Not Quite Alive

by Lyla Payne

  “Duh. I mean, I love having Lindsay around, but neither of us can cook for shit.”

  “You’re always welcome. All of you. You know that.”

  Amelia is in the kitchen pulling dinner out of the oven while Mel tosses a salad at the counter. There’s a bottle of wine open on the counter and a pitcher of tea sweating on the table, where Will’s sitting with Grant. They’re all smiling and my shoulders relax, if only a little. It doesn’t look like he’s here with an arrest warrant, or if he is, they’re all inordinately happy about it.

  “Smells delicious,” Leo booms, giving Amelia a side hug and a peck on the cheek. He gives her the same hopeful look he gave me in the foyer, which makes her laugh.

  “You’re welcome to stay. There will be plenty, even with Mel and me eating.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Hey, Gayles,” I greet the rest of them, crossing my eyes at Grant and making him laugh. He’s coloring a picture on the table and goes back to it quickly, his tongue sticking out of one side of his mouth in concentration. “Will…I suppose you’ll tell me eventually, but what prompted this family visit?”

  “You mean other than the fact that we haven’t hung out with y’all in a while?” Will quips. “I have good news, and I thought it would be fun to celebrate.”

  “Oh?” Good news for a change. But I still can’t shake my wariness, maybe because this is so far afield from the police’s usual reasons for visiting me at home. “Well, lay it on me.”

  “We got another anonymous tip this afternoon—different caller, because it was a man—saying he had proof Frank was behind the drug heist by himself. He promised to deliver the evidence within the week. So you’re basically cleared of the drugs. Well, as soon as we get what they have.”

  The air goes out of my lungs in a whoosh of relief. “Clete,” I say once I can breathe.

  Will’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise, and I can feel the same reaction from everyone else in the kitchen. Well, aside from Grant, who appears to have forgotten anyone else is in the room.

  “Why Clete? It didn’t sound like him.” He squints, his lips twisting in thought. “Well, maybe it did sound like Clete trying not to sound like Clete. Hard to say. But why would he help you, anyway?”

  “I’m not sure what the answer is to the last part, although we did discuss it the last time we talked. He told me he was positive Frank did the job alone. He thought he could get proof, but only if I figured out something good to give him in return.”

  “Oh, Grace,” Millie sighs out. “What did you do this time?”

  I hold up my hands in self-defense. “I didn’t do anything, I swear. I told him I’d think about it. Honestly, I’m not sure what on earth I could do for him that would convince him to help.”

  “If he decided to help anyway, you can bet he’s got something up his sleeve. He’ll come slinking around eventually.” Will’s voice is heavy with the weight of all of the times he’s been cornered into doing favors for Clete.

  Mel sets the bowl of salad on the table and then slides an arm around her husband’s shoulders, giving him a reassuring peck on the cheek. Amelia walks over with the chicken and rice while Leo takes a seat, and I sit next to him, feeling lighter even though the drugs are only part of my issue.

  The smallest part, really, but I’m happy to have any part of this ordeal off my plate.

  For the next couple of hours, I don’t think about anything but having dinner with my friends, my family. I let myself believe that every day and week can truly be the same for as long as I want it to be.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The next day after work, Leo and I slip back into amateur detective mode. I miss Beau, but as far as shenanigans and snooping go, there’s no one I’d rather have by my side than Leo.

  Well, maybe that’s not 100% true. Both Amelia and Melanie were dynamite cohorts back in the day, but their giant bellies make them a little too memorable right now. Not to mention that they’re mothers now, and motherhood comes with a whole new set of rules. It means me and my intrigue can’t come first anymore. It means we’re supposed to be grownups…I’m just lagging a bit behind the curve.

  Luckily—I guess—so is Leo.

  We head into the hospital, or what passes for one in Heron Creek, and wander over to the information desk. I’m not even sure who we need to talk to; I’m guessing we need to find an administrator of some sort to give us access to the security room.

  Honestly, it’s a little hard to believe this place even has a security room. Or that they’d let just anyone walk in and see it, though it’s not as if the tiny “hospital” in Heron Creek has protocol for these sorts of situations. Most likely.

  “Hi,” Leo says, giving a dimple-popping grin and pouring on the charm. The woman behind the information desk is in her twenties—maybe—and her eyes get big as she looks up to find Leo Boone smiling down at her.

  “Hi,” she replies, all dimples herself. “How can I help you?”

  “We’re looking to talk to someone who might be able to tell us about the security system here at the hospital. Where the tapes are stored, the cameras, that kind of thing. Any ideas?”

  That confuses her, if only for a second or two, before she lights up again. “Oh! You want to speak to Officer Dave. But he’s gone home already.”

  “Officer Dave?” I can’t help but repeat. “Who’s he?”

  “Our head of security.” She makes a face. “He’s a security guard, really, but he also switches out the tapes every day, purges old footage, things like that.”

  “We were hoping to get some questions answered tonight, and maybe take a look at that room. Isn’t there anyone else who might be willing to help? It’s important.”

  I watch the Leo Boone charm work its magic on this pretty girl who’s starting to seem younger and more doe-eyed by the second. It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest when she looks around, then leans forward conspiratorially on her elbows.

  Incidentally, but probably not accidentally, giving us a shot of her cleavage. Turns out we didn’t need more than a half-baked plan, not as long as we have Leo’s smile.

  “I mean, I can take my dinner break anytime and give y’all a tour. I don’t know if I’ll be able to answer all of your questions, but I can sure try.”

  “That would be great…” Leo pauses, his blue eyes sparkling as he waits for her to catch up.

  She stands, the chair behind her spinning a little with the quickness of it. “Abby,” she replies, sticking her hand straight into Leo’s like she’s been waiting to touch him since the second he walked in.

  “I’m Leo. This is Graciela,” he adds, almost as an afterthought.

  Her eyes go wide. “Cra…Gracie Harper?”

  She was about to call me Crazy Gracie. Clete’s nickname for me is spreading through Heron Creek, all right. I don’t even know this girl.

  She responds to my squint with reddened cheeks, and I manage a thin smile. “That’s me.”

  Abby regains her composure and, after giving us a beckoning gesture that’s clearly intended to be an alluring, leads Leo and me through a few ground floor hallways before stopping in front of an innocuous wooden door. She sorts through a dozen or so keys on her keyring and then goes to unlock it, only to find that it wasn’t locked to begin with.

  The glance she shoots us is sheepish. “We forget to lock up around here sometimes.”

  Of course they do. If that’s the case, then it’s not clear how helpful today’s visit will be—if literally anyone in town could walk into this room and transfer fingerprints to those cassettes, then the hospital won’t be able to help me narrow down the list of possible framing suspects.

  They are actual cassettes rather than DVDs or thumb drives or any other modern technology. That detail had nearly escaped me, but I remember it now, and recall thinking at the time that living in Heron Creek could sometimes feel a little like time traveling into the not-so-distant past.

&nbs
p; “This is it,” Abby says, sweeping her arm in a limp arc. The “security room” isn’t much to look at—there seem to be six cameras, five on the doors, one on the parking lot, and one on the stock room where the drugs disappeared from all those weeks ago.

  “How often do the tapes get changed?”

  “Once a week. We just tape over the old ones if there’s no reason to keep them.”

  Lucky me, Travis had managed to requisition mine before that happened.

  “How many people have a key to this room?” I ask, even though it’s probably a moot point.

  “Let’s see.” She taps a manicured finger on her chin, leaving me to wonder how far she drove for fake nails since our single beauty salon still hasn’t reopened. “Me, obviously. The hospital administrator and his assistant. Officer Dave, and the head of the cleaning crew, Malcolm. Oh! Also the backup security guard, Jasper Patton.”

  That last name catches my breath in my throat. Leo reaches out and squeezes my arm—of course he would remember, since we broke into the man’s house together when I thought he might have killed poor Glinda Davis. I haven’t thought about Jasper since we cleared his name, at least for the murder, but I had discovered other unsavory things about his life.

  Could he have been out to get me this whole time?

  I could almost make a case for it. Could almost believe he’d been angry enough to put my fingerprints on the tape and then hide the drugs under my house.

  But I have no idea how or if he could be connected to Frank, and even if they did know each other, it seems ludicrous to think he might have murdered my father just to frame me. And even if I’ve been cleared of the theft but not the murder, I have to think that the two things are connected. How can they not be, when my father and the stolen goods were found in the same place?

  We hustle out of the hospital after making our excuses to Abby, and soon Leo and I are hashing out the whole confusing mess in the parking lot. He’s frowning, and has already run his hand through his hair a couple of times. Pieces are standing up straight before he mashes them down with a stocking cap.

  “Okay, but what if the two crimes aren’t related? What if, I don’t know, someone moved Frank’s body under the house and the drugs were already there? Or Jasper didn’t notice the body when he left the drugs?”

  My mind clicks along, finding too many holes in Leo’s theories to make any of them plausible. “No, the drug case is old—if Jasper stashed them there, why wait so long to tip off the police? Not to mention Will said it was a woman who called the station.”

  “Anyone can be paid to make a phone call, Gracie.”

  “I guess, but it still doesn’t add up. Let’s say Frank put the drugs there—either a while back or the day he was murdered. Maybe the killer figured why not frame me for both things when they called the police.”

  “Either way, you know this wasn’t random. Whoever did it knew Frank, and you, and maybe your dad even trusted them enough to show them where the drugs were—to show them where you lived.”

  My phone starts to ring in my pocket before I have the chance to do much mulling. I bite my lower lip as I dig it out. “I don’t think Frank trusted anyone…oh. God. It’s Shana.”

  Leo’s face twists into an expectant look as I swipe the call open, doing my best not to let the dread pooling in my belly finds its way into my voice.

  “Shana. Thank you for calling me back.”

  “Well, you baited me like a bass protecting its nest in the spring. What was I supposed to do, not bite?”

  I have no idea how bass protect their nests in the spring, but her point translates, regardless. “No, I always expect you to bite. How are you?”

  “I’ll be a darn sight better once you tell me what in the hell you know about one Frank Fournier, that’s for sure.”

  “Fine.” There’s no beating around the bush with this woman. Never has been. There was a time when I appreciated that about her, and I guess I still should, since it means neither of us is inclined to reminisce about the good old days. Not that there were many of those when she was around. Shana’s been a terrible influence as long as I’ve known her. She had a way of always making me feel like my mother deserved better than to be saddled with a brat like me, enough that I made myself even scarcer than usual whenever she showed up.

  A sigh escapes before I can stop it. “I know he’s my father. And I know he was murdered and left under my house so the police would discover his body and blame it on me.”

  The silence goes on forever. Leo arches an eyebrow at me in a silent question, to which I shake my head. Sound finally transmits over the line, and I’m shocked to hear muffled squeezes and sniffles that suggest the woman on the other end is crying.

  Or so I’d think if she were human.

  “Shana?” I ask, my voice soft. Treading lightly, waiting for the explosion that always comes with her.

  “I can’t believe I give two shits about that man still. Ain’t seen him in over twenty years, and here I am bawling because he’s dead.”

  “I’m…sorry?” I guess. “How did you know Frank?”

  She laughs, the sound coarse and shaky—partly from sucking down a lifetime of cigarettes, partly, I guess, from incredulous grief. “How did any woman know Frank? Of course, it’s a bit different for me, seeing as he’s the only guy who ever managed to slip one past the goalie. For Fe, too. Frank is how the two of us met, but I guess you never knew that.”

  Now it’s me who’s stunned into silence. She and my mother, friends who both ran away from home at sixteen, both got knocked up by Frank. On the Fournier family tree, there are only two limbs coming off his name. Which means that unless Shana had an abortion… “You’re Travis’s mother?”

  “If you mean Dylan, then yes. Your mother helped us get rid of him.”

  The way she phrases it is so Shana—which is to say, callous and awful. My heart hurts at her dismissive tone, as if she’s referring to garbage or leftover pizza that sat too long on the counter. There’s no doubt in my mind that she’s not the sort of mother Travis has been hoping to find. Now that I know, it’s strange how I can see her face in his. Especially those gray eyes. It almost seems as if I should have figured it out before now, except for the fact that I’ve done my best to forget Shana and everything about her for the better part of five years.

  “Why?”

  “Why? There are about a million reasons, little girl, and you were one of them. The rest were my business.”

  “What do you mean, I was one of them?”

  Shana remains stubbornly silent, her way of telling me there’s no reason to keep asking questions. I rearrange my thoughts, diverting them from myself to where they need to be: Frank.

  “What about Frank? He didn’t want the baby, either?”

  Her laugh is brittle. “Definitely not. He never knew you belonged to him, or maybe he didn’t want to know. I wasn’t like Felicia, though. Didn’t want to do it alone, or at all, so I told him he’d gotten me pregnant and he needed to deal with it.”

  “So he was okay with keeping Travis in the dark about me? Or him?”

  “Okay with it? It was his idea. He wanted nothing to do with that kid. Didn’t want him to know he existed, like the kid would be dumb enough not to realize he had to have a father out there.” She snorts. “The part about you was your mama’s idea. She didn’t like the idea of you being weighed down by another one of Frank’s offspring. He was weird about his family, and you know how superstitious Fe was.”

  My mother was superstitious. I’d always assumed it had come from growing up in the South, but maybe it had been something more. If Frank had been as paranoid about his family as the Fourniers I’ve met in the journals, then maybe those fears translated loud and clear. Felicia wasn’t the type of woman to take a thing like that lightly.

  I can see her wanting to keep herself, if not me, safe from their prying hands.

  “Weird how?” I manage, glancing up to
meet Leo’s gaze. He looks as if he’s about to explode from curiosity.

  “Frank was secretive about everything, but especially about his family. We both loved him in our own times and our own ways, but neither of us knew what it was he did for a living, or where he came from. Where he went. Man was a mystery, and he liked to keep it that way.”

  “So he never said anything about his family, or friends, or anything?”

  “We didn’t do a lot of talking, sweetheart.” The way Shana calls me sweetheart sounds like the way most people say ‘shithead.’ It’s time to go. She doesn’t know anything more, and what she’s told me is enough to keep me chewing for weeks.

  “Okay, well, thanks for calling me back.”

  “Hey! What happened to Frank?”

  “Someone bashed his head in with a shovel.”

  “You do it?”

  “No.” I pause, thinking that I should be more insulted by the question. Would be, maybe, if it hadn’t come from Shana. “I’d only just met him.”

  “How’d that happen, anyway? Your mom was so careful.”

  “I guess she changed her mind along the way. He said that her ghost came to him and told him about me, and where to find me.”

  “And he looked you up. After insisting so adamantly that my son never know about him.” She pauses. I wonder if she’s waiting for a response. “Strange, that.”

  We hang up a moment later, nothing left to say.

  Strange, that.

  Strange, indeed.

  When my phone rings at the library the next morning, displaying Travis’s name on the caller ID, I still haven’t decided whether or not to tell him what I’ve learned. It’s not that I don’t totally trust him—at least, it’s not only that. I don’t love the idea of ruining the idea of the mother he has in his head.

  He hasn’t described her to me, of course, but it’s easy enough to guess that it doesn’t include a woman who never wanted him, who asked her friend to get rid of him, and has clearly not spared him a thought for the entire two-plus decades of his life. I’ve broken enough bad news in the past couple of months; what harm is there in letting Travis hold out hope for a little while longer?