in Southern California, the early-morning air held a chill. Sophie motioned her over to a pair of weathered deck chairs. Toots saw an old iron table with a glass top jammed in the corner of the deck, dragged it over by the two chairs, and placed it between them. Sophie snatched the shell they’d been using as an ashtray and set it on the small table before removing her cigarettes and lighter from the pocket of her sweats. As was becoming the norm, she lit up for the both of them.
    “Okay, you want to know about ghosts,” Sophie said matter-of-factly, as though they were discussing what they would have for breakfast. “I’ve been interested in the paranormal for as far back as I can remember.”
    Toots cast her an odd look.
    “It wasn’t something I talked about. Back in our day we would’ve been tarred and feathered for even thinking about this stuff, let alone believing it. I used to visit a lady in Queens, she called herself Madam Butterfly, if you can believe that. Everything was butterflies with her. Jewelry, clothes, even her damned wallpaper was butterflies all over. She read tarot cards for me once a week after I married Walter. She warned me about him, too. Said he was bad for me, but I was young and in lust and wouldn’t listen to her.” Sophie paused. “I wonder how my life would’ve turned out had I taken her advice? Oh well, too late for that.”
    Toots interrupted. “Get to the point, Soph.”
    “I’m explaining how I became interested in this stuff. I started reading astrology charts and doing my own little tarot readings on the side. Oh, nothing for the public, just for myself