There’s nothing fiercer than a mama protecting her baby. “Watch? I’d video it and play it on special occasions.”
Mama laughed. “That’s my girl.”
She made kissy noises into the phone and hung up.
Dylan said, “Everything okay?”
“My mama’s been hearing things about my erratic behavior and offered to kick some ghostly booty.”
“I’d pay to see that,” he said, tugging a coffee out of the tray and handed it over.
“Me, too.”
He went to the plate cabinet, pulled open the door. “I bought a coffee for Delia, too. I wasn’t sure what she liked, but I figure she probably likes what you like since you two are so similar.”
“You think so?” I asked, testing the lid on my cup. It was tight, and I figured it was the first thing Dylan had checked before leaving the coffee shop.
Taking down two plates, he said, “Except for the hex thing and her obsession with the color black, yeah. I never realized how much until you two became close.” Smiling, he said, “Two peas.”
The notion made me oddly happy.
He set two blueberry scones on the plates and handed one to me. “I’m planning to see what I can find out about the Harpies’ financial situation today.”
His shift started at eight thirty, so he was dressed for work in pressed black slacks and a white button-down with a dark tie. The clothes skimmed his body, hugging his muscles, and dang he looked good.
I stuffed a piece of scone in my mouth. I had to leave soon. There was no time to throw myself at him.
“Good,” I said, catching a crumb as it fell from my mouth. “Because none of the Harpies other than Hyacinth knew Haywood was the heir to the house, and I know she didn’t kill him because I asked, and her energy was truthful. Which means he wasn’t killed because of that house. That leaves us with only the blackmail angle to explore. The money trail will reveal a lot.”
“The only trouble is I don’t know if warrants have already been executed for the bank information. If not, it’s going to take time. Time you don’t necessarily have when it comes to Haywood.”
I glanced at the clock. It was almost eight, and I took a deep breath. “We can only do what we can do. Maybe Avery Bryan will have some answers for us.”
Because Haywood still hadn’t come back. For a ghost who wanted my help so badly, he hadn’t made my job easy. It would serve him right if I sicced my mama on him.
Dylan pinched the bridge of his nose. “What’s my mother got to do with her?”
“I don’t know.” I rubbed my hands over the sink to rid them of crumbs and set my plate in the dishwasher, then Dylan’s. “It’s not so much Avery, though, as her mama that has Patricia all fired up.”
“Twilabeth Morgan?”
“Patricia’s energy was off the charts panicked when I mentioned Twilabeth’s name last night.”
“Really?”
I nodded. “Do you know anything about her?”
“Never heard of her before this week.”
“Same here.” I looked at the clock again. “I have a couple of minutes before Delia comes by. I think I’ll pop over to Mr. Dunwoody’s to see what he might know about Twilabeth.”
“I’ve got to get to work. You’ll let me know?”
“Yep. You’ll let me know about the money trail?”
“First thing.” He pulled me into a hug, holding me tight. His heartbeat thudded against my collarbone as I snuggled against him. “Be careful today.”
I wasn’t sure if he meant because of the ghostpocalypse, because someone had already tried to kill me, or because I was taking Louella on the road trip. I supposed it didn’t matter much. “I will.”
He kissed me long and hard and walked out the door.
A moment later his truck roared to life and he backed out of the driveway. I gathered up my tote bag, Delia’s coffee, and sneaked up on Louella to clip a leash on her sparkly pink collar.
Sneaking hadn’t helped. She still managed to get a piece of my thumb.
As I locked the house and headed over to Mr. Dunwoody’s to see what I could learn about Twilabeth Morgan, I couldn’t keep my thoughts from drifting to Avery Bryan.
Like Hyacinth, had Haywood told her that he was the heir to the Ezekiel mansion?
Because all this time I’d been thinking a Harpie had something to do with Haywood’s death. But what if it hadn’t been a Harpie at all?
What if it had been his own daughter who killed him?
It was possible his murder had been about the house after all.
Chapter Twenty
It was an absolutely beautiful November morning as I practically dragged Louella down the sidewalk. A Carolina wren sang a sweet song, the sun was shining, and the wind was calm.
I left my tote and the coffee on my front steps because Louella was hard enough to handle without my hands full. I’d found my spare pair of sunglasses and had them on, but so far hadn’t needed them to evade any ghosts. My street was clear.
Mr. Dunwoody, as usual, was on his front porch, his glass in hand, a newspaper on his lap. “Morning!” he called when he looked up and saw me cajoling Louella to follow me up the path. His tee-hee-hee echoed in the quiet morning as he said, “Looks like you found Louella.”
“You want her?” I asked hopefully.
“No ma’am. No way. No how.”
She stubbornly refused to climb his front steps, and there was no way I was going to attempt to pick her up. I looped her leash around the banister and left her where she was.
Sinking into a rocker, I eyed his flask. I was tempted. Sorely tempted.
“What did you get yourself into?” he asked, studying the dog.
“Hell,” I answered. “Walked straight into it, following a ghost with kind eyes.”
He tee-hee-hee’d again.
I quickly told him about Virgil’s wanting Louella to have a home, and how right now I was the only option. “Unless you know of any candidates?”
He folded his paper and set it on the table between the chairs. “No one I know is as brave as you.”
For some reason I heard “brave” as “bat-shit crazy.” I wasn’t sure which was accurate. Most likely, the latter.
He gave me a quick once-over. “How’re you faring, Carly Bell?”
I couldn’t be anything but honest with him. “I’m okay.”
“It’s been a rough couple of days on you.”
He had no idea. “I’m ready for a vacation. I should have gone on that cruise with Marjie, then none of this ever would have happened.”
“You don’t like deep water,” he reminded, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.
“A pesky detail.”
His soft tee-hee-hee buoyed my spirits.
After taking a sip from his mason jar, he asked, “The sheriff have any leads on the fire?”
A pair of cardinals flitted between the branches of a poplar in his side yard. “They were waiting on fingerprints, the last I heard. Could take weeks.”
Slowly, he rocked. “It’s a bad business you’re mixed up in.”
“Sure enough. No one knows anything, saw anything, had anything to do with anything.”
His beard was starting to come in nicely, but I liked his face clean-shaven. For a skinny man, he had full round cheeks that jiggled when he laughed, and I missed seeing them.
“That’s a lot of anything,” he said.
I smiled. “Don’t I know it.”
He had on a red, white, and blue checkered bow tie this morning and blue suspenders paired with his white dress shirt. Oh so casually, he said, “Saw Patricia Davis Jackson tearing out of your house last night ’bout eight or so.”
“Yep.”
Nodding thoughtfully, he said, “Sometimes people make certain choices and think they need to live with those decisions, not realizing that they have the power to make another choice altogether.”
Undoubtedly there was wisdom in his words I was supposed to embrace
, but I was having trouble deciphering the message. “What kind of choices? To be a mean-spirited woman intent on making her son miserable?”
His brown eyes shined with sympathy. Rocking rhythmically, he said, “She’s intent on no such thing, and you know it. A long time ago, for whatever reason, she made a choice to not accept you in Dylan’s life, and she’s a stubborn pigheaded woman. Her choice is making her miserable, and yet she can’t see that there’s another option. She’s blind to it, terrified.”
Intrigued, I asked, “Terrified of what?”
“That she might have been wrong. Patricia can’t abide being wrong.”
I wasn’t sure she had been wrong a day in her life.
“I’m worried about Dylan,” I said softly. “None of this is fair to him.”
“He can handle what comes his way.” The rocking stopped. “But can you?”
I glanced at him.
He held my gaze. “Are you strong enough to let him hurt without feeling guilty about being part of what caused the pain? Because if a storm is brewing, he needs to know you’ll be there for him and not run away, thinking you’re saving him from even more agony.”
His words hurt, cutting to my soul.
Because I’d run before.
During our second attempt at getting married, I’d left Dylan standing at the altar and had literally run out of the chapel.
I bit my thumbnail. I didn’t want to lose him. I just didn’t want to be why he had broken ties with his mama.
Mr. Dunwoody’s rocking started up again. “The choices to be made now are yours, Carly Bell.”
My chest ached. “I know.”
We sat in silence for a stretch, and I began to wonder where Delia was. It had to be past eight at this point. It was much easier to think about her rather than the mucky mess my life was in.
When I heard a car coming down the street, I craned my neck. It wasn’t Delia, however. It was my aunt Eulalie. She swerved into her driveway, bumping over a curb and nearly taking out a holly bush in the process.
Driving was not her forte.
Eulalie parked, saw us and waved, and made her way over through the connecting gate between the yards. “Hidy-ho!”
We waved.
She carefully tiptoed through the grass so her heels wouldn’t stick into the ground, and nearly tripped when Louella lunged at her, her teeth aiming straight at Eulalie’s ankle.
“Yeee!” Eulalie screamed, wobbling backward.
I dashed down the steps, grabbed Louella’s leash, and pulled her backward. “Down!” Louella didn’t listen to a word I said, intent on taking a chunk out of Eulalie. “Go on around,” I told my aunt. “I’ve got her.”
Eyes wide, Eulalie skirted around the dog and climbed the steps as fast as she could. Once she was on the porch, she pressed a hand to her chest and exclaimed, “What in tarnation!”
“Carly adopted a devil dog,” Mr. Dunwoody said, handing her his flask.
Aunt Eulalie unscrewed the top of the flask and tipped her head back. Giving her head a shake, she said, “Hooey! That stuff’s like to kill you.” Then she took another swallow and handed him back the flask. “Thank you kindly.”
I adjusted Louella’s leash, giving it a shorter range of motion. “She’s . . . special. You’re not looking to adopt a special kind of dog, are you?”
“Oh hell no.” She sat in the rocker I just vacated, adjusting her voluminous skirt and taking off a floral neckerchief. “I’ve done had it up to here with special. I’ve just come from the hospital to see Wendell Butterbaugh and he’s specialing all over the place. He was set to come home today, but he’s convinced the doctors that he’s dying, and they’re running every test known to man.”
Mr. Dunwoody laughed his tee-hee-hee.
She frowned at him.
“You volunteered, Eulalie,” he reminded her.
“I thought the heart attack would knock the weak constitution straight out of him, but all it’s done is made it worse. Lord-a-mercy. You don’t see Johnny Braxton acting like that, making a fuss over every little thing.”
Everything made sense now as to why Eulalie had volunteered to watch over Mr. Butterbaugh. She thought he’d be her Johnny. Johnny Braxton had a heart condition I’d diagnosed, but he hadn’t yet visited a doctor about it because he was a stubborn ass.
The Odd Ducks had an odd pact to always do everything as a trio. If one bought an inn, they all bought inns. It had been this way all their lives until Marjie bucked the tradition and started dating Johnny, while the other Ducks didn’t even have boyfriends. Aunt Hazel had since started dating mailman Earl Pendergrass, but Eulalie was still on the hunt and clearly feeling left out of her family dynamic.
“Johnny has his own issues,” I said.
“Am I on a cruise right now?” she asked. “No, I am not. I’m stuck here with a hypochondriac and I was almost attacked by a devil dog. I rest my case.”
Mr. Dunwoody started to laugh until she glared at him. He picked up his glass and took a long swallow, nearly draining the amber liquid.
“You have Mr. Dunwoody and me,” I said. “Plus, you know how Marjie gets motion sick. She’s probably having a terrible time.”
“You think?” she asked hopefully.
“Definitely.” She didn’t need to know I’d given Marjie a potion for seasickness before she left.
“That does make me feel better.” Standing up, she dusted herself off. “I best get going. I promised Wendell I’d bring him some slippers and an electric blanket. He’s chilly.” She rolled her eyes.
As we watched her sashay back to her place, another car came down the street, and I leaned forward to see if it was Delia.
It wasn’t.
“You expectin’ someone?” Mr. Dunwoody asked.
“Delia. We’re headed off to deliver Jenny Jane Booth to Opelika. And then we’re going to Auburn to meet up with Avery Bryan. I’m starting to think Haywood must be down there with her, too. I haven’t seen him since the fire.” I glanced Mr. Dunwoody’s way. “I’m pretty sure he’s her daddy.”
His eyes went round. “Well, if that don’t beat the band, I don’t know what does.”
Louella gave up her stoic stance and plopped to the ground, stretching out. “Her mama is Twilabeth Morgan. Do you know her? She and Haywood were married for a minute back in the late eighties.”
“Twilabeth? Sure thing. Prettiest little thing you ever did see, all big green eyes and curly blond hair. Smart as a whip. I always wondered where she’d gotten off to. She left town right after the divorce. I worried a fair bit about her over the years, hoping she was all right.”
“Why wouldn’t she be?”
He tapped his head. “She was fragile, up here. Went through a period of deep depression just before she met Haywood, as I recall. Tried to kill herself more than once. She took a leave of absence from her job as a secretary at the courthouse and ended up quitting altogether to enter an inpatient psychiatric program.”
How terrible. “What pain she must have been in.”
“She seemed better when she met Haywood, and it was a shock when they divorced. Most around here feared she’d fall back into a depression. Then she moved and no one ever knew what became of her.” He picked up his glass. “Is she living in Auburn, too?”
“I don’t know. All I know is she once owned the house Avery is living in.”
“You let me know what you find out, y’hear?”
“I will.” I glanced down the street again. No sign of Delia. “Do you know what Patricia might have to do with Twilabeth? She has strong feelings toward her, but won’t admit to any of them.”
“Patricia? Can’t say I do. They didn’t run in the same circles. Twilabeth was down to earth, and Patricia has always had her nose in the air. Twilabeth worked nine to five, and Patricia was busy with her committees and party planning. This was when Dylan was little, so she was busy with him, too.” He shook his head. “Are you sure about the energy?”
“Positive.�
�
There was definitely bad blood between them, and I hoped beyond hope that Avery Bryan would be able to tell me what it was.
Chapter Twenty-one
The reason why Delia had been late was a failure on our part to plan ahead how we were going to get Jenny Jane down to Opelika.
In a closed space like the car, her ghostly presence was entirely too close, which Delia had learned rather quickly this morning when she set off to drive to my house without the use of her right arm. Delia had struggled for half an hour to find a proper distance for Jenny Jane to follow that wouldn’t have Delia experiencing the symptoms of a stroke.
That distance was twelve feet, which explained why she was floating behind the car and not in it with us as we drove down I-65.
It would have been easy enough to just give her the address and tell her we’d meet her there, but as she couldn’t read, she couldn’t decipher street signs, and Opelika was so far away from Jenny Jane’s comfort zone it might as well have been Paris. She didn’t seem to mind flying behind us—in fact she had a big smile on her face.
It was an almost four-hour drive to Moriah Booth Priddy’s house including pit stops, and we were still a half an hour out. Elvis sang on the radio, and I was growing sleepy in the warm sunshine. If I couldn’t hibernate on All Souls’ Day, being on a road trip was the next best thing.
Delia glanced over at me said, “I think I found out what Idella Deboe Kirby is being blackmailed about.”
Suddenly wide awake, I turned to her. “What?”
“I started thinking about how you mentioned Idella’s letter had been postmarked from New Orleans and how Haywood’s had been postmarked from Auburn. The towns seemed like clues to me. If Hay was being blackmailed because of his daughter, and his daughter lived in Auburn . . . So I started looking into what kind of history Idella might have in New Orleans.”
I hadn’t even thought of the postmarks being clues. I wondered where the other letters had been postmarked from. Would the mayor’s be from Montgomery, because that’s where the casino was? Would Hyacinth’s be from Hitching Post, because that’s where she did the majority of her drinking? Patricia’s was too big a question mark to even hazard a guess.
magic potion 03 - ghost of a potion Page 19