by Nene Adams
Veronica picked at the food, avoiding the hot wings altogether—a wise move, Mackenzie considered, as the chef dished out hot sauce by the pint. Strangely out of character, Veronica also didn’t speak to her or even glance at her, but polished off a bottle of brown ale in a few gulps and ordered a second from a passing waitress.
Mackenzie sipped from her bottle despite the urge to chug-a-lug just as quickly. “How long has it been?” she asked, desperate to end the painful silence.
“What?” Veronica’s green eyes grew impossibly wider, as if Mackenzie had asked an unexpected and unwelcome question. “Well, I…I don’t…I mean, I do, but…” she stammered, her expression panic-stricken.
“How long has it been since you moved to Antioch?” Mackenzie clarified.
“Oh! Yes, yes, a couple of years already,” Veronica replied, flushed and blotting sweat with a paper napkin. “I was glad to leave the Savannah force. They were real good to me and I enjoyed living there, but I was doing more paperwork than policing. Antioch suits me fine.”
The brief spurt of conversation ended. Mackenzie’s dwindling appetite fled. She and Veronica were friends. They knew each other better than casual acquaintances, which was why she found the uncomfortable atmosphere between them alarming…
Veronica gratefully snatched a fresh bottle from the waitress’ tray, and ordered a pulled pork platter and another Snakehead ale.
Mackenzie placed her own order and came to the conclusion that she’d better nurse her single bottle of ale since she’d be the one driving them home tonight if Veronica kept drinking like her liver was her worst enemy.
“Um…hey, Mac, I have something to tell you,” Veronica said, still not looking at her, but focused on picking the label off an empty bottle.
“Are you okay?” Mackenzie asked, reaching out to still Veronica’s nervous fingers.
“I’m fine, but I—”
“And your family? Everything good?”
“Yes, Mac, they’re okay, only I think you should know that I—”
An explanation suddenly occurred to her for Veronica’s atypical drinking, the uneasiness, the dinner invitation, the perplexing silences and the skittish glances.
“Oh, God, you’re sick, aren’t you?” Mackenzie blurted. “Is it cancer?”
“What? No! No,” Veronica said, lowering her voice and jerking her hand free from Mackenzie’s grasp. “Why would you think that?”
Because I’m an idiot, Mackenzie thought, blaming a childhood fondness for her mother’s soap operas on her habit of assuming the worst. She blushed and mumbled a lame excuse, wishing the dinner from hell would end so she could leave and tend to her psychological bruises in private. The waitress swept in with their dinner platters before she could manufacture a plausible excuse that would get her home.
The pulled pork was delicious—moist and not too fatty, laced with a sharp, spicy, vinegary sauce—and the sides of baked beans, corn bread, collard greens and sweet potato casserole were tasty. However, Mackenzie found it difficult to enjoy her dinner with Veronica when the woman kept staring at her so surreptitiously.
At last, after an agonizing amount of time, Veronica pushed her half-eaten platter away. “Do you want dessert? They’ve got peanut butter pie, bread pudding with bourbon sauce, peach cobbler and ’nanner pudding. Or maybe a cup of coffee.”
“No, thanks, I’m pretty full,” Mackenzie said, ignoring the muted howling, whining and gurgling as her stomach protested the lie. She’d hardly eaten a thing “Think I’ll call it a night, if you don’t mind.”
“Really? Was the food that bad?”
No, the company, Mackenzie almost said. She kept the mean-spirited observation to herself. “Everything was good, Ronnie. I’m just not that hungry. I’ll ask the waitress for a doggy bag. That leftover pork will make a nice sandwich tomorrow for lunch.”
“I’ll add mine to yours. When you’re ready to go, I’ll drive you home.”
“I don’t think so. You’ve had four Snakeheads since we got here. I’ll drop you off at your house. Call me in the morning and I’ll run your truck over there.”
Veronica looked crestfallen. “Did I drink too much?” she asked in a heart-wrenchingly small voice.
“No, not at all,” Mackenzie hastened to say. “I had a wonderful time, Ronnie. I just don’t want you to get in any trouble if we’re stopped by a state trooper. You know those breathalyzers will pick it up if you’re even a fraction of a hair over the legal limit.”
“That’s true.” Veronica appeared to rally, squaring her shoulders as though getting ready to face a challenge. “I’d be honored if you drove me home.”
Mackenzie flagged the waitress and asked for the check. When it arrived, she started to take out her wallet, but Veronica stopped her.
“My treat. I asked you out.”
“But—”
“Please, Mac, I got this.” Veronica opened her purse, fished out a credit card and gave it to the waitress.
Mama would have argued until the crack of doom about who paid the check, Mackenzie thought, but she had made up her mind long ago not to play that pseudo-polite tug-of-war game over a few dollars. Even on a date, she’d offer to split the check. If her offer was rejected, so be it. She wouldn’t turn down a free meal.
In the truck on the way home, with Veronica slumped on the passenger side holding the bag that contained her leftovers, Mackenzie recalled an unfinished bit of business.
“What did you want to tell me?” she asked.
Veronica started, the bag on her lap almost toppling over. “Huh?”
“In the restaurant, you said you had something to tell me.”
“Oh.”
Mackenzie waited a full minute before she prodded, “Well?” The word came out a little more pointed than she’d intended.
Veronica’s face looked gray and pinched. “It’s not important,” she said at last.
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
Shrugging, Mackenzie continued to drive. She sensed something was wrong, but Veronica didn’t seem to be in the mood to talk.
Later, she told herself. She’d figure out the problem later, and then she’d fix it. She could do no less for a friend.
Chapter Eight
The next morning, Mackenzie slapped the alarm silent and rolled out of bed with a groan. She’d been up half the night with heartburn and indigestion, reduced to sitting in the dark on the sofa in front of the television, watching infomercials—to her relief, the remote control and television behaved themselves—and swigging Pepto-Bismol from the bottle. The thought of eating leftover barbeque for lunch did not sit well.
She shuffled into the bathroom, took a hot shower, belched acid, and brushed her teeth. After contemplating her bleary-eyed reflection in the mirror, she ran a comb through the rat’s nest of her hair and dragged her feet to the bedroom.
Thinking about the mess in her office gave her a headache, but she decided not to work from home. She got dressed and followed the smell of coffee into the small kitchen. Thank God for whomever had invented the programmable coffeemaker.
She poured a cup of strong brew into her favorite mug, added a splash of half-and-half and carried the coffee with her to the front door.
Delicious smells rose from the bakery below, including a whiff of hot oil. Mackenzie grinned and opened the door to find a small box sitting at the top of the stairs. As per the rental agreement, the bakery’s owner provided her with fresh baked goods every morning. If her nose was correct, today’s offering was—she picked up the box and lifted the cover—a deep fried cinnamon roll drizzled with maple glaze and bits of crunchy bacon.
Happy to the depths of her greedy soul, she padded back into the kitchen carrying the box. She unfolded a small vintage card table made of Danish birch, a flea market find, and sat down on a red painted wooden chair to enjoy her unhealthy breakfast.
Just as she took the first bite, she heard the glass coffeepot rattling behind her.
&nb
sp; “Go ’way,” she said indistinctly, her mouth full of sweet, crunchy, salty deliciousness. Whatever Annabel Coffin wanted could wait until she finished her treat.
The rattling grew louder and more ominous.
Annoyed, Mackenzie put down the half-eaten cinnamon roll and started to turn in her seat. A silver-gray streak flashed in her vision seconds before the coffeepot exploded, showering her with glass splinters. She managed to get an arm up to shield her face. Her short-sleeved T-shirt protected her torso, but the rest of her exposed skin stung from dozens of tiny cuts. She lowered her arm and glared sidelong at the space in front of the counter.
Annabel didn’t appear as a full-body apparition this time. Instead, the ghost remained a smoky smudge with no visible features.
“I can’t believe you did that,” Mackenzie said, switching her glare to the glittering carpet of glass fragments on the wood laminate floor. “And I can’t believe I’m going to have to walk barefoot to get the broom, damn it.”
When she scooted the chair back from the table she saw that her breakfast was ruined too. She grabbed the bakery box with the ruined cinnamon roll and stuffed it into the trash.
By the time she minced to the broom closet, leaving a small blood trail behind, and cleaned up the glass, Mackenzie was furious. She disinfected various minor cuts and stripped naked so she could shake out her clothes over a spread newspaper.
After retreating to the bedroom to change into a green cotton blouse, denim capri pants and a pair of sneakers, she returned to the kitchen and said with heartfelt conviction, her hands on her hips, “That’s it. I’m done, Annabel. You can go to hell.”
One of the cabinet doors creaked open and slammed shut with a tooth-jarring bang.
Mackenzie ignored the provocation. “Goddamn it, what do you want from me?”
The woodshed.
“You said that before. What does it mean? Where is this woodshed?” Blowing out a frustrated breath, Mackenzie tried to will away the knot in her chest. “What do you want?” she repeated, suddenly more tired than hostile.
What happened? Where’s Billy?
“You were killed a while back, I think. I’ll let you know what I find out. Who’s Billy?” At least Annabel had grown a little more coherent since last time.
Billy Wakefield.
“He’s the boy you ran away with?”
Annabel took a long minute to answer. I love him, she said slowly at last. We’re going to New York City.
Mackenzie had never heard of Billy Wakefield, or any Wakefields for that matter, living in Antioch or one of the nearby towns. Was this the name of Annabel’s young man, the budding Romeo her parents had had run out of town? She’d ask her mother. “Okay, you were supposed to meet Billy in the woodshed so y’all could run away together to New York. What else do you remember?”
I went to the woodshed, and…and…Annabel broke off with a wail that sounded like the mosquito whine of a dentist’s drill with the volume amped up to eleven.
“Christ!” Mackenzie stuck her fingers in her ears, which helped dull the sound of Annabel’s crying, but not by much. “Could you tone it down a little, please?” she begged.
Where’s Billy? Annabel sobbed. Billy, Billy, Billy…
A stainless steel fork lifted from the dish drainer next to the sink. Mackenzie flinched, expecting the utensil to fly at her, but it landed on the kitchen table as though tossed underhand. The fork’s tines were now bent at several angles and the shaft twisted in a spiral.
When she lifted the fork, the shaft snapped in half.
“Will you get hold of yourself?” Mackenzie shouted when another mangled fork joined the first. “Damn it, Annabel, if you don’t stop wrecking my silverware—”
Where’s Billy?
“I don’t know!”
The eerie crying ended abruptly. He promised.
“I’m doing my best here, but you aren’t helping by pitching conniption fits.” Mackenzie took a deep breath, striving for calm. “Just try to remember what happened.”
In the woodshed. A noise. And then it ended.
“What ended?”
Everything.
Mackenzie suppressed a shiver. Sounded like Annabel had been killed in the mysterious woodshed she kept talking about. “What kind of noise did you hear?”
Noise.
“A gunshot? An explosion?”
Behind me.
“Do you know how you…uh, how you got in the wall?”
I ended.
“Well, where have you been all this time?”
Annabel’s eyes appeared first, as black as pitch and filled with sadness, no longer cold. The rest of her face and body followed. Mackenzie focused her gaze above the ghost’s head to keep her in view, noticing for the first time that Annabel, an attractive young woman, wore a simple belted dress with a Peter Pan collar and a full circle, A-line skirt typical of the fifties. A charm bracelet shone on her left wrist.
Maynard had mentioned finding a charm bracelet on the body, she recalled.
Annabel replied after a pause, I woke up. Billy gone. You were there. I went with you.
What had she done to rouse the ghost of the murdered woman? Mackenzie wondered. Had taking pictures of the body stirred things best left undisturbed? No, she realized a moment later. Maynard must have had deputies and crime scene technicians in her office snapping photos and processing the scene. Why had Annabel become attached to her?
She asked and was unsurprised when Annabel didn’t provide an answer.
“I really can’t put up with you breaking my things all the time,” Mackenzie said. She felt sorry for Annabel, but that didn’t mean she enjoyed being terrorized.
Annabel remained silent, watching her.
The overhead light flickered three times.
Mackenzie considered the ghost stories she’d read, or seen on television or at the movies. A solution seemed at hand, if the writers weren’t lying. “If I help you, if I find out who killed you and why, and what happened to Billy, will you go away? Can you go away?” she added when the thought struck her that perhaps Annabel was stuck somehow, caught between this world and the next.
Tell me, Annabel demanded, her gaze zeroing in on Mackenzie with frightening intensity. Tell me and I’ll go.
“Deal!” Mackenzie exclaimed.
From the doorway came the sound of someone clearing her throat.
“Hey, Mac…who are you talking to?” Veronica asked hesitantly.
When Mackenzie cast a frantic look toward the counter, Annabel was gone. She buried her face in her hands, asking herself if the day could get any worse.
Chapter Nine
“Mac, is everything okay?” Veronica asked, coming into the kitchen
The gentle tone, the same as one might use to calm a spooked horse, got on Mackenzie’s last nerve. “Everything’s hunky-dory,” she snapped. “Can’t you tell?”
Veronica’s gaze drifted to the coffeemaker. “Did you break your pot?”
Mackenzie sighed. “Something like that.”
She eyed Veronica, dowdy as ever in a sheriff’s department uniform. The polyester/rayon blend trousers were truly abominable, a color of brown normally associated with baby poop, and the button-down shirt was an insipid tan that washed out her gorgeous complexion. The thick, heavy-duty belt didn’t do much for her either.
“Would you like to get breakfast before I go to work?” Veronica leaned a hip against the counter, gazing down at Mackenzie with a smile on her pink, well-scrubbed face. Not a trace of last night’s makeup remained. Her brunette hair had been scraped back into a tightly pinned and very serviceable bun at the base of her neck.
Recalling the ruined pastry with regret—and recalling last night’s dinner debacle—Mackenzie shook her head. Maybe they needed a little time apart to let the inexplicable awkwardness fade. “Sorry, Ronnie, I’ve got things to do in the office and I was hoping to get an early start. I want to head over to Sweetwater Hill later today.”
“
Oh? What do you need on Sweetwater Hill?”
“I’m doing a favor for a friend.”
Disappointment briefly flickered in Veronica’s expression, but in the next second, she smiled. “If you need anything, you call me, yeah?” Her tone softened. “And Mac, about last night…I’m real sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”
Mackenzie didn’t know how to respond. Why was Veronica apologizing like she’d done something wrong? Sure, dinner at Swine Dining hadn’t gone well, but that was no reason to act like it was her fault.
“No problem. I’m not mad or anything about it,” she ventured. “Stuff happens.”
“I’m glad to hear you weren’t offended.”
“Why would I be offended?”
“I was drunk.”
“You had a bit too much to drink, that’s all. Not like you were slobbering all over me or anything like that. God, that would have been the worst!” Mackenzie’s laugh sounded tinny and slightly hysterical to her ears.
Veronica flushed an ugly shade of red.
Feeling as if she’d made a gaffe, Mackenzie asked, “Are you okay?”
“You know me. I’ll be fine.” Veronica’s smile turned brighter and more brittle. “Like you said, everything’s hunky-dory.”
The wattage of Veronica’s grin didn’t fool her. Mackenzie had seen that toothy-white crescent when Veronica had faced a drunk armed with a shotgun. Her smile not touching her eyes, she’d strolled up to the guy, grabbed the shotgun’s barrel and wrenched the weapon out of his hands just as he pulled the trigger. Thank God the weapon hadn’t been loaded.
Then, like now, Mackenzie felt a cold looseness in her lower belly at the sight of Veronica’s stony green gaze. To have that distant glance, that false friendliness, that lack of true warmth aimed at her hurt like an open-handed slap.
Screw waiting and time apart, she decided. Clearly, for some unknown reason their friendship had suffered a rupture. She needed to fix this right now.
“How about lunch?” Mackenzie offered. “We can eat in the park. Forget leftovers. I’ll spring for that potato thing you like from Shapiro’s Deli.”