by Mona Marple
“Isn’t that it?” I ask, pointing to the bag.
Tabitha glances down and then becomes perfectly still. She makes no noise, and her gaze doesn’t return to me. I turn my head a fraction so that I can see Patton, whose pursed lips tell me he smells something fishy.
“You’ve got some explaining to do,” he says, and begins to approach her.
“I think I’m in shock,” she says, and before Patton can reach her, she faints and drops to the floor.
“darn it,” he mutters, then floats past her. “I’ll get help. Stay with her.”
I do exactly that. I hover near her, thinking about the fact that it’s often the quiet ones you should keep a close eye on. The loud ones give themselves away easily, or tire themselves out with noise-making before actually doing anything. Tabitha lies perfectly still, and if it wasn’t for the slight flutter of her eyelids, I might feel some concern for her.
Instead, I realise that despite her bit-part performance, I’m looking at the most talented actress in Mystic Springs.
**
After Tabitha’s been admitted to hospital suffering from an apparent case of delayed onset shock, which I have no doubt is as fake as her pretence that she’d forgotten her bag, Patton and I skulk back to Connie’s empty house, which is in darkness apart from the Christmas tree lights, which come on on a timer.
“She should be here,” I say as we close the door behind us. Yes, spirits can walk through walls and doors, but it’s not a pleasant experience. I avoid it whenever I can. “It’s late.”
“She’s with Taylor. They probably went back to his,” Patton soothes. He has a point. The babies are there. Taylor will want to be with Scarlett and Axel, and Connie will want to be with him. She won’t let herself admit she wants to be near those babies too.
“You’re right,” I say, and I flop down onto the settee. I wish I could still eat. I’d reach for chocolate right about now. There are some situations that only a sugar high can fix. But then Patton sits beside me and pulls me into his strong frame, and I realise not all sugar comes with calories.
“I wonder what Tabitha wanted to do backstage,” Patton murmurs. Headlights of a passing car turn the living room a dull shade of amber for a moment, before it’s gone, and darkness returns. I was scared of the dark, when I was alive. Even as a grown up, as a mother, I’d keep a little night light on and pretend it was for my girls. I’m not afraid anymore. It’s hard to keep being scared of ghosts when you are one. And, as my mum would tell me when I begged her to check under my bed, the real monsters are walking amongst us.
“Hide some evidence?” I guess. “She’s clearly involved.”
“I hope Taylor found that Nick guy,” Patton says, his voice urgent.
I stiffen a little. “You really think it’s him?”
“He came out in his costume, just with a gun as well. Of course it’s him.”
“I’m not so sure,” I say.
“I know you know the guy. You don’t want to think that he could do something like that. But sometimes the most obvious answer is the right one.”
“Ugh,” I say. I’ve watched Connie idolise her friend Nick for years, and I’ll admit I did it with a suspicious eye at first. I didn’t understand the friendship, and I didn’t entirely trust a well-presented man who disappeared for months at a time. But he’s never said or done anything to make my suspicions valid and over time, I’ve come to share Connie’s high opinion of him.
“Anyway,” Patton says. “Are you okay?”
“Oh, yeah. Tired,” I say.
“Sure there’s nothing on your mind?” He pushes. He doesn’t know about Bernard. He couldn’t know. Could he? It would be terrible if he does, and I’m still here refusing to tell him what he already knows.
“Well, I mean, there’s nothing big going on. The big thing is the murder, right? We need to focus on that,” I say, swimming around an ocean for the right words. The fact that my husband has turned up unexpectedly after years of silence is so not a big deal. Absolutely insignificant. And I don’t know which words to use to make it clear just how tiny a thing it really is. Surely the best thing to show it’s unimportant is to not even mention it? I let out a small groan of frustration.
“I’d rather focus on you,” Patton says, and my stomach flips. He’s such a good man. And a looker too. They don’t usually go together, in my experience.
“Well, I’m worried about Connie,” I admit, deciding that the best way to get it out is just to say it in the middle of other things. Then I’ve told him, but I haven’t given the news the importance of delivering it in its own conversation. “I mean, if it is Nick, that’s going to hit her hard. I hope Taylor’s looking after her. He’s not always the most sensitive, is he? Like you, I guess, used to practical mode. I’m sure she’s okay. My husband’s in town. And I really have a bad feeling about Tabitha Reed.”
“Your what?” Patton asks, jolting away from me on the settee.
“Yeah,” I say. “She totally faked that fainting spell. I mean, I watched her like you told me to, and she kept her eyes closed but of course she did. She knew I was there. You know, she hates spirits. She writes into the newspaper most weeks complaining about how spirits are going to send the town to Hell.”
“Sage!” Patton tries to interrupt me but I’m on a roll. If I just keep talking, maybe he’ll forget the mention of Bernard.
“I do understand that it’s not easy for people to get used to sharing a town with spirits. Really I do. So, I’m not suggesting she’s hiding something out of revenge or anything. I just don’t think it adds up. She deliberately crept past the tape outside the town hall. That’s a crime, right? Breaking and entering? Interfering with a crime scene?”
“Sage…” Patton repeats, his voice lower this time. “What did you mean that your husband’s in town?”
“Oh,” I say, keeping my voice light. “Yeah. Weird, huh?”
“How do you know? How long has he been here?”
“Well, I, erm, bumped into him. The day before the show.”
Patton groans.
“It’s really nothing to worry about,” I begin, but Patton raises a hand to stop me talking,
“I can play jealous boyfriend later, if I want to. But right now, I need to know everything there is to know about him.”
“Huh?” I ask, scrunching my nose.
“Standard police investigating. Anybody who arrives in town just before a murder has to be checked out.”
“Oh, no, not Bernard,” I say with a laugh. “He wouldn’t hurt anyone. And, anyway, you said it’s Nick. They’ve probably already found him.”
Patton shakes his head. “I’ll ignore how quick you are to jump to this man’s defence, Sage. Now, I need you to tell me about him.”
I think of Bernard and wonder what there possibly is to tell a man like Patton, who prides himself on his ability to take charge in difficult situations. When I do ever think back to my time with Bernard, my resounding feeling is one of confusion. I’d been such an adventurer at heart, with no shortage of boys who wanted to take me out, treat me to a night at the cinema, claim me as theirs. With such big ambitions, and so many options, how on Earth had I ended up with Bernard?
I know the answer, though. He won me over precisely because he didn’t beg, like the others did. He was standoffish, I thought, until I realised it was crippling shyness. What I had been flattered to imagine was him playing hard to get was actually him having paid very little attention to me. He barely knew I was alive, back at a time when every red-blooded boy around town was very much aware of me being alive. He wore a leather jacket, and had an uncle who played guitar in a band. The uncle lived with Bernard, because he was constantly in search of a gig that would provide reliable work and stable income, and Bernard’s parents made him earn his keep by helping out. Bernard arrived at school every day in the uncle’s classic car, a family heirloom and the only thing of value the uncle ever owned. That, together with the fact that the uncle’s minor
fame seemed stratospheric to us kids, made Bernard, in a strange twist of fate, the coolest guy in school.
I practically threw myself at him, I realised later to my eternal embarrassment. It wasn’t even as if the boring sod had worn me down with his constant invitations out, but closer to the other way around.
By the time I realised there was really nothing more to his personality, nothing lurking underneath the leathers, and the novelty of the rides in the uncle’s car had worn off, we were engaged - at his mother’s urging. Bernard’s mother, battle axe that she was, she was wily. She knew she’d never get another chance at such a daughter-in-law.
When Bernard dropped down to one knee after Sunday dinner at his parents’, I said yes. There didn’t seem to be another option. I’d never in my life heard of a woman saying no to a marriage proposal, especially while his whole family watched and the custard for pudding was busy heating on the stove.
Yes, I said. And after that, the questions stopped coming. My future mother-in-law announced to all and sundry that we would be wed after a six-week engagement, which sounded like no time at all to me. A chintzy affair in the local church, with a buffet spread of ham paste cobs and pork pie, and the mother-in-law in every single photo, the wedding felt like it was happening to someone else.
My one moment of control came when I changed my legal name. Not only would I become a Shaw, I would change my dreadful first name as well. And so, Jane Winters, dreamer with a heart filled with wanderlust, became Sage Shaw, wife. Wife and mother not much later. What else was there to do, really, other than begin the family everyone was waiting for with baited breath? Two girls, Sandy and Coral, neither perfectly shaped to fill the hole in my life where my own aspirations had once been.
And Bernard. What could I remember of him? Surprisingly little. Overpowered by his mother in the engagement and newlywed days – she liked to be on hand to make sure that I’d been taught properly how to keep a house. And then lost to the background when his daughters arrived.
He went out to work. He never hit any of us. And he didn’t drink all the money away. There was always some left for him to hand over to me to pay the bills and buy the food.
Did he cheat? Did he have his head turned by other women? He was out of the house an awful lot, not that I really noticed or minded. But no, I never suspected there was another woman. I’d kept my looks after having the babies, and I was grateful for that. Not all women did. I didn’t understand how having a child could affect a woman’s face as well as her stomach and bladder control, but it did often enough. I was still a looker. And I had the time, when the kids were at school, to make sure I looked the part. Not that Bernard paid me attention in that regard. He never had. So, no, I don’t think there had been other women. I felt confident that I was the best the town had to offer in that sense, and if Bernard wasn’t interested in me, he wasn’t going to be interested in any others.
6
Connie
Finally, the door opens and a plump, disapproving nurse looks at Taylor and I, her eyes heavy with 16 hour shift exhaustion.
“You can go in now,” she says, hint of a Southern accent hiding at the back of her clipped tone. She’s kept us out of Nick’s hospital room for over three hours, insisting that despite him being awake, he needs to rest. “Don’t get him upset or excited, you hear?”
“We won’t,” I say, rising from the plastic chair. My back aches at being sat there for so long and I push my chest forward a little as I stretch out my muscles.
“Ten minutes. Then I’ll be back to get him settled for the night,” the nurse says, then she turns on her heels and clip-clops down the corridor. No doubt she has a full roster of patients all vying for her attention, more patients than she can possibly give the amount of attention her textbook training taught her to anticipate.
I push open the door and gasp. Nick’s body is hooked up to wires and a monitor that beeps every few seconds. Forget me disturbing him, that noise is going to drive him mad. Or at least it would have normally. For now, he’s lying on his back, eyes open, gazing right up at the ceiling, which has been decorated with glow-in-the-dark stars. Maybe this used to be a children’s room. Or maybe, I think with a shudder, the stars help the fatal cases pass over. My mother used to tell me we were born from stars and we’d return to stars. I don’t know if she meant it to be comforting or awe-inspiring, but I found it chilling. I couldn’t imagine many things more scary or lonely than being a star, up there in the sky millions of miles away from your closest neighbour. I force the thought from my mind and clear my throat, letting Nick know we’re here. Taylor remains behind me, making it clear he’s here as my support, not as the Sheriff.
“Nick,” I whisper, not wanting to startle him. Maybe he’s asleep. People can sleep with their eyes open, can’t they? Or – the thought appears in my mind, unwanted – maybe he can’t move. What if he’s paralysed? Beautiful, strong Nick, whose body has always been his temple. It would be too cruel for him to lose that. I force myself to stay rational. He has burns. And he has a head injury. Those two don’t add up and equal paralysis, surely? I wish I’d asked the nurse questions.
Taylor gives me a gentle push forward and I approach the heavy-duty bed. It could fit two people easily, but that’s not what it’s meant for. It’s made that way for super-size patients who would be at risk of spilling out of regular sized beds. Nick looks tiny in there.
“Hey you,” I say, a little louder, as I lower myself into the seat next to his bed. Taylor remains in the shadows. I reach for Nick’s hand, see the needle still in there. Feel my stomach flip. “You just had to be the centre of attention, huh?”
Nick moves his head then, such a tiny fraction it’s almost imperceptible. He side-eyes me and I see that the white of his eyes are bloodshot. His head’s bandaged. I don’t know if humour’s the way to go, but I do know that if I get more sympathetic, I’ll be wailing by his bedside and he’s never been able to stand seeing me cry.
“It… hurts,” he manages, his voice as dry as sandpaper. There’s a plastic cup of water on the bedside table, with a straw in, and I gesture towards it. He nods. I raise the cup and manoeuvre the straw into his mouth. He takes a tiny sip and struggles to swallow. I think, not for the first time, how care work must be the most difficult and rewarding job out there. I’d considered it once, before I ended up talking to dead people for a living.
“Hey Nick,” Taylor says as I return the cup to its place. “You need anything, buddy?”
The buddy sounds false, as it should. The two have never met. The two most important men in my life weren’t supposed to meet like this.
“No…” Nick manages. Every word is causing him pain. I know that Taylor wants him to talk, wants him to give us an early heads up about who did this, but Nick clearly can’t manage more than the odd word. I tenderly hold on to his little finger as if my life depends on it.
The door opens then and the Southern nurse reappears. She seems infuriated to see that we’re still here, and I know for a fact she hasn’t even given us the ten minutes she promised.
“Y’all done here?” She asks as she picks up a clipboard from the end of the bed. She watches the monitor for a moment then jots down figures on the chart.
“We’ve only had a minute,” I object. “Please.”
She sighs. “Your friend here needs to rest, surely y’all can see that. I’m not tryin’a be mean,” she meets my gaze and lowers her voice, “We’re talkin’ serious burns and a lotta pain. Sleep’s the best thing for him til the pain passes a little.”
“Okay,” I say with resignation. I can’t argue with a nurse. If she says Nick needs to sleep, it’s selfish of me to try and keep him awake.
“She…” Nick’s voice comes then. I turn to him, see the nurse frown. “She…”
“She’s right, Nick,” I say, with a peace-keeping smile towards the nurse. I give his finger a squeeze. “She’s doing her job. You get your rest and I’ll be back in the morning.”
&n
bsp; **
“This is great,” Taylor says sarcastically as he drives us back across town after leaving the hospital. “We have a murder, a serious attack, and no suspects.”
“Nick will get better,” I say. “He’ll talk, as soon as he can.”
“I know that,” Taylor says, “but every hour we lose reduces the chances of catching the killer.”
“Well,” I begin, “let’s forget Nick. If all we had was a murder, where would we start?”
“We?” Taylor asks as he pulls up at a stop light. He turns to me and raises an eyebrow, flashes that smile I love.
“We’re a team now, right?”
“Too right,” he agrees. “Go on, what are you thinking?”
“Well, if there was no separate attack, what would we be doing?”
“Arresting Nick,” Taylor says with a shrug. “Santa did it, remember.”
“So the person who did this probably only hurt Nick to get the costume? Or they had a grudge against him, too?”
“I can’t imagine Nick has many enemies?”
I laugh at that suggestion. “Have you heard of tall poppy syndrome?”
Taylor shakes his head, his attention distracted by a car in front that’s weaving across the line. “darn drunks.”
I watch the vehicle and hold my breath, while Taylor switches his lights on. The car’s unmarked, not his official Sheriff’s vehicle, but he’s always ready and equipped to make an arrest. After a few moments of us following the car, which has righted itself and is staying in lane, it pulls over, and Taylor unclips his belt.
“You don’t get out of this car, understand?” He asks me. I nod and watch him walk across, tap on the driver window, show his badge. He chats for a few minutes, then steps back and allows the car to drive on.
“Who was it?” I ask as he gets back into the car. “I mean, can you say?”
“Sure,” he says. “You could have been a bystander and seen, I don’t think there’s any need for secrecy. It was Antoinette Cross.”