Not Quite Gone

by Lyla Payne

Especially in his uniform.

  My first thought, strangely enough, is that his feelings are going to be hurt when he sees we’ve invited people over for dinner and excluded him. I remember our chat at the police station and feel a little more okay about it, then recall that he’s given Will a job and feel worse.

  There’s nothing to be done but open the door, a fact reinforced by the irritation on his handsome face. “Can I come in?”

  “Is this official police business?”

  That makes him think, and my stomach somersaults. If it is official police business, I’m positive it’s not going to be good news for any of us.

  “Yes, but I’m not going to arrest you or anything. Today.” He gives up the hint of a smile, then shifts his weight when he finds himself still on the porch. “I have an update on the hospital case and I thought you’d be interested.”

  “Oh. I would, thanks.” I hold open the screen door, and he steps onto the slick tile in the entryway, looking around.

  “You cooking? Smells good in here.”

  “Yeah, we had a few people over and grilled out. Plenty of leftovers, if you’re interested.”

  His face falls slightly, hurt in his stormy gray eyes for a split second before he rearranges his features into a professional grimace. Travis’s go-to expression, as a matter of fact.

  “I’ve eaten. Thanks.”

  “At your desk, no doubt,” Amelia interjects, sweeping in through the formal dining room. “I knew you were working, otherwise I would have invited you.”

  “Not a problem, Miss Amelia. I thank you for any worry over my health, but I assure you, I’m a grown man and can look after myself.” The statement is polite but with a slight edge, one that’s rarely present when he’s speaking to my cousin.

  Maybe it’s because I’m still in the room.

  Now her face droops, but she doesn’t recover as fast as he did a moment before and Travis looks stricken. He reaches out, putting a hand on her shoulder. “I don’t mean to be gruff. It’s been a long day at work, is all. It’ll sure be nice to have William join us next week and ease some of the workload.”

  The gloom trying to wrap big hands around my cousin eases back at his explanation but I’m not totally buying it. I think his feelings are hurt at not being included today, despite Amelia’s quick explanation as to why. This is Heron Creek. Travis could be on duty and still have dinner with us, just skip the wine. We all know it. But they’re determined to make nice at the moment, and I fully support avoiding confrontation at all costs.

  “What’s going on with the hospital case?” It seems best to prod this discussion back on track before someone starts crying. Or telling the truth.

  Beau wanders in from the kitchen, a towel in his hands, and nods at Travis. “Detective.”

  “Mayor.” Travis looks back at me. “We’ve been able to catch a break with security cameras on the bank and another outside Pete’s. He thought one of his employees was stealing from him a month or so ago and had them installed.”

  “And?” It’s not that I don’t appreciate a good story, but come on. This dragging it out is for the birds.

  “We think it’s one of Clete’s guys—Cooter.”

  The accusation is a lot to process all at once. First, for some reason, I’m worried about Cooter. The guy wasn’t involved in all of Clete’s bullshit when he inherited Glinda’s property a few months ago, not really. It was probably pretty damned naive on my part to think he had a prayer of staying that way out there.

  “Are you going to arrest him?” Beau asks the question.

  My mind continues clicking along, sliding down muddy paths that lead to waterfalls over giant boulders. Not to be overly dramatic or anything.

  This feels off in the same way as the fake tape at the hospital with the fake ghost felt off. As though it has something to do with me, and now that Clete and his crew are involved, I feel more sure than ever that it does.

  “Grace.” Amelia’s tone suggests this isn’t the first time she’s said my name and the concern in her emerald gaze when I look up confirms it. “Dylan asked you a question.”

  “Sorry, what?”

  “I said I wanted to come to you first, since you’ve had the most dealings with these men. See if you had any ideas as far as what their motive would be coming into town. They haven’t before, as far as I know.”

  I shake my head slowly. “I haven’t talked to Clete in weeks, and the last time it was about his own business dealings. Nothing about town.”

  In the back of my mind, there’s a faded memory, or something I noticed but never pulled out and examined. I think it has something to do with Clete and Detective Travis, but it will take some time to extract it. “Will might have a better idea than I do.”

  The pointed look Travis gives me says he’s not so sure. As irritating as he can be, as hard as he can make my blood boil just by being himself, the guy’s sharp. There’s no way he’s not thinking the same thing I am—that if they chose to include a fake ghost, they were really trying to include me.

  As he follows Amelia into the kitchen to talk to Will, I sink down onto the stairs. Beau sits beside me, one strong arm wrapped around my shoulders.

  “What are you thinking?”

  I shake my head. “I’m not sure. I just have this bad feeling that we haven’t seen the last of Clete. He’s just waitin’ for the right time to show up.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The next time Dylan Travis shows up unexpectedly and unwelcome, it’s at the library just after story time the next day. Marcella was conspicuously absent, but Leo texted me saying she’s feeling under the weather. Grant and Mel pass Travis on his way in, and she looks as though she’s dying to turn back around but doesn’t.

  “Miss Harper.”

  Oh, crap on a cracker, it’s Miss Harper today. That can’t be good.

  “Detective Travis.”

  He glances around the room, which is mostly empty. Amelia is still back in the kids’ area, cleaning up the books that got scattered off the shelves and probably handfuls of Cheerios and heaven knows what else out of the carpet.

  “Is this a good time to talk?”

  “It depends what you want to talk about.” As hard as I try, my voice jitters.

  “It’s about your father.”

  “My what?”

  “Your father.” His cheeks color slightly. “Your cousin mentioned his appearance to me, and as a favor to her, I ran a background check. The results came in this morning.”

  He holds out the manila folder in his hands. I reach out and take it, those roots of dread in my middle curling deeper, winding tight. There’s nothing to do but open it and read, whether or not every instinct is screaming at me to do the opposite.

  The file is thin, just three pages, but they’re covered. Frank Fournier, with a long list of aliases and pseudonyms, has one long-ass rap sheet.

  There are too many words, some of them technical, others I’ve heard on television shows but don’t one hundred percent understand, so I close it without inspecting it too closely, dropping it on my desk. The expression on Travis’s face is hard to read, as usual, but it’s nothing like gleeful. He’s not taking any pleasure in relaying this information, which swings me back in the direction of liking him more than I dislike him. For today.

  “What’s it say?”

  “He’s a con man. First arrest when he was eighteen, according to that, so he’s probably got a juvenile record that’s locked or expunged. Major scores more than once in his career, once at an art museum and a couple of banks. He’s good.”

  “He’s a thief.” Well, that explains his unwillingness to own a cell phone or stick around town for long. I don’t know how this is supposed to make me feel but it’s pretty interesting, that’s for sure. It’s not as though I knew he existed before a month ago, so I’m not…sorry, exactly. It’s a tad embarrassing, though it’s hard to say why, and causes me to worry that maybe my track record of occasionally illegal pursuits is somehow
genetic.

  “He’s wanted by the FBI, so if you see him again, I need you to give me a call.”

  “Oh, I bet it would be a pretty big score for you, bringing down a criminal wanted by the feds.” The sneer in my voice isn’t right, isn’t fair, but my attempt at an even keel is totally whacked.

  Travis frowns but looks as though he gets it. Maybe. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this. I don’t want to bust this guy because it would be good for my career. I’m perfectly happy working in Heron Creek. But he’s dangerous. If not physically, he’s certainly got a way about him that gets people to do things they shouldn’t. He’s a bad influence.”

  A bad influence. The wording scrapes a laugh from my tight throat. “The last thing I need is a bad influence.”

  “That we can agree on, Miss Harper.” Travis relaxes enough to give me half a smile. “Call me if you hear from him. Please.”

  I nod, agreeing even though he can’t know that my father doesn’t have my phone number. Travis nods back, then glances toward the sounds coming from the stacks again, a look of indecision on his face. In the end he leaves, deciding against going to say hello to my cousin, and I collapse into the chair behind my desk.

  Frank’s not going to call, but he is going to show up again. I guess I have until then to decide if I’m going to rat him out or keep my mouth shut.

  A text comes from Daria before I leave the library, asking if we can meet at Drayton Hall later tonight. I tell her yes, then spend the earlier part of the evening at home alone with Millie, watching baseball and trying to learn how to knit. Her therapist claims it’s stress-relieving and keeps urging her to find a hobby to keep her hands busy while her subconscious sorts through her issues, but this is not going to be it. We’re both frustrated within an hour, surrounded by knotty yarn and two…things that are never going to be baby booties no matter how hard they try.

  I remind her that once the baby’s born, drinking can again count as a hobby, which makes her laugh, even though it’s obviously terrible advice. She passes out on the couch before nine, and I tuck a blanket around her and turn down the volume on the television before grabbing my keys and a flashlight and driving out to Drayton Hall.

  It’s strange being here after the sun has set instead of during the day, doubly so because the last time I watched the sun set over the Ashley River, Beau was beside me. I texted him and told him I was meeting Daria for some more training, so he’s not expecting to see me until tomorrow. It’s good and bad. I think I’m getting comfortable with the idea of having him there when I come home and vice versa, but it’s also nice to know ahead of time when my space will be mine.

  Daria’s waiting in her car in the gravel parking lot, playing with her phone. She shuts it off when she sees me and climbs out, surveying the impressive property. The sun has disappeared now, the last rays losing their grip on the edge of the horizon.

  “Nice digs.”

  “You’ve never been here before?”

  Drayton Hall is visited less than Magnolia and its beautiful gardens, and less than Middleton for the same reason. Even Boone Hall over in Mount Pleasant gets quite a bit of traffic ever since they filmed part of The Notebook out back. People are more interested in a pretty picture than actually stepping back in time, but it still surprises me when locals say they’ve never visited.

  Daria shakes her head. “I avoid spots like this. Too much activity. Leave it to the ghost-hunter shows.”

  “They’ve been here, I think,” I comment as we stroll past the house and back toward the river.

  We stop in the middle of the vast expanse of landscaped area that might qualify as a backyard, halfway between the main house and the path that winds along the Ashley. Massive live oaks obstruct the right amount of the view, draping limbs and Spanish moss around the edges of the scene like Southern picture frames.

  “So, tell me about the ghost. Just what you know, not what you suspect.”

  What Sean Dennison told me falls under the category of ‘suspect,’ I’m pretty sure. That leaves only what my own two eyes have observed. “I saw her by the river. I was wandering around in the weeds and underbrush looking for something, and she blocked my path. Scared the snot out of me, but when I tried to go around her, she blocked me again. Gave me a wag of the finger, like No way, sister. A few minutes later my boyfriend charged over and got bitten by an African snake. Then the woman killed it with her mind or a spell or something.”

  “An African snake? Here?”

  “Yeah, someone took it from the serpentarium or it slithered off or something.”

  We haven’t gotten any more details as far as how that snake might have made its way from Edisto to this particular spot on the bank. They’re not going to find one. I know in my soul that Mrs. LaBadie put it here, one way or another.

  “That is one weird encounter.” Daria purses her lips, staring toward the water. “Why do you think she was trying to help you?”

  I pause. “That might fall under the category of conjecture, but that’s the feeling I got. I don’t know why she would want to help me, either.”

  “Well, let’s just get started, then.”

  We spend the next twenty minutes going through the same process as we did a few days ago at the creepy yellow house. The theatre door opens wide in my mind, and this time I nudge mental, cement bricks in front of them to make sure they stay that way. Whatever Mama Lottie has to say, I want to hear it.

  Daria nods at me a while later and we start walking. I’m not sure if we’re going to see Mama Lottie, or where, if we do, since she’s reportedly been spotted inside the house and all over the grounds. It makes more sense now that Sean told me about her expertise as a healer and conjure woman; she would have met people and probably taken them into the slave quarters if they needed assistance.

  I am seeing other ghosts. Drayton Hall is crawling with them. That seems to be the downside about having my mental doors flung open: there’s no way to pick and choose who and what appears. There are black men swinging from the trees by their broken necks. Children playing in the river. A full-on scene of a hospital during the Civil War, with men in torn and bloody uniforms writhing on the brown grass.

  Daria wipes a sheen of sweat from her forehead. “This place is active. It’s…too much. We need to find this woman, fast.”

  “I’m looking,” I hiss back, my stomach a knot of stress.

  We’re under the cover of the biggest oak, its trunk half-submerged in the river, when she appears. She’s watching the water, a turban around her head and lines around her eyes that betray years of worry. Mama Lottie—if that’s who she is—doesn’t look surprised to see me. In fact, she gives me a slight inclination of her head and a knowing smile that’s hiding an answer to a question something whispers not to ask.

  My fingers dig into Daria’s arm, and she steps closer to my side. “You see her?”

  “She’s right there, looking out at the water. You don’t?”

  She shakes her head but then stops, her lips tight. “I can hear her. She says ask your question.”

  Mama Lottie watches me, careful now. She seems to know I can’t hear her and doesn’t try to speak. Daria can communicate with the spirits in a totally different way than I can, and having to go through her, to let a woman who remains a mysterious stranger in on these kinds of secrets, gives me pause.

  There’s no other way, though. As hard as I stare at the slave woman’s spirit, I hear nothing.

  “Ask her what her name is.”

  “I already got that. Carlotta, I think. Charlotta?”

  “Okay.” I worry at my bottom lip until I taste blood. “Ask her if she knows about what’s happening to my family, and if that’s why she was trying to save me from the snake.”

  It’s not half a second before Daria starts to nod. “Yes to both, and she’s getting impatient, like you’re asking her stupid questions.”

  “Sorry.”

  “She scares me, Graciela. She’s too comfortable wi
th being a ghost. She likes it. She’s powerful and she’s…” Her face twists, as though she’s trying to figure out how to explain what she’s feeling. “She’s figured out how to affect the living.”

  “Affect the living how?”

  “Feelings, for sure, and I don’t know…like curses, maybe?”

  My heart pounds, my mouth dry. I don’t know what to ask. My body feels like it’s on fire but also shaky, as though my knees might turn to actual water at any second.

  “She says she can help you break the curse. That it’s her duty as a hougnan.” The fear in Daria’s eyes tempts me to run as far and fast as I can. “That’s a voodoo practitioner aligned with the light.”

  I nod. The research I’ve been doing has lodged in my long-term memory. “How?” I manage to choke out.

  Daria closes her eyes, all the color gone from her face. I turn and watch Mama Lottie do the same, a bigger smile growing on her generous lips. She’s the cat who’s just snapped her sharp teeth around the unsuspecting canary, and there can be no doubt who’s the bird in this scenario.

  “She says you don’t think the curse can be broken but it can. She’ll show you how but only after you do something for her.”

  “What does she—” I stop because Mama Lottie disappears.

  Blinding light floods the riverbank, and the shouts of men and crashing footsteps fill the night.

  “Put your hands where we can see them!”

  “Don’t move!”

  “Charleston PD!”

  “Oh God, not again,” I mutter, wondering what it says about me or this messed-up situation that I’m almost relieved to be getting arrested instead of hearing what a long-dead voodoo witch is going to ask in return for her help. I might have to give up my firstborn kid. At this rate children are looking questionable for me so that probably would be the best deal for her.

  And, you know. She’s not Rumpelstiltskin.

  “Well, well, well, if it isn’t young Miss Harper. We have to stop meeting like this.” It’s Officer Dunleavy, his chocolate eyes sparkling.

  His presence eases the knot between my shoulders the slightest bit, although the snap of the cool metal cuffs around my wrists can’t exactly be counted as a comfort. “Officer, if you wanted to have coffee with me again, you could have just asked.”