by Tegan Maher
The ride forgotten, I rushed toward them to see what was going on.
“You have to come with me,” she said, her tone desperate as she pulled on his arm. “There’s a woman. I think she’s d—well, I think somebody up and killed her!”
I was really starting to think I was onto something with the whole Carnival of Death thing.
Chapter 4
Hunter looked so relaxed and happy when he and Justin stepped off the ride, and I hated to be the one to crush that. Duty called, though.
Confusion crossed his face when he saw my expression. “Hey, what’s with the frown? We survived all in one piece. Didn’t even break a nail.”
“Yeah,” I said, biting my lip, “but that was your last ride of the day, I’m afraid.”
He followed my gaze to JP, who was striding behind the woman as fast as they could weave their way through the crowd.
The workaholic in him popped to the surface and I watched as he struggled to squash it.
“JP’s perfectly capable of handling whatever the emergency is,” he said. “I’m sure it won’t take more than one person to break up a fight or chase down kids who were up to no good. And he has backup, too. I have three deputies stationed here, one on each side of the carnival, and the ambulance is over at the cookoff.”
“Yeah,” I said, turning in the direction JP and the woman had gone. “But I’m pretty sure you’re not gonna want to pass this one off. She said somebody had been killed. Justin, go wait at the Ferris Wheel for Matt and Anna Mae. We have to go.”
He started to protest, but I raised a brow. “Go. Even if I wanted to take you, Bobbie Sue would skin me alive.”
“Fine,” he grumbled, turning and plodding toward the Ferris Wheel.
After he’d gone, Hunter and I picked up our pace to keep from losing sight of JP, but we needn’t have bothered. The crowd had concentrated in one area, and my stomach sank when I saw where. There were so many people packed around the fortune-teller’s tent that Hunter had to yell to get them to clear a path.
“Wait here,” he said once we got to the entrance. Compassion filled his eyes when he saw how shaken I was.
I’d only met her once, but I’d liked her. Or at least I hadn’t disliked her. I sent out a tendril of magic hoping to feel hers; after all, just because it was her tent didn’t mean she was the one who was killed. Or maybe the woman had been wrong, and Mercy had passed out from the heat or low sugar or something. I heaved a sad sigh when I didn’t feel so much as a twinge of magic pushing back against mine.
What I did feel, though, was death, and I sucked in a startled breath. It’s hard to describe, but it felt sort of gooey, like the air was coated in invisible black sludge. A chill swept down my spine and I shivered. I’d never felt anything like that before, but I had no doubt what it was.
It was gone almost as soon as it hit me, sort of like a breeze. The warmth of the sun felt good, and I rubbed my arms to get rid of the goosebumps. I reached a tentative hand out and touched the tent, almost afraid of what I might see. I was relieved when nothing happened, though it would have been nice in a morbid way if I’d have caught a flash of the murder. At least then I’d have been able to tell Hunter who it was.
Magic was fickle, though, and didn’t like to give up secrets that easily. One of Hunter’s deputies—the photographer judging by the camera in his hand—pushed out through the flap in the tent and the fabric folded over itself, leaving a gap that allowed me a view of the body.
Sadness washed over me. Mercy was lying on her side, her beautiful blue eyes fixed on some point that no living gaze could see. Her lips were nearly the same color as her eyes, and an angry red line marred her pale neck. I squeezed my eyes shut to block out her final, anguished expression and turned away from the tent.
Nausea swept over me, but not because I’d seen her body. No, I was sick because such a bright light had been snuffed out in such a cruel way. The standard what-ifs flashed through my mind. What if I’d stayed a little longer? What if I’d come just ten minutes later? The rational side of my brain told me I was being silly, but my emotional side just had to have a voice.
“I know what you’re doing right now. Stop it,” my Aunt Addy said, appearing in front of me, her translucent arms crossed over her ample bosom. “You couldn’t have done jack to stop this from happening, and even if you could, that wasn’t her fate.”
Her face shimmered with concern and her tone softened. “Beating yourself up won’t bring her back.”
No, it wouldn’t. But there was one thing I could do for her. I vowed then and there to help Hunter find who did it so that Mercy would have justice.
It was only ten minutes or so before Hunter ducked out of the tent. It wasn’t hard to tell how he was feeling. The weight of the world stooped his shoulders and the fine wrinkles around his eyes seemed deeper. I hated seeing him that way and wished with all my heart that I could just rewind time and stop this from happening. Addy was right, though. That wasn’t within my power. Instead, I did the one thing I could. I placed my hand on his arm and poured all my commiseration into the touch.
“She was strangled,” he said, his tone flat.
“I know. I saw when your photographer came out. Are there any clues as to who did it?” I tried to push the image of her lifeless eyes out of my mind, but I couldn’t help but shudder.
“We’re not sure yet. We need to find out who she really was. We didn’t find any identification, but we haven’t finished going through all of her things yet. Kyle went to track down the carnival manager and see what info he has on her. Surely, he has to do tax paperwork on his employees.”
“Her name was Mercy McDermitt,” I said. “She told me that when I stopped in.”
His shoulders straightened a bit. “Did she say where she was from?”
I shook my head. “No, but I have Serena’s number in my phone. I could call and see if she knows. I’m sure she knows at least a little bit about her, even it’s only where she’s from. That’ll give you a head start, anyway, if you can’t find anything else.”
“I have to go back to the office and get the paperwork started on this,” he said. “I’m sorry to ditch you, but I can’t dump it on JP.”
“No, of course not,” I replied. “Go do what you need to do. I’ll call Serena and see what she has to say. If she has anything that may be useful to the investigation, I’ll have her give you a call.”
He gave me a quick peck before he left, and I pulled out my phone. Before I could dial, though, I noticed a pretty but rough-looking woman of about twenty-five standing beside the House of Mirrors. She was watching the chaos with a mixture of belligerence and curiosity.
I made my way over to her.
“Hey,” I said, trying to muster a friendly smile.
She glanced from the scene to me then back again. “Hey.”
“It sucks about Mercy,” I said, waiting for a reaction.
The girl looked down at her feet. “It does. I really liked her. She used to help me set up. Sometimes the guy who’s supposed to work it with me ends up goofing off with the guys from the Ferris Wheel and I have to do it alone.”
I took a look at the structure. It had a false aluminum front that covered the heavy canvas tent and it appeared to be poised on some sort of platform. Aluminum ramps led into it on one side and out of it on the other. Strands of lights were strung across the front, some of them so high that it surely required a ladder to get them up there.
“Wow,” I said. “What a jerk. It looks like it would take forever to do that.” I held out my hand. “I’m Noelle.”
She lifted a beefy shoulder, then reached out to take my hand. “Doris. It’s not so bad where there’s two of you. It takes a couple hours. Three, maybe, if we take it easy.”
I nodded. “Listen, did you see anybody coming or going over the last half-hour or so?”
She turned her gaze to me and seemed to be looking for something. Whether she found it or not, I didn’t know. “Just you.
”
“Did you hear anything?”
Doris shook her head. “Nope. Course, with all the racket going on here, that’s not surprising. Listen, are you a cop or something?”
I gave her a half-smile. “Or something. Did Mercy have any problems with anybody here at the carnival?”
She pressed her lips together.
“Doris, if you know something, you need to tell me. A girl’s dead.”
Sighing, she replied, “Georgio, the guy I was talking about who’s supposed to help me set up. They didn’t always get along. He thought she butted into stuff that wasn’t her business.”
“Do you know where we can find this Georgio?”
“Who knows,” she said, lifting a careless shoulder. “He’s around here somewhere. Probably off sniffing after the girl at the cotton candy stand. Or maybe the one who runs the ticket booth. One’s as good a guess as the other. Listen, I gotta get back to work. If this isn’t ready to go when the boss comes around, I’m in big trouble.”
I dug through my brain trying to think of any other questions, but I figured that was about it. “Okay, well if you think of anything, can you call the local sheriff’s department?”
“Sure, though I’ve told you what I know.”
I meandered back over to stand in the shade of a picnic area, and it wasn’t five minutes before Anna Mae and Matt showed up.
“What’s goin’ on?” she huffed with a wince, her hand on her belly. Her cheeks were flushed and sweat beaded her brow.
“You okay?” I asked, a little concerned. She was close to her time, and the full moon was only a couple days away.
She scowled at me. “No, I’m not okay. I’m the size of a heifer, I can’t see my feet, and it’s hotter’n Satan’s pepper patch out here. On top of it, I gotta pee and I hear someone up and killed somebody. Who was it? Do we know ’em?”
I shook my head. “I met her earlier when I came down to use the bathroom, but we didn’t know her. She was a psychic, or at least I think she was. The fortune-teller.” I motioned toward the sign on the front of the tent. “Madame Mercei.”
I thought about our brief conversation. She hadn’t sounded Northern to me, and I hadn’t detected any other accent, so that meant she probably had the same one I do.
“What do you wanna know?” a voice said from behind me.
I about jumped out of my skin as I spun around. I thought for a minute a miracle had happened. It had, but not in the way I’d hoped. Mercy hovered a few feet over me, her form watery and mostly translucent like new ghosts tended to me. I glanced toward Anna Mae and Matt to see if they could see her, too, but they were just looking at me with twin expressions of curiosity. Thankfully, they knew me well enough to know I wasn’t crazy, so they were waiting for me to tell them what was going on.
“Mercy!” I exclaimed after making sure nobody else was paying attention to us.
“Mercy, what?” Anna Mae asked. “You’re gonna have to give us a little more than that, sugar.”
“No,” I said, motioning toward the ghost. “She’s here. I mean, her ghost is. Her name’s Mercy.”
Chapter 5
“Wait, she’s right here?” Anna Mae asked, waddling around in a great penguin imitation to look behind her.
“Of course, I am,” Mercy said, her expression exasperated as she waved at Anna Mae.
“Uh,” I stuttered, struggling to decide whether Mercy thought she was visible or didn’t know she was dead.
“Oh, don’t worry about having to break it to me gently,” she said, flapping an impatient hand. “I’m well aware that I bit the big one, and I’m pretty pissed about it, to tell you the truth. I finally found something I enjoy doing and managed to get myself strangled before I even made it through the third town.”
“Speaking of,” I said, “you don’t happen to know who did it, do you?”
She shook her head, sending her blond hair swinging. “Nope. It doesn’t usually work that way. I don’t remember dying. The only reason I know what happened is because I woke up standing over myself.”
I winced. “That must have been brutal.”
“What must have been brutal?” Anna Mae asked, her forehead crinkled in irritation.
“She doesn’t remember dying,” I explained. “She doesn’t know who killed her.”
“Why can’t we see her?” she asked, then looked in Mercy’s direction. “Turn yourself on or whatever it is you ghosts do so we can all see you.”
Mercy rolled her eyes. “We ghosts? Really? And I don’t know how to turn myself on, as she says. I don’t even know how I made myself visible to you. This gig doesn’t exactly come with a manual.”
“Hang on a second,” I said. “I might be able to help you with that. Addy! Cheri Lynn!”
If anybody had the whole ghost thing figured out, it was those two. Cheri popped in almost immediately dressed in a tiny yellow bikini visible beneath a gauzy white cover-up. Her dark hair was swept up in a comb and she had an orange-and-red hibiscus tucked behind her ear.
“What’s up, sugar? I was just heading to meet Rupert. He and some buddies are havin’ a shindig on the Riviera and there’s a guy who died while he was cookin’. Somehow, he managed to bring his cooler full of steak and shrimp with him.” She licked her lips. “They say we can actually eat and taste it, which tickles me pink.”
“I’m up,” Mercy said, and my friend pivoted toward the voice.
“Oh, hey there,” Cheri said, her gaze appraising. “I’m Cheri Lynn. Who are you? I haven’t seen you around before.”
“Mercy,” the newly minted ghost replied. “I’m sorry to interrupt your trip. Noelle says you might be able to help me figure this whole ghost thing out. I’m sorta new to it.”
“Aw,” Cheri said, compassion flooding her features. “You poor thing. I remember my first few hours. It was awful. I didn’t even know I was dead. What do you want to know?”
“She wants to know how to make herself visible,” Anna Mae said, and I raised a brow at her. Though she tends to be excitable, she’s rarely inconsiderate.
“Okay,” Anna Mae added, then sighed. “I want her to know how to make herself visible. I realize I’m bein’ prickly, and I can’t seem to help it. Here the poor thing has just gone through somethin’ unimaginable, and I’m bein’ an old harpy. I’m sorry.”
“Tell her not to worry about it,” Mercy said with a wry half-smile. “She’s nothing compared to the crazy beast my sister turned into when she was pregnant.”
I relayed the message, and Anna Mae nodded.
“So, it’s really easy once you get the hang of it. All you have to do is focus your energy,” Cheri Lynn said. “Close your eyes and imagine being visible.”
While my post-living friend walked Mercy through the steps, I turned my attention back in the direction of the crime scene. A deputy was talking to the young woman who’d been setting up the house of mirrors to the right of Mercy’s tent. She swiped a tear from her cheek as she shook her head. From the body language, I was guessing the deputy wasn’t going to learn much from her. I pulled in a deep breath and released it. Just once, it would be nice to get a case that was easy to solve, or better yet, it would be grand if folks would just stop killing each other altogether.
Cheri Lynn’s delighted squeal brought my attention back to our little group. “See, I told you it was easy. Now you can fine-tune it to only be visible to certain people usin’ the same principle.”
Mercy was smiling as Anna Mae and Matt introduced themselves. It seemed so surreal to me that she was taking it so well.
“You don’t seem too upset or scared by this whole deal,” I said, watching her expression.
She shrugged. “I’ve been a medium and a psychic all my life, so death isn’t unfamiliar to me, or particularly scary. I mean, I’m totally bummed that I’m dead, but there’s nothing I can do about it.”
I had to wonder if she just hadn’t wrapped her mind around the situation yet because I was doubtful that anyb
ody could be that blasé about being murdered. I know I wouldn’t have been. Shoot, if it ever happened to me, I’d probably end up going full poltergeist. I have a bit of a temper.
“You can help us find who did it,” I said. “My fiancé is the sheriff, and I promise you, he’ll do everything he can. We just need to know where you came from and anything else that you think might help, even if it seems irrelevant.”
A shadow passed over her face. “Why? It’s not like it’ll bring me back.”
I wasn’t even sure how to respond to that.
“No,” Matt said, “but it will keep them from hurting anybody else. And don’t you want them punished? They took everything from you.”
Her full lips twisted into a cynical smile. “Sugar, I lost everything a long time ago. Anything you need to know about me, you’ll find in my trailer.”
With that, she faded out.
Cheri Lynn worried her lip. “Y’all don’t want to hear this, but I don’t think you can expect much help from her. She either knows who did it and doesn’t care or else she’s more worried about what you’ll find out about her than she is about solving her murder. Either way, don’t expect much, I don’t think.”
“What makes you say that?” I asked. Cheri was usually the most optimistic person I knew. It was a big part of her charm.
“I’ve seen it before. I know she pretended like she doesn’t care about being dead, but I don’t think that’s true. I think she just didn’t want you to know how she feels about it. Also, some folks get real dark about dyin’. They don’t see the point in participating in the livin’ world anymore because they think they’re no longer part of it. They see death as the end. What they don’t get is that a whole new existence just opened up.”