by Catie Rhodes
“Uncle Joey’s is the third one from the left.” Hannah started pushing her way through the brush, her face stony. I picked my way after her, wishing I had a machete to cut the thick brush, but knowing it was best I didn’t. The people in the marina parking lot would have remembered a woman carrying a machete.
Hannah stood in front of the house she’d pointed out, hands on her hips. The problem was obvious. No footholds to use to climb over. The surrounding trees were not thick enough to hold either of our weight.
“Shit,” Hannah whispered. “I’d hoped we could go in the back, lessen the risk of one of the neighbors seeing.”
“How about I give you a boost over?”
Hannah nodded. “On the other side of the fence is the frame work. I’ll climb onto it and help you over.”
Boosting Hannah over presented little difficulty. She hooked one long leg over the top of the fence and pulled herself into the yard. The fence rattled, and Hannah’s head appeared over the top. She held out her hand. I craned my neck to study the distance between me and the fence’s top. A good two feet. I got ready to tell Hannah I couldn’t do it, but one look at her face stopped me. Arguing would do nothing more than waste precious minutes before Carly came home.
I jumped up and grabbed her hand, using my feet to walk up the fence. As soon as I could, I used my free hand to grab the top of the fence and used it for leverage instead of pulling Hannah’s arms from her sockets. My shoulders twitched and shuddered by the time I dropped into the yard. I caught Hannah studying where the rough fence boards had scratched her arms and found similar spots on mine. We crept to the back door, both of us looking over our shoulders like the criminals we were. Hannah unlocked the white French door and slipped inside, quickly punching in the alarm code.
“I can’t believe they didn’t change the locks and the alarm code after they disowned you,” I said.
“Maybe they figure I won’t come back, and I wasn’t going to. Come on.”
The huge kitchen Hannah led me through had every possible frill I could imagine. I wondered how Joey and Carly afforded it on a teacher’s and a sheriff’s salary. The laundry room was right off the kitchen. Hannah turned on the light and held the door wide enough for me to follow her inside. To the right was another door. Hannah opened it and darkness faced us.
“Oh, the light,” she said and flipped the switch.
I held my breath, ready to see the Bruce family journals, the book of folk medicine, and a bunch of other contraband Sheriff Joey shouldn’t have. We both stared in shocked silence for several long moments. The storage room was empty except for an electric tile floor cleaner.
From across the house, we heard the front door open and a gruff voice say, “Damnit. Don’t know why I bought this alarm system if she can’t set it.”
Sheriff Joey Holze was home. My thoughts scrambled into a meaningless roar. I stood paralyzed beside my friend. Joey’s heavy steps thumped up the stairs, his angry grumbles drifting back to us.
“Let’s go. Right now.” I turned to Hannah and almost lost hope. My buoyant friend stood with her eyes squeezed shut, her hands raised in trembling fists. Was she just going freeze up and let us get caught? I nudged her.
“He’ll be able to see us from the bedroom window.”
“Does it look out on the front or the back?”
“The back,” she hissed as though I should have known.
“We’ll go out the front then. Hope nobody sees us.”
“Somebody will, though.”
“It’s either stay here and wait for him to find us or try to get away.” I doubted our ability to get out undetected, too, but I’d be damned if I stood in this utility room like a lump of shit on a log waiting to get stepped in. I tiptoed out of the room, towing Hannah behind me.
We crept through the other side of the kitchen and came out in a dining room, which opened onto a massive living room. The front door stood on the other side of it, right by the stairs. I tugged Hannah, motioning at the door. The squeaking sound my sneakers made on the tile seemed to fill the room, hell the whole house. I tried to take my steps differently, but nothing helped. If we could make it to the thick, cream colored carpet in the living room, we’d be home free.
I held my breath, gritting my teeth against the desire pounding in me to run, banging off walls and knocking over furniture if that’s what it took, anything to get me out of there. Sheriff Joey hated me, had since I was a kid. No telling what he’d do if he found me here. Maybe shoot me. Definitely arrest me.
I took the first step onto the carpet, relief flooding my body. Ten more steps to the front door. We got this. I glanced at Hannah, giving her an encouraging nod. Her face had turned the color of old socks, neither white nor gray, and her lips trembled. Seven more steps. Just seven little steps.
Joey’s cellphone began ringing. It was too loud to be upstairs. I spotted it on a catch-all table next to the front door. Joey’s heavy footsteps thumped across the upper floor. Hannah and I made a run for it. It slipped right through my sweaty hand. I froze, the inside of my mouth going arid. Hannah reached around me and twisted. Still nothing. We both saw the deadbolt was engaged at the same time. Our hands collided. Hannah brushed mine aside and flipped the thumb turn, opening the door.
“Carly? That you? Answer my phone, would you?”
His footsteps stumped closer, his grunts of effort drifting down the stairs.
“Hey,” he yelled. “Who’s down there?”
We ran through the front door, leaving it standing open, and sprinted down the street. Hannah pulled ahead of me, leading the way to a vacant lot at the street’s end and cutting through it. We lunged into the woods, ignoring the branches tearing at us, and didn’t stop running until we dove into my car.
“Go, go, go,” Hannah yelled, slapping her thighs for emphasis.
“I can’t. They’ll notice us for sure if I go screeching out of here.” Trying to ignore Hannah bouncing in the seat next to me, I crept out of the lot and stayed with the speed limit all the way back out to the main road. Once I assured myself I heard no sirens and saw no flashing lights I turned to Hannah to make a joke about our close call. My words died a quick death. She sat with her elbow wedged against the passenger window and her forehead resting on the palm of her hand. I asked, “You all right?”
“The books were there, Peri Jean. I swear to you.” She squinted her eyes and shook her head.
“I don’t doubt your word,” I said.
“Those sons of bitches moved them. That’s why they didn’t bother to change the locks.” Hannah’s jaw moved like she was chewing on a big wad of gum.
“We’ll figure something else out.” I pulled to the curb a block from the museum so Hannah could sneak back in without her gossipy helper seeing me.
Hannah got out.
“See you at the barbecue tonight?” I leaned over the seat.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” She got out and walked down the block, head swiveling around to as though she still feared getting caught red-handed.
I could have kicked myself for the whole fracas. We didn’t find a damn thing and could have ended up in jail over it. The likelihood of me having to contact the thieving ghost had just grown exponentially.
I dragged the recesses of my mind for ideas on how to connect a living person to the crime without resorting to what Dean called my woo-woo talents. Half the town and hundreds of treasure hunters would have given their left nipple for the stolen items. Which brought me back to Joey Holze and his fancy house.
The house Hannah and I illegally entered earlier was a year old and on a tiny subdivision lot. There hadn’t even been a storage building in the backyard. Where else could Joey have hidden the stuff Hannah saw on Memorial Day? The possibilities were limitless. He’d had nearly three months since Hannah stumbled upon his stash to pick the perfect hiding place. My first guess was public storage, but I saw no way to locate his rental.
Gaslight City had a population of two t
housand or so, plenty of residents to justify the three storage facilities dotted around the city. Burns County, with an overall population of twenty thousand, had even more rent-by-the-month storage businesses. No way could I check them all. Even if I could, how would I get the owners to admit Joey rented a unit there?
I needed someone who had better resources to investigate this stuff. Rainey Bruce. She went through assistants faster than shit through a goose, and I worked for her at least a couple of days a month so she wouldn’t drown in mundane tasks. I’d heard her talk to a private investigator several times for help on a case.
I took out my cellphone and called her. She answered on the first ring.
“I’ve had an idea about who may have stolen your family’s property. Can you meet me to talk about it?”
“I’m closing the office for the day. Fifteen minutes at my house?”
4
I told Rainey about the day’s events in her huge living room, trying not to stain her pristine white couch. At points in my monologue she closed her eyes and clenched her jaw. Mostly she shook her head.
“I hate to leave you and Hannah Kessler alone together. The two of you are like a pair of dumb, teenage girls.” She pushed herself off the couch and glided across to her open air dining room and picked up a brown leather messenger bag probably worth more than anything I owned.
I curled my toes into the chocolate colored carpet, Rainy having insisted I leave my nasty shoes outside. She glanced at my sock encased feet, shook her head again, and set the messenger bag on her coffee table. The scratches and drink rings on the expensive surface suggested she worked here often.
“What you want me to look into is illegal without a search warrant, and one of those would require probable cause. Of which we have none.” She tapped her long fingers on the closed laptop. “Plus, if we do find he has a storage unit, who goes in?”
I opened my mouth to speak.
“Don’t say anything. Forget I asked.” She took her cellphone out of the messenger bag and placed it on the coffee table where she could see it. “I think the legal risk involved in this idea is not worth the possible gain.”
“But—”
“Let me finish. I think you are stalling, trying to keep from, honestly, facing who and what you are.”
“You’re right,” I said. “So what?”
Rainey stared at me for too long. Then she leaned forward and pointed one of her blood red, inch long fingernails at me, her gaze never leaving mine. “Those journals belong to my family, and I intend to have them back. You, as my friend, could help me. There’s your ‘so what.’”
“I’m trying to help. There’s a good chance Joey might have the journals.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier for you to contact the ghost we saw on the video and find out?”
I sighed and considered asking if it would be easier for me to wring her neck. “It’s not like those mediums you see on TV solving crimes. I get flashes, images, sometimes a short vision. It’s not like the ghost is going to say anything to me.” I left out the part where the ghost appeared in the backseat of my car, begging for my help.
“What about the thing around your neck? Eddie mentioned it had powerful magic.” She pointed at the black opal. I took it off and handed it to her. She hesitated before she took it but smiled as soon as it touched her hand. “This reminds me of a tour I took once in New Orleans, an occult tour. We went to this museum right in the Quarter and looked at voodoo artifacts. Some of them emanated power. This is the same. Why don’t you wear it more often?”
I squirmed a little. “Dean asked me not to because when I wear it, I see more stuff, and more of it tries to interact with me.”
“Is this resistance to helping us coming from Dean? Like an issue between the two of you?” Rainey crooked an eyebrow.
“I don’t want this, either.” I gestured at my head, where I guessed the power came from. I could tell by the way Rainey mashed her full lips together she disagreed, but she simply handed the black opal back to me without saying anything. We sat in silence for several long moments. Rainey’s forehead crinkled, a line appearing between her perfectly plucked, maybe even waxed or threaded, brows. Finally, she turned to me.
“May I tell you why this is such a big deal to me?”
I thought I knew, but refusing to listen might cause her to have an outburst, and I didn’t want any part of one of Rainey’s fits. Aliens in outer space feared Rainey Bruce’s temper.
“I think we can talk from the perspective of two women who share an understanding of what it is to be the odd woman out. Me because of the color of my skin. You because you have this quirky gift.” She raised her eyebrows at me in question. I nodded to show I agreed.
“These journals represent what my family overcame in this county, what we achieved in spite of racism and lack of opportunity.”
A calico cat slunk into the room and bounded onto the couch. Rainey petted it with the back of her fingers. I wondered how she kept her couches so clean, why she bothered to buy furniture so receptive to showing dirt, if she had this cat. For the first time ever, I saw the complexities Rainey faced in being Rainey.
“My ancestor Hezekiah Bruce, who wrote the journals, came here with nothing yet managed to build a solvent business and gain respect in the community. His son, Isaiah, worked his way up at Longstreet Lumber to become the first black foreman. Isaiah’s son, who was my grandfather, became the first black judge in Burns County. We march forward, no matter what, no matter how badly it hurts.”
I didn’t understand where this was going or how I was supposed to respond.
“Letting those journals go, writing them off without fighting to get them back, seems like I’m saying I don’t respect the sacrifices my family made or the road they fought to pave for me.”
“I can see what you mean, but—”
“Still not finished.” She held up one hand. “It would be bad enough to let go of my family history, but losing the history of what happened to Priscilla Herrera, poor woman, rankles even more. She deserves for people to know her story, the persecution she faced, as much as my ancestors do. It surprises me how much your story parallels hers, and how it doesn’t seem to matter to you.” She settled her intense gaze on me, and it took a while before I realized she expected me to speak, to explain.
“People think because I’m a Mace, I’m treasure crazy. They think because I can see ghosts, I’m a freak of nature. Both together is like being an attraction in a carnival. People pointing all the time, laughing, jeering. I’ve dealt with it all my life, and I’m sick of it. I want to pretend to be normal.”
She barked a short, bitter laugh. “At least you can pretend to be something you’re not. I don’t have that luxury.”
My cheeks flamed. Of course she didn’t. The prejudices she faced wouldn’t go away, no matter what she did. She gave me a tight smile as though she knew the thoughts in my mind better than I did.
“Here’s what I see: a thirty-one-year-old woman who wants to hide from who and what she is when she could use it to better both herself and the world around her.”
I shook my head. “Not when people think I’m a Satanist. Don’t you remember when Felicia told everyone I was a Satanist? Back in eighth grade?”
“So what? Who cares what assholes think?” Rainey yelled the words at the ceiling. The calico cat raised its head and regarded its crazy mistress. “Let me tell you something, Peri Jean Mace. You’re going to face prejudiced, bigoted assholes for the rest of your life. This woman whose book of folk medicine was stolen along with the journals, paid the ultimate price for standing up against mean, hateful bullies.”
Her words stung, but they didn’t change how I felt. The journals and the folk medicine book belonged to the Mace treasure and all the crazies who got their jollies hunting for it. I blamed Priscilla Herrera’s horrible death on the Mace Treasure as much as I did the ignorance of a bunch of greedy jerks. Rainey might have her point, but I had mine, too, dammit.
“Whoever has the journals and the folk medicine book wants them because of the Mace Treasure. I know firsthand about the havoc the Mace Treasure can cause.” I clenched my hands in my lap. “I’ve lost family and friends to it, and I don’t want to lose myself in it.”
Rainey started to speak.
“No. I listened to you. Now it’s your turn to listen to me.” I took a deep, fortifying breath. “There is a lot of risk involved. If things get out of hand, I face both Priscilla Herrera’s fate and the curse of the Mace Treasure.”
“And you face whatever’s going on with you and Dean.” Rainey’s lips curved, and it wasn’t the smile she used to win the title of Miss Texas.
I jumped as though someone had goosed me and got ready to demand what she knew and how she found out.
“Before you get too upset about someone gossiping, remember I read people for a living—juries, law enforcement, clients, you name it. I’ve seen the tension between the two of you and wondered what it was about. Now I know for sure.” She sat back on the couch and crossed one long leg over the other. “I’ll rephrase what I said earlier. Do not, under any circumstances, let other people tell you what to be. Embrace what you are and let the rest follow.”
“But aren’t you trying to tell me what to be?” I leaned forward and met her gaze as steadily as I could. “Don’t you want the services of a medium?”
“Okay.” She shrugged. The expression on her face suggested I was lucky to get even that. “You got me. Only you can decide what matters to you, and what you need to do to matter to yourself.” She unzipped the messenger bag and took out the padded envelope I saw her fiddling with in the video from the museum board meeting. “I’d like to show you something we found with the folk medicine book. Aside from the book’s contents, this picture backs up my theory Priscilla Herrera penned the book.” From the envelope, she pulled the rectangular card I’d glimpsed and set it in front of me.
What I saw stunned the arguments I wanted to present to Rainey right out of my head. I looked at a very old picture printed on what amounted to card stock. It featured a full-length shot of a woman wearing a dress I thought looked like a wedding cake. Blazing, defiant dark eyes topped by eyebrows Joan Crawford would have envied dominated the woman’s oval face. Full lips compressed into not quite a pout and not quite a scowl, she thrust out her chin as though to say, “Here I am.” The picture would have been the same as every other cabinet card I’ve ever seen except for one thing: every visible area of this body was tattooed.