by Lyla Payne
“That we should look into your dealings with the local mountain outlaws, for one.” He raises an eyebrow at me.
There’s no need to explain my dealings with Clete to Will—he’s the one who had an arrangement with the moonshiner first. He introduced us, an act of friendship that I still can’t decide whether to consider a favor or a curse.
“There’s more,” he continues. “Remember when those drugs went missing from the hospital a few months ago, and Travis suspected your dad?”
“Sure. Daria came in to make sure it wasn’t a ghost.”
“Right. Well, this mysterious female caller said that we’ll find the contraband if we check the crawl space at your grandparents’ place.”
It’s like his words suck all of the oxygen from the room. My brain stumbles over Will’s confession while my eyes remain locked on his, trying to figure out what he’s thinking. Or what woman would be making that phone call.
I panic for a second that maybe our friendship means squat after all and he’s only brought me here to distract me while the Ryan twins are at our house, searching the place.
“There’s nothing in the crawl space,” I mumble. “Except spiders and mildew.”
Will nods, still picking at the label on his beer. “I figured you would say that, but Gracie…this is my job and I need it. I have to follow up on a tip like that, but I’ll go by the book and get a warrant. Probably take a couple of days.”
A hot rush of indignant anger floods my blood after it registers that he at least thinks it might be true. That I stole drugs and have them hidden in my house. “You seriously think I’m a thief? Why would I steal drugs?”
My voice is too loud, a fact I don’t realize until the heads at the tables nearest ours swivel in our direction. As if the other patrons weren’t already trying to overhear the two of us in the hopes of gathering some good gossip to take home to their spouses or friends.
“Gracie, Jesus. No.” Will looks stricken. “I’m saying that a lot of crazy shit has been happening around you ever since you came back to town. More than your fair share. I’m saying…why don’t you check the basement first. That’s all.”
Guilt pummels me as I release the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. Of course Will doesn’t think that. Of course he’s on my side. All of the stress in my life is getting to me. “I’m sorry.”
“You should be,” he grumbles, but offers one of his Will smiles nonetheless.
The burgers arrive and Will digs into his like he hasn’t eaten in a week. I pick at my fries and try to get a handle on what exactly might be going on, taking about five minutes to come to the conclusion that it all has to come back around to Frank.
My father is, after all, the one we suspect robbed the hospital. He never admitted it, and Travis never arrested him. Because he never caught him.
I’m pretty sure at this point that my father isn’t the type of person to willingly admit to anything.
But Clete also said someone has been asking about me, and that it has to do with Frank, and now the Heron Creek PD has received a tip from a woman connecting me to an open case. A case in which my father is the prime suspect. It’s all too coincidental to be unconnected, but how? Why? And who on earth is behind it?
It could be Frank. You don’t know anything about him but what he’s told you, one of my devils sneers in my ear.
He didn’t give a shit about you your whole life—you think he gives a shit now? his companion chuckles from the opposite shoulder. Stupid girl.
I growl in frustration, wondering whether I’ll ever earn at least one good, encouraging voice in my ear. That’s usually where Amelia comes in, but in order for that to happen, I’ll have to share all of this with her.
If the police are going to come knocking in a few days with a search warrant, I guess there’s no way to keep her happy and in the dark, anyway. Unless she goes into labor before then. That would be nice—some good news, anyway.
“Gracie…what’s going on? Do you have any idea?”
I shrug out of my sweater, wondering why it’s so hot in Pete’s all of a sudden. The back of my neck feels sweaty beneath my hair and my stomach remains too upset to tackle my burger.
When the waitress stops by our table I ask her for a to-go container and order Amelia another burger and fries to take with me, then turn back to face Will. I was going to talk to him about Clete and the supposed threats at some point. Probably. What better time than now?
“Clete came to see me.”
“Yes, I heard you had lunch at Debbie’s. It was quite the scandal.”
“What isn’t, where I’m concerned?” I joke. “But seriously, he wanted to warn me that he’s heard someone is asking questions about me. My schedule, things like that, and he got the impression that it had something to do with Frank.”
“Was it a woman?”
“He didn’t say.”
“But he said it had something to do with your dad?” I nod, and Will takes a moment to think. I can tell because he’s chewing on the inside of his lower lip the way he always does when his mind has eclipsed the real world. “Like what?”
“I have no idea. The last time I saw him, he was as normal as Frank ever is. He gave me a bunch of family history documents and said he had to drop off the grid for a while. Nothing odd. For him.”
“Clete didn’t say anything else?”
“No, and I think he would have if he knew anything. We have an understanding, you know.”
“Oh, I know how those work with Clete.” Will snorts. “But I agree that he wouldn’t have made the trip to town just to bullshit you. Maybe he likes you.”
“Lucky me.” The waitress brings my box and Amelia’s burger, and I slide my food into the styrofoam. Will picks up the check, even though I try to insist on paying for myself and Amelia for a good three minutes, and then we’re back outside in the cold January night.
Frustration swirls around me on the breeze, dancing with all of these sudden questions about Frank—and maybe my own personal safety. It occurs to me again that I should reach out to Travis, and that sooner would be better than later. Frank’s his father, too. Maybe he’s been getting strange, veiled threats, as well.
Tears sting my eyes. My heart aches over this, over Beau. When Will glances at me and sees a tear slip down my cheek, he gets the same panicked look on his face that he used to get when we were teenagers and my emotions boiled over. It wrenches a laugh from my chest and a gush of relief that weakens my knees. “It’s okay, Will. I just…thank you for being my friend, that’s all. I’m sorry I jumped to the conclusion that you weren’t.”
“We’re in this together, Gracie, remember?” He leans over and kisses my cheek. “Until the end. We’ll figure it out. I’m glad you told me about Clete.”
“Me, too. I haven’t said anything to Mel or Amelia, so maybe keep this between us for now.”
Will makes a face, one that says he’s loath to keep that kind of secret from his wife or my cousin. “You are going to tell them, though. Right?”
“Yeah. I just hate to upset Millie since she’s been so much better lately. But Brick is back, so maybe now’s a good time.”
We start the short walk back to the library side-by-side. The cold air feels good on my face after the overheated feeling the bar gave me. Or maybe it was the inquisition.
“What’s going on with the two of them, anyway?”
“I’m not even sure they know, but it’s definitely something,” I reply after I remember that we were talking about Brick and Millie. “I don’t think he’s going to stop hanging around anytime soon.”
“Can’t say as I blame him.” Will opens the passenger door for me and waits until I’m buckled in before going around and sliding in behind the wheel.
He keeps up more small talk on the short drive to my grandparents’ house, but he doesn’t seem any more into it than I am. We’re kind of deflated, despite the good talk.
Wil
l pulls into our driveway and twists to face me, a small smile on his handsome face. “I’ll see you, Gracie. Call me if you think of anything, or if Clete comes by with any more of his sort of help.”
“Will do.” I push open the car door and head inside.
My impulse is to go directly to the crawl space, but I take Amelia her food instead and sit with her in the kitchen while she eats. She asks what Will wanted, but a well-timed text message from Brick lets me off the hook. Not for the first time, I find myself grateful for his presence in her life.
I text Travis an apology for snapping at him the other night, and he responds with a simple: That’s okay. It’s a start, at least, and we’re talking. The energy for any more tonight is nowhere to be found, despite all of the things I need to ask him.
I decide to wait until she goes to bed, and then see what—if anything—is hiding in the basement. There’s no reason to rile everyone up before I have all of the facts, after all. At least, that’s what I tell myself.
Chapter Eight
I’m not proud of the fact that I was too much of a chickenshit to go into the crawl space alone, in the dead of night, with nothing except a flashlight. I see ghosts, and I’ve nearly been killed a few times since last summer, but the dark? Apparently that’s what I can’t handle.
Beau still hasn’t called or texted me. It’s been over twenty-four hours now, which is by far the longest we’ve gone without talking since we got back together. That, combined with Clete’s threat, the phone call to the precinct, and the fear that something might actually be in the crawl space, resulted in a serious case of sleeplessness.
One good thing has come from my insomnia, at least: I’m up with the sun. Even so, I need to hurry if I want my privacy for this little excursion. I probably don’t have all that much time before Amelia rolls out of bed, too. She says that between her giant belly and the constant peeing, sleeping more than two hours at a time is distant memory.
I pull on a pair of ratty jeans and a hoodie I stole from Beau’s closet the last time I was at his house—it smells like his cologne and his skin, and my throat burns at the sight of my still-silent phone.
I leave it on my bed and tiptoe downstairs to grab my gloves, hat, and a flashlight, since it will be dark under the house regardless of how the sun is glaring over the horizon. It’s one of those January days that can almost fool you into thinking that you’ll step outside and feel the warmth of the sun’s rays on your face, but cold bites at the tip of your nose instead.
The nerves in my stomach keep me warm enough as I traipse around the house to the crawl space entrance and struggle through on my belly. Balls of dried dirt smear across my chest and cling to my hands, which shake as I struggle to turn on the light.
Half a dozen clear plastic bags filled with bottles and syringes appear in the weak, yellow beam, and my heart sinks into my stomach. The drugs are here, just like the anonymous tipster promised. For now, I decide not to touch anything. There’s no way to know whether, if someone is trying to set me up, they’ve gone so far as to plant my fingerprints. Mrs. LaBadie did that before, so my paranoia isn’t unwarranted, but either way, reaching for any of it now will only make the situation worse.
Worse, right. How could it possibly get any worse?
Then, like a big, fat, putrid laugh, an awful smell wafts under my nose. It’s pungent but not strong enough to make me gag—still, there’s no mistaking the stench of death.
I sweep the flashlight beam between the bags, trying to reach into the corners of the dirt-packed space to find whatever possum or raccoon crawled in here to die so I can tell Leo where to find it when I bribe him into coming over to get rid of it.
A scream rises in my throat when the puddle of light lands on the big lump in the corner, and the sight of Frank Fournier’s dead face makes stifling it impossible.
It takes me a half a second to scoot backward out from under the house and I keep going, scrambling to my feet and up onto the porch without a single thought other than holy shit going through my mind. My hand is on the doorknob, ready to wrench it open, when my higher brain function kicks in and I stop.
Stop screaming in my head, stop moving. Stop panting. It’s not quite so easy to stop panicking, but my freakout is under control after five deep, controlled breaths. Despite the cold morning and the fact that I’m not wearing a coat, I sink onto the front porch swing, clutch the freezing chain, and lay my head on my hand. Think, Gracie. Think hard. Now is not the time to fuck up.
I don’t want to tell Amelia about Frank. Don’t want her to know that maybe the smell that’s been driving her nuts is my father’s dead, rotting body.
But there’s no choice.
As quickly as the thought of getting rid of the body on my own crosses my mind, I dismiss it. There’s not a doubt in my mind that I’ll get caught, and then I’ll look super guilty.
Then you’ll look super guilty? one devil bursts out, following the exclamation with a hearty laugh. You’re probably the last person to see Frank alive. He’s dead under your house. You look super guilty now.
Yeah, maybe you should hide the body. It can’t go any worse.
I don’t listen to them because, as always, the devils on one’s shoulders give terrible advice.
I have to tell Amelia. We have to call the police, even though it means they’ll find the bags of drugs along with the body. If they ask me what happened, I would guess that Frank’s the one who hid the drugs down there without telling me, thinking that he could come back for them later. I haven’t the slightest idea what happened to my father.
Now that I’ve had a moment to think on it, the truth sinks in. My father is dead. I’m an orphan.
Maybe these thoughts shouldn’t hit me so hard, given that I’d spent most of my life believing my father was already dead. But then Frank waltzed into my life and told me he was like me, that maybe others were too, and somewhere, in the back of my mind, I started to think I wanted him in my life.
But the truth is, I already have family. I have Amelia and Mel, Will and Leo. I have Heron Creek, so I don’t need Frank. Even if part of me is sorry that he’s gone, that he won’t ever tell me the truth about his gift or why he came to find me, I didn’t know him well enough to grieve.
That realization kind of makes me more sad than anything else.
And then there’s Travis. The brother I never knew I had until a month ago, and someone else who will want to—and deserve to—know about what’s under the house. An unexpected pang of sadness thrums through me at the thought of having to tell him. He’s only just found his real father, and without Frank, his chances of learning more about where he comes from, and about his mother, are smaller than ever. He deserves better.
Maybe we both do.
My heart has slowed down and at least some of the fog wrapping my brain has dissipated. The front door swings open and my cousin pops her head out, her features pinched with worry until she spots me sitting on the porch swing.
“Grace, there you are. I was worried.”
“You’re the one who sleepwalks,” I retort, but my voice sounds weak even to my own ears. Or maybe it’s my ears that are wrong.
Amelia shivers and pulls her robe tighter around her bulging middle. “What are you doing out here? It’s freezing.”
Not really by Iowa standards. Sometimes it would feel like the wind had punched actual bruises into my skin on the walk between my car and the classroom, but she’s not wrong. It is nippy.
“I’m coming in.”
“What’s wrong?” she asks as I step past her and over the threshold. The wrinkle on her forehead tells me that she’s caught the scent of trouble.
I sigh. “Let’s go make some coffee and I’ll tell you all about it.”
She gives me the once-over and squishes up her nose. “You should change clothes, first. You’ll track dirt all over the house and it was just cleaned two days ago.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I’
ll be right back.”
“I’ll start breakfast.”
It’s early, still not quite seven, so we have over two hours before we have to be at work. Today is Friday, which means we’ll probably be pretty busy with people stocking up on books for the weekend, which could be good or bad.
You’re probably not even going to work, Gracie. You have to call the police about your father’s dead body.
It’s strange how quickly I’ve forgotten about what’s under my house. Like the act of coming back inside and going upstairs to change is trying to convince me that all is well and normal.
I change my clothes on autopilot, picking out gray pants and a warm pink sweater that will work well for either the library or for mugshots before heading downstairs to break the bad news to Amelia.
My cousin is puttering around the kitchen, exuding nervous energy. The coffee pot is only about a third full, so I grab a mug and a bottle of creamer from the fridge and set them on the counter so I’ll be ready as soon as it finishes brewing. Amelia is heating up water in the tea kettle for her morning cup of cinnamon tea, and we both wait for our dash of caffeine in silence.
Once we’re leaning over steaming mugs at the table, I catch Amelia’s eye and give her a resigned smile. “I’ve got some bad news.”
“Oh, Grace. When is the last time you sat me down and told me you had good news?”
I try to remember, but give up quickly enough when nothing comes to mind. “There’s something going on that has to do with Frank. Several things, actually.”
Her expression darkens as I relay the news of my visit from Clete, then my talk last night with Will. When she starts to open her mouth to respond, I hold up a hand.
“There’s more. I went out to the crawl space this morning to check out the tip Will got.”
“Please tell me there aren’t drugs underneath our house, Grace. Don’t lie to me.”
“Do you want the truth or do you want me to tell you there aren’t drugs under the house?”
“Shit.” Millie’s face goes white. “Shit, Grace. What are we going to do? Do you think Frank hid them there before he disappeared?”