Ghost of a Gamble (Granny Apples Mystery) Read Online Free Page B

“I’m pretty sure that’s what I heard.” Emma ran a hand through her cropped blond hair. “I wish Granny hadn’t left before that.”
    “I wish I hadn’t, too.” The ghost left the window and floated over to the sofa. “Sounds like something Edward G. Robinson would say.”
    Milo nodded. “Granny’s right.” Quickly, he passed along to Tracy what the ghost had said.
    Tracy looked at the empty air by Emma. “How do you know about Edward G. Robinson, Granny?”
    “You forget,” Emma answered instead, “she watches a lot of TV.” She glanced at the ghost. “Too much, in my opinion.”
    “And that’s all it is,” Granny snapped, “your opinion, not the law.”
    “She’s now hooked on old movies,” continued Emma, “especially black-and-white crime films. She and my father have been watching them together.”
    “Yeah, but when Dr. Miller snores, I can’t hear.” Granny crossed her arms. “I gotta figure out a way to work the clicker on my own.”
    Emma sighed, thinking that if Granny could work the TV remote and the DVD player on her own, the TV would be going day and night.
    “Granny might not be too far off,” Milo said, returning to the subject at hand. “Back when I was a kid here in Vegas, there was a well-known hood named Nemo.”
    The two live women and the dead one turned their attention fully on Milo. “Really?” asked Emma, the first to find her voice.
    “Yes. He was a local guy named Nelson Morehouse, but everyone called him Nemo. I don’t think he was officially Mob, but he had connections to them. He was in the news a lot. As I recall, he was suspected of running drugs from Mexico and operating gambling scams. I think he was even connected once to a casino robbery.”
    “So if there is a spirit in the light, it might be him?” Tracy put a hand on Milo’s knee. He covered it with one of his own hands.
    “The voice asked if Nemo’s boys sent me,” Emma said, “so whoever was speaking was probably not Nemo.”
    “What about the light fixture?” asked Milo. “Do you really think there’s a spirit inhabiting it, and that’s who spoke to you? Or could it have been another spirit lingering nearby?”
    Tracy snorted in laughter. “Lenny the Lightbulb. How funny would that be for a gangster name?”
    “I kind of like it,” said Granny with enthusiasm.
    Emma played with her water bottle as she dug through her memory for exactly what she’d felt at Dolly’s. “At first I wasn’t sure there was a ghost haunting the light, but it was obvious that Nicholas could see Granny, and he is fixated on that particular light.”
    “Isn’t it odd,” asked Tracy, “that the baby could see Lenny the Lightbulb and you couldn’t?”
    “Not really,” Milo answered. “If the ghost specifically didn’t want Emma to see him, she wouldn’t.”
    “But he definitely wanted me to hear him,” Emma pointed out. “At least at the end of my visit.”
    Remembering the way Dolly had glanced at the light, Emma asked Milo, “Do you recall if Dolly had any friends named Lenny?”
    Milo looked surprised. “Do you think my mother knows the ghost in the light?”
    “I don’t know,” Emma admitted. “It’s just that when I asked how she came to give him the name
Lenny
, she seemed a bit nervous when she answered. And when I mentioned the name
Nemo
, I caught her glancing up at the light in an odd way.”
    Milo tapped his left foot on the carpet as he tried to think. “I really don’t recall her having any friends named Lenny. Then again, she did her best to keep our life together separate from her life at the casinos, especially after I was old enough to be left alone.”
    “Could have been nothing,” Emma said with a shrug. “She just might have been nervous about the light.”
    Putting her water bottle down on the coffee table, Emma got up and went to the desk in front of the large window. On the desk was her iPad. She turned it on and brought it back to the sofa and sat