Sweet Tea and Spirits

by Angie Fox

  Sweet Tea and Spirits

  Angie Fox

  Sweet Tea and Spirits

  Southern girl Verity Long is about as high society as her pet skunk. Which is why she’s surprised as anyone when the new head of the Sugarland social set invites her to join the "it" girls. But this is no social call. Verity’s new client needs her to go in undercover and investigate strange happenings at the group’s historic headquarters.

  But while spirits are whispering hints of murder, the socialites are more focused on Verity’s 1978, avocado-green Cadillac. And when Verity stumbles upon a fresh body, she's going to need the long-dead citizens of Sugarland to help her solve the crime. Good thing she has the handsome deputy sheriff Ellis Wydell on hand, as well as her ghostly sidekick Frankie. The bad thing is, the ghosts are now whispering about the end of a certain ghost hunter.

  Contents

  Sweet Tea and Spirits

  Also by Angie Fox

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Also by Angie Fox

  About the Author

  Also by Angie Fox

  Keep track of Angie's new book releases by receiving an email on release day. It's fast and easy to sign up for new release updates.

  The following Angie Fox titles are also available in print format.

  * * *

  THE SOUTHERN GHOST HUNTER SERIES

  Southern Spirits

  A Ghostly Gift (short story)

  The Skeleton in the Closet

  Ghost of a Chance (short story)

  The Haunted Heist

  Deader Homes & Gardens

  Dog Gone Ghost (short story)

  Sweet Tea and Spirits

  Murder on the Sugarland Express

  New book to release in Fall 2018*

  * * *

  *Want to receive an email on the day this book releases? Sign up for new release alerts.

  * * *

  THE ACCIDENTAL DEMON SLAYER SERIES

  The Accidental Demon Slayer

  The Dangerous Book for Demon Slayers

  A Tale of Two Demon Slayers

  The Last of the Demon Slayers

  My Big Fat Demon Slayer Wedding

  Beverly Hills Demon Slayer

  Night of the Living Demon Slayer

  What To Expect When Your Demon Slayer is Expecting coming April 2018!*

  * * *

  *Want to receive an email on the day this book releases? Sign up for new release alerts.

  * * *

  SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS:

  A Little Night Magic: A collection of Southern Ghost Hunter and Accidental Demon Slayer short stories

  Chapter 1

  They say you know a ghost is near when bloodhounds howl in the night or when you see a flickering shadow out of the corner of your eye. But as I leaned against the white painted rail of my back porch, I knew a ghost lingered behind me because he couldn’t stop talking about his poker hand.

  “Four of a kind, aces,” Frankie crowed, laying his cards out on the table for his three gangster buddies, who would have been green with envy if they hadn’t shimmered in black and white.

  The snub-nosed ghost across from Frankie tossed his cards down onto the table. “You’re cheating!” he declared, but he said it halfheartedly. He knew as well as I did that Frankie couldn’t be hiding an ace up his sleeve. Spirits could only own what they’d died with and Frankie hadn’t been holding any cards on that hot summer night back in 1933.

  “Lucky at cards, unlucky at love,” I teased, gaining a bemused glance from my boyfriend of several months, the handsome deputy sheriff, Ellis Wydell. I drew close enough to smell his spicy aftershave. “I’m talking about Frankie.”

  “I figured,” Ellis said, wrapping an arm around me. “You need to find him a girlfriend.”

  “I think that’s beyond my pay grade.” I was still getting used to the fact that I could see spirits and talk to them. And that I occasionally hosted poker night. Ghostly matchmaking was a whole other level of weird.

  Ellis and I shared a grin and I was just about to lean up and kiss him when the phone in my pocket vibrated.

  “I wonder who that could be,” I said, not recognizing the number. If the call wasn’t from a friend or family member, maybe it was a potential client. I’d been trying to get my ghost-hunting business started. “Oh, Ellis. I think this could be it.” I stepped away from him and answered. “Hello?” I asked, over the croak of bullfrogs and the chirping of crickets.

  Static clouded the other end of the line. A woman’s voice crackled in the midst of it. “We need you.” Her words sounded hollow, far away.

  “Who is this?” I pulled the phone away to take a second look at the caller ID.

  “I recognize that number,” Ellis said. “It’s the main line for the Sugarland Heritage Society.”

  The group oversaw historic preservation and resided in one of the town’s most treasured old properties. It shouldn’t be open this late at night, on a Friday no less.

  The screen on the phone flickered as I brought it to my ear again. “Sorry. I didn’t catch your name.” When there was no response, I added, “What can I do for you?”

  The caller didn’t respond, and for a second, I thought I’d lost her. Then the voice came through. “There’s been a murder.”

  Almost simultaneously, the police radio on Ellis’s belt went off.

  Break-in at the Sugarland Heritage Society. All available officers report to the scene.

  We exchanged a worried glance. Before I could tell him what I’d heard, a harsh click echoed in my ear and the line went dead. “Hello?” I demanded. “Hello?”

  “I have to go,” Ellis said, backing up a few steps as he unhooked the radio from his belt.

  “Woah! Hey!” the gangsters protested as my non-ghost-seeing boyfriend walked straight through their poker game.

  He spoke into the radio. “This is Officer Wydell. I’ll be there in five.” He headed for the porch steps. “Sorry, Verity.”

  “I’m going with you,” I said, hurrying after him, making sure to bypass the ghosts.

  Ellis stopped at the edge of the porch and planted a quick kiss on top of my head. “Not this time. Break-ins can be dangerous.” He gave my hand a squeeze and then took to the stairs. “Let me do my job.”

  “It’s a murder,” I said, following him down. “That’s the call I just got. A woman reported a murder. The call came from inside the house.”

  He drew his radio out again and cursed under his breath. “Watch your backs. Verity Long just received a call from inside the Sugarland Heritage Society. Caller reported a murder.”

  I gave it ten seconds before that was all over town.

  “You see why I’m going with you,” I said, trailing him to his police cruiser. Dang. I needed to get my purse.

  “Not yet,” Ellis said, turning to me. “The police will be swarming all over the place.” He dug in his pocket for his keys. “This is the biggest thing since the bank murder.”

  “Which I solved,” I pointed out.

  “You know I think you’re amazing,” he said, with the kind of pride that made me go a bit melty, “but let the police do their job, mortal methods only. I
’ll tell you what we find and bring you in as soon as we can.”

  “But a murder?” I protested, unwilling to let it go.

  “I’ll check it out,” he assured me.

  Yes, well, he couldn’t see everything.

  “I’ll call you as soon as I have something to tell you,” he said, opening the door and hitting the lights on the cruiser.

  He’d better.

  Chapter 2

  The next morning, I sat on my porch swing, watching an electric blue butterfly stretch her wings on the edge of a pot of zinnias, wondering if I was crazier than a soup sandwich.

  Last night’s caller had made it perfectly clear. There had been a murder.

  Ellis had met up with half the Sugarland PD outside the heritage society. They’d found the historic building locked tight, which was six kinds of strange considering someone or something had tripped the alarm. The society president let four officers inside the house to conduct a thorough search.

  They’d found nothing.

  No caller.

  No killer.

  Not even a body.

  Don’t get me wrong. I was both grateful and glad a tragedy had not occurred. But it also left me puzzled.

  Of course nobody else wanted to talk about the blaring alarm that had sent police rushing to the house. It was more fun to pretend nothing real had happened, to laugh about my ghostly warning on the morning radio talk shows. One particularly obnoxious host even had the gall to speculate that I lived for the drama of my failed wedding and my ghostly gift. As if I’d asked for any of it.

  She had called me!

  Just when I’d proven myself on my first ghost-hunting job. Just when I’d thought the town might be ready to take me seriously…

  A small cold nose nudged my arm. My little skunk, Lucy, sniffed the last strawberry in my breakfast bowl and gazed up at me as if to say, If you won’t eat it, I will.

  I placed the skunk and the bowl on the porch and stood.

  I’d been up since six a.m., fielding calls from my sister, my neighbors, and my mother in Florida.

  The Sugarland grapevine was more like a weed, one that sprawled every which way and was impossible to kill.

  My friends and family had been kind, at least. Thank goodness you were mistaken, they said. You must be imagining things, they hoped.

  But I wasn’t. I’d heard the raw truth in the caller’s voice last night. Her cry for help had come from inside the building, even though it had been locked up tight. Whoever she was, she’d reached out to me, never mind the fact that Ellis and his fellow officers had found not one single soul on the property.

  She’d sounded desperate. I simply couldn’t ignore that. It wouldn’t be right.

  In fact, there was only one thing I could think of to do.

  “Frankie!” I called. I scanned my generous backyard for any sign of the ghost that lived on my property. “If you can hear me, I’d like a word.”

  I’d met Frankie during an unfortunate bout of house cleaning, when I’d decided to try to make something of the dirty old vase I’d found in the attic. I hadn’t thought twice about dumping the ashy old soil inside over my rosebushes and rinsing it deep into the roots with the hose. Only it wasn’t a vase, it was an urn. And that wasn’t dirt. It had been…him. Or what was left of the poor fellow.

  My bang-up cleaning job had trapped Frankie’s ghost on my property for good. Or at least until we could figure out a way to separate him from my garden soil. Nothing we’d tried so far had worked.

  I alone could see him. Well, when he chose to appear to me. He frequently liked to remind me that he had his own friends and his own afterlife.

  “Oh, Frankie!” I called again, hoping he’d turn up. He liked to hang out in my backyard. Yet I detected no sign of him near the fishing pond, in the field beyond, or even in his favorite spot under the old apple tree.

  Frankie wasn’t what you’d call an early bird, especially after a late night of poker, but this was an emergency.

  He couldn’t leave the property, not unless I left and took his urn with me, so he had to be around somewhere.

  If I could get his attention.

  “That’s strange,” I said, going from coaxing to conniving, “I didn’t know there was money buried under my porch.”

  The strawberry bowl clanked and spun as my skunk made a beeline in the other direction. That was a good sign.

  She tended to bolt when Frankie came around.

  Of course, even I wasn’t ready for Frankie’s head to pop up out of the porch near my feet. I jumped back. “Good Lord!”

  Frankie appeared in black and white, but I could see through him. Mostly. I tried to avoid staring at the neat, round bullet hole in the center of his forehead.

  He scrunched his long, thin nose and squinted up at me. “There ain’t no dough down there. Just a rusty bucket and a couple dozen spiders.”

  “Big ones?” I squirmed.

  “As far as you know.” He rose up out of the porch, looking every bit the angry specter—make that gangster. He’d been a ruthless mobster in his day, and he dressed the part. Frankie wore a 1920s-style pin-striped suit coat with matching cuffed trousers and a fat tie. He rose up and up until his chest was level with my line of sight.

  He’d clearly been very good at intimidating his enemies, and probably his friends as well.

  I squared my shoulders. If I backed down an inch, he’d take a mile. “I’m sorry for the false alarm, but I need your help.”

  He glared down at me. “And you figured you’d lie to me to get it.”

  I felt a twinge of guilt, but I refused to flinch. “Considering you made your living gambling, stealing, and smuggling, I figured you might not mind so much.”

  The corner of his mouth tugged up. “Maybe I am teaching you a thing or two.”

  I sincerely hoped that wasn’t true. “I received a call last night,” I explained. “From an individual who may be a ghost. Is that even possible?”

  He shrugged. “I’m standing here, having this conversation with you, and you want to talk about whether or not crazy things happen?”

  “I see your point. You should know the call came from a locked building, with no living soul inside. Ellis checked.” The gangster didn’t appear overly impressed. “The woman on the other line reported a murder,” I said. “It has to be a cry for help, not from someone living, but from the dead.”

  He held up a hand. “Oh no. I see where this is going.”

  “Then you understand why I need you.” I couldn’t talk to any other ghosts without his help. I couldn’t do a darned thing about that call unless Frankie lent me his power to see the spirit world. Frankie wasn’t what you’d call a team player, but we’d joined forces before, with amazing results. “We’ve done so much good,” I pressed, hoping he had a soft spot…somewhere. “We saved my house, we helped that little boy reunite with his parents, we solved the murder at the old distillery.”

  “You drained my energy and dragged me along on a bunch of do-good nonsense that was distinctly uncomfortable to me and didn’t pay beans,” he said, as if that were all that mattered. “Now you want to borrow my powers to go running off to solve some murder you don’t even know exists.”

  “She asked for my help,” I said. “How can I ignore that?”

  He reached to the side and a white Panama hat materialized in his hand. “You’ve refused to help me plenty of times. A couple of weeks ago I asked you to drive me and the fellas to the First Sugarland Bank and you said no.”

  “That’s because you wanted to rob it.”

  He drew the hat down over the bullet hole in his forehead. “It really bugs Suds that he never got that job done,” he mused. “I don’t like leaving anything hanging, either.”

  I ran a hand through my hair and tried to think of a way to get him on my side, short of raiding a bank vault. “I realize it’s uncomfortable for you to help me. I’m truly sorry about that.” The power drain made parts of him disappear. But they alway
s came back.

  Eventually.

  The problem was I’d already made a somewhat jarring deal with him the last time I needed his power. He could invite any ghost buddies he wanted to get together in my backyard. He’d gone from my guest to, well, I supposed he was more of a housemate now. I didn’t know what else I could offer.

  “I may just have to owe you,” I said, notching my chin up to match Frankie glare for glare. “This is important. I have to know who made that call. It may be nothing. It may be a false alarm or a dead end, or it could be murder.”

  “Even if I wanted to let you put my power on layaway,” he said, his attention drifting to the yard. “I don’t have time right now.”

  “You’re a ghost,” I balked. “All you have is time.”

  “That is stereotypical and offensive,” he said, waving at someone out in the yard.

  “Who’s out there?” I asked, trying to see, knowing I couldn’t without his help.

  Frankie grinned. “Sticky Pete!” he called, strolling to the edge of the porch. “Tie the bangtail out back by the shed.”

  “The what-tail?” I seriously needed to get a book on 1920s slang.

  “Never mind.” He waved off my concern. “The point is I’ve got a major event starting at noon. We got less than two hours to get this show started and the fresh dirt isn’t even down yet.”

  “What? I told you that you could have friends over.” As in a few of his old buddies to keep him company. “That doesn’t mean new dirt, bangtails, or whatever else Sticky Pete has planned.”