by Lyla Payne
“They only helped you because it served their interests. You know that.”
“I know. But they’re not all bad, Will.”
“They’re outlaws, Gracie. Like, I think some of them might be on a reality show with the word outlaw in the title.”
“That doesn’t mean they’re evil or whatever. They just like living on their own terms.” I rush ahead, knowing Will—like Beau—will be more than happy to lecture me on the responsibilities of being an American citizen. “Do you know anything or don’t you? I just want information, not for you to bribe anyone.”
The word slips out on accident out of sarcastic habit, and make me wince. Will takes in my reaction, a knowing glint in his blue eyes, but makes no comment about Beau. No doubt the news of what happened at the arraignment has traveled all the way through town by now, so there’s no need to update him.
“The process is pretty basic,” he says, taking a sip of his drink as though he needs extra fortification to relent to my demands. “They file paperwork that includes a business plan, a portfolio containing their capital or plans to access it, where they foresee making the product, things like that. The state considers all requests, but there are so many every year that only a fraction get approved.”
I lean in closer, knowing he’s going to hate the next question. “And seriously, Will, this is me. How many of those applications get approved for people who grease a few palms?”
The tips of his ears turn red, a sign that he’s either angry or embarrassed. Or both. “It’s politics, Gracie. You should know better than anyone by this point that it’s not all rainbows and unicorns.”
“So if Clete could find someone he knew to help, this could get done.”
“I mean, he’d still have to have all the other requirements met, otherwise there wouldn’t be much point. Once the state issues a license they also tell you how much they expect you to produce by a certain date. If you don’t meet that, then you no longer have a license.”
“Makes sense. So, if Clete has applied several times, he’s likely ready to go.”
“I’m sure they’re making more money selling it under the table, anyway,” Will mutters, draining the rest of his glass.
I pick up my own and take two giant gulps of what tastes like middle-of-the-road whiskey, better stuff than I typically buy for myself but not the top-shelf snobbery David favored when we went out with his academic friends in Chicago. We’re quiet as I finish my drink, and Will motions to the waitress.
He raises his eyebrows at me. “You don’t want another, do you? I need to get home.”
“No. I do, too.” I swallow the rest of my sentence. I was going to tell him about not being able to get Amelia out of bed yesterday and the curse possibly trying to kill us in our dreams, but I don’t. My problems are not his problems. Not anymore. “Aunt Karen’s in town,” I finish lamely instead.
He makes a sympathetic face and every last piece of me remembers why I loved him. “I’m surprised you don’t want to stay and have a couple more, then.”
We laugh, and he pays the tab. He holds his umbrella over my head as we walk out into the storm. Everything is how it might have been, or maybe it’s just how it should be. How it is. I don’t even know anymore. He walks me to my Honda and we say a quick good-bye through the pelting raindrops.
Dr. Ladd glimmers in the passenger seat, excitement making his bright eyes sparkle. His gaze falls to his lap and mine follows, a surprised “Oh!” punched from my gut when I see that he’s holding something. Really holding it, with his ghostly hands. Glinda never did that. Anne only did it that one time she stole my keys, and I always wondered if her powers were stronger because of our connection.
I guess not.
He must have practiced all day after the failure with my coffee cup this morning.
The pamphlet on his lap is one that Amelia grabbed from the outside of the Thomas Rose House. It contains information about the property and its historic status, visiting times, things like that. He points at it over and over, as though I’m too daft to figure out what he wants after the Amanda snafu this morning.
“Look, I get that you want me to go back to the house, and I’m glad we’ve got a little two-way street happening right now. I figured out that whatever you want me to find has to do with your lady friend, Amanda, and that it’s in the house. But they’re not going to let me in until the renovations are over.”
He jerks, as though he snorted, and looks at me like he knows every slight bend of the law I’ve ever committed. It’s the look of a man who’s been waiting a very long time to get what he wants and is sitting across from a girl who is inclined to assume that laws, when they get in her way, are really made for other people.
I’d like to get upset with him, pull out some really convincing indignation, but he’s not wrong.
In fact, he’s spot on.
Dr. Ladd disappears right out of the moving car after wrangling a promise from me that we’ll go back to Charleston this weekend. I can’t afford to miss any more work and there’s a good chance I’m going to end up spending the night in jail, so it’ll have to wait four more days. He seems appeased, if still a little wobbly and sorrowful around the edges.
I relish the quiet solitude of the car, the heat blasting on my still-chilled skin, for a solid three minutes before my phone rings. It scares me and I wrench the wheel, my stomach launching into my throat and shakiness finding my legs.
Damn adrenaline. Damn jumpiness. Damn ghosts.
The number is blocked. I accidentally hit accept instead of decline and curse.
“You’ve got quite a mouth on you for a southern lady,” Clete’s drawl rebuffs me through the phone’s speaker.
“First off, I’m not actually a Southerner, and second off, if you think they’re prim and proper I have to wonder how many you’ve met. Remember Glinda?” I wonder how much longer I can continue to claim Midwestern heritage. My continued use of y’all and the occasional slip of fixin’ into my speech, not to mention my diet, say that that expiration date might have already passed.
“Bitch was no lady.” He pauses. “Maybe I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but she was a bitch.”
“What’s up, Clete?”
“Well, I was callin’ to see if you made a decision about my proposition.”
Part of me wants to continue to be smart with him, but the rest of me is too exhausted to play games. We both know what he wants and what he claims to offer in exchange. “I talked to Will tonight. He said if you greased some palms that your application would definitely be approved. As long as your operation is ready.”
“Oh, my operation is ready.” The greed drips from his voice, like the thought of legit money makes his mouth water. “When will he be able to push it through?”
“He said the next time the board meets to make approvals. He wasn’t sure exactly when that is, but for sure before the end of the year.”
Lies, again. Big fat lies that push fear through my veins. As hard a time as I have taking Clete seriously because he and his cronies are such awful caricatures, he’s dangerous. I’ve seen the careless glint in his eyes when he references “taking care of business,” one that leaves no doubt in my mind that he’s got more than a few actual bodies buried or sunk or hidden.
If he finds out I lied, which he will once his application isn’t approved, he’ll come after me. My heart sticks in my throat, not at that realization but the one on its heels—he could come after Will, too.
No. If it comes to that I’ll make him believe that Will was never involved at all.
Which he isn’t.
It may be hasty, and maybe focusing on the problem in front of me will come back to bite me in the ass, but Beau needs me. I might be the only person who can help him; I’m definitely the only person with an inkling that there might be another guilty party getting away scot-free.
I take a deep breath, hoping Clete can’t hear it shake. “Okay, so your plans are in motion. How about you cough up
what you know about Beau’s case?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I should wait and see what happens with my application.”
The fear drops into my belly. “No. His trial starts in two weeks. I need to know now. You can trust me, Clete.”
“Don’t trust nobody, not even my own mama.” A brief pause. “But I trust that you know what will happen if you welch on your word.”
“I appreciate that,” I force out with my cotton-thick tongue.
He’s going to kill me. Or at the very least, inflict some serious damage.
“You’re gonna want to look into a guy named Chandler Wellington. He just sounds like a half-baked pinhead, don’t he?”
I’m forced to agree with that assessment because anyone with that name must have blood bluer than the Caribbean and the attitude to match. Exactly the kind of guy who, in my experience, would cheat in order to get ahead. Maybe it’s not fair, judging a person solely on their name or family, but it’s instinct.
It’s the reason my interest in getting to know Beauregard Drayton was so minimal at the beginning. He proved me wrong in a lot of ways. I think back to my confrontation with his brother the other day, though, and have to admit that so far his family is nothing more or less than expected.
“And he’s the guy who supposedly took those bribes from the gang or drug lord or whatever to put Lindsay Boone away for a long time instead?”
Clete snorts. “Girl, you have been watchin’ too many movies. You sound like you think we’re livin’ in a 1940s Bogart film, but yes. That’s the general consensus around these parts.”
“Thanks, Clete.”
“Sure ’nough. I’ll be in touch.”
He hangs up before I can defend my assumptions or do something stupid like ask him how he knows so much about the drug world or a six-year-old bribe. When it comes to those guys, the less I know, the better.
At least now I have a name. I can do some research. As I pull into the driveway, it’s all of the sudden clear to me exactly where to start. With the young lady at the center of this entire hurricane: Lindsay Boone.
Chapter Fourteen
As many nights as I’ve spent in the Heron Creek jail—plus one in Iowa City—I’ve never seen the inside of a real prison. It’s not as hard to get in as I thought it’d be, but I suppose there’s something to the old saying that getting into a prison isn’t the issue so much as getting out.
All I had to do was research the visiting hours, which are on Thursday mornings, and make up a lie about why I’m going to be late to work. Amelia’s there and covering, having decided that the library is preferable to spending twenty-four hours a day under her mother’s watchful eye, so at least there’s that. As far as she and Mr. Freedman know, I’m a few towns over checking out their local archives to get ideas for upgrading our own.
I am a few towns away in Ridgeville, but I’m not at the library.
The state prison is a far cry from the tiny, two-room police station at home. The building looks like a really depressing elementary school—a nondescript color, one story, no windows big enough for a body to fit through. There are guard towers and barbed wire and a basketball court, and none of it strikes me as unexpected after marathoning the first season of Orange Is the New Black.
The guards have me sign in, stating my name and which inmate I’m there to see, then they do a quick pat down and rummage through my small purse to make sure I’m not sneaking in a weapon, or sleeping pills, or something really awful like Fifty Shades of Grey.
Once they determine that I’m not a threat to the general prison population, they let me through a security-locked door. It clicks shut behind me, and after a few hesitant steps, I find myself in what looks like a cafeteria full of picnic tables. Torn linoleum covers floors that, by the echoes of feet and voices, must be concrete, and the room is void of all color but dingy white. The bars on the windows and the orange jumpsuits, not to mention the guards, make it impossible to forget where we are and I glance around, trying not to draw attention to myself.
The room is about half full of visitors and inmates, but it doesn’t take me long to spot Lindsay sitting alone at one of the tables. She hasn’t changed much since high school, except for a few more lines in her skin. She was always pretty, with the same jet-black hair and jewel blue eyes as her brother. All the Boones look the same. It makes it hard to tell them apart, since there are so many.
She notices me watching her and her eyes pop open wide. I walk over and lower myself into a plastic molded thing masquerading as a chair that immediately pinches my ass. I try not to wince. I am so soft.
“What are you doing here?” She folds her arms over her chest, the hard challenge in her gaze reminding me of her brother, too. “Leo says you’re dating the mayor.”
The Lindsay in my memory is vague, fuzzy around the edges, but even there she’s not someone to be messed with, not a girly girl. No pom-poms for this one. I think she played softball in high school, and even though I don’t remember any rumors about drugs, she’d been a partier.
But hell, who hadn’t been?
“I am dating the mayor.”
“Then again, what are you doing here? I got nothing to say to any friend of his.”
This is going to be harder than I thought. Thinking about it now, it was pretty silly of me to think she’d just open right up and trust me. It’s not as though we have an established friendship to call upon, and I am cavorting with the person I assume, at this point, is her sworn enemy.
It’s almost enough to make me laugh, Beau being someone’s sworn enemy, but my point of view is a little skewed. He put away plenty of criminals like Lindsay Boone during his tenure at the prosecutor’s office. A smidge of panic takes root inside me at the realization that he could be on a whole lot of hit lists.
Maybe I should take a martial arts class or something. It doesn’t seem as though I’m going to stop getting into tight spots anytime soon.
Lindsay’s watching me, eyebrows raised as she waits for a response to her valid question.
“I’m here because I don’t think Beau did anything wrong, but I also think that you got screwed somehow.” I bite my lip, ready to present my case, but she doesn’t say anything. “I was wondering if you could tell me who the lead was on your case.”
“Who put me away?”
“Yeah.”
“Douchebag named Wellington. Real preppy asshole. Never could look me in the eye, like it would soil his pedigree somehow just by making that much contact with me, you know?”
I did not know, but I give her a sympathetic nod anyway. “And he was the only one?”
“Yeah. I mean, he had assistants or whatever, and he took over the case from someone else early on, but he’s the guy.” Her expression turns curious. Maybe suspicious. “What does that prick have to do with anything?”
“I’m not sure,” I tell her honestly, my stomach churning with the knowledge that the next question isn’t going to go over as easily as my first. There’s rough-looking tattooed guy a couple tables over who seems to be listening to us so I drop my voice, leaning in. “Is there anyone in the office who would have been easily influenced by your … boss?”
“My boss at the Cluck Bucket?” She’s definitely confused now. “Why would he want to lock me up?”
“No, not him. I mean …” I glance around again but the nosy guy is gone. One of the guards, a skinny little shit-looking guy, is watching us, but he looks away when my eyes meet his. “I mean whoever you were selling drugs for back then.”
“Oh, Robert.”
“Robert?”
“Robert Caruso. The Carusos?”
I give her a helpless look. “They’re, like, a mob family or something?”
She looks at me as though I’ve sprouted a second head. “Yeah, or something. They pretty much run the drug trade in North Charleston. I bought from them, and when I got into trouble—money stuff—they gave me a choice: I could hook or I could drop off some packages.”
&n
bsp; The statement comes out matter of fact, as though she’s reciting a paper for her high school English teacher, but her eyes are sad. Lost. A little ashamed but also on fire. It’s hard to take it all in and make sense of it, but Lindsay Boone isn’t the kind of woman who fell into this life willingly, or all on her own. My heart sinks.
She was railroaded. She’s not a hard case, not a lifer. She got into trouble, and for some reason the only people there to offer a hand were mobsters and drug dealers. She doesn’t deserve to be in prison after all this time, to be missing out on Marcella’s life. She needs a break.
“And you chose to drop off packages.”
“I have a daughter. She was just a baby. How could I have afforded to have her watched if I stayed out all night or brought that kind of men home?” She blinks back the slightest sheen of tears. “I couldn’t. I did what I had to do.”
“What about Leo? Your family? Wouldn’t they have helped?”
Everything about her hardens, from her gaze to her lips, down to her shoulders and her clenched fists. My body tenses in response, unsure what I said that was so wrong or how to backpedal. Crap. Things have been going so well.
“I couldn’t ask them. Haven’t you ever been ashamed of yourself? So stinking mortified at what you’ve become that the thought of anyone you love seeing you that way, even for a second, is enough to make you turn your back on them when you need them the most?”
I think of Amelia, of what happened with David. Of how I slunk back into this town, a place where, at least for a little while, I wouldn’t have to face a single person who knew the truth about the mess I’d made of my life.
My head nods of its own accord.
“You understand, then.”
“I do, but I’ve also learned a few things in the past couple of months. Sometimes asking for help is the only way out.” Anne Bonny’s face, then Glinda’s cross my mind. “If we don’t, it might be too late.”
She sits back in her metal chair, arms tight over her boobs now. “Is that what you came here for, Graciela? To help me? Or to help your boyfriend?”