Shuttered Secrets

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  After packing the cameras into a cardboard box in Jade’s trunk, Riley took the camera bag off her shoulder.

  Jade gingerly took it from her. “It’s so hideous. And it smells musty. I might be able to repurpose it, though. With a little love and care, maybe I could turn into a picnic basket or something.” She placed it on the floorboards behind the passenger seat.

  They had just climbed into the car when Jade’s phone rang, dispelling the last of Riley’s idle worries about the shop owner and her odd behavior. Especially since Jade hadn’t seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary.

  Brie’s face popped up on Jade’s screen. Attaching the phone to her dash, Jade answered the call, putting it on speaker.

  “Hey, Brie,” Jade said, strapping herself in. “Riley and I just picked up more cameras.”

  “Hi, Brie,” Riley said, strapping in, too.

  “Oh my God,” Brie said in her flat monotone. “I am having the worst day … hi, by the way. So I am at the mall with the kids and I managed to lock my keys inside my car. I am driving the stone-age minivan because the fancy SUV is in the shop again. Greg is stuck at the office for a few more hours.”

  A screech rose in the background, followed by a child’s wail.

  “Both of you need to stop right now. I am very upset with both of you,” Brie said with all the passion of a sleepy sloth. “I am trying to talk to Jade.”

  “Hi, Jade!” a small voice called out.

  “Sorry you had to hear that,” Brie said. “I try not to yell at the children in front of people. I really do hate to ask, Jade, but could you please pick me up so I can get the spare keys from home? I will owe you for the rest of time.”

  When Brie was stressed out, she talked even slower and abandoned all contractions. She sounded like a mildly irritated butler from a period piece.

  Jade laughed. “Of course! I’ll be there in a jiff. I just need to drop Ry off first.”

  “Totally fine,” Brie said. “You are a gem. Sorry to steal her from you, Riley, but I am desperate.”

  “Are you kidding?” Riley asked. “This is perfect. She’s been running me all over town. Now I get to put my feet up and watch Netflix, which is the only way to spend a Friday, if you ask me.”

  “Despite her surliness, she actually loves me,” Jade said. “She can’t express deep feelings. Unless it’s about Michael. Then she can’t stop gushing.”

  Riley’s face flamed. “I hate you.”

  “See?” Jade said, laughing.

  Brie was laughing, too. “See you soon.”

  Even after Jade disconnected the call, she didn’t start the car. Slowly, she turned toward Riley and said, “Speaking of Michael …”

  Riley braced herself for a friendly interrogation. There hadn’t been one of these in a couple of months. They were overdue.

  “Have you heard anything more about this family vacation?”

  “Just that the way they’re making their decision on where to go involves one of their food challenges,” Riley said.

  “Now that you’ve had a chance to think about it more,” Jade said with all the caution of approaching a scared kitten, “how are you feeling about getting an invite?”

  “Still a little nervous.” That was all Riley was going to say, just like the last time Jade asked. Yep. Nothing more to say. Jade waited her out. All of a sudden, Riley was spewing all her insecurities at Jade as if a dam had broken. “We haven’t even been dating a year yet and they already want me to come on their annual family vacation? We haven’t even said we love each other yet! I’ve almost said it like three hundred times but I keep chickening out. Michael is the hugest cornball in the world. If he hasn’t said it, he probably never will, right? What if he’s over it and his parents are forcing him to prolong it?”

  Jade rolled her eyes. “I knew you were wigging out about this, but good lord, girl. Get a grip. He adores you. And it’s a family vacation that’s still months away. They clearly think you’ll still be in his life then. Have you considered the possibility that maybe he keeps chickening out, too?”

  Riley’s face was still on fire. She wasn’t really the type to fall fast, but she’d fallen into a relationship with Michael within a month or so of knowing him and they’d been going strong ever since. “It’s all so fast. But it’s also so … easy? Effortless, really. Being with Casey wasn’t easy. We were hot and cold. I think I convinced myself that meant we were passionate?”

  Jade wrinkled her nose. “Easy isn’t a bad thing. Easy, as far as I’m concerned, means it’s working. Being with someone shouldn’t be a chore or stressful or any of that. You two click. Effortless is how it should be. I mean, don’t get me wrong, you’ll still want to strangle each other. Jonah drives me bonkers. But he’s my person, you know? I want him around all the time even when I want to strangle him.”

  Riley nodded.

  “I know it can be hard to trust a good thing,” Jade said. “But I hope you give it a full chance even if it scares the shit out of you.”

  “I already agreed to the food challenge,” Riley said reluctantly. “His parents won’t give any of us any details, but they promised that it will be delightfully awful. Even Michael and Donna are scared. I’m convinced whatever their parents have planned is going to involve a lot of mustard.”

  Jade cackled.

  Last month, a huge group of Riley’s friends had gone to a new gourmet hot dog place that had opened in town recently. Michael had an abhorrence for mustard on a level that was unbridled. He’d requested his dog come without mustard nearly ten times, and yet, when he bit into his, mustard had been hiding below the healthy layer of grilled onions. He’d managed to swallow the bite down, but had practically wept while doing so.

  “Jonah is like that about capers,” Jade said, grinning. “That man will eat just about anything, but capers are ‘little salty nuggets of despair.’” She started up the car. “I’m going to need a video of this food challenge, just so you know.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  When they got back to Riley’s apartment, Jade pulled into a guest parking spot. “So in addition to ditching you, I need a favor.”

  Riley had called at least ten craft stores yesterday to ask which ones had faux beech wood. If Jade wanted her to make more phone calls, Riley was going to lose it. The new season of Tiana’s Circle was dropping tonight and she and her friend Rochelle had a viewing party scheduled. Instead of replying, Riley squinted menacingly at her.

  “Chill,” Jade said. “I’m not going to make you miss your precious show. Can you keep the cameras with you tonight? Jonah is low-key obsessed with vintage tech.” Nose wrinkled, she braced herself as she added in a rush, “Last night he might have dismantled one of the ones we bought.”

  “Can he remantle it?” Riley asked, inwardly groaning at the fact that this likely meant even more thrift shops would be added to their search.

  “So far, no,” Jade said. “Thankfully I got the other one away from him before he ruined that one too. I was so mad. I almost wish we were already married so I could divorce him.”

  Riley laughed.

  “So, can you keep them with you?” Jade asked. “I want them far away from him until the wedding. He can take them apart like the weirdo he is after we’re married.”

  “I can do that.”

  Once upstairs, Riley set the box in the corner of her living room along with a couple of boxes of other wedding supplies Jade had yet to pick up. She flopped onto the couch. Since it was nearly 4 pm, she put on the local news for a few minutes, just as she had every evening for the last six months. She knew if something big had happened in the Francis Hank Carras case, Walter Palmer or Detective Howard would keep her in the loop. Yet, she still checked daily—both on TV and online. She supposed she didn’t want to be caught off guard if the slippery bastard somehow got released. The fact that Hank had stalked her long enough to find her apartment and had left a vase of flowers on her doorstep had never stopped unsettling her. Any time sh
e heard a strange noise outside, her brain screamed He’s out there! even if logically she knew that was impossible.

  This afternoon, just like every other afternoon, there was no news about Hank. He presumably was still in his prison orange, awaiting trial for his assault and murder of Walter’s daughter, Renee Palmer, in 1983.

  Rochelle got to Riley’s apartment around seven. The tiny curvaceous brunette flipped a lock of her shampoo-commercial hair out of her face when Riley opened the door. Holding out a tote bag as an offering, she said, “I have wine, popcorn, and a jumbo bag of M&Ms.”

  “You may enter,” Riley said, ushering her in.

  Riley didn’t have to start her shift at The Laughing Tiger, a dim sum restaurant where she waitressed five to six nights a week, until 5 pm tomorrow night. She and Rochelle planned to get through as many episodes of the new season as they could handle in one sitting. They made it through four before Rochelle started to fade on her, exhausted from a day at work.

  “What if I pass out on the couch for a few hours and then we finish up in the morning?” Rochelle asked.

  Riley got her a pillow and blanket, but by the time she returned to the living room, Rochelle was fast asleep with one leg thrown over the armrest and her mouth hung open. She issued a clipped snore in greeting. After draping the blanket over her friend, she left the pillow on the coffee table.

  As Riley took a shower, her mind was awhirl with theories about what Rose’s new ability to wield lightning meant, considering that her mother was a werewolf. Crawling into bed, Riley sincerely hoped Rochelle didn’t sleep the morning away. Otherwise Riley would be forced to watch the next episode on her phone without her. Howie’s recent confession couldn’t be real, could it? The waiting would drive her mad.

  After half an hour of lying there wide awake, she re-downloaded last season’s episodes of her favorite Tiana’s Circle recap podcast. Fans even nerdier than herself dissected the show, tossing around their theories about what was to come in the season Rochelle and Riley had just started.

  Riley startled awake after what felt like a moment, yet her room and the world beyond her windows was still dark. Had a sound woken her? Groping around her comforter, she found her phone and earbuds, placing them both on her nightstand table.

  She waited a moment, wondering if some piece of a dream would come floating back. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, a shape at the foot of her bed didn’t melt back into the shadows.

  An unmistakably human-shaped shadow.

  Riley scooted away like a startled crab, her back to the headboard. Her sleep-addled mind ran through a panic checklist of nots. This was not Hank. This was not a man at all.

  It was a woman.

  The person was too tall to be Rochelle and the body type was all wrong.

  Riley’s heart slammed against her rib cage. How had someone gotten in here without Rochelle noticing?

  But that was logic trying to explain away the obvious illogical reality. A reality she’d known immediately but had rejected just as quickly because she couldn’t deal with this shit right now.

  And the reality was this: there was a ghost in her bedroom. Again.

  It had been six months since a ghost had woken her up, and at the moment, she would have much preferred to see the familiar form of nine-year-old Pete, not a twenty-something woman.

  As Riley’s eyes adjusted further, recognition kicked in. It was the same young Black lady she’d seen in the thrift shop earlier. Riley pursed her lips. “Hi?” she asked, her voice cracking. “Are you—”

  The woman abruptly vanished.

  Dramatically throwing herself onto her side, Riley let out a groan. Cycling through what few “rules” she knew about hauntings, she quickly assessed the situation. Ghosts had a tendency to latch onto objects of importance. If that item were moved, the ghost went with it—like Pete riding back to Riley’s apartment after he’d snuck his beanie into her duffel bag. Ghosts sometimes latched onto people, too, but Riley hadn’t been anywhere notably haunted recently. Except that grocery store.

  Which meant two things. First, at least one of those cameras that sat in a box in her living room was haunted.

  Dammit.

  And second? She had to call Nina.

  Double dammit.

  CHAPTER 3

  She peered into the mirror, scrutinizing her face, then squeezed another dollop of hair cream into her hand and scrunched the ends of her curly hair still damp from the shower. She stared down at the tube of unused red lipstick on her counter. Tentatively, she picked it up, turning it this way and that. Lipstick intimidated her anyway, but red? It was such a bold statement. She knew this bout of insecurity was silly. People had told her all her life how pretty she’d be if she stopped hiding behind baggy clothes and drab colors. But she didn’t really like attention.

  So it was a mystery even to herself why things had changed for her, why she felt like crawling out of her shell for one of the first times in her life. She’d had help, of course, but it was a significant shift and she knew it.

  She stared at the lipstick tube still held in between her fingers. “Do it,” she told herself. “He said you’re a natural beauty. It’s time for you to start believing it.”

  She leaned forward and swiped on the lipstick.

  Standing back to admire herself, she gave a little nod. Not bad. Gently tugging on the cap sleeves of her sunshine-yellow sundress, even she had to admit that the color looked great against her dark skin. The color last time had been a mistake. Hell, everything about that had been a mistake.

  Her phone chimed from the counter and she picked it up to see Bruce had texted her again.

  Bruce: What color are you wearing?

  Me: Yellow, just like you requested.

  Bruce: I bet you look amazing. You doing okay on time?

  Me: Yep! I was able to get home from work in time to freshen up. Should I meet you in the parking lot?

  Bruce: That would be perfect.

  Me: Great. I’m excited!

  Bruce: Me too.

  With one last look at herself in the mirror, she headed for the door, stumbling slightly over the clothes heaped on the ground. Gray slacks, black button-up, gray suit jacket. She stepped over the pile, her bright yellow dress swishing around her legs as she did so. She grabbed her purse off the back of a chair in the dining room and stuffed her phone inside.

  She let herself out of the apartment.

  As the door closed, Riley’s eyes sprang open.

  Blinking rapidly, she shook her head as she tried to untangle her own reality from the one in the dream. A dream about the same woman who had been at the foot of her bed earlier, and in the thrift shop before that.

  She waited a few moments as her eyes adjusted, searching every corner, half-expecting the woman to be lurking, ready to discuss what Riley had seen. Her bedroom remained empty.

  Creeping out into the living room, Riley checked on Rochelle, who was still passed out on the couch. She was curled up under the blanket in a more comfortable position than she had been a few hours ago, at least, and the pillow was under her head now. A quick glance at the clock told Riley it was just after seven in the morning.

  She shot a death glare at the box of cameras in the corner of her living room and considered dumping them out a window. If she told Jade it had been an accident, would she believe her? The problem with Jade was that she was obsessed with ghosts. The whole reason the spirits of serial killer Orin Jacobs and little Pete Vonick had entered Riley’s life in the first place had been because Jade forced Riley to attend a ghost hunting investigation weekend at Orin’s former home. And now another ghost was in her life, thanks to Jade.

  Maybe she needed a new best friend.

  A voice in the back of her head told her she couldn’t blame the Poltergeist of Aisle 3 on Jade. Or the weeping woman from miniature golf. She told the voice to shut up.

  Heading back into her bedroom, she grabbed her cell phone off her nightstand, put on some house slippers,
and eased out her front door. She dialed Michael as she carefully headed down the steps.

  He answered immediately. “You’re calling me before noon. What’s wrong?”

  “Rude,” she hissed.

  “Did you and Rochelle stay up all night watching your show?” he asked. “Is that it … you haven’t slept yet?”

  “I think my apartment is haunted.”

  Michael sputtered. “What? Is Pete back?”

  “I wish. Actually, no I don’t. Pete being gone and staying gone means he’s in a better place now. Wherever that place might be.”

  “It’s not the poltergeist, is it?” he asked. “Ghosts can hitch a ride on people, right? Do we have to burn your whole apartment complex down to get rid of him? I’ll start siphoning gas out of my neighbor’s cars if you need me to. Just say the word.”

  “It’s very sweet of you to offer arson as a solution to my problems.”

  “Anything for you, babe,” he said in an over-the-top tone she knew he knew would make her roll her eyes.

  “Cheeseball,” she said, then told him about the thrift shop, the cameras, and her dream. “Arson isn’t the key. But maybe getting rid of Jade is.”

  “If you get rid of Jade, you know she’ll haunt your ass for the rest of your days,” he said.

  Riley wrinkled her nose. “I didn’t mean murder. Geez. But also you’re right.” She walked out into the quiet parking lot and started chewing on a cuticle as she paced near her carport.

  “Do you think it’s time to call Nina?” he asked.

  “Probably,” she said.

  “I think she’s right: you’re going to need to figure out how to live with being a ghost whisperer. You’ve been driving out of your way to a different grocery store to avoid the poltergeist, which is working well enough, but you can’t avoid your apartment forever. You’re always welcome here, but if you start bringing ghosts home with you, we’re going to have to get a therapist for Baxter. Mine doesn’t see cats.”