Better Dead

by Pamela Kopfler

She closed her eyes, and the room spun. Seven generations of her family had held on to Holly Grove through the Civil War, the Depression, and the Great Flood of 1927. Holly Grove and the people who worked there were the closest thing she had to a family. She’d never give up Holly Grove for a ghost or anything else. “What do I have to do?”

  He didn’t answer.

  She opened her eyes. “Burl?”

  White powder sprinkled down like salt from a box onto the hardwood floor, and he was gone.

  * * *

  Rhett’s yaps pierced Holly’s ears and bounced from temple to temple in her aching head.

  She cracked one eye open. Sunlight flooded through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the parlor. She squinted and tried to lift her right hand to shield her eyes from the glare. The useless arm tingled and throbbed. No wonder. Her arm was dead asleep from spending the night on the hardwood floor. Blasted Burl. She couldn’t even toast him good-bye without him causing trouble in her life.

  Still groggy with sleep, she remembered what had to be last night’s nightmare. Definitely, no more champagne for her.

  Shifting her weight and trying to pry herself from the floor to begin her recovery, she noticed Miss Martha Jane Shaw’s face, framed by cupped hands, staring at her through the window.

  “Y’all. She moved.” Miss Martha Jane turned and then crooked her arthritic finger in a motioning gesture toward the other end of the porch.

  A cattle clomp of heels tromped across the porch. Oh, no. The Deltas had arrived. All four members of the Delta Ridge Bridge Club pressed their faces against the glass.

  Holly dropped her sore head back to the floor. Just shoot me now.

  Miss Martha Jane rapped on the 150-year-old glass. “Don’t move. We’ve called 911.”

  Holly opened her mouth to protest as glass shattered. Miss Alice reached through the gaping hole where the windowpane had been and unlocked the window. The ladies heaved open the walk-through window, as Holly struggled to get up with a numb arm and a pounding headache.

  Miss Alice Fort stormed to her side, followed by the rest of the club. She pushed Holly’s shoulder back to the floor and lunged over her, trapping her under no less than forty pounds of grandmother boobs.

  Grabbing Holly’s numb wrist, Miss Alice zeroed in on her large-face watch to check Holly’s pulse. Miss Alice’s husband had been the only full-time doctor in Delta Ridge before dropping dead from a heart attack four years ago. She probably thought she’d earned a medical degree through osmosis in the course of her fifty-year marriage. “Lie still,” she commanded.

  Holly squirmed. If she wasn’t afraid she’d break the old gal’s hip, she would’ve struggled harder.

  “Help me hold her down,” Miss Alice ordered.

  Knees cracking, the other three Deltas scampered to the floor. All four geriatrics pinned her down.

  Holly pried her numb wrist free with her good hand. “Miss Alice. I’m fine,” she said, dodging a boob.

  Miss Alice stared down at her. “How much did you take?”

  “What?”

  The old lady leaned over Holly, nearly smothering her. Then Miss Alice swept her hand across the floor. She held her wrinkled fingers, dusted with white powder, in front of Holly’s face. “It’s cocaine, isn’t it?”

  Holly remembered showering Burl with the fire extinguisher last night and the white powder that had flaked off him just before she passed out. The fine hair on her neck lifted as she wrapped her mind around the fact that she’d had no nightmare. “Oh, my God. It’s Burl.”

  Miss Alice’s eyes widened. “What?”

  “That’s Burl’s dust,” Holly blurted.

  Miss Martha Jane gasped and covered her mouth.

  “She’s hallucinating,” Miss Alice said to the other biddies.

  A wail of sirens drew their attention. Miss Martha Jane rushed to open the front door.

  Sandy Wright jogged into the parlor, pushing a gurney. She gave her pants a yank and tilted her chin up. “What happened here?”

  “It’s an OD,” Miss Alice snapped with medical precision.

  “No sh—” Sandy covered her mouth. “Sorry, ladies. This is the first OD call I’ve had since I got my EMT license.”

  Holly’s throbbing head spun back to Miss Alice. “It’s not cocaine. It’s Burl’s dust.”

  “She’s hallucinating, too,” Miss Martha Jane added, wringing her hands.

  While Miss Alice was distracted, Holly took the opportunity to wiggle out from under her and bolt to her feet. “See. I’m fine. This is just a mis—”

  Black and red splotches danced across her vision, and she staggered.

  Sandy grabbed Holly’s arm and steadied her. “Don’t worry, Holly. Everything is going to be fine. Just lie down here.” She helped Holly to the gurney, then strapped her in.

  Holly’s vision cleared. “No. I just got up too fast.”

  “You could have a concussion from passing out, too,” Sandy said. She gave the straps an extra tug, then eyed the old ladies. “Among other things.”

  In the distance, Holly heard Burl laughing his tail end off.

  “It’s not funny,” she snapped as she struggled against the straps.

  Sandy patted Holly’s arm. “No one’s laughing. Just try to calm down.”

  “You don’t hear him?” Holly searched the women’s faces and met blank stares.

  Burl laughed harder and louder. If he weren’t dead, Holly would have murdered him on the spot.

  Rhett trotted alongside the gurney as Sandy rolled it across the hardwood floor.

  Poor Rhett. “You can’t go, boy.” Holly looked back at the Deltas.

  Miss Martha Jane scooped up Rhett. “Don’t worry, Holly. I’ll take care of him while you’re in rehab.”

  “Rehab? For what? That’s fire extinguisher dust.”

  Miss Alice narrowed her eyes. “You said it was Burl’s dust.”

  “It is. Well, sort of. I meant to spray the fire in the fireplace and sprayed Burl.”

  “But, honey, Burl has passed on,” Miss Martha Jane said.

  “A hallucination,” Miss Alice said to Sandy, as though Holly wasn’t there.

  Sandy pushed the gurney out the door. “I’ll take good care of her.”

  Holly’s stomach knotted. If the Deltas’ version of this story traveled through the gossip circles of Delta Ridge, it could ruin her business.

  Dang you to Hades and back, Burl. This is all your fault.

  A little prick of an idea loosened the knot in her stomach. Burl owed her, and he needed her to do something big. She had leverage. Her resident poltergeist had better get ready to pay up or burn.

  CHAPTER 2

  Holly tiptoed on bare feet to her back door after being held for observation most of the day, thanks to a possible concussion and Miss Alice’s pull at the clinic. Tugging the aged cypress door open, Holly met the spicy aroma of Nelda’s gumbo. Then deep laughter slapped her in the face.

  “I don’t think it’s funny,” Holly snapped at her housekeeper. “Where were you when they hauled me off in an ambulance?”

  Nelda cleared her throat and rubbed her hands on a white dishcloth. “I was cleaning the guest rooms in the carriage house. You know we got six coming for the weekend. I came running when I heard the siren, but I got there too late. They told me all about it, though.” She guffawed again. “I’m sorry, Holly, but I can just see Miss Alice holdin’ you down like she was roping a baby calf.” She stomped three times, then buried her chubby face in the dishcloth.

  Holly glared at Nelda, whom she had known longer than Burl and liked a lot better. Usually.

  Nelda held a hand up. “Okay. I won’t laugh, but this is one of the best messes you ever got yourself in. They didn’t call you Hurricane Holly for nothin’.” She stirred the gumbo with a wooden spoon and shook her head.

  Would she never live that name down? One sunken boat, a fire alarm, and a science project gone wrong in middle school had earned her the title of Hurricane Holl
y, a natural disaster, and it had stuck. “This is different. It’s all just a big misunderstanding.”

  “You know, folks is sayin’ everything at Holly Grove is canceled on account of you bein’ in rehab and all.”

  “No.” Holly drew the word out with an exasperated breath. She plopped down on an oak bench at the planter’s table. The tongue-wagging Deltas hadn’t wasted any time. Holly Grove was on the Haunted Pilgrimage Tour of Homes, which brought hundreds of tourists to Delta Ridge every October. She couldn’t let a rumor ruin the best moneymaker of the year. Without the money from the tour, she couldn’t keep Holly Grove going. What about her staff? Her throat tightened as she looked back at Nelda. She was like family.

  “Uh-huh.” Nelda adjusted the flame on the 1928 gas stove. “But I told ’em you don’t do drugs.”

  “Unless you’re going to scream it from every corner in the South, we’re screwed.” Holly’s stomach pinched.

  Nelda lifted the lid on the rice, and steam curled over the pot, reminding Holly of Burl’s appearance. “Don’t worry. Movie stars go in and out of rehab all the time and don’t miss a beat.”

  Holly looked at her wrinkled red dress and bare feet. She raked a hand through her hair, and it tangled in a snag of blond curls. “But I’m no movie star.”

  “You’re ’bout the closest thing we got in St. Agnes Parish.”

  “Have you looked at me lately?”

  “Sure.” Nelda spooned some rice in a bowl. “You done lost ’bout ten pounds and wears lipstick more since Burl passed, God rest his soul. Don’t forget you was Sugarcane Queen.”

  “That hardly counts.” She would never have won if the virus she’d had the week before—which knocked several pounds off her—hadn’t swept through the competition on pageant day.

  “That flu didn’t have a thing to do with you winning. Even if folks did call it hurricane flu.”

  Of course, Mama, Grandma Rose, Nelda, and Jake McCann—the people who loved her—had believed she would have won, anyway. Holly had loved Jake for that back then.

  A foolish teenage love for a guy who couldn’t wait to get the heck out of Delta Ridge the day he finished high school. Now Jake was probably in some foreign country, living out his dream, and she was in Delta Ridge, living a nightmare. “Well, that was fifteen years and a lot of living ago.”

  Nelda flooded the bowl with a ladle full of chicken gumbo. “You’d have won Miss Louisiana, too, if you hadn’t up and married Burl, God rest his soul.”

  “Why do you say that every time you talk about Burl?”

  “I don’t want to call him back.” Nelda served another bowl of gumbo. “It’s bad luck to talk about the dead and not say something good.”

  No kidding. Holly glanced around the room for Burl.

  Nelda shuffled to the table with the two bowls of hot gumbo. Rhett trailed Nelda, sniffing the air.

  “Gumbo’s bad for your constitution, boy,” Nelda said as she sat across from Holly.

  The first spoonful of warm, spicy gumbo hit Holly’s empty stomach. “Nelda, don’t you dare die without giving me this recipe.”

  “Humph.” Nelda chuckled. “I’ll leave it to you in my will. It’s gonna be worth somethin’ when I win the Haunted Pilgrimage cookin’ contest.”

  “Did you notice that white, powdery stuff the Deltas thought was cocaine?”

  “Yeah. I vacuumed it all up after Sheriff Walker said it wasn’t dope.”

  “The sheriff was here, too?” She plunked an elbow on the table and dropped her forehead on the palm of her hand.

  “Yeah.” Nelda grinned, showing all her bright white teeth. “He laughed harder than me when he found the fire extinguisher rolled up under your desk in the parlor.”

  Holly blew out a heavy breath. Could this fiasco get any worse?

  “Sorry.” Nelda’s lips strained to cover her grin.

  “Wait a minute.” Holly jumped up from the table. “I can fix this.”

  “What you gonna do?”

  “The same thing the stars do.” Holly framed her face with her hands and flashed what she hoped was a movie star smile. “Damage control.”

  Holly rushed to her desk. Within a few moments, she’d called and asked the sheriff to e-mail his reports to her. She perched on her straight-back chair and fired up her laptop, which she kept hidden in her rolltop desk. Except for electricity, bathrooms, and a kitchen, Holly had kept the plantation house frozen in 1857. That was what the tourists paid to see.

  Nelda poked her head around the door frame. “How ’bout that damage control?”

  “I’m going to sweet-talk old Sam into running a feature article on Holly Grove in the Gazette, since I can’t afford an ad.”

  “Humph,” Nelda grunted.

  “So, he’s a little tight.” Holly lifted her shoulders. “You don’t know if you don’t ask.”

  “Tight? He squeezes a penny so tight, he rubs old Abe’s beard off.” Nelda waved Holly off. “But you go right ahead.”

  Holly laughed. “I have a backup plan.”

  “Now I’m all ears.” Nelda pulled a chair up beside Holly.

  She tapped her laptop screen. “The sheriff and the hospital are going to e-mail my reports to me.”

  “So what you going to do with the reports? Put them in the paper?”

  “No. Better. I’ll invite the Deltas to play bridge in the parlor tomorrow for free. I’ll show them the reports and explain what happened.” Except the part about Burl. “The gossip mill started the rumor that I was in rehab, and they can darned well grind it to a halt.”

  “I don’t know about that.” Nelda shook her head. “Them Deltas, they got the best of you this mornin’.”

  Holly straightened and eyed Nelda. “You just make the coffee and dessert. I’ve got big plans for the Deltas.” And if Burl played along, the Deltas were in for a shock that would make Holly Grove the most popular plantation on the Haunted Pilgrimage.

  * * *

  Holly squirmed in her slightly tight, but most flattering jeans on the leather seat of her Tahoe as she drove into Delta Ridge. Sam’s age didn’t keep him from looking, and she needed all the help she could get to persuade him to run a nice fluffy piece on Holly Grove.

  In ten minutes, the doors of the Gazette would be locked for the night. But the gossip mill never stopped. Holly squeezed the steering wheel. She needed an article in the newspaper ASAP to help squelch the rumor she was in rehab. Holly Grove had to pay the bills now, and she couldn’t afford bad publicity or another failure.

  Holly tilted her head to check her lipstick. Too bright. But Sam had cataracts. It’d work.

  She came to the straightaway and sped around a cane-cutting tractor. The white Delta Ridge water tower stood dead center on the horizon, surrounded by a sugarcane field. The faintest outline of a faded pink heart on the tower had bled through the chalky paint again. Her stomach fluttered, as if she’d hit a dip in the road, even though St. Agnes Parish didn’t have a single hill.

  Every five or so years, the heart bled through. For fifteen years, the whole town had speculated about who had painted the heart on the tower. Only two people knew the truth. Holly and Jake. It was their secret. She’d never told a soul. Jake had left town with his half of the secret and her heart. He’d begged her to go, and she’d begged him to stay, but they had both been stubborn kids back then.

  If she’d gone with Jake, would their young love have decayed, the way her marriage had? Now that Burl was gone, she wondered if she’d ever truly loved him or if she’d married him to fill the hole Jake had left in her life.

  She drove past the old Bijou Theater, now Joe’s Swap and Trade. Bare mannequins stared through the cracked-glass storefront of Delta Style Boutique. She had worked there in high school and had bought it when Miss Darling retired after forty years. A year into the recession, the business had failed. Holly heaved a sigh. Another notch in her list of unlucky ventures. Vacant buildings and a hodgepodge of conversions haunted downtown Delta Ridge from its
past. The rural South withered around her, and she hated watching it die.

  Holly wheeled into a parking place on the square, then eyed her watch. One minute until Sam locked the doors to the public. She grabbed the quart of gumbo Nelda had donated to the cause. If she couldn’t sweet-talk Sam, she would try to reach his heart through his stomach. If Sam said yes, the gumbo was a thank-you gift. If he said no, maybe the old buzzard would feel guilty when he ate it.

  The high-heeled boots she hoped made the legs that came with her five-foot-three-inch body look longer hampered her speed. Her heels clicked as she trotted down the street, past Bob’s Barbershop. Bob had died years ago, but his daughter, Roberta, stood behind a vintage barber chair, rolling Miss Alice’s hair. Holly nearly jerked a crick in her neck to avoid making eye contact. She wasn’t ready for Miss Alice yet. That conversation would be best handled over the phone.

  Light from inside the Gazette shone through the plate-glass window. The breath she didn’t realize she’d held rushed from her lungs as she opened the door.

  A worn oak counter spanned the reception area. “Hello?” she called in the empty room.

  Holly pushed through a swinging panel and strode behind the counter. The panel sprung back in place with a flapping noise as she scurried down the hall to Sam’s office.

  His wooden door stood ajar. She knocked lightly but hard enough to push it open. “Hello?”

  Holding the glass jar of gumbo, she strolled into the room. The stale scent of Sam’s pipe tobacco hung in the air. Sam’s sailfish covered the wall behind his desk. Piles of newspapers, paperwork, and notes littered his work space. Broad shoulders that didn’t belong to Sam inched over the back of Sam’s chair, which faced the sailfish.

  A keyboard rattled under rapid, heavy strokes. “Yep.”

  “Sorry. Can you tell me where Sam is?”

  The typing stopped.

  Massive hands clasped behind a head of short, black hair. The chair creaked as he leaned back. “Vacation.”

  “Oh.” The jar of gumbo felt a little heavier, and her high-heeled boots pinched a bit. She still needed an article in the Gazette. Swallowing her disappointment, she asked, “Are you filling in for Sam?”