by Lyla Payne
“It’s Miss Harper. But yes.” I push to my feet, too anxious to sit still.
“Detective Travis.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” I say, sticking out my hand. He looks at me as though I’ve grown a second head, an expression I’m familiar with but not typically in the context of a handshake. “What? I hope you don’t expect me to curtsy. I’m not really from here.”
His look of surprise leans toward comical, almost crossing the line. He gets it together after a breath or two and reaches out to take my hand, giving it a firm couple of pumps before dropping it as though it’s hot.
Whatever that means.
“Apologies, ma’am. I’m not used to murder scenes being treated with the same protocol as afternoon tea.”
“You’ve obviously never taken afternoon tea at Mrs. Walters’.”
Beau heaves a defeated sigh as my badly timed joke tumbles onto its face. It would be nice to have a nervous tick that doesn’t include making totally inappropriate comments at the worst possible moment, but a girl’s got to work with what she’s got.
“I’d like to take your statements—separately—about what transpired to bring you to Mrs. Davis’s house tonight.”
It’s weird, but again, all I can think is, Who is Mrs. Davis? Glinda, as far as I know, has never been married. She lived here alone, ran the shop alone, and paid little children quarters to bring in her groceries and sweep the floors and rub her bunions for as long as I can remember.
“That’s fine,” Beau interjects, standing beside me.
“I’ll speak with you first, Mr. Mayor, if you don’t mind. I’m sure you’ll be wanting to get home.”
“I won’t be leaving without Graciela, but thank you. We’re both quite anxious to put the evening behind us.”
The detective’s inky eyebrows jerk upward, but only a tick. “Very well.”
They step out of hearing distance, off the decrepit wooden porch that must be housing more than one nest of snakes and across the brittle August grass toward the unmarked police car. Beau’s tall—a few inches over six feet—but Detective Travis stands at least even with him, if not a smidge taller. They have a similar build, too. Thick across the shoulders and chest, narrow waists, and a tendency to wear dress pants with a comfort most guys display only in jeans or jogging shorts.
The similarities end there, at least outwardly. Beau’s an open book, smiling and dimpled and coaxing since the day I first ran into him in the middle of town. To say the detective is a hard read would be an understatement. This is South Carolina. People shake hands, and smile, and introduce themselves as they spout niceties out of their asses no matter the situation. Rudeness and lack of manners aren’t things I’ve encountered in Heron Creek, save my daily sparring bouts with my neighbor Mrs. Walters.
I’m doing the old bird a favor, really. She’d be dead already if she couldn’t check disapproving of Gracie and spying off her daily to-do list.
I kill time studying the men’s body language, trying to interpret what’s going on with little to no success. The mysterious Detective Travis scribbles down notes in a tiny booklet, as though he time-traveled here from the seventies and has never heard of digital recorders. Beau’s as relaxed as ever, even if his posture looks a bit defensive with his arms crossed loosely over his chest. He runs a hand through his hair, mussing it the way I’ve been aching to do for weeks, as he follows the detective back up the steps toward me.
“Am I the next contestant on The Price is Right?” I quip, grimacing as the words leave my lips.
Beau groans softly, reaching out to squeeze my hand. His breath tickles my ear as he leans in. “Stop acting like a lunatic. You don’t have anything to hide.”
Not entirely true, but factual in that neither of us had anything to do with poor Glinda’s demise. I manage a quick smile that does nothing to dispel the worry tightening his gaze, before trailing Detective Travis out onto the crunchy grass.
“Miss Harper, if you could please explain the details of your evening leading up to the time you discovered Miss Davis’s body.”
My mouth feels dry, my eyes wet. All it took was that one question, straightforward and stark, for the gravity of tonight to punch me in the gut.
Glinda’s dead. Someone killed her.
And she wants my help with something.
Please, dear God, let it be that she’s particular about how she wants to be buried and isn’t expecting me to go after her murderers. I’ve had enough of homicidal crazy people and playing an inept version of Nancy Drew to last me a lifetime.
Tears burn the corners of my eyes, but I blink them back then swallow hard, determined to do what I can for her. “Mayor Drayton and I had dinner at the Wreck, then we walked back to his house along the riverfront. We, um, watched television for a while, and then I left. On the way home I ran into Toad and brought him back here but got worried when Glinda didn’t answer the door and called Beau.”
“Why didn’t you just leave the dog in the backyard?”
“I don’t … I don’t know. I thought the gate was broken, maybe, and she’d want to know?” This is bad. Beau and I should have discussed more details, and given that he’s pretending to have always walked the straight and narrow, it should have been me to suggest it.
Just thinking about all of the different answers he could have given Detective Travis nearly gives me a facial tic. His gray eyes rake my face in search of God knows what, but he doesn’t call me on any bullshit. It’s been a never-ending night, and one of the longest-standing members of this community is dead. He’s got to cut me at least a little slack.
“And why didn’t you have a car?”
“Excuse me?”
“You said you were walking home from the mayor’s house. After what happened to you last month on a similar late-night excursion, I’m a little surprised that you would set out on your own after dark. Did he not offer to walk you?”
The insinuations raise hackles along my spine. I’ve read enough crime fiction to know that the person who calls the cops usually knows more than he or she is saying, but being the one getting grilled like a criminal feels like shit.
“First of all, it’s none of your business whether I walk or drive my car. Second, while the mayor is a gentleman, he respects the fact that I am more than capable of taking care of myself.” That’s not 100 percent true—either part—but it’s nice to say it, anyway. “And last, how the dickens do you know what happened to me last month when you only took this job a week ago?”
Not one of my triad of blows makes the slightest impact. Detective Travis remains impassive and unruffled, watching me with those post-thunderstorm eyes like a parent waiting not-so-patiently for a toddler to finish a tantrum on the floor at Walmart. “Those are fair questions, but for tonight I’d prefer it if you’d let me do the asking. Because there’s a murdered woman inside that house.”
He puts his hands in his pockets and pulls out one of those fancy-schmancy e-cigarettes, then takes a couple of puffs that come out the other end in a cloud of strawberry-scented smoke. “Do you know the last time someone was murdered in Heron Creek, South Carolina, Miss Harper?”
“No.” I can name the last four people that were victims of attempted murder since the beginning of the summer because they’re all my friends, but it doesn’t sound as though this guy needs any enlightenment on recent local history.
“Over sixty years ago. Do you know what that means?”
“That you’re in for a hell of a first week on the job?”
Exasperation tightens his lips around his metal cigarette, and he sucks in with far more force than necessary. “It means this is serious, and seeing that you knew the deceased, I’d think you’d be a little more sober. And helpful.”
My heart seizes. Poor Glinda.
“I’m sorry. My mouth just kind of roams like a naked country boy when I get nervous or freaked out. It’s a problem. I’m working on it. I mean, I’m working on several problems at the moment, so this o
ne might not get resolved right away, but—”
“Miss Harper?”
“Sorry.” He looks at me, expectant, and my mind struggles to recall the original question. “Beau picked me up, and we had a drink at his place before walking to the Wreck. He offered to walk or drive me home but I refused, because I’m stubborn and I like being alone. And as weird as this sounds, sometimes it’s hard to remember there might be a crazed voodoo priestess stalking me. Takes some getting used to.”
The sound of his scribbling strums my nerves. My mind tosses around the thought of Mrs. LaBadie, the aforementioned voodoo priestess, and wonders if the ghosts are somehow her doing. They showed up about when she did.
No. She’s still on the loose, still intent on ensuring Anne Bonny’s family line—my family line—includes no surviving male heirs. Anne helped me put at least a temporary stop to that. The woman’s nuts, but she wouldn’t have sicced the ghost on me.
The click of leather when Detective Travis flips his book closed makes me jump a mile. “Thank you for your statement. I’ll be in touch if there’s anything further.”
He leaves me standing there, feeling like a giant fool. One who wants nothing more than to get back to the house by the intracoastal waterway that used to belong to my grandparents. To crawl into bed under the blue-and-cream quilt my grandmother made for my eighth birthday, breathe in the moonlight, and try to get some sleep.
Beau appears a moment later. He takes a good, hard look at the expression on my face and pulls me into a hug. As much as I want to, as much as my throat burns, I don’t cry for Glinda. It’s selfish and horrible, but all I can think right now is that I don’t want to see any more ghosts.
I don’t want to be responsible for figuring out what happened to her, or for resolving what she left behind undone.
“It’s going to be okay, Gracie,” he murmurs into my hair.
I tighten my arms around his waist, letting him comfort me even as sweat builds up between our bodies. His touch doesn’t have the same effect as it did an hour or two ago.
I think it’s because no matter how much I like Beau, or that things were finally starting to look up in Heron Creek, everything’s not going to be okay.
If the ghost of Anne Bonny taught me anything, it’s that ghosts don’t go away because they’re inconvenient, or because they almost get you killed, or because you want nothing to do with them.
Glinda’s here to stay, and the only way to get rid of her is to figure out what the heck she wants.
Chapter Three
“Can’t you, like, give me a hint or something? You haven’t even pointed at me in three days.” I glance at the ghost in the corner of my room who watches me, wearing a mournful expression that hopefully has nothing to do with his opinion of the sandals I’m strapping on for Beau’s birthday party. “Depression is an illness, you know. Would you like some booze? It works for me.”
He purses his lips, clearly annoyed, before fading from sight.
“Okay, so first rule for tonight,” my cousin Amelia says, sweeping into the room. Her skin glows, but her smile is as haunted as my bedroom. “No talking to invisible people at the party.”
She turns in front of the mirror, the soft green of her sundress swirling around her legs and hugging her five-month-pregnant belly. The bump completely disappears when she turns her back to me, and it’s annoying that even knocked up, she’s hotter than me.
“No talking to ghosts in public. Got it.” Nerves claw their way free of my stomach and squeeze my airway. “Any other advice for getting through tonight without letting my weirdness burst over the room like confetti?”
Amelia rolls her eyes and swings around to face me, then comes over to smooth the wrinkles from the black belt on my dark purple sundress. “Mayor Drayton likes you, and he knows about your weirdness. Most of it, anyway. Just be yourself.”
“Except for the ghost-talking.”
“Except for that.” She hands over a tube of sheer lip gloss, then watches me apply it. “Why do you think you’re still seeing dead people, anyway?”
I flick a glance toward the corner, even though I know the man isn’t there now. Other than Beau and my cousin, I haven’t told anyone else about seeing Glinda’s ghost before the police discovered her body. The list of people I’d tell is pretty short, and given that Detective Travis has the same attitude as a Rottweiler with a big-ass bone, he’s definitely not even an alternate.
I’m trying to get my life back together in Heron Creek. My boss, Mr. Freeman, promoted me to Mrs. LaBadie’s job after she went certifiably nuts and disappeared into thin air, which puts me in charge at the library, and I’m dating Beau. Amelia and I are making up for lost time. I have my old friends back in my life after years apart, even if we’re still feeling our way to a new version of the way things were.
“I don’t know. I mean, at first, when the old man showed up, I thought maybe … Anne put the word out that she’d found a living sucker to do her bidding.” I laugh, even though I’m not sure it’s funny. Or a joke.
“Or maybe listening to Anne and following her around and helping her opened some kind of dormant gene or door or something?” Amelia worries at her bottom lip. “What if they’re never going to stop?”
“If they keep coming, I hope they don’t gang up on me,” I mutter, checking my own reflection in the mirror. My dark hair hangs in nice waves, and even though the humidity outside will frizz them inside of five minutes, I don’t look half bad. Amelia did my makeup, and Beau’s going to be super impressed that my eyes don’t look like a three-year-old finger painted on the lids. Or he would be, if men noticed things like that. “I haven’t seen Glinda again since that night. Three days. Maybe she only wanted us to find her body. You know how she hated anything stinky and rotten.”
“Yeah. But what about nameless old dude?”
“He’s a big fan of aimless moping.” I take one last look at my reflection and a deep breath. “Let’s go.”
We head out of the bedroom we shared as children and down the steps. If there’s one thing—other than the ghosts—that I’d change, it would be to have Gramps here with us still. He’d be thrilled to know Amelia and I reconciled and that she’s away from her abusive husband and at least trying to be happy again.
I may have literal ghosts but my cousin has plenty of figurative ones lurking around corners and under beds.
The two of us are sometimes good for each other in that respect. But sometimes not. We can get pretty low in each other’s company, and given her condition, I’m the only one who can drink the depression off. I’ve been drinking less since she can’t right now; it doesn’t seem fair to rub it in her face.
Then there’s the fact that Mrs. LaBadie tried to kill Millie’s baby just over a month ago, and we don’t know where she is now. It’s making it hard for my cousin to shake off the past and really think about what she wants and where to go. She didn’t even finish college.
“You know,” she says as we step out into the muggy evening, closing the heavy door to our grandparent’s house behind her, “if I knew what he looks like and what he’s wearing and stuff, I could do some research at the library. Maybe you could try drawing him again.”
I frown. “My artistic abilities have not suddenly improved. A monkey could draw better, and I think you just want to make fun of me. Besides, you’ve got my old job. You’re supposed to be washing windows and shelving the same books fifteen times a week the way that old witch made me.”
“Please. I don’t clean.”
That makes me snort. “Are you cool with walking?”
“Let’s drive, Grace. It’s hotter than blue blazes out here.”
Which means my car probably smells more like moldy nachos than ever, but Millie’s the one with pregnancy super-smelling, so I don’t complain. Hopefully the odor won’t find its way into my hair during the ten-minute drive to the mayor’s. He’s celebrating with a sort-of garden party on the back lawn of his house, which runs to the saltw
ater causeway that flows downstream toward Charleston. Very fancy.
“We can assume Sir Mopes-a-Lot is local,” I comment, the wheels in my head desperate to grab on to anything other than having to meet and impress Beau’s friends tonight. He would never describe the evening that way, of course. He would say he invited me because he wants me there, and no pressure, but for all of his good points, Beau’s still a guy.
He’s a little slow about certain things. Like women. And relationships.
“Right. Because if you start collecting spirit buddies from around the world we’re going to need a bigger house.” Amelia’s gaze wanders out the window, along with her interest in our conversation.
It’s hard to know where she’s gone—back to the night she shot her husband, to the afternoon we learned the woman determined to extinguish our family’s male line had disappeared into thin air, or the unhappy years before that—but I wish more than anything she didn’t have to remember any of it.
That’s not the way it goes, though. There might be some things in my past I wish had never happened or that I could forget, but the truth is, I wouldn’t be me without each and every one of them. Strangely enough, I’m kind of starting to like myself again.
On occasion.
“Why do you care?” I joke in an attempt to win her attention. “It’s not like you can see them. What if I told you the mystery man likes to sniff your panties and curl up next to you during your afternoon naps?”
“First of all, ew. Second, I care because we’re going to need separate wings soon. It’s not easy listening to you talk to yourself and still pretend I don’t think you’re bonkers.”
“Nice, Millie. Real nice.”
We pass the rest of the drive in silence. Her thoughts have wandered beyond my reach, leaving me to wonder if she’s 100 percent teasing. Amelia’s the only person other than me who saw Anne Bonny, and we’re close enough that she’ll love me even if I have slid clean off my rocker. But still. If she wonders whether or not I’m imagining the old man, or Glinda, what must Beau be contemplating?