Not Quite Alive

by Lyla Payne

  “It was uneventful, I guess. The Draytons said there’s no reason not to cooperate, since we didn’t do anything wrong, so we gave them DNA and fingerprints.” I pause to swallow my bite of food, which feels as if it’s stuck in my throat. “They told Amelia they think they can pin it on me, though.”

  Leo lowers his own bite of food until it’s resting on his plate again, and his blue eyes are hard on my face. “What?”

  “Yeah, it’s annoying. I’m just going to have to figure out what really happened.”

  “Bugs…”

  “I swear to Yosemite Sam, Leo, if you say, ‘You know you’re not a detective,’ I’m going to smash this plate of food right in your smug mug.”

  “Smug mug. Heh,” he jokes, but the intent expression on his face doesn’t change. “But seriously…do you think you should hire someone?”

  “I don’t have any money, and the Draytons have investigators on retainer who will be looking into it, too.” I shake my head. “There’s no one who understands my life the way I do, though. How is a stranger going to figure out who’s after what’s left of my reputation if I can’t?”

  “It’s a good point, I just…this is murder, Gracie. And it’s the FBI, not Travis and the inept Heron Creek PD.”

  “Hey, be careful. My ex is running the place these days.”

  “I thought Travis was back,” Leo comments, still ignoring his food.

  “He’s back, but I think he’s on probation until the council votes.” I pause. “He wants to work with me to figure out what happened to Frank. I think the poor guy is still looking for answers about his past.”

  “My point stands.” He refuses to let me slip out from under this conversation and it chafes. “You could outthink the Ryan twins as a nine-year-old; they’re not exactly a challenge. This is serious.”

  I frown. “Do you seriously think I don’t know that? That I’m playing around?”

  “No, but…Travis is good at what he does, Graciela, but you don’t really know him. It’s weird how he moves around all the time.”

  I can’t betray Travis to Leo. Not now, when things are getting better between us.

  “I’m not playing around, Leo. I’m seriously going to find out what happened to Frank…” I trail off at the sight of Will walking into Debbie’s on his own, already dressed in his uniform.

  He pulls off his hat and holds it between both hands, his gaze sweeping the restaurant. When it lands on me, his expression changes to one full of nerves, and when he starts toward us, my stomach sinks.

  “Please tell me it’s not Clete,” Leo breathes without turning around to check the direction of my gaze.

  Leo’s fear of Clete makes me giggle, even though I’m aware that it’s far more normal than my approach, which is caution. But Leo acts like a child terrified to sit on Santa’s lap every time we run into the man, which, in my opinion, just gives Clete more power. Like Beetlejuice.

  “It’s Will,” I reassure him while he gives me a dirty look, presumably peeved by my amusement. “Do you need to go change your underwear?”

  “You’re so hilarious.” Leo rolls his eyes and picks his fork back up, though he doesn’t attack his plate with the kind of gusto he possessed a mere ten minutes ago.

  Will arrives at the edge of the table and clears his throat like we’re blind and need to be alerted to his presence. The formality of the gesture freezes my muscles in place and it takes all of my self-control to force a smile.

  “Morning, Will. I can’t believe you’re here for breakfast without Grant. That kid likes pancakes almost as much as I do.”

  He doesn’t smile back, not even at the reference to his son, and that’s when the cold dread raises a strong hand to grip the back of my neck. “I need to talk to you, Gracie.”

  “Okay…do you want to sit down?”

  “No. Need to do it down at the station, so we can get you on tape.”

  I lick my lips, trying not to freak out and cause a scene. “Sure. Can I finish my breakfast?”

  “Yeah, go ahead. I’m headed there now, though, so come right over after you’re done.” He pauses, glancing around like he’s trying to gauge how many people might be listening. The whole restaurant, basically, which he must realize. “You could call Brick or Birdie, if you want.”

  Will holds my gaze for another ten seconds, presumably to ensure that I get his point, which I obviously do, then tips his hat toward Leo and leaves the diner. And it’s like in the movies…there’s a thirty-second pause of complete silence in the restaurant before everyone resumes their morning conversations as though nothing happened.

  Leo eats the rest of his breakfast like someone is standing over him with a gun to his head, then drops his fork and motions for the check. “I guess you’d better get going. Are you going to call Brick?”

  “It’s seven o’clock in the morning,” I reply, as if that’s any sort of answer.

  “Yeah, well, he’s a criminal defense lawyer. I’m guessing it’s not always a convenient line of work.”

  I sigh, knowing he’s right. Hearing Beau in my other ear, telling me that everything Will just said, not to mention his body language and the way he handled our interaction, should tell me that I’m not heading to that police station to visit with a friend. I’m going to see a cop, one who needs to speak to me about a crime.

  “I’ll text and ask what he thinks.”

  “Good.” Leo pays the bill, not even waiting for me to argue that we should split it the way we usually do. “Let’s go.”

  “Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry,” I grumble, looking down at my still half-full plate.

  “Come on, Gracie. You’re not going to eat that now and we both know it. Just march your butt down there and get it over with, yeah?”

  I take the hand he holds out and let him pull me up, then keep it tight against my palm for a few seconds longer to let him pass some reassurance my way. To leech friendship and confidence and a little bit of that Leo magic to take with me.

  “You’re going to be fine,” he whispers, looking me straight in the eye.

  For some reason, a shiver zips down my spine, then back up. We part ways out front, and after I call Brick and get his advice—he gives it to me reluctantly when I refuse to wait for him to join me—I march the two blocks to the police station. By the time I get there, I still don’t know whether that shiver means good things are coming, or bad.

  Maybe there’s no way to know other than face the music, so that’s exactly what I do.

  Inside, Ted Ryan refuses to meet my gaze. Will stands up so fast his chair spins around behind him, like the Roadrunner just disappeared from it in a puff of smoke.

  “No Drayton?” he asks, his voice tight.

  I shake my head. “He said I could handle it, but to only answer yes or no questions.”

  The face Will makes relays his unhappiness with the arrangement, but rather than give voice to it, he motions me down the hall and then sits me in the only room—other than the single jail cell—that has a door. It used to be Travis’s office, officially, though he never used it. It contains only a desk, three chairs, and a wall of filing cabinets that I’m guessing hold all of the files on Heron Creek crimes since forever. Will opens a drawer, pulls out a recorder and turns it on, then sets it on the desk in between us.

  “Sit,” Will says, dropping behind the desk with an expression of dread on his face that returns the icy hand to the back of my neck. “We got a report this morning from the FBI on the bags of drugs they found under your house. There are three sets of fingerprints on them, and one of them belongs to your father.”

  “Yeah, the FBI told me all of this yesterday.” Even my paranoid brain realizes it’s far too soon for them to have gotten any DNA results back from their lab, so what else did they tell Will that’s got him so upset? The fingerprints? How long did those take?

  “Did they tell you that one set of prints also matches the videotape that was
in the evidence locker? The one you and Daria looked at after the original theft of the drugs?”

  That takes me aback. I’m not sure what to do with it, other than to make a list in my head of all of the people other than me who could have had their fingers all over it.

  “No. They think I what? Doctored it?”

  He nods. “Yes. They’re bringing Travis in to ask him a bunch of questions about the day he brought you in to check it out, and why. I don’t know if he remembers well enough for his testimony to clear you, but given your habit of breaking and entering, I doubt it will make a difference.”

  “Oh, you’ve just been waiting for the day when my history of questionable law-following comes back to bite me, haven’t you?” I tease.

  Will doesn’t laugh. “This isn’t a joke, Graciela. I’m sitting here having to ask one of my oldest, best friends very serious questions, and your answers are going to be reviewed by the FBI. Please don’t make this any harder than it already is.”

  My heart climbs into my throat and throbs there. “Sorry.”

  It’s the only word that manages to squeeze through, but it’s the right one. As good as it gets, anyway, as evidenced by the slight relaxation of the tension around Will’s mouth.

  He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, then opens them again. “Did you steal those drugs from the hospital?”

  I bite my tongue to stop from reminding him it’s not a real hospital, and clasp my hands under the table. The sweat on my palms makes them slip against each other. “No.”

  “Did you tamper with the videotape of the event?”

  “No.”

  “Did you handle the drugs after the theft at the behest of your father, Frank Fournier, or hide them under your house? Did you know they were under your house?”

  “No, no, and no.”

  He pauses, taking another deep breath, and then turns off the tape recorder. “Thanks.”

  “That was horseshit,” I inform him now that we’re no longer being recorded. “They don’t even know whether those fingerprints are mine!”

  “Are they?”

  “They shouldn’t be,” I snap. “But those drugs shouldn’t have been under my house, either.”

  Neither should my father’s body, but one thing at a time. The drugs are Will’s purview.

  “They are a match to yours, Gracie. It doesn’t prove anything, but combined with that tip we got, it doesn’t look good.”

  I rub my forehead, feeling a headache coming on through the fear tumbling around in my stomach. I need to get out of here. Do something before the FBI show up, this time with an arrest warrant. “Can I go now? Amelia’s going to be worried.”

  It’s just an excuse—I texted her after I talked to Brick, because the last thing she needs is to hear about this from someone else—but it’s enough to earn me my freedom. Will’s eyes are sad as he nods and stands up with me from the desk, then follows me back out to the main room.

  “See you, Ryan,” I tell Ted on my way out the door, since he has yet to acknowledge my presence. My own tone is tinged by grief because today, I lost something.

  Trust, maybe, or at the very least, the ability to walk outside of the rules in Heron Creek. Ted’s not any more comfortable with having to treat me like everyone else in town than I am with having to act that way. It’s what I feared the other night when I let the Draytons and Mallory out of the house—that this whole situation is going to cost me what I’ve started to build here.

  In that moment, I hate Frank. On the fifteen-minute walk back to the house, that feeling only builds, and by the time I relay the events of the morning to Amelia in the kitchen, I’m actively blaming him for everything that’s happened.

  I can’t help but think that if he’d never learned about me, if he’d never shown up, none of this would be happening.

  Then, one of the Carlottas whispers in the back of my mind. I don’t know how I know it’s her, or why it’s so crystal clear. But she says, yes it would.

  Chapter Eighteen

  After exchanging a slew of flirty text messages with Beau, in which I stayed well away from such topics as my troubles with the law and the latest about Lucy, I feel a bit guilty about not keeping him updated. But I needed a “normal” conversation with my boyfriend. He told me he loved me and made me laugh, which might just help me get up and moving in the right direction.

  I figure that when it comes to illegal activities in and around Heron Creek, Clete Raynard is the best place to start. He is, after all, the first person to have warned me there was a storm on the horizon, one that might break right over my head and follow me around town like I’m Charlie Brown.

  I feel more than a little like Charlie Brown lately. Picked on by my friends, who all seem to have the idea that if only I’d handled things differently since returning to Heron Creek, maybe none of this would be happening.

  Or maybe I’m just feeling sorry for myself. That seems more likely.

  The walk into the woods is different in the winter. It’s louder, for one thing, between the sticks cracking under my feet and the howl of the wind through the bare branches of the trees. Even the evergreens seem thinner, their pinecones scattered on the forest floor instead of bunched together above my head. The day is gray, overcast, the perfect January weather to complement my mood. It’s Sunday, two days since Will “interviewed” me about the feds and their suspicions regarding the drugs. Since I wasn’t able to take any time off work, and I have enough sense not to venture into the woods in the dark of night, this is my first opportunity to visit Clete. Amelia is at the movies with Brick, who hasn’t decided if he forgives me for not waiting for him to come along the other day.

  “Who does he think he is, my lawyer?” I mutter to myself, stopping to untangle a long, spindly branch off a leggy bush from my hair.

  The comment isn’t funny, not even to me. I wish that Big Ern would go ahead and find me already, because it would actually be nice to have someone to talk to other than myself. Clete’s usually not too big on conversation. He’s more of a tit for tat, business first and then get the hell off my lawn sort of guy, which is something I truly appreciate about him.

  Big Ern doesn’t show up until I’m about to step into the clearing where Clete lives. Ern tips his straw hat at me and gives me what might pass for a smile, if he bothered with such things. I look down, just to satisfy my curiosity, and see that he does, in fact, own shoes. Instead of his puffy bare feet, I’m greeted by the sight of two work boots that have holes nearly worn through on the toes. The laces trail behind him.

  “Ern. Clete here?”

  “Yep. He’s ’spectin ya, I think.”

  I don’t bother to ask why, but it’s not exactly a surprise. Everyone else I run into seems to know everything that’s going on in my life, so why shouldn’t Clete be expecting me? I have been thinking about coming out here for two whole days.

  Big Ern stays behind, prowling the edge of the woods like a loyal hound. I cross the dead, soggy grass to the equally wet and tired-looking porch, stepping carefully up to find Clete on his favorite swing. Despite the chill in the air, he’s not wearing a coat, just a pair of torn jeans, a flannel shirt, and some house slippers that have definitely seen better days. He’s the living embodiment of the mountain man stereotype—too tough to be bothered by anything as pesky as weather.

  “Crazy Gracie. Didn’t figger it’d be long till I seen ya again, not after the feds come around.” He shakes his head, patting the porch swing next to him. “Have ta say, didn’t see that daddy of yers showin’ up under the house, though.”

  “You and me both,” I inform him, choosing the white, molded plastic chair as opposed to getting too close to Clete on the swing. He may not make me want to crap myself, but I don’t trust him, either. Not totally. “You know anything about that?”

  Most people might get up in arms about being accused of knowing something about a murder, but Clete has proven he’s not most people.
>
  And let’s face it…this is not the first time he’s been accused of something awful.

  “Nope, can’t say as I do,” he muses, rolling a toothpick around between his lips. It’s a relief from the tobacco he’s usually chomping on. He looks like I’ve caught him after a big squirrel dinner. “Ain’t surprised, neither, though.”

  “You mean because he deals in shady business and this is what happens?”

  Clete shrugs. “If ya ain’t careful, sure.”

  It’s almost hilarious that he’s accusing my father of being a subpar criminal. Almost.

  “From what I know, Frank was just a con man. He stole shit, but he wasn’t involved in organized crime, or any kind of community that might decide to take him out. So what happened?”

  Clete sits forward with his elbows on his knees, peering at me closer. A chilly breeze whips through the trees and makes them howl as a shiver runs through me. “I don’ know what happened, Crazy Gracie, but what I told yah last week stays true—you need ta be mighty careful. Because if what happened ta Frank ain’t got ta do with him, maybe it’s got something ta do with you.”

  My heart stops beating at the seriousness in his face. The earnestness of his words—not a latent threat, the way so many of Clete’s conversations with me have ended, but a warning—makes the little girl in me want to run away and hide.

  As a grown woman, I know it won’t make trouble disappear. That usually goes double for me.

  Clete leans back and looks out toward Big Ern at the edge of the clearing, breaking the spell that had grown up around us. “I’ll keep mah ear ta the groun’ though. You been real useful to me here an there. Hate to lose ya to the big house.”

  “Gee, thanks.” I get to my feet in response to the clear dismissal, lingering on the edge of the porch because I came all the way out here and am going home with a whole lot of nothing I didn’t already know. Or at least suspect. “Hey, Clete?”