Waking Up Dead

by Margo Bond Collins

  “More likely he stole the plates and switched them out,” Ashara said.

  I put my head in my hands. “I was so sure we had him.”

  Ashara reached over to pat me on the back, and then stopped herself before she put her hand through me. “Look,” she said. “I need to go check in on Maw-Maw. Why don’t you come with me? Maybe we can think of something on the way over there.”

  * * * *

  Maw-Maw was still in her recliner. “Well,” she said as we came in through the front door. “I see you still got you that white lady ghost.”

  “Yep,” said Ashara. “We can’t seem to find out enough about that guy to go to the police with it.”

  Maw-Maw snorted. “What you think you gonna tell the police anyway? That you know that man killed that woman ’cause a spirit told you so?”

  “We hadn’t gotten that far,” I said, sitting down on the couch. “First we’ve got to find out who he is, then we can figure out what to tell the police.”

  “Tell me what you know,” Maw-Maw said.

  So I did. Everything. Well, almost everything. I didn’t go into graphic detail about the man cutting up the body or anything. No need to frighten the old lady.

  Ashara had moved into the kitchen, where I heard her opening cabinets and cans, pulling out dishes.

  “Ashara, honey?” Maw-Maw called.

  “Yeah?”

  “Where’d that killer man turn off the main road?”

  “Onto some dirt road,” she called from the kitchen. “Before the interstate, but after you pass your doctor’s office.”

  “Hmm.” Maw-Maw nodded to herself. “That sure sounds like the road out to the old Howard place.”

  Ashara came into the room with two plates of food--roast chicken, creamed spinach, and cornbread, and it all smelled wonderful--and set one of them down on the end table next to Maw-Maw’s chair. She took the other one over to the end table next to the couch and moved back into the kitchen. She came out a moment later with two glasses of iced tea and sat down on the couch.

  “What you want to watch on the TV, Maw-Maw?” she asked.

  “I don’t want to watch nothing right now. I want to talk more about this murder case you girls are working on.”

  “Maw-Maw, this is not like one of your crime shows,” Ashara said. “We are not working on any ‘case.’ I’m just trying to help Callie here out.”

  “Oh. So the white ghost lady got a name now, does she?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I’m Callie Taylor. I’m here from Dallas.” It’s amazing how quickly southern training kicks back in. I can be a total bitch, but you put me in a room with an old woman, and suddenly it’s all “yes, ma’am, no, ma’am.”

  And I don’t care what Ashara says. Dallas is still the South.

  “And you, young lady,” Maw-Maw said, suddenly turning on Ashara, “don’t you go acting like I don’t know the difference between my TV stories and real life. I been alive plenty long enough to know what’s what. And just ‘cause I’m old and half-blind don’t mean I’m senile. Not yet.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ashara said meekly.

  “Now. What did that man look like?” Maw-Maw asked, turning back to me.

  I described the man to her.

  “Yep,” she said. “That sure does sound like one of them Howard boys. Bad skin, every one of them.” She shook her head. “They never was no good. Always in one kind of trouble or another. Not nothing like this before, mind you. Not murder. Not that nobody ever found out about, anyway.”

  I leaned forward avidly. “You think that maybe there was something that nobody knew about?”

  Maw-Maw nodded. “There was rumors. When I was just a girl, Jimmy Powell just up and disappeared. Prettiest boy you ever saw. My momma thought maybe he was gonna marry me someday, but Jimmy Powell was just a big ol’ flirt. Didn’t mean nothing by it.” She smiled as she reminisced.

  “Anyway,” she said, “Jimmy Powell went missing one day. His people said he hadn’t just run away. They said he’d gotten into a fight with one of them Howard boys. They was pretty sure them Howard boys had done dragged Jimmy Powell off and done him in. Now what was their names?” She stroked her chin as she tried to remember. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Graham and Owen Howard. That’s who they was. Owen was always the meanest one.” She shook her head sadly. “Anyway, not much came of it. Colored boy gone missing? Sheriff didn’t pay much attention to Jimmy’s people. Said Jimmy must’ve gotten himself in trouble with some girl and run off. Either that or gone to look for work someplace else. But Jimmy’s people knew better. We all did. Jimmy wouldn’t have left without telling his momma goodbye.”

  Ashara and I both leaned forward, listening intently. Ashara had completely forgotten the food on her plate.

  “Like I said,” said Maw-Maw, shaking off her reverie, “them Howard boys are no good. You watch out for this man. If he’s a Howard, there ain’t no telling what he might do.” She reached over and picked up her plate of food.

  “Maybe you girls can just take me out there after we’re done eating. That way I can tell you for sure if it’s the old Howard place. Yep.” She nodded to herself. “That’s what we’re gonna do.”

  Ashara and I stared at each other in mutual horror.

  Chapter Nine

  “Maw-Maw,” Ashara said, “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

  “I have to agree with Ashara, Mrs. Thompkins,” I said.

  Maw-Maw reached out and patted at my hand on my lap, ignoring the fact that her hand went right through mine.

  “You can call me Miss Adelaide,” she said. “All Ashara’s friends do.”

  “Okay, then, Miss Adelaide,” I said. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go out there. That man is dangerous. He’s already killed once. I saw it, Miss Adelaide, and it was horrible. He is cold blooded. He won’t hesitate a minute to kill you, too.”

  “Well, then,” said Maw-Maw, “we’ll just have to take us some protection. Ashara, you go into my second-best bedroom and look in the bureau in there. Third drawer down. There’s a gun and some bullets. You just bring those in here and we’ll take them with us.”

  Ashara’s eyes grew enormous. “A gun? Maw-Maw, I didn’t know you had a gun.”

  Maw-Maw rested her hands on her stomach complacently. “No need for you to know before now. Go on back there and get it.”

  Ashara looked at me with huge eyes. I shrugged. Maw-Maw was her grandmother. Hell if I knew what to do about her.

  Ashara left the room and came back moments later with a pearl-handled handgun. It looked like a snub-nosed .38 double-action revolver, but I couldn’t be sure unless I got a closer look at it.

  I grew up in Texas. I know guns. I’d handled them much of my life. So what? It didn’t do me a damn bit of good when my own killer grabbed me. But believe me, if I’d been carrying, I’d have shot that bastard dead on the spot without so much as a flinch.

  Ashara clearly didn’t know guns; she handled it like it was a live snake that might bite her at any minute.

  “Well, give it to me,” Maw-Maw said. Ashara handed it over gingerly.

  Maw-Maw, on the other hand, handled the gun like a pro. Her hands shook with age, but she popped open the cylinder and checked the rounds already loaded inside. She nodded, apparently satisfied with what she saw, and clicked the cylinder back into place.

  “How long have you had that thing?” Ashara asked, shaking her head in amazement.

  “Oh, your Grampa gave it to me years ago. Just in case I ever needed it. Now it looks like I just might.”

  “I don’t mean to intrude here,” I said, “but when was the last time that gun was cleaned?” I could just see it backfiring in Maw-Maw’s face.

  “I got my yard boy to clean it for me just last month,” Maw-Maw said. “He did a right fine job of it, too. Sat here and watched him do it.”

  “You paid a fifteen-year-old boy to clean your gun?” Ashara’s voice went up several notches by t
he end of her sentence.

  “Sure did,” said Maw-Maw. “Now. Where’s my cane? I want to get back in time for Law and Order at eight o’clock.” She started hauling herself up out of her chair. Ashara grabbed her elbow and handed her a wooden cane from beside the chair.

  “There’s a little problem,” I said. They both stopped and stared at me. “I can’t seem to leave the city limits. Every time I try to, I just end up back in the downtown square.”

  Maw-Maw’s eyes narrowed. “Hmm,” she said. “Seems like there ought to be a way to keep that from happening. You just come on with us and we’ll see what we can do.”

  At this point, I wasn’t about to miss out on any part of this little adventure unless I absolutely had to, so I followed them out to Ashara’s car, watching as Ashara helped Maw-Maw into the passenger seat.

  We moved out onto the main road and headed north toward the interstate. I looked at Rick’s repair shop as we passed through the square and wondered briefly about the poor guy who had seen me dive through the closed car doors. Then we were on the main drag and heading past all the fast food restaurants.

  “Okay,” I finally said. “When we hit the city limits, I’ll end up back in the square. So I’ll meet y’all back at Miss Adelaide’s house when you’re done.”

  “Don’t you go making up your mind so fast, missy,” Maw-Maw said. “Ashara, give me your hand.”

  Ashara glanced over at her, frowning.

  “Just one hand,” Maw-Maw said. “You can keep the other on the steering wheel.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” muttered Ashara.

  “And you can just watch that smart mouth, too. Don’t think you’re so big that I can’t still smack you.”

  Ashara grinned and reached her right hand out to her grandmother. Maw-Maw took it and held it up toward me.

  “Now,” she said to me. “You just put your hand on ours.”

  I looked at her suspiciously. “You know my hand is going to go right through yours.”

  Maw-Maw just stared at me.

  I sighed. “Fine.” I reached out and let my hand hover just above theirs.

  “No,” Maw-Maw said. “You gotta touch us. You just reach on in and hang on.”

  “Okay,” I said, my voice distrustful. But I let my hand sink into their clasped grip. I felt a shiver run up my arm.

  “Good,” said Maw-Maw. “Everybody just hang on tight until we get past them city limits.” She closed her eyes and leaned back into the seat.

  I watched as we approached the city limits sign. As we pulled past it, I felt suddenly disoriented, dizzy. I closed my eyes and felt a long sort of stretch at the center of what used to be my stomach, as if I were being pulled in two different directions.

  Then I felt the pop! I had been waiting for all along. I opened my eyes, expecting to find myself in the Abramsville town square. Instead, I was right where I had been--in the back seat of Ashara’s car. I pulled my hand away from Maw-Maw’s and Ashara’s clasped grip and leaned back against the seat.

  “What the hell did you just do?” I asked.

  “And you can just watch your mouth, too, young lady,” Maw-Maw said to me. “Just ’cause you’re dead don’t mean I ain’t got ways to get to you.”

  “Clearly,” I muttered.

  Ashara shook her head. “Okay. That was weird. What did you do, Maw-Maw?”

  Maw-Maw turned her head and looked out the window. “Just thought about how much we wanted Callie here to come with us.” She stated it as if it were the obvious answer.

  “Oh. Well, then,” I said. “Okay.” Ashara met my glance in the rearview mirror and we shook our heads at each other.

  We drove along for a few more minutes in silence. Then Ashara said, “It’s the next road on the right, I think.”

  Maw-Maw nodded. “Yep. That would be the road to the old Howard place.”

  We turned onto it, Ashara’s car rumbling and bumping over the dirt road. It hadn’t rained in a while, but the road was not well cared for, so it was dried into a series of miniature gullies and hills.

  “This better be worth it,” Ashara said as she tried to avoid the worst of the ruts.

  The road might have been the “old Howard place” road, but there were more than a few houses scattered along it. Cars stood on blocks in front of houses that needed painting. As we passed by the old, run-down houses and trailers tucked back into the trees, I thought that this looked like the Deep South that was so often portrayed on television and in movies--economically depressed, backwards, more than a little frightening. No one sat in a rocking chair on a front porch polishing a shotgun and no one played “Dueling Banjos,” but I don’t think I would have been surprised if they had. We were only a few miles outside of clean, neat, tidy little Abramsville, but in some ways, this was a world apart.

  Ashara slowed the car to a crawl as we peered out the windows, looking for the white SUV the man had been driving the night before.

  The road came to a dead end at a huge, rambling old farmhouse. The house was in utter disrepair. The white paint had long ago almost all peeled away, leaving the weather-darkened wood exposed. The long, wrap-around porch sagged in places. Plywood boards covered several windows where the glass had broken out.

  The white SUV stood in front of it.

  “This is it,” I said. “I’m going to go inside and see what I can find out.”

  “What should we do?” Ashara whispered.

  “I don’t know. You really don’t have to wait for me, you know. I can meet you back at Miss Adelaide’s,” I said.

  “No, ma’am,” Maw-Maw said. “I want to know what you find as soon as you find it. You are not just sending me home now that I got you all the way out here.”

  I couldn’t very well argue with her. “Then just drive down the road a little and wait for me.”

  “Why can’t we just wait right here?” Maw-Maw demanded.

  “Because, Maw-Maw,” Ashara said in a fierce whisper, “his car is right here. He won’t see Callie, but he’s sure to notice us. Now let’s get out of here.”

  “Uh-oh,” I said as the front door of the house swung open. “It looks like he’s already noticed us.”

  Molly McClatchey’s killer stepped out onto the sagging front porch and stared at us.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m going inside. You fake him out. Tell him you’re lost or something. Then get the hell out of here. I’ll meet you at the end of the road.”

  I ducked out of the car before either Ashara or Maw-Maw could answer. The man walked toward the car.

  “Can I help you?” he said. He didn’t sound overly suspicious, I thought as Ashara rolled down her window.

  “I’m looking for Jimmy Jones’s place,” she said in her strongest southern accent. “Do you know where he lives?”

  “No, ma’am,” he said. “I think you must have the wrong road.” I moved toward the front door.

  “Are you one of them Howard boys?” I heard Maw-Maw ask. I groaned. No. No, no, no. They needed to get out of here. I turned around to the car and waved them off with both hands. Ashara stared back and forth between me and her grandmother, but she didn’t move the car.

  Dammit.

  I slipped into the house, deciding that it would be better for me to get in and back out to them quickly. Maybe that way Maw-Maw would shut up and we could all get out of here.

  I could still hear them talking outside.

  “Why do you want to know?” the man asked. Now his voice was suspicious.

  “This is the old Howard place, ain’t it? And you look just like your grand-daddy,” Maw-Maw said.

  The inside of the house was dim. Dust motes floated in the air, shining in the scant light that came in from the few un-boarded windows. It was neat, though. An old couch sat in one corner of the living room across from a television. A rolltop desk stood in the corner. A seventies-era coffee table completed the furnishings.

  I moved to the rolltop desk. The top was down. I stuck my head through th
e cover, but it was too dark to see anything. Even at the time, I thought that seemed weird. A ghost ought to be able to see in the dark, don’t you think? Well, I can’t. Not the total pitch blackness of that desk, anyway.

  I heard Ashara’s car pulling away and sighed in relief.

  The man came back into the house.

  “Stupid nigger bitch,” he muttered to himself as he moved through the living room. I bristled, wishing I could pick something up and hurl it at him. I even considered trying it for a moment--I was getting better at moving objects, after all--but in the end decided not to. The best way to get back at him would be to get him arrested for murder.

  Now I just needed to know how.

  I followed him into the kitchen, where he stood looking out the window at Ashara’s retreating car.

  Then he reached into his pocket and pulled something out. I moved in closer to him. He held a tiny key in his hand, staring down at it and bouncing it lightly in his hand. I leaned over and peered at it closely. He started a bit and shivered, looking around.

  Crap. He was more sensitive than I had thought. He’d felt me.

  He put the key back into his pocket and walked over to the telephone. I moved closer as he dialed, but caught only the last four numbers. 5478.

  “Hey,” he said into the receiver. “I think we need to move on this.”

  He was silent for a moment. “Sure. Tomorrow. Noon. See you there.” He hung up the phone and began pacing through the house. Every so often he pulled the key back out of his pocket and fingered it.

  Then he moved to the rolltop desk.

  I knew it, I thought. There had to be something important in there.

  He slid the top up and reached into one of the several cubby-holes in the desk. He pulled out a piece of paper. I leaned in over his shoulder and looked at it. It had just one number on it: 203. I moved back away. He shivered again, turning around to stare at where I’d been standing. Then he reached into desk again and grabbed another sheet of paper.

  I was drifting forward again, trying to get a look at this sheet, when I felt a pulling sensation in my stomach, a stretching like I’d felt when we had passed the city limits. Then the pop!