Not Quite Clear (A Lowcountry Mystery)

by Lyla Payne

It hurts to say the words, as though uttering them could breathe life into them, send them scurrying into the corners of Beau’s office, into the eaves of the big house by the river. They might be tumbling down the side of the highway toward Charleston, catching rides on sunbeams as they bounce off the water, each on its way to seek out a person that my boyfriend calls family.

  Before my cousin can formulate an answer or I can let out the breath growing cold in my lungs, a gush of fall air blows in from the street. The smell of sweet peas and crisp fruit trees threads through my hair. Before I turn around, the look on Millie’s face tells me that whoever’s intruding on our conversation is a friend.

  So, not Mrs. Walters, then.

  “What are you two talking about? LaBadie? Hurry. Tell me everything. I have to be at work in ten minutes.” It’s Mel, her blond curls falling out of her haphazard bun and holding her heels in her hand.

  She never did like wearing shoes.

  Her earnestness would make me giggle, if everything weren’t such a tangled mess. Amelia does give in to a sort of half snort before climbing out of the swivel chair and walking around the desk. I follow, poking a gaze at the door over Mel’s shoulder. It’s fallen closed, and from here, there’s no one visible on the street. We don’t typically get patrons until midmorning at the earliest, but these days it certainly feels as though the walls have ears.

  “So?” Mel presses.

  “Grace here was just telling me that she thinks a voodoo ghost killed Mrs. LaBadie.”

  To her credit, Mel takes this information pretty much in stride, with the exception of losing her hold on one of her sensible, nude, accountant heels and dropping it to the cheap carpet. “What?”

  It’s only now that I realize how long it’s been since Mel and I have really talked. She’s been busy with her family—plus, she and Will both have new jobs—and since Amelia has been doing so crappy, it seems as though the two of them haven’t been chatting much, either.

  “I met a ghost on the Drayton property the night Beau got bitten by that snake. She was trying to save me, it seemed like, since she killed the snake, and then later she told me she knew about the curse on my family and that she could help us break it.”

  “If Grace helps her put a curse on Beau’s family,” Amelia clarifies.

  Mel stays quiet. Her eyes lock on me, waiting patiently for the rest of the story before she makes a comment or gives any advice. That’s the way Mel is, but in my heart, I already know what she’ll say. Amelia is family. Little Jack is family. We do what we have to.

  I harden my heart and keep going. “According to Mama Lottie—the ghost—she was a free girl living up north somewhere when she was kidnapped and sold into slavery. She thinks the Draytons knew it but kept her enslaved anyway because of her ability to heal and other things she did for the family.”

  “So she wants revenge,” Mel observes. We stand together in silence for so long Mel checks her watch and sighs. “I’ve got to get to work, but is there anyone we can ask about this? Didn’t you two make friends with some voodoo lady in Charleston?”

  “She’s Gullah, but yes.” The idea loosens the vines of dread tightening around my innards. It’s something to try, at any rate. “I don’t know how much she can do, or whether she’ll give us a straight answer, though.”

  “It can’t hurt to ask.” Amelia’s spine straightens, her voice steadying. As though all she’s needed this whole time is a piece of rope or a life preserver to hold on to in the midst of the dark storm. “It could be that getting into bed with Mama Lottie is a terrible idea, but honestly, if we want to have a prayer of getting out of this with our lives—and Jack’s—she might be our only chance.”

  Amelia and Mel make plans to meet at the diner for a quick bite after we all get off work. Their voices filter into the background, blotted by the constant ding-dong of alarm bells in my head. They seem to call out a warning, one that promises that Mama Lottie must have known just how desperate we were before she ever put herself between that snake and me.

  We end up skipping a sit down dinner and going through a Chick-fil-A drive-through on the way to Charleston. The market shuts down early this time of year and I have no idea where else to go looking for Odette if we miss her. Then again, Odette often appears as though dropped from the sky. As though she senses my proximity and puts herself underfoot.

  By the time we find a parking space over by the College of Charleston and wind our way down to the market, Mel’s up to speed on everything she’s missed. The familiar smells of the city—sweet candies, the stink of horseflesh and hay, an undercurrent of spice and saltwater—combine with the clop of hooves, a smattering of chatter and laughter, and the faint sound of music cartwheeling through the alleys and along the sidewalks.

  The market is slow, patrons almost nonexistent as bored shopkeepers watch us wander through the stalls, touching and pointing out funny signs and cute items to one another with no intention of stopping or buying. Amelia and I are looking for Odette and Mel’s taking her cue from us, and as usual, it doesn’t take us long to find her.

  The look on her weathered, coffee-bean face when she spots us makes me positive that, once again, she’s the one who’s found us.

  “Well, look atcha gals. Hoo yes, brought me a straggler, too.” She appraises Mel, gnawing on a long stalk of sweetgrass. The smell of it winds through my hair, sticks to my skin, washes familiar comfort through me. “She’ll do.”

  “Do for what?” Mel recovers enough to ask. She’s trying to act like she’s not checking out Odette’s scarves and colorful layers and sweetgrass sandals that do nothing to protect her cracked heels.

  “Whatever ya want,” Odette replies, holding up her hands to Amelia and me.

  My cousin is the first to realize that the woman is asking for help up off the curb. We haul her to her feet and stand in an awkward circle, like a group of teenagers at their first school dance, while our informant-slash-charity case brushes dirt off her rear end.

  “S’pose ya came here tah ask more of yer questions, huh?” She nods and shuffles toward East Bay Street without waiting for a response.

  Mel looks at Amelia who looks at me. I shrug and then take off after her, the girls at my heels. We keep pace, following her like little clueless ducklings as she makes a right on East Bay, then stops to dig a pipe and a book of matches from Pearlz Oyster Bar out of one of her pockets.

  The smell of sweet, earthy tobacco smoke plumes around us as my cousin nudges me forward, trying to stay clear of the cloud.

  “We need your help making a decision.”

  “I ’spect yah do, bunch of shapeless whiteness that ya are.” She nods, puffing clouds into the twilight and reminding me, absurdly, of the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland.

  I suppose it’s not so absurd a comparison. She is sort of a master at dispensing random wisdom that only makes sense in her head.

  “It’s about the curse,” Amelia supplies, apparently anxious to move this along. Maybe because combining plumes of smoke and pregnancy isn’t so much advised.

  “I’m just here for the experience,” Mel adds, an attempt at a joke that falls flat when Odette gives her a look that could knock the stink off a monkey.

  “Ain’t no laughin’ ’bout these things, blondie. And yah gals know what? Odette pretty hungry. Stomach curling up at the edges, ’fact.”

  I roll my eyes, a smile tugging at the corners of my lips. We should have known better than to eat on the way here. Odette never gives up information for nothing. Usually money does the trick—I had made sure to swing by the ATM to grab cash—but the last time she had requested pralines. It must be a pattern.

  “We already ate, but what sounds good to you?” I ask her.

  “S’little early for oysters, but a cravin’s a cravin’. Pearlz sounds mighty right.”

  “A little pricey, too.” I give her a look that would cow anyone but her. And maybe Clete. “I assume you’ll be more helpful than usual?”

  Odette f
lashes me a grin, the teeth she has left stained with tobacco. “Yah ain’t told me tha question yet, Graciela Anne Harper. S’hard to say.”

  She leaves us there, trudging down the block toward Pearlz. The three of us do the look-look-shrug routine again before we continue following her.

  We luck out and grab a table for four outside the restaurant, sliding into that slim window where happy hour is winding down but dinner reservations haven’t flooded the place. The other people milling around, slipping in and out of the heavy, painted front door, look like locals on their ways home from work. The tourist season is over now, and summer has tumbled headlong into fall. Winter—and the best oysters—won’t be far behind.

  Odette, undeterred by the early season, orders two dozen raw on the half shell and half a dozen fried ones. I order a spicy Bloody Mary, while Mel and Amelia shoot daggers my direction and both ask for club soda. I don’t feel badly; they both got knocked up of their own accord. Why should that mean I can’t lubricate this entire situation?

  Once we’re settled and waiting for the immense amount of food considering it’s for one person, I try to figure out where to start.

  At the beginning, says a voice that sounds not like my devils but like my beloved, pragmatic grandfather.

  “Remember the last time I came to see you?” I ask, feeling my way along as though my eyesight has suddenly gone wonky in unfamiliar surroundings.

  “Yep. Shorted me on pralines.”

  “You ate a whole bag,” I feel the need to point out.

  She shrugs, giving me that toothless grin again as the waitress sets down our drinks and wanders off. “Two mighta gotten yah summore answers. Ya think?”

  “You’re a piece of work. Let’s just say you can have as many oysters as it takes to give us some real help. Deal?”

  She shrugs again, her face serious now. “D’pends.”

  “So, other than the paltry amount of pralines, do you remember the last time we talked?”

  “Yep. Ya think sum ghost lady gonna help ya’ll wit that there curse hangin’ ’bout yer heads.” She eyes the air above my head, then examines the same spot over Amelia, before frowning. She slides her gaze back to my face. “Still there, but is sumthin’ wobbly ’bout it today.”

  The spark of hope inside me flickers harder, as though receiving a gust of oxygen from the mere mention that the curse could be changing with Mrs. LaBadie gone from the world.

  “Huh. Well, the ghost lady did offer to help us lift the curse, but she wants something in return. My help with a new curse.”

  The waitress returns, sets down the plates of raw oysters and a silver apparatus that holds two kinds of horseradish, cocktail sauce, and what looks like tartar sauce in the fourth tiny bowl. Odette digs in with the kind of gusto that’s usually reserved for girls waiting for sailors to come in to New York City during Fleet Week.

  The rest of us watch with varying degrees of disgust and awe as she puts away the first dozen, then pats the corners of her mouth with a cloth napkin as though she grew up going to cotillion.

  “’Course she wants sumthin’ in return, girl. Can’t get sumthin’ for nuthin’, not in your world, not in mine, not in the next, neither. Question is, are ya willin’ tah pay up?”

  “That is the question,” I stress. “The one I’m asking you. Do you think she’s telling the truth about being able to break the curse? Like, can it be done? And if it can, is putting another curse out into the world really something I should do, anyway?

  Frustration over the fact that Mama Lottie was a little scant on the details of said curse turns the corners of my mouth down harder. Knowing might make it harder, I suppose, but there’s the tiniest bit of a chance that it might help ease my anxiety.

  Right, it’s one of those not-so-bad curses, the fatter devil chortles.

  Witches use the word curse to convey amiable feelings all the time, the guy on the left chimes in.

  Odette is quiet for a long time, pondering while I suck at my drink in an attempt to drive the voices from my head. Amelia taps out a supremely annoying rhythm on the wrought iron tabletop, hard enough to rattle the flatware. Mel leans over and takes a long pull from my drink, looking as though it’s killing her to stay silent this whole time. We talked about how to go about this in the car, though, and too many distractions won’t work with Odette. It’s hard enough to get her to focus to start with, so we agreed I’d do the talking.

  I raise one eyebrow at my pregnant friend, who has known me long enough to read my thoughts.

  “What? It’s the end of my second trimester. Doc Bryant said I can have a glass of wine if I want to.”

  I hold up my hands in a defensive posture. “Hey, I’m sure whatever damage that kid is going to sustain was done the moment you added Will’s DNA to the brew.”

  Odette clears her throat, giving both of us a look that would be more at home on the face of a nun about to whap some misbehaving ten-year-old boys with a ruler. We settle down just as fast. Maybe faster.

  “I think…she can do what she say, or she be willin’ to try.” Odette glances above my head again, then closes her eyes briefly and pushes her nose into the air, like an animal trying to ferret out danger on the breeze. “Far as tha price, that’s up tah y’all. But I’ll tell yah this: that curse ain’t gonna go away all by itself. Ain’t gonna stop, not ever, not until it fulfills every last bit of purpose. It’s powerful. Deep, like roots. This spirit might be scary, she might be asking yah fer a whole heckuva lot, but ask yerselves this: what choice do yah have, truly?”

  Chapter Four

  Amelia, Mel, and I didn’t talk much on the way home last night. My cousin and I haven’t talked much since, either. Odette’s words feel as though they’re tattooed on my brain, trying to rub out what our grandmother always told us: we always, always have a choice.

  It’s true, even now. We can choose to do nothing about the curse. Maybe we choose not to believe it’s true, choose to sacrifice Jack and hope that the next time one of us gets pregnant, it turns out to be a little girl, instead.

  Grams never said choices were easy, and she never said there was always a good one. Bad choices, sickening choices, dumb choices—they’re all still options.

  But the thought of making those other choices, the ones that require me giving the finger to Mama Lottie and her offer of help, turn my stomach.

  If only the thought of hurting Beau didn’t do the same thing.

  “What do you think?” I ask the ghost of Henry Woodward as he sulks in his corner.

  He takes his time peeling his gaze away from the cobweb above him to peer over at me. The expression on his face suggests that he’s worried, or maybe annoyed. Henry’s spirit always seems to be a little of both, and I’m starting to think it’s because he’s decided he came to the wrong ghost-business resolver. He’s been hanging around for months, now, and I’m no closer to figuring out what he wants from me.

  Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe he’s just lonely.

  Henry raises his eyebrows as though he can hear my thoughts, giving me a frown. I return it, huffing to the closet to dig around for my black flats. “It’s not all my fault, you know. You could help. Even pointing aimlessly would be a welcome change.”

  I find my shoes and put them on, then stand in front of the mirror on the back of the door to examine my outfit: pink dress, black printed cardigan, black flats. Once I swipe on some lipstick and smooth some stray strands of hair, the whole ensemble accomplishes a grown-up, conservative look—exactly what Amelia requested for our first meeting with her attorney.

  The sound of her moving about the kitchen, along with the smell of coffee, draws me away from poor old Henry. He heaves a sigh as I give him a salute and open the door, but to his credit—and a little bit to my discomfort—at least he bats away the cobwebs.

  He’s getting too good at manipulating the real world around him. Makes me nervous to think he can reach into my life and rearrange whatever he likes. Or maybe I haven’t forgiven him f
or taking orders from my father a couple of weeks ago and stealing my phone.

  The thought of my father, who claims all of this ghost business came part and parcel with his genes, causes a flutter of anxiety in my stomach. He’s left town, of course, and with the local robbery I’m sure he committed with help from some spirits, there’s not much chance he’ll be back anytime soon. I need to find the time to research my own family, find out what it means to be a Fournier, instead of spending all my hours and days peeking into other people’s pasts, but with Amelia’s court date sneaking up on us and this whole curse thing staring me in the face, the legacy of the Fournier clan is still riding in the backseat. Maybe a third row. Like in a Suburban.

  “Good morning,” I chirp on my way into the kitchen, trying to force as much positive energy into the space as possible. The room is clogged with Amelia’s nerves so it’s an uphill battle. Maybe more akin to Sisyphus than one that can be won, but like him, I keep trying like a stubborn mule.

  For my cousin’s part, she appears to be on the brink of throwing up the scrambled eggs she’s forcing past her lips with robotic precision. Millie may be having issues taking care of her own mental well-being these days, but she’s never, not for one second, lost sight of the health of that little baby boy growing inside her. She’s over halfway there now, with a due date in late January.

  “Morning,” she says. “I made a pot of coffee.”

  “You’re just a little martyr this morning, aren’t you?”

  She wrinkles her nose. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to go back to drinking coffee after this. The smell of it makes me nauseated for some reason.”

  “What doesn’t make you nauseated these days?”

  “Not a whole lot,” she mutters ruefully, scraping up the last of the eggs and carrying her plate to the sink. “Are you ready?”

  “Yeah. Let me pour a cup and grab a granola bar.”

  Amelia wipes the crumbs from her toast off the counter with a pink sponge, anxiety radiating from her skin and tightening my own chest. By the time I’ve managed to fill a to-go mug and snatch a peanut butter granola bar out of the cabinet, even I’m close to hurling.