Wrongfully Dead: An Afterlife Adventures Novel, #9

By Jordaina Sydney Robinson

Not so newly dead Bridget Sway is making a difference. Sort of. 

 

She and her best friend, Sabrina, are solving murders all over the show while minding their own business. And then Detective Johnson shows up at their office and drops a missing person's case in their lap.

 

Although deeply suspicious of his motives, they decide it would be wise to at least give it a cursory investigation. Forewarned is forearmed, after all.

And that's when things get messy. 

 

With Oz is keeping secrets, little to no information to go on and practically no suspects, can Bridget and Sabrina solve their case and stay on the right side of the law for once?

 

Afterlife Adventures Series:

#1 Beyond Dead
#2 Dead and Buried
#3 A Little More Dead
#4 Still Dead
#5 Utterly Dead
#6 Dead Completely
#7 Unexpectedly Dead
#8 Dead Investigations

#9 Wrongfully Dead

#10 Dead Confused

#11 Finally Dead

#12 Dead Conclusion

 

In the same universe:

An Aurora North Exposé:

#1 The NOT Vampire Murders
#2 The NOT Ghostly Murders
#3 The NOT Witchy Murders
#4 The NOT Cursed Murders

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jordaina Sydney Robinson
• Release date: Mar 30, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224921751

Book preview

Chapter One

"T his is all your fault!" I hissed at Sabrina, hunkering down even lower behind the upturned table we were using as a shield. 

That’s funny, she hissed back. I was about to say the same thing to you!

No. Uh-uh. I shook my head so vehemently that the ends of my bright red ponytail nearly whipped either side of my face in turn with the force of motion. "No way are you putting this on me."

"You were the one who⁠—" 

A blue and white vase the size of a football whistled over the top of the table interrupting Sabrina’s accusation. It smashed into tiny pieces against the wall, shards of blue and white glazed pottery raining down on us. 

"I wasn’t the one who thought it was a good idea to have this conversation in a pottery therapy class." 

"No, but you are the one who told him, very bluntly, his mistress had murdered him for the money."

"She did! I exclaimed. That’s what happened. I thought the whole point of this was to tell people the truth, so they can get some closure."

I don’t see how mentioning she’d been diddling the⁠—

A lump of clay the size of a large cantaloup flew over the table and slapped into the wall with a thud. It landed in the exact same place the vase had. Part of me wondered if the guy had done that on purpose. As if his aim was just that good. Another part of me wondered why he was throwing large lumps of clay. As impacts go, it was a little anticlimactic.

The lump of clay stuck for a few long seconds before gravity peeled it off. It left a lovely brown stain in its wake as it fell to the floor. It hit the worn wooden parquet flooring with the same slapping thud. Oddly, that felt more satisfying as an impact sound than when it had hit the wall, but maybe I was focusing on the wrong things.

Personal trainer was relevant, Sabrina continued as if there hadn’t been a flying lump of clay interruption. 

He was cheating on his wife, I said with probably a little more screech in my voice than truly necessary, but that was likely due to the objects being hurled at us, as well as the indignation at his response. "He was cheating on his wife, I repeated. I was merely pointing out the irony that not only was his mistress cheating on him, but that she was the one who murdered him."

That’s not irony.

I nodded. It’s karma, is what it is.

I thought we were over this, Sabrina said, twisting to face me while still keeping her head below the top edge of the table. I thought you’d made peace with Michael-the-cheating-scumbag and The Trollop. I thought we weren’t even calling them that anymore.

"This and that are not connected. I simply don’t think it’s unreasonable to want to twist the knife into a cheater’s stomach when they were the one who stabbed themselves in the first place."

Sabrina opened her mouth as if she were about to argue and then closed it again without saying anything. Obviously, because she saw the sense in my argument. Obviously. 

Another vase flew over the top of the table but since this one hadn’t been fired, it crumpled against the wall. Something about the way it squashed in on itself reminded me of a cartoon character. Especially because it didn’t peel off the wall and drop like the lump of clay had. It looked wet, as if it had just been plucked off someone’s clay wheel and weaponised. Probably because it was still damp, the suction kept it attached to the wall as it slid to the floor. 

Joseph! a woman’s voice called from the front of the room. What on earth are you doing?

There was a teacherly vibe to her tone that would’ve had me stopping whatever I was doing immediately and looking appropriately sheepishly. But not Joseph. 

Don’t you dare, she warned. "You put that down immediately."

A manic laugh erupted from the far end of the classroom and, against my better judgement, I peeked above our table shield. 

Joseph was now shirtless. He had, either accidentally or on purpose, I couldn’t tell, managed to wipe his hands over his torso after touching the damp clay and left streaks of brown in their wake. It almost looked like really poorly applied war paint. Maybe drunkenly applied war paint would’ve been a better description. 

His neatly cut, pale blond hair was sticking up in tufts and his cherubic face now had an unhinged sweaty sheen to it. His blue eyes were glassy as they watched someone in the doorway. I couldn’t see who because the open door blocked them from me, but I assumed it was our teacher lady. 

Do you think she’s going to get him to back down? Sabrina whispered, peering over the top of the table next to me. 

No. I don’t. Not even a little, I whispered back. Look at that cheater’s face. He’s lost the plot.

I don’t know. I think⁠— 

Before Sabrina could finish yet another sentence, Joseph grabbed a curved clay cutting blade and hurled it toward the door. Whoever was on the other side of that door yanked it shut just in time. The blade’s handle hit the door, then bounced off and landed harmlessly on the floor. 

I looked at Sabrina. Told you so.

You needn’t look so happy that a man has lost his mind.

"A cheater, I corrected. That a cheater has lost his mind."

Well, at least you’re not still harbouring any anger over Michael-the-cheating-scumbag and The Trollop.

I took pains to smooth out my expression. I’m totally over that whole thing.

Sabrina nodded. Clearly.

The door opened again and two burly men in white smocks charged across the room in a manner that implied they were familiar with this type of situation. They tackled Joseph and pinned him to the ground. Somehow, during the takedown, he still managed to maintain a soundtrack of manic laughter. That alone was cause for concern. 

Sabrina and I straightened up from behind the table and dusted the remains of all of the broken pottery off each other. 

The two bouncer-like men hoisted the still laughing Joseph to his feet, but he refused to stand. Every time they tried to get him to put his weight on his feet, he collapsed like a rag doll. Eventually, they gave up and dragged him toward the door, his feet trailing on the floor. And he was still laughing. It was a little unnerving to witness. Almost enough to make me feel bad for him. And then I remembered how we’d gotten here.

A lady, whom I assumed was the teacher-voice lady, stepped into the room and held the door open for the men. She looked like an evil librarian from a children’s TV programme. Painfully thin, dressed in some type of Victorian styled black floor-length dress with her dark hair piled high and neat on top of her head. 

Her pinched expression showed her annoyance as the two bouncers negotiated how to get Joseph out of the room. There were a few attempts and a lot of awkwardness as Joseph kept trying to cling onto the door frame and the bouncers didn’t have enough hands to keep hold of his wriggling form, keep him upright and remove his hands. 

For heaven’s sake, the evil librarian lady said as she slapped Joseph’s hands off the door frame and the two men quickly shuffled him out.

When Joseph’s unsettling laughter faded along the corridor, she faced the room and clapped loudly twice.

It’s okay, everyone. Her tone was a type of thin, authoritarian tone that matched her pinched features. Thin or not, it brooked no argument. You can come out now. Out you come. Everybody. Come on.

Roughly twenty people climbed out from behind their own table shields and surveyed the damage. Honestly, it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I thought it was going to be. Yes, there was a lot of smashed stuff, but everyone was still alive. And they had all of their limbs. And they were not actually injured in any way. So, really, I was chalking that up as a win. 

Will Joseph be okay? asked a lady in her early-forties. She asked with a level of concern that bordered on affection. 

I raised an eyebrow at Sabrina. 

It’s not cheating if he’s dead and his wife and mistress are both alive, Sabrina muttered out of the side of her mouth. 

Uh-huh. That was all I could manage. I would consider it cheating. That’s all I knew. The til death do us part of the vows only works until you realise there’s an afterlife. It should really be, til death temporarily separates us.

He’ll be just fine, the evil librarian said with more warmth in her voice than I’d imagined her capable of. And then she narrowed her eyes on Sabrina and that warmth evaporated. No thanks to you. What did you say to him?

My first instinct was to lie and she wasn’t even looking at me. 

Unfortunately, that’s confidential, Sabrina said while stepping out from behind the table, carefully avoiding the minefield of smashed pottery, and motioning for me to do the same. 

I took that to mean we were running away. I was good with running away. I did not like the way the evil librarian was looking at us. Nor the woman who was concerned with Joseph’s wellbeing. Actually, as I glanced around the pottery class, all of the other students were looking decidedly … something. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what their expressions were, but their posture made me think of how dogs snarled in warning before they bit you. That was their vibe. 

You can’t just come in here and upset the apple cart with no explanations, the evil librarian said. That simply won’t do.

The way she was staring at us, I wasn’t getting the most mentally stable vibe from her, either. And I hadn’t seen her blink. Unless she and I were continually blinking at the same time, which seemed unlikely.

I can see this was our mistake. Sabrina edged around the lady and grabbed my cuff to drag me after her. As if I were going to stay with the rabid pottery students and their evil librarian circus master. 

"It most definitely was your mistake, she snapped and poked a finger in Sabrina’s face. I shall be speaking with your supervisor."

Sabrina grinned at her. He would love to hear from you.

And with that, Sabrina tugged my sleeve again. I let her pull me along and then we were both past the evil librarian and walking swiftly in what I hoped was the opposite direction that they’d dragged Joseph.  

"And that’s why we wore these outfits. Sabrina gestured to the red jumpsuits we were wearing. The red jumpsuits of the afterlife messengers. Whoever she speaks to, we’ll be fine. Surely you have to agree it was worth it clashing with your hair."

I adjusted my fringe the way I did whenever anyone mentioned my hair. And, while I could see the benefit of not getting in trouble, I wasn’t sure anything was worth wearing a colour that clashed so desperately with my hair.

My hair was pillarbox red. Sabrina was a blonde. The red outfit suited her so much more. That wasn’t why she’d picked them. She’d chosen them so we’d have an excuse to talk to Joseph. Still, the hair clashing upset me. But Sabrina was happy with herself and we were likely going to escape without getting in trouble, which was a very good thing, so I made a noise of agreement. 

I was also sure that Sabrina understood that noise of agreement had a side helping of, "No, I don’t think it was worth it, but I’m humouring you". I was learning that sometimes, to maintain friendships, you had to let the lies lie, so to speak. 

Did you see the other pottery students? I asked. 

I thought they were going to go for us, Sabrina said while navigating around another corner. They all had the same weird expression.

One of the best things about Sabrina was her memory and navigation ability. I guessed it was part of her alive life as a private investigator. That said, the more I learned about her PI abilities, the more convinced I was that she had, in fact, been a cat burglar and not a PI. 

You know when your source said this was a pottery therapy class, I said, following her blindly along another corridor that looked exactly the same as the one we’d come from. I thought they meant therapy as in a way to cope with the afterlife. You know, like an extra GA meeting type thing or a sort of therapy his parole officer made him go to. Like what Oz made me do for a while.

GA meetings was shorthand for Ghostly Acclimatisation meetings and they were a requirement for all ghosts. The longer you were dead, the less frequently you had to attend, but for newly deads it was daily. The set up was basically a ridiculously long induction to the afterlife. It was an experienced ghost teaching a group of newly deads the rules and how to do some cool ghost stuff. It was supposed to help with adjusting to your afterlife. Just like the communal living aspect and your parole officer. 

Yeah, me too. But I think—a-ha! Sabrina snapped her fingers and pointed directly at a set of lovely, wide open, double doors to freedom. 

You think it was a we’ve-been-murdered-in-life-but-don’t-know-it therapy class? I asked as I followed her through the doors. 

Yeah. She nodded. Which is weird because I didn’t know they took extra special precautions with people who’d been murdered. They didn’t for me.

True. But maybe those guys set off some red flags as they were coming through Arrivals.

And the natural balm to being murdered is a pottery class?

"I think you’re forgetting where we are. One of my therapists designed rollercoasters in his alive life. That’s hardly the person you want giving you mental health advice, is it?"

Once we were away from the building and out in the beautiful garden, I offered her my hand so she could tunnel us back to the office. 

Tunnelling was the ghost form of transport. You thought about where you wanted to go and then you appeared there. Depending on how skilled you were at it, it could either be a seamless transition of your surroundings or it could feel like you’d fallen into a washing machine and were stuck on a painfully fast spin cycle. 

It was easier to tunnel yourself than yourself and a passenger, but Sabrina had been involved in a tunnelling incident when she’d first died. She and another ghost had accidentally tunnelled to the same spot and had almost merged. Ever since then, she refused to tunnel to the same place with someone individually. Seven years later and she’d still not overcome it. 

We landed in the office and I immediately stripped out of my jumpsuit. It wasn’t as if I were that bothered about the outfit clashing with my hair, though that was a legitimate concern. I was more worried about getting caught impersonating a messenger. My parole officer, Oz, might be lenient, but he’d been a little off kilter lately and I wasn’t about to push him. And he had this awful knack of showing up at inopportune times.

I adjusted my white blouse and high-waisted black trousers. I’d thought it had been a good idea to wear our clothes underneath, but now my blouse had twisted around in my trousers and somehow the seams on the sleeves had twisted in the opposite direction. I dumped the jumpsuit on my chair while I sorted myself out. 

It wasn’t until I’d undone all the twists, untucked and re-tucked the blouse back into my trousers and fiddled with my hair some more that I realised Sabrina hadn’t said anything. I glanced up to see what she was doing and found her folding and unfolding and refolding her red jumpsuit. Sabrina was not concerned about clothes being that neat. 

What’s up?

Hmmm? She looked up from the neatly folded jumpsuit in her hands and shook it out again. Nothing.

You’re about to fold that for the fifth time since I’ve been watching. That’s not a ‘nothing’ activity.

We messed up today. She stated it like a fact. I wanted to argue with it, but I couldn’t. We had messed up today. 

Yes, we’d solved Joseph’s murder. Yes, we’d gone to tell him in what we thought was a safe environment. Yes, we’d broached the subject gently. And yes, we’d royally messed up.

"It wasn’t technically our fault," I said, because that was true. A little bit true. 

Tell me how. Sabrina folded the jumpsuit again and I took it from her hands before she could unfold it and dumped it on top of my crumpled jumpsuit. 

"He wanted to know. He filled out the form. He filed the form. We took the form and solved his murder and told him. Just like he wanted. I held my hand up before she could interrupt. Was I the embodiment of tact? No, I was not. Was that unprofessional? Yes. It was. Should I have been more considerate of my word choice? Probably. Did we use our initiative to find an environment to catch him where we thought he’d be safe? Yes. Did⁠—"

Did he lose his mind? Yes.

Did it go according to plan? No, I conceded. But it wasn’t as if we just rocked up on him and were like, ‘Hey cheater, your bit on the side offed you to get your money. Serves you right’.

"I don’t know. I feel like that’s exactly what you said. But, she continued before I could argue, I just don’t feel like we made his life better today."

He ticked the privacy box as well, I reminded her. "That meant he specifically didn’t want anyone with him. And when we showed up, we asked him for a preferred time and place to discuss it. As in, we gave him another chance to say he wanted someone present, someone to be there with him when we explained what we’d found. To have that conversation elsewhere. He was the scumbag who demanded to know immediately. And he didn’t even say thank you for our hard work, by the way."  

You’re right. She nodded. You’re right.

I’m hearing the words. I’m not feeling the vibe.

She sighed. I just feel like we’re making things worse. Every time we do this, every time we tell someone the truth, I feel like we’re making their life worse. Maybe we shouldn’t get them to issue those forms at Arrivals anymore.

"That was your idea! I was working very hard not to let my voice become a screech. You were the one who suggested the whole system because it made more sense to solve murders of people who wanted their potential murders solved rather than just solving random old murders of someone who might not want their murder solved."

I know. I know. She waved me off. But maybe newly dead people aren’t the best judge of this. Maybe they’re not the best judge of what’s best for them.

"Okay. That’s fair. I can’t argue with that. Newly dead people are stupid. I mean, dead people in general are stupid, but newly deads are the worst. The problem with that is if we stop asking them, if we stop asking newly deads if they want their murders solved, where does that leave us? Because we looked at the unsolved murders of folks who were already dead and …" I inclined my head and let the sentence trail off. 

I didn’t need to finish it. Sabrina had been in the room with me when the delivery guy had brought in fifty-seven boxes. Although it had been a lot, I’d felt like it was doable. And that was when Sabrina had lifted the lid from one box and realised it wasn’t a box of files, it was a box filled with a list of files. The list was fifty-seven boxes long. And just when I’d gotten myself to the point where I thought that might be doable—we had eternity after all—the delivery guy had said that was just A to D and where did we want the rest. 

Sabrina flopped onto the sofa and leaned back, resting her neck on the back cushions and stared at the ceiling. 

I just—I want to do something that matters.

Whoa. You can’t just steal my line like that.

She rolled her head in my direction without lifting it from the sofa and grinned at me. It was⁠—

A knock on the door interrupted her. We did the same thing we always did in that situation. Despite having shared the office with Madame Zorina, a livie psychic, for nearly seven years, whenever anyone knocked on the door we had the same response. We both just stared at it. 

Madame Zorina ran her private investigations business out of the office, so there were regularly livies, alive folks, traipsing in and out. Since Sabrina and I were technically ghosts, that presented a problem when livies came a-knocking and Madame Zorina wasn’t around. 

Before we could have the usual back and forth over what we should do, the doorknob twisted. A short, balding man with a down-turned mouth and carrying a few extra pounds around his midsection pushed the door open and stood in the frame.

Ah. Just who I was looking for. Detective Johnson’s mouth pulled into a sneer. My two least favourite people.

Chapter Two

"W hat do you want?" I asked, heaping as much disgust into my tone as possible in the hope he’d focus on that and not on the fact I was strolling with exaggerated casualness back to my chair. 

I’d dumped both of the red messenger jumpsuits on the seat