Last Chance Knit & Stitch by Hope Ramsay

be avoided at all costs. It was Zeph’s job to keep the ghost contained until Simon left town. And right now, that meant finding a home for this pup. The ghost always calmed down when one of its strays was taken care of. So Zeph had pushed things up a little bit. He’d made a snap decision.
    Zeph stirred from the shadows, crossed the street, and headed into the alley between Dot’s place and the dry cleaners. The alley opened into a parking lot. Across the way stood a small two-story house with an external fire stair leading to a second-floor apartment.
    There was a small, weed-overgrown garden at the back with a couple of concrete planters that hadn’t seen living plants in some time. Zeph pulled out the remnants of long-dead flowers, then laid down a couple of rags that he’d tucked into his shirt to keep them warm.
    He placed the dog on the makeshift bed, then backed into the shadows at the corner of the building. He checked his watch. On Wednesdays and Fridays, Ricki left the bar at ten-thirty.
    He didn’t have to wait very long, and he wasn’t surprised when the dog woke up right on cue. The ghost had something to do with that. The critters could see the ghost, even better than Zeph could.
    Ricki came walking across the lot on those high-heeled boots she always wore to Dot’s. Before she couldput one foot on the stair leading to her apartment, the dog raised her head and gave a little halfhearted bark.
    Ricki gasped in surprise and turned toward the planter. The dog barked again and started shivering.
    And that was all it took for the bond to be forged.
    Molly ducked out of work on Thursday morning around ten-thirty, just as soon as she’d finished rotating the tires on Clyde McKeller’s Buick. She hurried up the street and into Arlo Boyd’s real estate office.
    She probably should have had an appointment, but these were desperate times. Adelle Clarke, his receptionist, looked up from her workstation computer as Molly came through the door.
    “Hey,” Molly said, “is Arlo available?”
    “He’s back in his office reading the paper and eating his midmorning doughnut. Thursdays are pretty slow. You can go on back.”
    Molly headed down a hallway, past a break room, and into Arlo’s standard-issue real estate office. The room had a faux-wood desk, blue carpet, and a conference table where Arlo helped his clients make deals and offers. Arlo had once been a really big dude. Big enough to be a linebacker on the 1990 Rebels dream team. But that had been a long time ago. His love of doughnuts and cigarettes had caught up to him. He was balding and paunchy and red-faced, and he was headed for an early coronary just like Ira. She caught him finishing a big, juicy Bavarian cream doughnut.
    “Hey, Arlo,” Molly said. “I only have a minute. I’ve gotta get back to work. But I wanted to find out how much it would cost to lease the old Coca-Cola building.”
    Arlo used a paper towel to dab the Bavarian cream thathad leaked from the corner of his mouth. “Sweet Jesus, what is going on in this town? That building’s been vacant for decades, and now, suddenly, in the space of three days, I’ve got two people wanting to lease it and a third who’s about to make an offer to buy it.”
    “What? Someone is buying it? Who?”
    “Well, the offer isn’t all the way in yet. To be honest. And I’m not at liberty to disclose that. But it doesn’t matter because the building is no longer available for lease. It’s been leased for the next three months.”
    “Three months? You leased it for only three months?”
    He speared the last few doughnut crumbs on his Styrofoam plate and conveyed them to his mouth with his finger. “Well,” he said after savoring the last morsels with half-closed eyes, “the building’s been vacant for a decade. I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. In fact, I would have taken the horse even if he’d been toothless and ready for the glue factory.”
    “But that building’s