by Lyla Payne
“No kidding. I don’t actually take you for a reader, Detective.”
“Well, you would be wrong on that count, but that’s beside the point.”
His response piques my curiosity, but asking what kinds of books he enjoys would only cause him to accuse me of treating a murder like afternoon tea again. “What can I do for you?”
“I have a few more questions about the other night.” He peers around the cavernous, deserted front room of the library. “Can we talk here?”
“Sure. My cousin is the only other employee.”
“Mrs. Middleton?”
“I think she’s probably going back to Miss Cooper, but yes. She said y’all met the other day at the pharmacy.”
He nods, looking for the first time a bit lost as to how to proceed. It makes my eyebrows knit together. He recovers after a moment, pulling that notepad and a pen from his back pocket. “Are you sure there’s not anything else you want to tell me about how you came to discover Mrs. Davis’s body the other night? Your story about finding the dog and returning it doesn’t exactly match up with Mayor Drayton’s.”
“Which part?”
“I don’t feel comfortable disclosing that information.”
“I didn’t kill Glinda. I was with the mayor all evening.”
“You don’t actually have an alibi for the time when the murder was committed.”
“So you’re saying what? That she died way before we found her?” It makes me wonder why Glinda waited so long to come find me. Maybe she checked my house first. Or the library.
When he doesn’t reply, irritation heats my cheeks. I know I should shut up and probably call a lawyer or something, but this is all too ridiculous. “If you won’t tell me when she died, how do you know I don’t have an alibi?”
“It was earlier that night. Before your … date with the mayor.”
“Why did you just say date like it belongs in air quotes? Do you have a problem with the mayor having a relationship with me?”
“No. Why would I?” His tone and expression betray genuine surprise.
Calm down, crazy cakes. You can swim in your own insecurities if you want, but no need to invite the whole town in for a skinny dip.
“Never mind. The point is, I was alone from the time I got home from work until Beau picked me up for dinner.” I cross my arms over my chest, letting them give me a little bit of protection. “But I didn’t kill her. Why would I do that?”
“You tell me. By all accounts, you’ve been having a rough time. You’re a bit of a drinker. A bit of a loner. Maybe you talk to ghosts—or think you do.”
My jaw hurts from my mouth falling open, even though I have no idea why surprise is my initial reaction. Maybe because although a couple of months isn’t enough time to place me in the role of local kook in my mind, apparently the rest of Heron Creek doesn’t feel the same way.
“You’re very rude, aren’t you, Dylan Travis?” Amelia appears beside me, close enough to lend me support with her warmth as well as her question. Her voice is even and controlled, a dead giveaway that she’s mad as an old wet hen, but the detective doesn’t know her well enough yet to realize he’s poked a bear.
“Excuse me?” Two matching pinpoints of color pop out on the apples of his cheeks. Between the rosy spots and his jet-black hair, he’s starting to resemble one of those old ventriloquist dolls. Which are always creepy.
“Grace may be on your list of suspects or whatever, but that doesn’t mean you have the right to insult her. Ask your questions, if you have any real ones. If not, you can run along.”
Her defense bolsters my confidence. My chin juts out, and I meet Detective Travis’s eye.
He doesn’t flinch, staring right back at me. Through me, kind of, as though he’d like to rummage around in my mind, were it possible. “I came to ask where you were during the time of the murder, and you’ve answered that.” He sighs, cutting a glance at my pregnant bodyguard. “I suppose that’s all for now.”
“You’re not going to tell me not to leave town?” I snap, encouraged by his tail-tucking.
That actually makes the faintest hint of a smile touch his lips. It changes his face in a way that makes it possible to believe he might have friends. And teeth. “I do believe you watch too much television, Miss Harper.”
“You can call me Graciela. If you end up tossing me in the clink we can go back to the formal. Or not.”
“Very well. I’ll take your word on how things work in small towns.”
He has a hint of an accent that’s hard to place, maybe because he doesn’t talk all that much, but I stop myself from asking where he’s from. It’s not that I don’t want to know; it’s more that I want to get him out of here before I start to freak out about being an official murder suspect.
Detective Travis leaves without insisting again that I call him Dylan. Amelia glares at the door for a good forty-five seconds before turning one of her hardest looks on me.
“What?”
“Grace, maybe you should tell him the truth.”
“What? This from the girl who told me to stop talking to myself and act normal?”
“Well, duh! You don’t have to walk around advertising, or give people a reason to hustle their kids to the other side of the street when you’re taking a stroll, but I mean … he thinks you killed Glinda.”
My gut finds immediate flaw with her argument. If it would make a difference, I’d tell Travis everything before letting him arrest me. But it won’t. “Telling that no-fun stick-up-his-ass David Caruso wannabe the truth about the ghosts might convince him I’m crazy. It won’t have any effect on his opinion of my innocence.”
Time gets away from me that afternoon, running like sand into the bottom of a giant hourglass as the archives steal my attention. Amelia leaves for the day, wrangling a promise from me to be home by dinner.
“Hey. Don’t you answer your cell phone anymore?” Leo asks, startling me.
He’s dressed in a blue security guard uniform, and since his rounds don’t start until nine, his arrival means that I not only have a kinked neck and stiff shoulders from sitting still for five plus hours, I’ve broken my promise to my cousin.
My heart thuds in my ears, and I have to swallow a few times before my brain stops screaming that I’m going to get raped and stabbed. “Jesus H, Leo. Don’t sneak up on me like that.”
“I figured you’d be used to it, what with your ghostly friends.”
I groan. “You heard about the party?”
“Gracie, everyone’s heard about that party. I think Ms. Massie’s still looking for a good skywriter, but maybe you’d be safe in Charleston. For now.” He grins, not at all uncomfortable. Leo’s never been the kind of guy to revel in town gossip, though he is the kind of guy to use what he hears to tease me mercilessly.
Guess there’s no reason he’d quit just because we’re supposedly adults now.
His dark hair is cut short for the summer, and his bright blue eyes twinkle in the lamplit library. Leo having fun at my expense brings me back to the Heron Creek of my childhood, the one I came back to find. The one that still has a beating heart, and forms the foundation under all of this new, uneven ground.
“Where do you get off scolding me?” I ask. “I called you two days ago.”
“I was off the grid with Marcella. Caught some mighty big fish, too.”
“Well, pin a rose on your nose.” Inwardly, I smile, because Leo’s so sweet with his niece. The circumstances that dumped her in his care are less adorable, but that’s over and done with, and Marcella seems happy. “Did she have fun?”
“Yes.” His smile stretches his cheeks. “She’s the opposite of Lindsay. My sister rebelled against anything remotely outdoorsy or sporty because of all her brothers, but Ella loves it all.”
“Does she get to talk to her mom?”
“We go visit her once a month. It’s not easy, the balance between letting the kid live a normal life and dragging her inside a state prison on a re
gular basis, but I’m doing the best I can.” He swallows hard, but the determined love in his eyes shines brighter than ever.
I can’t help but reach out and squeeze his hand. “You’re doing great, Leo.”
He clears his throat and gives me a quick squeeze back before folding his arms over his chest. “What did you call about? I heard about Glinda. Terrible. Do they know what happened yet?”
“They is the new detective in town, Dylan Travis. Have you met him?” Leo shakes his head no. “My advice is to wait as long as possible. He’s a bit of a downer. And as of right now, I think I’m his only suspect.”
“You? That’s insane, Gracie. Aren’t you and the mayor the ones who found her?”
I shrug, then nod. “I guess that’s what makes him suspicious of me. Us knowing that the police should go check on her.”
“Right, but why would the person who killed Glinda want the cops to find her body? I watch television. The longer a body can be … left, the harder it is to find out what happened.” He takes off his Clemson cap and sinks down into the chair that Millie vacated hours ago. There are tan lines around his eyes that make him look like a raccoon, and there’s a fishy smell about him that probably won’t wear off for days.
I used to hate it when Will went fishing, thought it was gross and scaly and slimy, but I guess that’s changed, too. Because the whole picture of Leo at the moment is strangely sexy.
In defiance of my weirdness, I wrinkle my nose. “Yuck.”
“So, how did you know to check on Glinda? Are you really seeing ghosts, Graciela Harper? You know you can tell me anything. I’ve always kept your secrets.”
True enough, but I’m not willing to let this particular cat out of its bag to anyone else. Rumors are rumors, but once they start getting confirmed, there are going to be cats running around everywhere. Hell, at least twenty of them will probably belong to me in a few years, once I’m the resident spinster. I hope they’re all proper and black.
“The truth is I had a feeling, and I cajoled Beau into going with me to check.” I want to change the subject, partly to avoid discussing me and partly because of the way clouds darken Leo’s expression at any mention of the mayor.
“I wonder if the cops know about her moonshine business. Those people can get pretty rough.”
It takes a moment for the words to register. They bang around in my brain like parakeets trapped in a room full of mirrors but finally settle into sense. “I’m sorry, her what?”
Leo winks at me. “See? I told you I can keep secrets.”
Moonshining isn’t a common pastime of people in Heron Creek, at least not in a commercial capacity. We’re surrounded on the north and west by hills and mountains—country folk, ones without teeth or showers but a healthy devotion to the Second Amendment—who take that shit pretty seriously, at least based on the tales our grandparents told to keep us close to town.
“Glinda—the same Glinda who turned old ladies’ hair blue and hadn’t worn shoes for ten years while she gossiped at Sonny and Shears—made moonshine? You’re pulling my leg.”
He gives me a wide, innocent look and couples it with a Boy Scout salute. “I swear I’m not. Do you remember her granddaughter Winnie?”
“Vaguely. She was, like, four years younger than us? Maybe?” Glinda’s family didn’t live in Heron Creek but, like me, spent their summers in town.
“Five. She and I dated last summer for a few months, and that’s when I learned Glinda had a few secrets. I don’t know how many people in town know. I’m guessing not a lot.”
I’m guessing he’s right, because knowing everything about everyone in this place had been a lifelong hobby of not only mine but Amelia’s as well, as we grew up. And Melanie’s family has treasure troves of secrets in the attic, and more in the crawl space.
None of us ever suspected that familiar, bossy, eccentric Glinda had anything to hide.
I wonder if this is what she wants me to know. And if it is, what exactly she expects me to do with the information now.
Chapter Five
I keep the knowledge of Glinda’s side business to myself for the next couple of days while I try to figure out what to do about it. She hasn’t been back around, and since Beau’s out of town for a leadership seminar, it’s left me plenty of time to watch shows about moonshiners on the Discovery Channel. That whole world kind of terrifies me, but it does take my mind off how much I’ve missed the mayor’s company.
The latter is disturbing all on its own. The last thing I intended was to feel this attached to anyone so soon, and even though my gut and my brain keep backpedaling, swearing we’re not ready for a serious commitment—unless it’s to an insane asylum—my heart keeps racing loose from my sensible clutches.
The backwoods hill folk on these television shows are insane and, as I suspected, love their guns more than hygiene of any kind. They’re not the kind of people I’d like to tangle with in any capacity, or ones who seem to embrace the idea of new friends, but if they’re depicted even half correctly, it seems plausible that being involved in the seedy world of brewing underground booze could have gotten Glinda killed.
If she’s a moonshiner.
It’s not that I think Leo’s a liar. He’s not. But maybe this Winnie likes to tell stories or thought it might impress her new boyfriend. I don’t know.
The most recent episode, which features a man who for some reason allows his friends to call him Tickle, has taken a commercial break when Glinda shows up in my bedroom. Even though I wouldn’t describe her presence in my life as welcome, the smell of rosewater and hair chemicals that accompanies her comings and goings is preferable to Anne Bonny’s stench of brine.
The nameless guy doesn’t really smell like anything except salty air. There’s a faint undercurrent of some kind of spice, occasionally earth, but he’s not unpleasant, either. Given what little I can garner about Anne’s personality, it seems likely she smelled just to remind me who she was and what she’s capable of.
“What do you want?” I grump in Glinda’s direction, giving her a wide berth as I shuffle into the bathroom to brush my teeth. Amelia went in to open the library, but I’m supposed to show up in a little over an hour.
The ghost follows me with silent steps. Morning sunlight hits her white, filmy nightgown, brightening the brown splotches of blood until they glow red again.
She hangs around while I get ready, growing more agitated as the minutes tick past and I continue to ignore her. Her gray curls sprout from behind a scarf she probably tied her hair up with at night, unruly enough to make me wonder whether she struggled with whoever killed her, and she shifts from foot to foot, never taking her burning gaze off my face.
“Why can’t you just tell me what you want?” No answer, of course, and I watch her in the mirror as I put on mascara and some lip gloss. It’s nice to have a reason to look professional again, not to mention to have the added incentive that Beau will probably drop by around lunchtime since he’s scheduled back from the conference today. He has a habit of showing up uninvited, but as much as that should bother me, it just doesn’t. Not when it comes to him.
“I hope you don’t want me to solve your murder, because I am so not down for befriending toothless mountain folk. I don’t even own a gun.”
The expression on her face changes at the term mountain folk. It excites her, and the realization sinks my heart into my stomach. “So it’s true. You were involved with that whole scene? What in the actual hell, Glinda?”
The ghost fixes me with an exasperated-grandma look, one the woman was famous for in real life. She reserved it for anyone who questioned her hairstylings—which was most every client she ever had—any kid who refused to run her errands, and people who cursed in her presence. Basically, when the woman gave an order, she didn’t take kindly to it being questioned.
I’ve been on the receiving end of her looks often.
Leo claims the granddaughter said the mysterious Mr. Davis owned property out in the count
ry, and that’s where Glinda ran the business. I swear, I thought Davis was Glinda’s maiden name. Even though she had kids and grandkids, there are no pictures of a husband in her home, and she never talked about him. He either died or pissed her off and got kicked out. One seems as likely as the other.
I slip into a pair of plain black flats, grab my purse, and step into the hallway, casting a longing look back at my warm, comfy bed. It’s not that I don’t want to live my life anymore, not like when I first got back. It’s just that going back to being a basket case with normal problems seems a lot easier than figuring out how to make ghosts disappear.
Just because Glinda wants something from me doesn’t mean she wants me to find her killer, I remind myself. She could want anything. Anne wanted me to find a diary, not avenge her death.
The thought makes me feel a tad better as I get downstairs and turn toward the front door. It’s on the tip of my tongue to holler at Gramps, tell him I’m leaving, and a rush of sadness swirls through me at the reminder that he’s never again going to be sitting in the living room, feet propped up as he watches the Braves win or lose. Never going to give me a goofy grin or a hard time, or just the right piece of quiet advice or gentle pat on the hand.
It still blindsides me at least once a day—usually two or three—how life in Heron Creek will never be the same. Not for me, and not for the rest of town, either.
The nice thing about how everyone loved Gramps is that he’s never going to be gone. He’s in every nook and cranny of this house, this street. He’s along the river and sitting in Westie’s shooting the shit, he’s down at the Wreck harassing waitresses. It’s a small comfort, but one I won’t concede because it gets me through the worst of the grief.
The humidity chokes me. The heat filling my lungs makes them feel stuck together. I step in something mushy and brown on the porch—it’s stinky, too, but it’s not poop—and frown as I sweep it into the bushes. It’s the second time this week that’s happened, now that I think about it. I should ask Millie if she knows where it’s coming from; I haven’t the slightest. Summer’s not quite over for the local teenagers, but it doesn’t seem obnoxious enough to be one of their pranks.