by Anne McAneny
Hoop assessed the rusty blue bike. The foam filling on its green banana seat had popped out from the vinyl covering in three places, like the first mushrooms of spring. “You’re gonna need good balance with me carrying this bag and all.”
Macy accepted the challenge with a snort. “Get on. Can’t have you supplying the game and carrying it home, too.”
Hoop swung a leg over the seat, adjusted the bag, and rested a hand on Macy’s hip. He couldn’t have been happier.
Macy lifted herself up on one pedal and pressed down hard. The muscles in her arms and legs strained slightly as she got the heavy load going, but after a few rotations, she cruised along with ease. As her ponytail swung like a pendulum along her back, Hoop imagined it counting down the seconds of their life together. But then he remembered the conversation with his dad and decided that the ponytail was counting up, toward the seconds he and Macy would be spending together in multiple lives.
“April Fools’ Day is coming up,” Hoop said.
“Yep.” Macy turned her head a quarter way round. “You getting me something good this year?”
“Getting you something? For what?” The tease in Hoop’s voice came through loud and clear. “Oh, wait. Is it your birthday? ’Cause seems to me I gave you a custom-made alligator tooth necklace last year.”
“Yeah, me and every other girl in the class.”
Hoop smiled and squeezed her hip. “But I gave you the sharpest tooth—and I didn’t charge you.”
“Last I checked, birthday gifts were supposed to come free of charge.” She cruised around the bend and let the bike glide as they coasted along a downhill slope.
“Mm, I mighta got you something better this year,” he said.
“Not something gross like a beaver tail, is it?”
“Don’t see what’s wrong with a quality beaver tail, but nope. For starters, I got you a card.”
“A real card? Like from a store?”
“Got the receipt in my back left pocket. Same place you keep yours.”
He watched her neck grow longer as she craned her head up in surprise. “How do you know where I keep my receipts, Hoop Whitaker?”
“You’d be surprised what I know about you, Macy LeGrange.”
“Do you know why I save receipts?” she asked.
“In case you wanna return something?”
“Nope. I do origami with them. Receipt paper’s real thin, so it folds tight. And after a while, the ink fades to awesome shades of violet or green.”
“Well, I’ll give you the receipt for my card, then. Found the perfect one at Boyd’s.”
“Didn’t know Boyd carried cards.”
“He’s got everything. You just gotta dig.”
“Sometimes, that Boyd Junior gives me the creeps, but then he turns around and helps Momma and me out. Lets us pay on credit and whatnot. Which reminds me, I need a card for Momma’s birthday.”
“When is it?”
“I’ll put it this way. We were born four minutes apart but in two different months.”
Hoop needed less than a second to process. “March thirty-first.”
“You got it. She was born one minute before midnight; I came along three minutes past.”
“The original April Fool.”
Macy steered the bike onto the rutted dirt road that led to their duplexes. The bats clunked and the balls shivered, but Macy kept her balance. Hoop wouldn’t have traded the bumpy ride for anything.
“I’m looking forward to the card,” Macy said, her voice vibrating with the ruts. “I don’t get many real ones.”
Hoop leaned forward and spoke into her ear. “It ain’t the card that matters, Macy. I mean, heck, you’re finally gonna be fifteen.”
Macy hoped he couldn’t see the deep blush of her cheeks, but she was pretty sure the heat of it had traveled clean up to her forehead. She smiled from ear to ear, realizing she was going to get exactly what she wanted for her birthday.
Chapter 19
“Is it all right if I take a few things from this bin, Chad?” The bin held the old class photos and the yellow envelope addressed to Macy. Guilt and desperation were undoubtedly glazing my features, so I remained facing the wall as I made the request.
Chad sounded pained to answer. “I can’t let you, Clo.”
I spun around accusingly. “Why not? In case it’s relevant to a murder?”
Chad suddenly took a deep and awkward interest in the floor. “Not like we’re in a wrecked old attic digging up DNA samples for fun, now is it?” His eyes lifted and found mine.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You don’t deserve the brunt of . . . all this.”
“Apology accepted. Now come on, let’s get out of here.”
The flimsy attic stairs served their purpose and we made our way down the wide hall. As we passed the entrance to the second-story tower, Chad pointed. “Betcha that’s where the poker games are held. I think it used to be a library.”
I tried the door but it was locked, and the frosted glass denied peeping eyes. But when the scent of cigars, smoky bourbon, and dashed dreams entered my nostrils, I knew Chad was right. This was the room where men forgot their daily worries and dreamt big—until departing with a hole in their pockets.
After we descended the stairs and exited to the weed-filled back yard, Chad’s cell phone rang with an upbeat bird-tweet. He looked embarrassed, as if he’d been caught feeling hopeful while I was feeling anything but. After he answered, he listened and nodded for at least two minutes, taking notes with the half-sized pen from his pocket.
“Anything?” I said as he hung up.
“They found Melanie LeGrange. She works at a travel agency in Chicago as”—he referred to his notes—“an international liaison for high-level business executives.”
“Whoa,” I said. “Guess she finally got on the right meds.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mrs. LeGrange used to lie in bed for days, claiming migraines, but we all knew it was more than that. One summer, she got so emaciated, you could almost see through her. And you could tell she was stunning once, but somewhere along the way, a demon must’ve grabbed hold of her beauty, wrung it through hell, and spit her out on the other side.”
Chad looked mildly horrified. “Where do you get your images, Chloe?”
“I’m just saying, when the bad stuff took over, it took a toll. That’s when Macy ran things. Laundry, meals, forging signatures.” I knitted my brows and thought back. “Guess the last time I saw Mrs. LeGrange was at the funeral.”
“That must have been awful.”
“You never saw a person more shattered.” I cocked my head at him, feeling like I owed him something positive. “I bet you didn’t know it was your dad who paid for Macy’s funeral.”
“That was nice. Guess he could afford it, right?”
“No, he offered that up before he knew about the lottery. Beautiful casket. Ivory and gold with a cushiony purple lining.” I swallowed hard, but emotion overtook my voice. “Macy looked amazing, like getting thrown from a bike didn’t even faze her. It was a proper send-off, even if she would have hated the froufrou nature of it.”
Chad looked lost, and I suddenly realized he’d probably never been to a funeral. That would have required knowing people in a permanent enough way to mourn them. Still, he tried to empathize. “Must’ve been a huge turnout.”
“It was. Minus one.”
“Hoop Whitaker?” he asked, something less than sympathy in his words.
“That’s when we knew something had happened. Because if Hoop were alive, he would have been there.” It was only as I heard the words aloud that their meaning clocked me in the brain. I folded my arms in front of chest and swallowed the lump in my throat.
“Anyway,” Chad said, clearing his throat, “Melanie LeGrange says she didn’t call Grace Elbee. Hasn’t thought about her in years. Assuming she’s telling the truth, couldn’t have been her on the Caller ID.”
A strange tingle sw
irled around my body and then whooshed away, like an evil spirit had dropped in, checked out the goods, and deemed me useless. I shivered. “Then who was calling Mrs. Elbee?”
Chad glanced at me cynically. “We’ll find out, but pretty sure it won’t turn out to be Casper the Friendly Ghost, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
I couldn’t shake the ominous feeling, and then something bubbled up in my brain. I took out my phone. “What was the number that the M. LeGrange calls came from again?”
He flipped a few pages back in his notebook and read: “843-7526.”
As I looked at the numbers on my keypad, the earlier tingle crushed my chest. “That was Macy’s number.”
“Come again.”
“That was Macy’s number when we were kids. I should have realized it when I saw Mrs. Elbee’s Caller ID.”
“How do you remember Macy’s number?”
“I don’t know. I spell things in my head, and I have a weird memory for phone numbers and stuff. Macy’s number spelled THE SLAM.”
Chad looked at his own phone to verify, then sighed. “So big deal. Some telemarketer got hold of an old phone book and programmed in local numbers with the hope that some sap would answer.”
I smirked. “Did that telemarketer also plan for the sap to write the caller’s name on a mirror and end up dead in a swamp seventy-two hours later?”
“Good point, but it’s less of a stretch than believing that a ghost is using Ma Bell to haunt earthly beings.” He shook the tooth container. “I gotta get this to Sherilyn.”
“Hey, did you tell your dad about his DNA on the duct tape yet?”
“No. Guess I’ll do it now.”
“I’m coming with you. I need to see his reaction.”
“What? Why?”
“Come on, Chad. Isn’t it strange how Boyd’s troubles with the law always disappeared? Seems to me something must have happened in that basement that compromised your dad.”
Chad’s turn to cross his arms. “You know what? You can be there when I tell him. Because I guarantee you, there’s a simple explanation. Old Strike is not one to be compromised.”
He leaned down to get in his car but then popped back up. “By the way,” he said, “you heard anything about a magic show coming up?”
“Magic show? No.”
He glanced at his ever-present notebook. “Mrs. LeGrange just got an invitation in the mail for a magic show here in Beulah. She thought it was weird to get a call from one of our investigators the very next day.”
“You have any more details?”
“She read the invitation to my guy over the phone.” He recited from his notes. “Never-seen, never-imagined marvels that promise to leave Beulah on tenterhooks.”
“Tenterhooks?” My face knotted up. “Sounds painful. Maybe it’s a prank.”
“Could be, but who would have known to mail it to her in Chicago? We had trouble finding her ourselves.” The sun reflected off his watch as he checked it. “After we talk to Strike, you wanna grab a drink and hash through some of this stuff?”
I remembered my commitment to Rafe, but instinct told me not to mention it to Chad. “Can’t tonight,” I said. “Gotta prep for an interview in the morning—with the dreaded Adeline DeVore. The deadline for this story is crushing me.”
“Okay, sure,” he said. “I should keep working these cases, anyway. See you at the station.”
With a stilted wave, he got in his car and drove off. Dried mud spewed up from beneath his tires like a lazy dust bunny before settling back into place. After watching his car disappear around the corner, I turned and stared at the padlock on Quail’s back door.
I wanted that yellow envelope addressed to Macy. And I knew the padlock’s combination.
I glanced around. No one but me and some tobacco-farming ghosts. Might as well give them something to talk about over their evening smoke.
Chapter 20
No sooner had I grabbed the yellow envelope and the box it was clipped to than I heard a door slam downstairs. Dang, I’d been caught. I stashed the goods in my backpack and went to the opening in the floor. The stairs hung down like the gaping jaw of a dragon.
“Chad?” I called out reflexively.
“Hey! Who’s here?” It wasn’t Chad’s voice. “This here’s private property. You best get yerself outta here ’fore I call the police.” The voice carried a decided drawl and sounded vaguely familiar. I racked my brain to put a face to it but only came up with one impression: smelly. Maybe it was just some local workman Quail had hired. He’d probably spotted the open padlock and had come in to check it out. No problem. Quail had given me the combination and I had every right to be here.
Determined footsteps clomped up the stairs and then the voice came again. “Ain’t nobody supposed to be in here, and I got a gun!”
Shit. I didn’t. And then my mind matched a face to the voice. Oh no. The tables were about as turned as they could be. This would not play out well. I got on my belly and frantically reached down to the attic stairs, trying to yank them up. If I could just grab that cord . . . and if the stairs would just cooperate by oiling their own hinges, I could—
Crash!
I plummeted ten feet. Not too horrible of a tumble, though, and a fairly competent landing. I’d toppled out of the attic head-first but had grabbed hold of the pole-thin railing accompanying the stairs, so I’d flipped midair. Still, I landed hard on my elbow, hip, ankle . . . well, just about everything that sat to the right of my belly button. By the time I got my bearings, I was staring straight into the homely, gaunt face of Zeke Carver, my malodorous, early-morning visitor.
“Well, looky here,” he said, his eyes glinting with devilish delight.
Thankfully, he was holding a toolbox, not a rifle.
“Hey, there, Zeke.” I rose up and tried not to ache in every single place in my body. “I was just—”
As I tried to formulate some reasonable excuse for being here, Zeke placed his toolbox on the floor, reached into it, and pulled out a compact .38 revolver. “Now if this ain’t the cat swallowing the canary,” he said.
I let it go, lessons on idioms probably not my strongest play here.
“You following me or something?” he said.
“No, absolutely not. Why would I be following you?”
“That’s right. Why would you? You got nothing on me.”
Paranoid much? But I didn’t care. Odds were that I could encounter Zeke on any day of the week and he’d be within seventy-two hours of either committing a crime or planning one.
“I don’t have squat on you, Zeke. You are absolutely right.” I watched for signs of shock, certain that he’d never heard those last four words before. He seemed okay, so I continued. “I’m here on behalf of Mr. Quail.”
“Whatchu talking about?”
I pulled out the note Quail had scribbled for me and thrust it forward, but Zeke frowned and looked suspicious. “Crumple that up and toss it here,” he said. “I don’t trust any high-falutin’ chick that makes guns appear from her nether regions.”
I suppressed a grin. Had he assumed I pulled this morning’s .22 directly from my ass? Ouch. I crushed the notepaper into a ball—it even had Quail Realty and Development printed on it—and threw it at him. He leaned over to scoop it up, all the while keeping a wary eye on me.
Unsure if he could read, I blurted out its contents. “See? Mr. Quail told me to use the back door and he gave me the combination.”
“You could’ve written this yerself, for all I know.” He took a step closer.
“Yes, but how would I know the combination?” I said, moving back.
“I don’t know how you know stuff. All’s I know is I got hired to work on the roof in this-here house, and I was told ain’t nobody else gonna be here.” He took another step, taunting me with the potentially hot end of his revolver. The suspended attic steps hung between us. “But let me tell you something, missy. Me and my brother, we don’t like being threatened. And we
sure don’t like no woman getting the better of us.” He smiled in a deeply unfriendly way, his tongue bulging out through the toothless space. “Way I see it, it’s just you and me here, and ain’t nobody the wiser.”
A deep-seated survival instinct took over. Fight or flight, it said. And he’s way bigger than you.
Like a good reflex, my response allowed no time for additional analysis. My body took charge, leaving my mind in the dust. Next thing I saw was Zeke’s gun-toting hand rushing to his mouth, trying to stop the bleeding from where the hinged portion of the staircase had smashed him in the teeth. Might be room for his whole tongue to wriggle through that unsightly gap now.
By the time he could even think to react, I was midway down the stairs pulling off a ninety-degree turn on the landing. As I whipped around, I glanced up and caught a glint of the gun in his hands, but if his aim sucked as bad as his idioms, he’d miss by a mile. Still, I made it to the first floor in two seconds flat and flew through the living room. Hadn’t moved this fast since a copperhead had greeted me in my laundry basket four years ago.
Halfway through the big room that contained Quail’s old tables, I heard Zeke scuttling down the stairs. “You’ll pay for that, you bitch!”
I overturned a chair behind me to block his path and kept on keepin’ on. If he did follow me out the back door, I never knew about it. I was in my car, slamming the key into the ignition, and skidding around to the front of the house faster than a rabbit with a wolf on its tail. I took the corner on two tires, swerved around his blue pick-up, and kicked up a wall of dust. As my tires chewed up driveway like a ravenous hound, I thought I heard what sounded like the report of a wild gunshot. I braced for it, but my windows and tires remained intact, the bullet no doubt landing somewhere in an abandoned tobacco field.
Sure hope it didn’t hit any of my ghosts.
Chapter 21
“Is he here?” I asked upon seeing Chad behind his desk and reading through a file. I’d decided to keep my Zeke encounter quiet since I didn’t feel like explaining how I’d reentered Quail’s Victorian to steal potential evidence in a case.