Downright Dead

by Pamela Kopfler

“I hope you brought coffee,” Sylvia said in a tone as flat as death. “Bob is going to need a cup when you wake him up. I know I’d still be asleep if someone hadn’t beaten on my door.” She pitched a pointed glance at Liz.

  “I really don’t want to open the door and wake him up,” Holly said.

  “I’ve looked everywhere, and you know we can’t leave,” Liz said.

  “What do you mean we can’t leave?” Sylvia arched a perfectly plucked brow. “I thought the judge said we could leave after he files his report today.”

  Holly did a double take at Sylvia’s face. How does anyone wake up with perfect pink lips and a thin line of smudge-free eyeliner? Tattooed makeup. She’d heard of it but never seen it. “Actually, he said the report would probably be ready in a day, but it would take as long as it takes. We’re not going anywhere as long as Bayou St. Agnes covers the only road from here to the highway.”

  “Um, you’re kidding, right?” Sylvia crossed her arms.

  “Um, no.” Holly said, mocking Sylvia as she walked past her on the way to Bob’s room on the attic floor. “It usually goes down in a day or two.”

  “Coffee.” Sylvia groaned. “I need coffee.”

  Angel stepped out of her room as she tied her complimentary Holly Grove robe in place. “What’s going on?”

  “Liz thinks Bob is passed out in his room, which he probably is.” Sylvia gave a sarcastic snort. “I think we drank the entire bottle of bourbon in the hot chocolate last night.”

  “Correction. Not we,” Liz said. “You, Bob, and Sam drank almost the whole bottle.”

  Holly stood in front of the Bob’s door and pointed to the DO NOT DISTURB sign. “Did you see this?”

  “Yes, but it’s nearly ten o’clock and he won’t answer.” Liz looked over her shoulder at the gathering crowd. “Everyone else is awake.”

  “I wonder why?” Sylvia rolled her eyes. “Because you woke us up.”

  “Look,” Liz said. “I’ll take all the blame if he’s asleep in there. Just open the door.”

  “Bring Bob a cup of coffee when you wake him up for nothing. And while you’re at it bring me one, too.” Sylvia shook her head at Liz. “Let the man sleep. I know I wish I could.”

  Holly tapped on the cypress door with her key. “Housekeeping.”

  Nothing.

  “I told you,” Liz said, looking over Holly’s shoulder.

  “Bob, are you in there?”

  Holly took a breath and knocked harder. She hated to impose on her guest’s privacy, but under the circumstances she had no choice. She slid the key in the lock. The familiar click of metal on metal sounded as the lock released, but her muscles tensed. This could be an embarrassing situation. A bad situation. Or nothing.

  “Bob,” she called again as she eased the door open to the dark room.

  Liz brushed against Holly’s back as she tried to peek into the room.

  Holly took a step into the room and flipped on the light. She stared at knotted sheets on an empty bed. The tension rushed from her.

  Liz gasped and pointed at the floor.

  A foot with a tattoo of barbed wire around the ankle stuck out on the floor behind the far side of the bed.

  Holly’s mouth went dry. Joseph, Mary, and baby Jesus.

  “Is he dead?” Sylvia whispered, holding on to Holly’s T-shirt.

  Liz crept over to where Bob lay.

  “I-I don’t know,” Holly whispered, still staring at Bob’s foot. This couldn’t happen again, could it? She stumbled backward into Sylvia and Angel, then out into the hall.

  A wail came from Bob’s room. “I think he’s dead,” Liz said between sobs.

  “Go get Miss Alice in the carriage house,” Holly yelled. Feeling her pocket for her phone, she realized she was still in her clothes from last night and her phone was on her dresser in her room. “Someone call 911.”

  “I’ll go get Miss Alice,” Angel said, then ran down the hall.

  Sylvia whipped out her phone from her robe pocket and dialed. “What’s the address?” Sylvia asked.

  “Just tell them Holly Grove. They know where it is.” Unfortunately, she’d had to call 911 all too frequently lately.

  “What do you mean you can’t get here?” Sylvia shouted into the phone. “You want me to do what?” She covered the phone. “Someone else is going to have to do this. I don’t do CPR.”

  “Yoo-hoo,” Miss Alice called from down the hall. Her pink terry cloth robe flapped as she padded down the hall wearing gold slippers. “Where is he?”

  Holly ushered Miss Alice to Bob’s side.

  Miss Alice’s knees creaked as she kneeled over him and grabbed his swollen wrist.

  And that wasn’t all that was swollen. His face was so swollen he looked almost alien.

  Miss Alice shook her head. “No pulse, and his body is cold.”

  Angel made the sign of the cross and took a step back.

  “How long?” Holly asked.

  “Can’t say.” Miss Alice pulled the sheet off the bed and covered Bob’s body. “Looks like anaphylactic shock.”

  “But he didn’t eat any of the PB&Js,” Liz said, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “He knew better, besides he had an EpiPen. He always had it with him.”

  “He could have had the reaction in his sleep and didn’t wake up.” Miss Alice pushed down on the side of the bed to help herself to her feet.

  An EpiPen rolled across the bed. Holly covered her mouth. Had he tried to counteract the reaction and it didn’t work?

  “Don’t touch it,” Jake said, as he brushed her arm and strode into Bob’s room.

  Jake stooped by the body and pulled back the sheet. His face hardened as he studied Bob’s body. “I’ll have to call the sheriff.”

  “You don’t think . . .” But Holly had already thought it. How could someone slip him something with peanuts in it in his bedroom ? Was she letting her imagination go wacky?

  “All deaths outside a hospital have to have a police report,” Jake said matter-of-factly, not looking at her or anyone.

  Was this another murder? If so, why?

  * * *

  The distinctive whop-whop of a helicopter pounded the sky above Holly Grove as Holly waited at the airstrip with Jake for the judge to land. She was just glad they’d figured a way to get Bob’s body out of Holly Grove.

  “I get why Sylvia or Angel would want Tru and his debunking six feet under.” Holly gnawed at her lip. “I even get why Buster would think I would want Tru dead. But Bob was just a cameraman. There’s got to be more to this.”

  Jake shielded his eyes from the sun. “Maybe he’ll come back and tell you.”

  “I asked Angel about that. She doesn’t,” Holly drew quotation marks in the air, “sense him.”

  “You mean she doesn’t see ghosts like you do.” Jake tracked the helicopter as it circled the landing strip.

  “Oh, yeah.” Holly raised her voice over the noise. “She sees ghosts, but she can sense spirits when they can’t or don’t want to be seen. She tells me I have a forgotten spirit at Holly Grove that I can’t see. I just hope she stays forgotten.”

  “She?” Jake cocked his head sideways. “Angel can’t see this spirit but she knows the thing is female?”

  Holly raised her hands. “Hey, I’m new to this. I don’t know all the rules.” So far, the rules she’d tried to make had been about as useful as a castrated bull, as Grandma Rose used to say.

  “Well, if Bob doesn’t come back and tell us what happened, we may never know. How do you prove someone slipped the guy a peanut or, more likely, how do you know he didn’t accidentally get a taste?”

  “In his bedroom? In the middle of the night? I don’t know.” Holly’s head ached from thinking about that. “But I think if we figure out why, we can figure out how.”

  “Look, Sherlock.” Jake’s jaw tensed and his eyes narrowed. “You’re off this case. If, and it’s a big if, Bob’s death was intentional, this is out of your league even with your special assistan
t.”

  “My ghost.” Holly blew out a breath. “You know, the deal is he’s got to get whoever killed him to take his place on the devil’s roll call. I thought Tru would be right in the middle of this, and I haven’t seen him. Maybe Bob pushed him off the widow’s walk and he’s where Tru was?”

  “Why would an hourly guy do that?” Jake started walking to the helicopter.

  “If not for money, maybe he did it for love,” Holly shouted. The wind blew her hair to next Sunday.

  Jake cupped his hand over his mouth and yelled. “That leaves Sylvia, Liz, and Angel.”

  “Angel? I guess that’s possible, but I haven’t even seen him speak to her. He hardly spoke to anyone except Liz and Sylvia.”

  Buster jumped off the helicopter just before it touched down. “Did you preserve the scene?” he yelled over the chopper.

  “Sure did,” Jake said. “I’ve got Mackie guarding the door now.”

  Buster gave Holly a nod but didn’t speak. Surely, he couldn’t blame her for this one too. She supposed she’d find out, but she had questions of her own about what had happened to Bob.

  They all climbed in her Tahoe and drove back to Holly Grove. When they walked through the door, she heard Nelda’s voice from the kitchen.

  Holly stopped on the first step, held the newel post, and listened as Buster and Jake climbed the stairs.

  “Who told you that you could cook in my kitchen?” Nelda’s voice rang from the kitchen.

  Holly shook her head. She pitied Thomas for his sin of a good deed. And worse, she’d bet no one had an appetite either.

  As she followed them upstairs, it occurred to her Thomas was the only one in the main house who didn’t come upstairs to see what was going on.

  Surely, he’d heard the commotion or had heard about it by now. Nelda didn’t like to leave her cooking, but there was no doubt she would’ve hustled upstairs if she thought something serious was going on.

  Was it possible he already knew? Again, why? What stake would Thomas have in this? Holly just couldn’t see a decent guy like him doing a deadly deed.

  Holly reached the landing and turned down the upstairs hallway. The three rugs that broke up the twelve-foot-wide hall were crooked. She yanked on one to straighten it, but it was too heavy to move alone.

  How on God’s green earth did the rugs get all wompy-jawed? Just walking on them wouldn’t cause that and it never has before. At the end of the hall, the mystery portrait had jumped off its hanger again. Hmm. Was Tru learning tricks?

  “Psst.”

  Holly turned to find Angel motioning for Holly to come to her room.

  Angel grabbed Holly by the arm and yanked her into her suite. “Tru is out of control. Look what he’s done to my room.”

  The bed stood naked at an odd angle, and all the pillows and blankets were strewn across the room. “I guess that explains the hall.”

  “That was not him.” Angel picked a pillow up off the floor and hugged it. “That and all this is why I can’t stay here. That’s why that brute you think is your boyfriend should have let me swim across that bayou if I had to.”

  “First, Jake isn’t my boyfriend. Second, he’s not really a brute. He’s actually a gentleman.” Holly tucked her chin in and eyed Angel. “After all, he didn’t let you drown.”

  “So I could contend with this.” She made a flourish with her hand at the disaster in her room.

  “Welcome to my world.” Holly looked around the room. “Where is the little poltergeist anyway?”

  “I have no idea, but he is going to be dangerous if he figures out his full strength.”

  “What do you mean?” Holly rubbed her neck. “Burl could only blow a little. Well, he did take over Sylvia’s body once. That was pretty impressive.”

  “Burl was sent back from a different place.” Angel swept her hair over her shoulder. “He had a different reason for being here.”

  “All I know is Tru was in line for Hell because of some mix-up about his time to go. Saint Peter sent Burl to bring him back and give him a chance to make things right, but that required a deal with the devil.”

  “And he made it?” Angel looked up and seemed to mentally count to ten. “That’s the problem.”

  “It’s better than roasting until the end of time.”

  “What was the deal?” Angel asked.

  “He has to give the name of whoever killed him to replace his name on the devil’s roll call.”

  “So that’s why he’s so upset.”

  “Don’t tell me Bob came back too. I know good and well everyone doesn’t come back or I’d have Mama and Grandma Rose here with me.”

  Angel lifted her face upward and closed her eyes, then shook her head. “I don’t sense that Bob has a path back.”

  “Good to know.” If she does. That looked like a cursory check.

  “You see,” Angel tossed a pillow aside and sat on a Victorian rocker, “Tru thought since Bob died under suspicious circumstances that maybe the same person who killed Bob had killed him.”

  Holly had wondered the same thing. “But what does that have to do with you?”

  “He thinks I did it.” She placed her hand over her heart and looked into Holly’s eyes. “But I didn’t, and we both know who did.”

  Holly blinked. “We do?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Holly closed her bedroom door and felt a draft. Her French doors stood wide open. As she crossed the room to close them they flapped back and forth. She pulled on the handles but they slipped out of her hands.

  The wind swirled in her bedroom like a compact tornado. The coverlet and sheets flew off the mattress and the bed lifted and spun. All the while the French doors banged against the wall.

  Then, everything stopped and fell to the floor. Holly held her hand over her racing heart. “What just happened?”

  Tru fell from the ceiling and landed wobbly but on his feet. He walked toward her like a drunk man, his hair wild and his clothes disheveled. “I happened.”

  Holly now understood what had happened to Angel’s room. “Why? And how’d you do that?”

  “Why?” He staggered as though he were dizzy. “Because I can.”

  “Okay.” Holly crinkled her brow. “But why to me? I’m trying to help you. Didn’t Burl talk to you about that?”

  “Yeah.” He bent in a low bow. “Please forgive me, your most wonderful guide.”

  “Guide?” She tilted her head. “Like a spirit guide?”

  “Whew!” He steadied himself by holding on to the bedpost. “That stuff makes me dizzy.”

  “I’m really not a, um, guide. I just happen to be able to see certain ghosts. I helped Burl because I would have been stuck with him for life if I didn’t. I’m helping you because I feel partly to blame for what happened to you.”

  “I’m over that.” He waved her off. “I know you didn’t push me.”

  “That’s not the part I feel responsible about.” She sat on the bed beside Tru. “I feel responsible for you being on the widow’s walk when it wasn’t safe.”

  “Yeah. I sailed right over the little two-foot railing, but I wasn’t supposed to be up there.” He shrugged. “I don’t know why but if someone tells me I must do something or can’t do something, that’s exactly what I want.”

  “Maybe you should work on that.”

  “No need to work on anything now. What worse can happen to me?” He gave a weak chuckle. “I’ve been to Hell.”

  “I’m to blame for you coming to Holly Grove in the first place. If I had just said I didn’t have a ghost anymore, you would have never come to debunk ‘The Ghost in the Grove.’” She cringed. “That lie is why I’m trying to stop lying.”

  “That whole ‘the truth will set you free’ thing.” He looked down at his singed loafers. “It’s a lie.”

  “I’m still going to try.”

  “Not me.” He swung around her bedpost. “Here I was. Trying to keep a promise to the devil to give him the name of the guy who
killed me, so he can take my place on the devil’s roll call. Then Bob turns up D-E-A-D. Does he come back as a freakin’ ghost with conditions? Nope. That guy is gone and I’m still here. I’m pretty ticked about it.” He shoved off her bed. “Sorry about your room, but I’ve got to get some of this anger out or it could be really bad.”

  Holly now understood why Tru could be dangerous—and possibly useful.

  * * *

  “All right, people. Listen up.” Buster rested his hands on his utility belt as he stood in front of the fireplace in the parlor. “I called you all in here, so I only have to say this once.”

  Holly leaned against the back wall with Jake and Mackie. Sylvia had dressed in a black dress for mourning, Holly guessed. The deep neckline and slit up the side suggested she wasn’t all that sad.

  “Sam isn’t here yet,” Miss Alice said. “He went to get his camera.”

  Buster relaxed his stance and Holly almost wished she’d brought in a folding chair. It wasn’t likely Buster would say a word without Sam there to write it down and put it in the Gazette.

  Liz blew her nose loudly and stuffed the used tissue in her cargo pants pocket.

  Angel wore her signature black flowing dress and stared at the floor.

  Miss Alice had staked out the wide-bottomed wing chair by the window. Thomas sat in the matching chair next to her.

  Sam came in at a brisk pace for an octogenarian. He framed Buster in a shot and snapped the photo, then gave a thumbs-up. Sam had slept in the garçon-nière, so he’d slept right through the second death at Holly Grove in two days. Holly’s stomach quivered a bit. At that rate, even the ghost hunters may get nervous about checking in here.

  Buster clapped his hands. “Here’s what we’ve got, people.” He swung his hands back and forth as he spoke. “As Deputy McCann told you, it’s standard procedure to investigate a death at a residence. And that’s what we’re doing here. But,” he raised his finger, “because there have been two deaths at this establishment in two days, I’ve raised the level of my investigation to death under suspicious conditions.”

  “What does that mean?” Sylvia asked.

  “It means I’d like to take your statements as before, and St. Agnes Parish would greatly appreciate it if you would make yourself available for questioning at least through tomorrow.”