by Tegan Maher
Addy popped in. "I heard that. And I agree. Roberta's always been one to toot her own horn. Not only does she make her generosity known, she likes to throw out the numbers, too. Folks who do stuff with charity in their hearts don't brag about it; they just do it."
That seemed odd to me. I'd never had much in the way of cash, but the two causes close to my heart—veterans and animals—got as much of my time as I could donate, since that was all I had. It was something I did, not something I talked about, unless I was trying to raise awareness of either the cause or a specific fundraiser.
Max—our talking donkey, not the dead guy—wondered in just then with his nose in the air. "As usual, nobody bothers to tell the donkey supper's ready."
I rolled my eyes. "That's because you just about ate the bottom out of your bucket of oats not thirty minutes ago."
He sniffed. "That was thirty minutes ago! And oats are meager sustenance compared to the veritable feast I see before you." He sidled up to Justin, who was still a little awestruck by him. That wouldn't last much longer, but the shine hadn't quite worn off yet.
"Boy, fetch me a piece of that toast, with some beans on it, if you will." He eyeballed the rest of the meal. "Since nobody had the consideration and foresight to bring hotdogs, I'll just skip the meat, I suppose." He released a long-suffering sigh.
"Oh, knock it off," Shelby said. "You're just trying to get him to de-bone the ribs for you because you don't have thumbs."
That may sound mean to the uninitiated, but Max was in that form for a reason. He'd started life in the sixteenth century as a lesser British noble, but his less-than-gentlemanly ways had put him in the hot seat with an Irish witch. She cursed his form to more accurately reflect his personality, and here he was, centuries later, and still hadn't learned his lesson.
He pinned his ears back and scowled at her, but didn't deny it.
While Justin was tearing up some toast for him, he said, "Back in my day, it was my responsibility to take care of those who lived on my lands. It wasn't considered an act of charity." He reached out and took a piece of the toast from Justin's fingers, and I thought that for once, he was saying something nice. It happened every once in a while. Then he kept talking. "If I didn't make sure they had what they needed, they couldn't work, and I wouldn't have been able to enjoy my time traveling."
I saw that one coming.
"There's only one problem, though. Kirsten was in Eagle Gap. Roberta was here. What's the connection?"
Rae was worrying her lip. "And if that's truly what's going on, we're dealing with something a lot worse than some petty theft."
"I know," I said, gnawing the crispies off the end of a bone. "And the other problem is we blamed the Kirsten incident on Shelby's bracelet. We thought maybe she'd touched a confidence charm and a negative-energy charm together or something. But did you see Roberta today, Shel?"
She shook her head. "Nope. I was at the clinic all day. Ask Cody."
I tipped up one corner of my mouth. "I'm pretty sure you don't need a reliable alibi; we'll take you at your word."
Hunter chased a mouthful of coleslaw with a swig of beer. "Yeah, I don't see any reason to arrest you just for wearing tacky jewelry."
You can say a lot, but don't insult the charm bracelets in our house. Shelby kicked him under the table and Addy whacked him on the back of the head, though of course her hand went right through. He cringed and pulled away from her. "Eww. If you knew how weird that felt, you wouldn't do it."
Addy crossed her arms. "If you knew what a dink you are, you'd keep your lip zipped. I guess neither one of us gets it. Or in my case worries about, for that matter."
"Knock it off, all three of you," I said. "We all know there's no such thing as coincidences like this. The question is, what do we do?"
"Maybe we should call Camille," Shelby said.
She had a point, but with as worn out as she'd looked, I didn't want to burden her with something until we knew a little more. I said as much.
"I mean, Kirsten ate a pound of junk food and Roberta stole a few bucks. She gave it back—" I knew she gave the collection kitty back, but I looked at Shelby and Cody, because I wasn't sure about the donations. "She did write a new check, right?"
They nodded.
I picked up another rib. "Then it's not like anybody's dead. It'll keep."
Oh, when was I gonna learn not to say stuff like that?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
As soon as we finished eating, Shelby and Cody went on their merry way to the movies, Hunter went home to watch the game, and Rae and I got ready to go out.
"Who all's going tonight?" I asked as I patted on some powder.
"Anna Mae said she was in, and Cheri Lynn popped in earlier and said she'd be there. I asked Louise, too."
Louise, the other waitress I mentioned earlier, had moved here from Atlanta and was settling back into country living like a duck to water. Her dad had been killed a couple months back, but it hadn't been quite so hard since he'd decided to stick around. He and her mother had just gotten back from a cross-country vacation that he'd meant to surprise her with before he was murdered.
"Good. I'm glad you convinced her to come. She's been working her butt off and needs a break."
"Yeah, I think it's been hard on her, trying to adjust to Jared running the business with Matt. From what I understand, there's been some friction between him and Max since he got back from the trip."
I knew exactly how he felt. Having a living-impaired father-in-law looking over your shoulder and criticizing everything you did had to be tough.
I could totally relate. A week or so after Addy passed, I was having an ugly-cry session in the barn while I was cleaning stalls when I looked up to find her standing—well, floating—in the doorway. I was so glad to see her that it took me a full week to realize that since she couldn't actually do any physical work, she could boss us around full time. It was sort of a bittersweet situation. Regardless, I'd take it if it meant having her in our lives. I'd been totally lost, and the prospect of raising a sixteen-year-old sister on my own terrified me.
Still, it irritated the crap out of me when she pointed out that I'd missed a spot when cleaning a stall or reminded me that I hadn't cleaned the gutters yet. That was a joke because she'd always made Uncle Calvin clean them when he was alive, then after he'd passed, she'd made somebody else—me—do it. Apparently, it was a whole lot easier to point and criticize than it was to do the jobs while you're living.
Still, having her around to offer advice and just be there for us was worth all that. And besides, it's not like it was any different than when she was alive.
"Why does it matter to her if Max and Jared butt heads? Are they putting her in the middle?" I asked.
"Apparently so,” Rae replied, sweeping on some mascara. “Jared comes to her and complains about her dad being a PITA, then her dad comes and complains to her about Jared being incompetent. And you know how cantankerous Max can be."
Boy did I ever. I'd first met him when Hunter and I were packing up to come home from a vacation. He'd floated in, pretty as you please, and told us we needed to go find his body. You can imagine how shocking that was, considering we hadn't exactly clued Hunter in to the fact that there was a thriving post-living community in Keyhole Lake.
To be fair, I didn't keep it from him because I was being secretive. Well, I was, but it hadn't been my secret to tell. The ghost community was careful about whom they told; after all, stupid reality shows would love to get their hands on that kind of info. Then they'd show up here and try to exploit us to the world.
Tons of cameramen and city slickers oozing through the town, poking fun at us and asking stupid questions wasn't exactly our idea of ideal. So, nobody was allowed to know until the living impaired came to a consensus. Since Hunter was still new to the area—he'd moved here from Atlanta just a few months before—he still hadn't earned the title of local yet.
Of course, Max just showing up randomly had kinda push
ed him into the whole supernatural thing, hook, line, and sinker, but he'd taken to it like a trooper. I was worried for weeks that he'd finally recover from the shock of it all, realize what a nut-job situation he was living in, and high-tail it out of there as fast as he could throw his undies and toothbrush in a travel bag.
He hadn't, and I was grateful that he was a little cracked too. He'd have to be to stick around such a mess.
I poured some hairspray over into my leave-in-conditioner bottle and spritzed it on my hair. On the best of days, my hair was so thick and curly that I needed a chair and a whip to tame it, but the good hair products were expensive and I just couldn't justify spending twenty bucks on a product when I could make my own mixture myself.
"I can't imagine that Max would have been easy to work with living, let alone dead. Give that old termagant the ability to pop in wherever he wants to and that would be my idea of a living nightmare. Trust me—I lived it."
"I know. I think that's about three quarters of the reason she's coming out tonight. She needs to get away from it all for a while."
"Well this is the night to do it. Fancy's wings are amazing," she said.
I pulled my brows together as I buttoned my shirt. "You just ate half your body weight in ribs. Are you kidding me?"
"Not even a little. And you know you'll eat some, too."
I puckered my lips. She was probably right. No, she was definitely right.
Fancy's was a little dive bar that served cold beer and the biggest, crispiest wings you could ever imagine. It was beer and wine only, but that was part of its appeal. And Marybeth, the owner and regular bartender, quit serving the cheap stuff to keep out the worst of the riffraff. She said if you couldn't afford to pay three bucks for a real beer, you probably couldn't afford to tip either. That tended to be her ruler, and it wasn't a bad one to use.
We were just climbing in the car when Cheri Lynn popped in. As always, she looked amazing. That was partly due to her almond-shaped eyes and exotic appearance—courtesy of her gypsy blood—and partly to do with the fact that she'd been an exotic dancer pre-death. Those pole-dancing exercise classes were popular for a reason.
I hadn't known her much in life other than by reputation, and man, had I been wrong about her. She'd made a string of bad decisions and had paid for them with her life, but she was one of the best people you'd ever meet. She also said that she was much happier dead than she ever was alive, which made me a little sad.
"Hey, sugar. What's up?" I asked.
"Nothin'," she said, smoothing the little black dress she was wearing. She was always dressed to the nines in some of the hottest fashion trends. They tended to be a bit on the risqué side, but given her previous profession—and the fact that she looked amazing in all of it—I couldn't hold it against her. Well, maybe the part about looking amazing in it.
"Say, where do you get your clothes from?" Raeann and I had discussed that on numerous occasions but had never thought to ask when she was actually with us.
She shrugged, causing her ghostly cocktail dress to shimmer a little. "I just think about what I want to wear and they appear."
Dang, that must be nice.
Fancy's wasn't far from the house and I was glad to see that it was relatively slow when we pulled in. There were only a handful of cars besides Marybeth's in the lot.
"Looks like we're early," Rae said. "I don't see Louise's or Anna Mae's cars."
I checked my phone; it was only fifteen 'til eight. "Yeah, Camille's not here yet, either.” I'd no sooner said that than her little black Audi whipped into the lot and parked beside us. I was glad to see she looked marginally better when she climbed out than she had the day before. Either the black smears under her eyes were fading or she had really good foundation. Her eyes were a little brighter though, so I hoped it wasn't just the makeup.
Cheri Lynn floated over to her, frowning as she took a closer look. "Holy crow, sugar. You okay?" The fact that Cheri was concerned over her appearance when I was just thinking how much better she looked was testament to how ragged she'd been when I saw her.
Camille gave her a half-smile. "I'm gettin' there. The last couple months were brutal. I'm glad to be home.”
We strolled into Fancy's and decided to split a bucket of Bud Light. Marybeth—a tattooed, pierced woman with a lot of hard years on her—brought it over to us. Louise got there a minute later, and Anna Mae was right behind her.
They pulled the last two beers out of the bucket and both of them took a swig like it was water and they were in the middle of the Mojave. I cocked an eyebrow. "Rough day, ladies?"
"Rough week," said Anna Mae, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. The move was so out of sync with her pixie-like appearance that I grinned and shook my head. "It musta been something in the air, then. Let's compare. I hereby declare Ms. Monday officially started."
We tapped bottles, then Anna Mae heaved a sigh. "My problems are pretty much first-world, but holy cow. You wouldn't think running a tiny little business like mine would be so tough, but just getting people to deliver stuff on time is like pullin' teeth. To make all these period clothes more appealin', I've decided to start doin' some tailorin' on the side. I had to order some of the fabrics online, and half of 'em didn't show up and three of 'em were the wrong color! I've got a woman waitin' on me to fix a ball gown so she can go as Scarlett O'Hara for Halloween and at this point, I may as well yank down the drapes and make it myself." She huffed out a breath and took another swig of her beer.
"Okay," I said. "Louise, your turn."
"Oh," she replied, shaking her head, "nothin' at all wrong here. I'm sure every woman has to act as the buffer between her dead daddy and her fed-up hubby. She waved a frustrated hand. “I swear those two are worse than little kids. Daddy picks just for the sake of pickin', and Jared is just as bad. He digs his heels in even when Daddy's right just to be difficult."
Listening to these two made me feel like I was sittin' pretty.
"What about you, Cheri Lynn?" Though she couldn't drink, she still had her ups and downs and the Monday-night gab sessions were her place to work through it all, too. After all, it wasn't every day a girl was murdered, and we'd helped her get through the thick and the thin of it.
"I'm actually good this week, ladies. Me and Rupert”—a nice recently deceased man she’d met on our cruise—“are gettin' along fine as frog's hair and I'm comin' to grips with things. I still have my moments, but I'm gettin' there."
I'd been watching Camille, trying to gauge her state of mind. She was listening with half an ear but her heart wasn't in it. She peeled the label from her beer, chin in hand, her mind a million miles away.
"Earth to Camille," I said, tilting my head toward her.
She jerked, then made eye contact, her eyes coming back into focus. Her mouth lifted into the hint of a smile. "I'm here. Just a rough patch for me, too."
"No shit, Sherlock," Raeann said. "You up and disappear for almost three months, and we don't hear so much as a peep from ya unless we leave a million voicemails threatenin' to come hunt you down. Then you show back up lookin' like—I'm sorry—death warmed over. What's goin' on with you?"
Anna Mae nodded. "Yeah, girl, we've been worried sick about you. Spit it out. You'll feel better."
Camille puckered her lips and pushed them to the side, staring at her beer bottle as if it held the answers to the universe. At first, I didn't think she was gonna speak, but right as she opened her mouth to say something, the most obnoxious voice—pouring from the most obnoxious mouth—in the county sounded behind me.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I pulled in a deep breath and released it before turning in my chair. My nemesis—also known as Olivia Anderson, the biggest cow in town—was standing behind me, arms crossed and an arrogant sneer smeared across her face. Her two blonde-bimbo cronies from high school, Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber, stood behind her.
"Look, ladies. It's Misfit Monday," she said, glancing around our table. Her nose
was particularly out of joint with me right now because, in her eyes, I'd outshone her on the veterans' memorial we just had built in the downtown square. It really hadn't been like that at all—my only goal was to raise enough funds and work with the best company to get it done right.
As it turned out, Wheeler Construction, one of the two best construction companies in the county, had won the bid. Unfortunately—especially for Max Wheeler—he was murdered before the project started, so it was on hold for a couple of weeks. It's worth mentioning that even with the delay, it was still completed a week before her then-boyfriend's company had bid, and cost almost a grand less.
She had some sour grapes, though. We'd both been on the county memorial committee and she'd voted to go with another company since the future of Max's company was up in the air for a week or so after he died. None of us could figure out why she was so keen to ditch Wheeler rather than give them time to sort it out, since they were both better and cheaper.
Turns out she was dating Bo Jackson of Jackson Construction—the other company that had bid on the job. It was a good match because Bo was as shady as she was, but since I knew Max's family would have the jobs back up and running, I encouraged waiting it out, and the rest of the committee agreed.
Apparently, it had cost her an engagement ring, or a pony, or liposuction, or something because she'd been even more hateful than usual since then. Of course, that wasn't saying much. I beat her ass in grade school for stealing a kindergartner's juice box and that pretty much set the tone for our relationship.
"Walk away, Olivia. Now's not a good time," I said.
Katie Lawson, another chick who'd worn speedbumps on her head more than once thanks to my knuckles, took a leery step back, but turned her nose up. I'd only tangled with her once when she stole Raeann's prom date, but I'd done a thorough enough job that she didn't want a repeat. Survival instinct. Even earthworms and brainless bimbos have it.