A Piece of the Action
lawnmowerelf
"Have a nice day."
As soon as the woman was out of sight Dean let his smile falter and rolled his eyes as he leaned back against the cash register. When Sam had told him that one of them would have to go undercover Dean had volunteered, figuring that it would give him a chance to flirt with all sorts of women while Sam holed up in the small, dusty library.
Unfortunately, it seemed that the clientele at the small town supermarket that Sam thought was haunted didn't exactly run to the kind of women Dean normally went for, or was interested in at all, for that matter. Either they were jailbait, seriously self-absorbed bitches, or they were the kind of scary that made him feel like he needed a shower.
He glanced back at the doorway where his last customer had just disappeared. She had definitely been one of the latter.
It had been a week since he'd managed to finagle his way into a job running the register, and so far there hadn't been any sign of the accidents that had drawn Sam's attention to the store in the first place. Before they had arrived one woman had slipped on a banana peel and twisted her ankle, one man had an entire shelf of baby food inexplicably fall on his head, and the eighteen-year-old night cashier had a frozen turkey fall on her foot and break it.
It was the banana peel incident that had decided things for Dean, as outside the Three Stooges no one ever actually slipped on banana peels, especially if said banana peel just suddenly appeared out of nowhere on the floor in the soup aisle. But there hadn't been any unusual accidents since the turkey incident, and Sam still hadn't managed to figure out what the connection between the victims was.
Which meant that Dean was stuck bagging groceries and being leered at by creepy old women while Sam was getting friendly with the hot, red-haired librarian who apparently had a thing for really ginormous geeks. Sometimes life just wasn't fair.
He jerked to attention a moment later when he heard the night manager yelp and then begin cursing. He headed towards the back, nearly bumping into Danielle as she stomped towards the front office, a towel wrapped around her hand.
"Hey, are you okay?"
She growled, holding her hand against her chest. "I cut my hand on one of the knives in the sink. I could have sworn that I'd put them all away, but I must have missed one. And this was turning out to be such a nice week, too. I even won fifty bucks on my last scratch-off lottery ticket."
Dean frowned, only half of his attention on Danielle as she moved around the store looking for the cordless phone. He remembered hearing that the cashier with the broken foot had bought her very first lottery ticket the month before on her eighteenth birthday and won a hundred dollars on her first try. Which meant that he finally had a lead for Sam to research, so that hopefully they could get this job taken care of and move on to something a little less creepy.
He managed to finish his shift without being leered at again and walked the four blocks to the library, pausing for a long moment by the Impala as he seriously considered just slipping into the car for a quick nap while Sam finished up whatever he was doing. He decided not to for the simple reason that if he didn't go and personally drag Sam out of the library he might wind up staying there all night.
It only took him a few minutes to find Sam, holed up in a corner with stacks of local newspapers in front of him and his laptop open to the side. Dean plopped into the seat next to him, shoving the newspapers back and grinning as Sam glared at him.
"Hey, Sammy. I think I've finally got us a lead."
Sam's frown faded at that. "Really? Did something happen today?"
Dean nodded. "Yep. Danielle sliced her hand open on a knife that she swears wasn't in the sink when she stuck her hand in. The kicker is, both she and the chick with the turkey bought winning lottery tickets before their accidents."
Sam grimaced and turned to his laptop. "You just might be on to something. I stopped by the coffee shop earlier and talked to Mrs. Jensen, the woman who slipped on the banana peel, and she mentioned winning two hundred dollars on a scratch-off lottery ticket less than a month ago."
"So we've got an angry spirit who either doesn't like the lottery or doesn't like other people winning it." Dean chuckled. "Maybe the ghost wants a piece of the action."
Sam rolled his eyes, attention focused on the laptop. "Hey, I think I might have found our ghost."
Dean leaned over so that he could read over Sam's shoulder. "Mrs. Josephine Thomas, who died in 1995 at the age of 92, was the wife of Richard Thomas and took over running his store when her husband died." He paused, skimming further down the article. "She was a Sunday school teacher for nearly fifty years, and publicly spoke out on the evils of drinking and gambling."
Sam nodded. "And our ghost is going after people who are benefiting from their gambling, but it's not seriously injuring anyone. It all fits, Dean."
"Yeah, it does. So, we gonna go dig Josie up then?"
"Yeah, though it's possible that we might not have to salt and burn her." Sam started reorganizing the newspapers and putting them back. "She's not really behaving like a normal ghost; she's not trying to kill anyone and the violence of the attacks isn't escalating. If we can talk to her, we might be able to convince her to just move on."
Dean wasn't entirely sure about that, but he was willing to give Sam a chance so long as Josie didn't try to pull anything funny. A quick trip back by the motel later, and they were standing in the oddly-named Smellage Cemetery, digging up Mrs. Thomas's grave.
They had just hit the coffin when a cold wind began to blow and the ghostly figure of a little old lady suddenly appeared. For a moment they just blinked at her, then Sam pushed himself out of the grave and walked over to her.
"Are you Josephine Thomas, ma'am?"
She nodded, raising one hand to point at Sam and Dean. "Why are you disturbing me? I have work to finish."
Sam flashed her his most earnest expression, and Dean could tell the moment she decided to listen to him. "You need to move on, Mrs. Thomas. I know you're trying to keep an eye on your late husband's store, but wouldn't you rather go on and be with him? We know you don't really want to hurt anyone, but if you stay here you eventually will."
For a long moment she simply looked at Sam, and Dean began fingering the rock salt filled shotgun that was sitting on the ground next to him in case she decided that she didn't really want to move on after all. Then she nodded, and a pale light began to glow around her.
"Thank you, young man."
There was a muted flash, and Josephine Thomas was gone. Sam and Dean just looked at each other for a moment, then Dean pushed himself out of the grave and handed Sam his shovel.
"All right, geek boy. Let's get this thing filled back in so I can get some sleep before I go tell Danielle that I quit."