by Lyla Payne
“It’s Gracie Lou Who, Ted! Come tie her up before she claws my eyes out.”
“Put me down, you big oaf!” I squeal, trying unsuccessfully to kick him in the shins.
“Tom, please. Some decorum. We do not manhandle Heron Creek citizens, no matter how they might deserve a little good-natured trouble from the police.” Dylan Travis, a recent addition to Heron Creek and the police force, glowers at my red-haired, freckle-faced old friend. Tom’s twin stops in his tracks three feet away, no longer sure he’s supposed to grab me now that we’re being chastised. Or they are.
“Sorry, Boss. Maybe you’ll understand after a few more months in the Creek.” Tom shrugs, elbowing me in the side. “Right, Gracie?”
“Yes, I can’t wait until everyone in town greets me with lung-crushing pain.”
“You’re such a baby these days,” he huffs, sitting down at his desk and wolfing down a glazed donut in a single bite.
“And I see you’ve decided to become a full-on cliché.” Despite the exchange, I can’t keep the grin off my face. These boys are like the big brothers no one wants but everyone loves, and if they ever left the town I feel like the sun would stop shining. Which would also be less annoying, on some days.
“Damn the man! Eat the donuts!” Ted chimes in, grabbing a chocolate-frosted one for himself.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I inform him, looking to Travis for another rescue.
He doesn’t seem to get the hint as it takes at least two minutes of pointed looks before he interrupts the twins’ banter. “If you’ll excuse us, fellas, Miss Harper and I have some police business to attend.”
“Ooooh, Gracie Lou, what did you do now? Set something else on fire? Steal Leo’s dumb guitar?”
“That would be a public service, not a crime,” Tom chides, stroking his chin as though he’s deep in thought.
Before I can come to Leo’s defense—he’s never going to get a record deal in Nashville but his singing isn’t exactly painful—Travis motions me away.
“We’re expecting a Miss Daria…” he says to the twins. He looks to me as though I’m supposed to finish the sentence, but I don’t even know if she has a last name. She could be like Cher or Madonna.
“A Miss Daria,” Travis finishes lamely. “Please bring her to the A.V. room when she gets here.”
“Sure thing, Yank.” Tom shoots a glance at his brother.
The looks on the twins’ faces say their curiosity has been piqued, and that’s definitely a bad thing. They’re going to know what’s going on and who Daria is before I leave here today, no reason to doubt it.
Travis grunts at the use of the nickname, maybe because he’s from Texas and not anything like a real Yankee, but doesn’t protest before leading me into one of the three closed-off rooms in the small station. It’s filled with outdated video equipment and a couple of laptops that would rival Sean’s for the World’s Oldest Working Computer award.
He sits and kicks out a matching folding chair for me, which I claim. “Should we wait for her?”
“Yeah. I’m on my lunch break so I don’t have time to go through it twice.” I check the time on my phone, noticing a text from Leo. “If she doesn’t get here in the next five minutes, though, we can start.”
I swipe open the text message.
How’d the first day go at the Drayton estate? Everything you hoped for?
It was…interesting.
As interesting as the reason Daria’s running around town? She just caused quite the stir at Westies when she informed old Mrs. Blount that her dead dog is really upset she didn’t cremate him with his favorite ball.
I can’t decide whether to pass out from horror or laugh.
Oh God. She didn’t say anything about me, did she?
You know it. The ladies of Heron Creek wouldn’t let a stranger escape without an interrogation, you know that.
Fabulous.
You want to play tennis later and catch up? I have a feeling I’m missing out on some excitement, and you know how I feel about being in the loop.
I pause, biting my lip. Beau and I are supposed to hang out but I’ve barely spoken to Leo since his sister, Lindsay, got home from prison, and I haven’t seen her daughter, Marcella, at all. It’s left a bit of a hole in my life, even though it’s clear their little family needs some time alone.
Sure. Before dinner, though?
I can squeeze in both. Leo’s exactly the person I’d like to tell about the creepy dead girl on the Drayton property. I saw Beau last night and told him everything else about my first day but left her out…I don’t know why. It’s his family and the death is fairly recent, which means she should be easy enough to track down. It might be better to make sure it’s not a sensitive family matter before ruining one of our precious nights together.
I meant to look up documented deaths on the property this morning but the library was actually a bit busy, with a meeting with Mr. Freedman to discuss when newly purchased books would be arriving—hopefully this afternoon—and the first school-year meeting of a mommy book club.
“How is Amelia doing, in your estimation?” Travis asks.
“In my estimation?” My tone is mocking but it goes straight over his head, not budging his earnest expression. I sigh. “Not well. She does seem more together as far as the nightmares and the sleepwalking, but I don’t know… I feel like she’s just getting better at faking it. She’s hiding something, and that scares me.”
He frowns. “I agree. That’s not ideal. Perhaps I’ll drop around this evening. Do the two of you have dinner plans?”
“I’m supposed to go somewhere with Beau.” I pause, a little unnerved by how much I’m starting to depend on Travis, despite all my efforts to the contrary, at least when it comes to my cousin. He’s good for Amelia—anyone can see that—and he really seems to care about her. Leave it up to my gorgeous, charming Southern belle of a cousin to snag the interest of a man when she’s six months pregnant. “But I think she’d like the company.”
He gives me a wry smile. “Well, I’m not confident enough to say that, but perhaps she needs the company, at any rate.”
“Hello?” Daria pokes her head in the door, halting any further conversation about my cousin, which is fine. There isn’t much left to say, sadly, though it will be nice to be able to check in with Travis later this week. Get his assessment on her mental state.
I wish there weren’t things like stupid doctor-patient confidentiality laws so I could just pry it out of her therapist myself, but alas.
“Hi,” I reply, realizing then that she and Travis haven’t met. “This is Detective Travis.”
“Pleasure,” he manages, his eyes wide at her appearance.
Perhaps because she’s dyed her hair bright purple since the last time I saw her and she is, for some godforsaken reason, wearing a ruby red, formal satin gown. With running shoes.
“Um…did I accidentally mention a dress code in my e-mail?” Inside, I’m wondering why Leo didn’t think to warn me about this development. The answer is, of course, that it would be exponentially less fun.
“No. I have plans after this,” she huffs, dropping into a chair and pulling a handkerchief out of her bag to mop the bridge of her nose. “I have a life, you know.”
“I don’t doubt it.” I choke out the words, unsure what the appropriate response is in this situation.
She shoots me a glare, but Travis breaks in before we can get into a ghost-hunter snarkfest. We should get a reality show on TLC or something.
“Okay, so I just want the two of you to take a look at this video from a breakin we had at the hospital last week. We have a moving image of what appears to be an apparition going into the supply closet—through the door—and emerging a few minutes later.”
“And you want to know if it’s real?” The expression on Daria’s face is skeptical. “Hard to say for sure without being there.”
“Well, this is our only option,” Travis snaps, leaning forward to press pl
ay on a VCR.
A VCR. Sometimes I wonder if maybe Heron Creek is part of a secret government time capsule experiment. Life here ambles along about twenty years behind the rest of the civilized world. The fact that the image is black and white does nothing to disprove my theory.
On the screen is an empty, slightly fuzzy hallway over at the three-story building that passes for a hospital in Heron Creek. There are doors on either side and, at the edge of the frame, an empty nursing station and another hallway.
It doesn’t take long for the apparition—or whatever it is—to appear. It looks like a semisolid glob that’s slightly person shaped as it flows down the hall. It doesn’t really have legs, per se, but it moves like a human being and not goo.
I squint, scooting my chair as far forward as it will go, until my nose almost presses against the screen.
“You know, I can’t see if you do that.”
“Sorry.” I’d almost forgotten Daria was here, despite the fact that she’s mouth-breathing behind me.
She shoulders her way next to me, pushing Travis out of the way, and copies my squint. We watch the goo-figure slide through the middle door on the left. About three minutes later it pops back out into the hallway and slinks back the way it came.
“It’s not carrying anything.” The surprise in my voice startles Daria, who turns to look at me. “What? I mean, stuff was stolen but whatever that thing is, it didn’t take it.”
“We noticed that, too, but no one else goes in or out of that room, and it was completely ransacked. Bunch of stuff gone, mostly painkillers and their whole supply of EpiPens.” Travis frowns at the screen before switching it off. “Well, what are your thoughts?”
“Like I said, it’s hard to say based on this.” Daria purses her lips, trying to look serious but failing, mostly because of her getup. The outward strangeness is what I expected from her from the beginning, but when we met at her office she had looked so…normal. “But I don’t think that’s a real spirit.”
“I agree, not because I’m an expert or anything.” I ignore Daria’s gaze, hot on the side of my face. “But items were stolen, and this thing didn’t take them. So, if whoever did this managed to doctor the tape to hide the actual theft then they could have put this fake ghost thing in at the same time.”
“That makes sense, and it’s in line with what I’ve been thinking since I’m not much for believing in ghosts. No offense to the two of you.”
“Ghosts are kind of like God, Mr. Travis. You don’t have to believe for them to be real. And, like God, they believe in you.”
“That’s very existential, ma’am. Thank you for your perspective, and for your assistance in this matter.” He shakes her hand, as formal as ever.
Daria looks at me the way she did at her place of business the other day; she’s trying to work a puzzle, but what exactly stumps her about me remains a mystery. “Call me, okay? I’ve just…got a feeling.”
With that cryptic statement, she’s gone, off to whatever venue requires formal attire, sneakers, and purple hair.
To his credit, Travis makes no comment on my new friend’s appearance, just shakes his head a little as though trying to put his world back to right, then nods in my direction. “Thanks for coming down. I wanted to eliminate the supernatural since there are some folks on the force who couldn’t let it go, with the tape and all. Your reasoning is solid. Someone stole drugs from that room and it wasn’t an apparition.”
“Who do you think it was?” I ask, small fingers of suspicion and curiosity starting to dig into my mind. It worries me that whoever burgled the hospital chose to use a ghost as a distraction. Perhaps my sensitivity is charting off the scale, but the discomfort wrapped around my spine whispers that this could, somehow, be about me.
“I don’t know. We’re looking at some local dealers, mostly small-time stuff. They’d be able to get decent money for those kinds of prescription drugs.” He stands up, pushing the folding chair out of the way so he can move toward the door. “We’ll figure it out. Don’t worry about it.”
Easier said than done, but there’s not much choice but to follow his lead, climbing out of the uncomfortable chair and sliding back into the station hallway. “Okay.”
His heavy hand lands on my shoulder, his gray eyes intent on mine. “I mean it, Graciela. This isn’t the time to go all amateur sleuth. You got lucky dealing with the Carusos. People who would steal drugs aren’t the sort you want to mess around with.”
“I know.”
“I suspect you know, but you’re not all that big on using your head to make decisions.”
“Hey.” Irritation spikes, slanting my eyes into a glare. “Why is this your business?”
“First of all, because I’m the actual law in this town and your antics make my job harder than it has to be, but second, and more important, Amelia needs you. You’re the one she’s leaning on, and what happens if you get arrested? Or worse?”
It’s not that he’s not making sense that pushes my annoyance into actual anger. It’s that he’s stepped way over the line. My fingernails dig into my palms as I struggle to keep my cool. Travis might be trying to help, and his concern for me comes from a good place—his affection for my cousin—but none of those facts placate me.
“Thank you for your concern.” I’m so pissed my lips feel frozen, and the guilt that flashes across his hard features says he feels the chill. Good. “I’m very grateful for the interest you’ve taken in my cousin, because I know that someone fighting her kind of battle can use as many people in her corner as possible, but as far as how I conduct my life, and my relationship with Amelia, those topics are off-limits. Understood?”
He nods, lips pressed together and an expression on his face that leaves no room for doubt that he doesn’t agree with me. That’s fine. He’s a cop, and cops have about the hardest heads of anyone.
Except maybe me. Which Dylan Travis will learn if he continues to butt his against mine.
Chapter Four
The look Millie gives me when I struggle back through the library doors laden with her many lunch requests feels a smidge over the top given my break only ended three minutes ago. “Here you are, your majesty.”
“Thanks.” She tears into the bags I set on the desk, pulling out her salad and dousing it in balsamic vinaigrette that’s going to linger in the air for the rest of the day. She shoves a bite in her mouth. “Good gravy, this tastes good.”
“That is disgusting, and Grams would be rolling over in her grave if she saw you talking with lettuce stuck in your teeth like that.”
“Please. We both know she’s off fishing somewhere, not hanging out watching us eat lunch. Grams loved us but she loved herself more. And honestly, that makes her my hero these days.”
The comment shocks me a bit at first, but not once it settles. Grams would have done anything for either of us—or Gramps, or anyone else in this town—but she never put her own happiness on the back burner for too long. That makes her something of a novelty down here in the South, where too many women marry young and lose themselves, their personal needs and wants sacrificed on the altar of husband and family. Amelia and I were lucky to have Grams as a role model, even if we’ve both done a shitty job of following in her footsteps thus far.
“We’ll do better, Millie. You and me, and Jack.”
She takes another bite and bares her teeth, bits of all sorts of food decorating her braces-straight smile. “You’re the best, Gracie. And now Mayor Beau loooooovvvvvvves you, so you’re on the right track.”
“I don’t even know why I try to be nice to you,” I pout, pushing her food out of the way to make room for me to work at the computer.
She snickers to herself as she gathers her styrofoam boxes and drink, then heads back to the break room. One of Mr. Freedman’s only real rules at the library is not eating out front.
There are no patrons here now, which is quite a change from this morning, and I wolfed down my turkey panini on the walk over, so aside from
my greasy fingers, the time is right for researching my latest ghost.
I close my eyes for a moment, bringing up the memory of the poor girl’s hair and clothes, trying to narrow down a possible time period. There’s no way she died more than twenty or thirty years ago, based not only on her entire look but because of her relaxed attitude. She was still a girl at fourteen, whereas if she’d been from a different time, she would have felt more like a woman.
After a moment, something else pops into my head: Her sandals.
They were white with thick straps across the toe and around the heel—not flip flops—and the sole was a good inch and a half thick. My eyes fly open and I pull up a search engine in my browser and start clicking. I remember the platform-sandal phase, though I was a little too young to have participated, because my mother had gone through a brief period when she dated quite a bit around that time. And she wore a lot of those sandals.
I type in hanging death Drayton Hall 1997-2002, which might be too narrow a parameter but what the hell.
There is only one relevant result.
An article in The Charleston Post & Courier, dated December 1999, is the first listed item. I click on the link and read, starting with the headline: Fourteen-year-old Nanette Robbins Found Dead at Drayton Hall.
There are two pictures accompanying the article, and I peer at them before reading on. The first is of the girl in question, and one look at the grainy image leaves no doubt that this is my girl. Her dark blonde hair trails down her back in a braid like it did when I saw her the other day, and she’s wearing the same red sundress. It looks as ratty, too, with some spots on the top that might be stains.
The second picture is of the old, giant oak tree where I first saw her at Drayton Hall.
A pain finds the center of my stomach, reaching through to my spine, and I have to take a deep breath, then another, before gathering the courage to read the article. Not because I have any real connection to her so far, but because reading a story about any young person who died hanging from a tree doesn’t rate very high on a list of happy-making things.