The boy was nodding at their conversation.
“How did you get here?” I asked.
Shane raised his hands in a palms-up motion. “I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember who killed you?” Clove looked doubtful. At least she wasn’t terrified anymore.
“No,” Shane glared in her direction.
“Is that normal?” Clove turned to me.
“Sometimes it takes them awhile,” I said.
“Will I eventually remember?” Shane asked.
“I don’t know. I hope so.” Actually, given the way that he died, I wasn’t hopeful that Shane would remember his final moments. Maybe they were too horrible for him to process – and that was why he had forgotten them.
“Do you think my mom knows I’m dead?” He looked like he was going to cry.
“I don’t know,” I said. “They didn’t know who you were this afternoon.”
“She’s going to be all alone now,” Shane said bitterly.
“I’ll make sure I tell them who you are tomorrow,” I promised Shane. How I was going to explain my knowledge of his identity was a conundrum I would tackle then.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Until then, why don’t you come with us,” I offered.
“That’s a good idea,” Thistle said. “If he does remember, we don’t want to have to come back here.”
“You want me to go home with you?” He seemed almost relieved.
I paused for a second. I really didn’t want him hanging around our house. If the aunts saw him, or heard him for that matter, it would raise a lot of difficult questions I wasn’t ready to answer.
“For tonight,” I said. “Then you can go and hang around at Thistle and Clove’s magic shop tomorrow with them.”
Seemed like a good solution to me.
Thistle gave me a dirty look. “Why the magic shop?”
I turned to her and smiled sweetly. “This was your idea. I figured you’d want to help – especially since I know you can hear him. Just think of yourself as his guardian angel.”
Shane seemed to be coming out of his funk, because he was smiling when he got a better look at Thistle under the moonlight.
“My guardian angel is hot!”
Thistle turned to me. The fake smile on her face looked like it was carved out of granite. When I didn’t budge on my earlier proclamation, though, she sighed reluctantly. “Fine, he can come to the magic store.”
She turned on her heel and started to head out of the corn maze. I smiled as Shane readily followed us.
“Aw, man, you all have asses like super models! Can I watch you in the shower?”
Clove turned to me as I paused to let her enter the maze in front of me. “Now I can see why he was killed.”
Eight
The next morning, I was surprised to wake up with a pronounced ache in my back. Last night’s activities were coming back to haunt me – in more ways than one. Shane had been a chatterbox the entire way home. Once he came out of his shell, we couldn’t shut him up. And, like most teenage boys, he was a vulgar little sex monster.
“Do you guys have boyfriends?”
I heard Shane asking the question as I exited my bedroom the next morning. I smiled when I saw Thistle and Clove sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee. They both looked as tired as I felt.
“No,” Thistle said shortly.
“Thistle is hoping to have one soon, though,” Clove supplied. After last night’s scare, she was back to her favorite activity: Irritating Thistle.
Thistle shot her a death glare.
“I bet he’s hot,” Shane said.
“He is,” Clove agreed.
“My mom said that I would grow into my looks one day,” Shane said sadly. “I guess that will never happen. I’ll never get the chance to get a hot girl.”
“I’m sure you’re cute,” Clove said.
I regarded Shane’s baby face – and the smattering of acne across his cheeks that was now readily apparent in the daylight – and sighed internally. I felt bad for Shane. Not only had he died a horrible death, but if he did remain a ghost for any extended period of time, he was going to be a teenage ghost with zits.
“Good morning,” I said brightly, announcing my presence when I entered the room.
“What’s good about it?” Thistle grumbled.
“Didn’t you sleep?”
“Who can sleep with Captain Can’t Stop Talking in the house?”
I turned to Shane, who was studying his shoes sheepishly. “I didn’t mean to keep her up,” he said. “I just couldn’t sleep – do ghosts even sleep? – and I guess I got carried away.”
I smirked at Thistle when I saw the dark circles under her eyes and the grim expression on her face. “I’m sure Thistle didn’t really mind,” I lied. “She’s just grumpy until she has at least three cups of coffee in her system every morning.”
Shane brightened considerably at my statement. “My mom is like that, too.”
“See, Thistle,” I teased. “You’re just like his mom.”
Despite the fact that Shane had proved to be a tenacious little horn dog, I couldn’t help but like him. Plus, the reminder of the way he died was weighing heavily on me – so I had more sympathy for Shane than I would a normal teenager.
“I need to take a shower,” Clove announced.
“So? Do it. You want us to give you an award or something?” Thistle really was grumpy this morning.
Clove bit her bottom lip. “I can’t until . . . “
“Until what?” I prodded.
“I can’t until I’m sure he won’t come in and watch me,” she admitted, pointing in the direction she had last heard Shane’s voice emanate from.
I turned to Shane, who couldn’t take his eyes off Thistle. I didn’t think Clove had anything to worry about. Still, I felt the need to placate her. “Shane?”
He turned his attention to me reluctantly. “You won’t watch Clove in the shower, will you?”
“No,” Shane promised.
“Just take a shower, Clove,” Thistle grumbled. “Don’t be a baby.”
Clove reluctantly got up and headed into the bathroom. I don’t think she believed Shane entirely – but I didn’t want to crush her ego and tell her he’d barely noticed she was in the room thanks to his infatuation with Thistle.
When Clove was gone, Thistle turned to me expectantly. “So, what happens now?”
“I’m going to get ready for work and stop at the police department on my way in,” I said.
“Are you going to tell him who I am? I mean, who I was? I mean, who the body was in the corn maze?” Shane turned his full attention to me for the first time that morning. He didn’t seem put off by my out-of-control bedhead.
“I’m going to try and figure out if he knows who you are first,” I said. “If he doesn’t, then I’ll figure something out. I can’t just tell him a ghost told me.”
Shane nodded sympathetically. “I guess not. They’d probably lock you up in a mental house or something.”
“Probably.”
“I’ll find out what else they know on the case, too. If he knows anything new, I’ll call Thistle. Since you’ll be at the shop with her all day, she’ll be able to tell you what I find out.”
“Thanks,” Shane said sincerely. “You’ve all been really nice to me.”
After Clove showered, I left Thistle and Shane so I could be the next one in the bathroom. Despite her grumpy attitude, Thistle was listening to whatever Shane told her with legitimate interest.
“You can’t haunt the popular girl at school,” she admonished him after a few minutes. “No matter how much of a crush you have on her.”
“Why not?”
“She probably won’t be able to see you – or hear you for that matter – so it would be a waste of time.”
“You can hear me . . . and Bay can see me.”
“We’re . . . different.”
“Different how?”
&n
bsp; Thistle avoided the question. “Plus, haunting a girl just because she didn’t notice you when you were alive is petty and mean.”
“She wasn’t that nice,” Shane offered. “She used to make fun of everyone that wasn’t popular.”
“Well, in that case, haunt the shit out of her.”
I snickered to myself as I closed the bathroom door behind me.
Thistle was still in the bathroom getting ready when I left for work. Clove had taken advantage of Shane’s fascination with our cousin to get dressed and was now waiting impatiently in the living room.
“We need another bathroom,” she complained.
We did. “Tell the aunts.”
“They’ll turn it into a big thing,” she argued.
“Well, we can’t magically make one appear – no matter what the townspeople think.”
Clove rolled her eyes dramatically. “Why do you care what the townspeople think?”
“I don’t,” I shot back quickly.
“You’re such a liar. You’ve always been so worried about what they think. It doesn’t matter. They’re going to think what they want to think. Stop being so insecure.”
I left the house without answering Clove. She had a point – but I didn’t want to acknowledge that. I hate it when she or Thistle is right and I’m wrong. That doesn’t happen very often, mind you. When it does, though, it tilts my whole world sideways.
When I made it downtown, I stopped at the police station before I made my way to the newspaper offices for the day. I went in through the backdoor, like I usually did, and paused in the municipal parking lot when I saw an expensive motorcycle parked at the back door.
“I wonder who that belongs to?”
I shook my head and pulled away from the bike, entering the building. It still wasn’t 9 a.m. yet, so I knew the office wasn’t open for regular business. I was surprised when I saw Landon exit Chief Terry’s office. I couldn’t hear what his parting words to the chief had been, but when he saw me he looked surprised.
“Someone is up early,” he said with a warm smile. I noticed he was wearing the exact same outfit he’d been clad in the day before.
“What are you doing here?” And why hadn’t he gone home to change his clothes?
Landon didn’t miss a beat. “The chief had a few questions for me.”
I looked down at my watch for a second and then met his eyes again. “At 8:30 a.m.?”
“That’s when I was free, so we made a special appointment,” Landon said.
He was lying. I could tell. I just couldn’t figure out why he was lying – or about what.
“That makes perfect sense,” I told him sarcastically.
“You still don’t trust me?”
“Nope.”
I moved away from him. I was eager to put as much distance between him and the feelings he was roiling up inside of me as possible. I could not have a crush on the new town thug. My mother would have an absolute fit.
Landon watched me as I angled past him and towards the chief’s office door. “You’ll grow to appreciate me,” he said.
I turned to him and saw the knowing look on his face. I found it infuriating, not cute. Okay, maybe it was both. “You have a pretty high opinion of yourself.”
“You will, too. I promise.”
With those words, Landon turned and left the building. I watched him leave. A few seconds after the door closed, I heard the motorcycle outside fire up and take off out of the parking lot. The bike clearly belonged to him.
Great. Hot man. Hot ride. This wasn’t going to end well. I could just feel it.
I sighed as I pushed into Chief Terry’s office and tried to force thoughts of Landon and his ridiculously shiny motorcycle out of my head. He didn’t seem surprised to see me.
“I figured you would stop here on your way to work,” he said.
“I ran into Landon in the hallway.”
Chief Terry dismissed the statement with a wave of his hand. “I just needed him to clarify something from yesterday.”
Under normal circumstances, I would never suspect Chief Terry of lying. The fact that he averted his gaze from mine, though, made me suspicious.
“What did you need him to clarify?”
“Nothing important.”
“Why are you being evasive?”
“Why are you butting your nose into things that don’t involve you?”
We were in a stand-off. I decided to move on from the Landon debate and broach the Shane subject.
“Have you identified the boy in the field?”
“Yeah. His name is Shane Haskell. He’s from Beula.”
Good. I wouldn’t have to try and lead Chief Terry to the truth. “How did you find out?”
“Dental records.”
“How did he get here? Beula is like an hour away.”
“We don’t know. The state police are interviewing his mom right now.”
I paused, unsure how to ask the next question. “How did she take the news?”
If Chief Terry was suspicious of my motivations for asking the question, he didn’t acknowledge it. “Not well. The boy was her only child. Her husband died a few years ago. She’s devastated.”
“Did you tell her how he died?”
“We had to.”
Well, that had to be ten kinds of awful. “Do you have any other leads?”
“Not yet. The crime lab is still testing results. The problem we have is that fifty people were probably legitimately in that area of the corn maze – and we have no idea what is evidence and what is accidental.”
“So, what’s the next step?”
“The state boys have practically taken over the investigation,” Chief Terry said bitterly. “They’re not letting me do much. They’re keeping me in the loop as much as they can, I think, but I don’t think they’re telling me everything.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I don’t know, just a gut feeling.”
My mind flashed to Landon for a second, but I quickly returned to the conversation at hand. “Do you think it’s someone from the town?”
“God, I hope not,” Chief Terry replied truthfully. “The problem is, how would a tourist know the area well enough to do what he did?”
That was a good point.
“Maybe they scouted the area beforehand?”
“Maybe. That still doesn’t explain why they picked this kid – and why he went missing from Traverse City two days ago and was taken over here to dump the body yesterday. We have more questions than answers.”
I sat quietly for a few moments, unsure of what to say next. Finally, I got to my feet and moved to leave the office.
“Keep me informed with anything you find out.”
“I’m not exactly at the center of the investigation,” Chief Terry said. “But I’ll do what I can. I always do.”
I thanked Chief Terry and exited his office. My thoughts were decidedly dark as I made my way outside. So Shane had been in Traverse City when he’d gone missing. Somehow, he ended up forty-five minutes away, and dumped in a corn maze. That didn’t make any sense. Of course, he was also missing his heart when he was dumped. Maybe finding rational answers in an irrational crime was something that simply wasn’t possible. Maybe I would drive myself crazy before all of this was said and done.
I called Thistle quickly on my cell phone and told her what I’d found out. I could hear her relaying the story to Shane, who seemed relieved that his mother had been notified of his death.
“At least she’s not worried about me being late coming home now,” I heard him say sadly. “She knows now that I’m never coming home. Never. That’s got to be better than worrying, right?”
“Right,” I heard Thistle respond to him. There wasn’t much conviction in her voice, though. I figured she was thinking the exact same thing as I was. At least when he was missing there was still hope. What hope did this woman have now? And where was Shane’s heart?
Nine
After I
left the chief’s office, I headed to the newspaper. I knew I would have to write something up on Shane’s death, but since the deadline for the next edition was still five days away I figured I had time before I had to file a story.
Instead, I logged my computer on, and sat down at my desk. I pulled up my Internet browser and Googled Shane’s name.
I was surprised to find that the first link that came up was an online memorial for him on Facebook. I clicked on the link and entered the site. I was stunned to see there were already fifty memorial messages. That was quick.
I scanned the messages with vague interest. Somehow I doubted that whoever had killed Shane was now posting on Facebook about it. It never hurt to look, though.
Most of the messages were the generic ruminations of empty-headed teenagers.
“I didn’t know Shane that well, but he’ll be really missed at school.”
“I wish I’d gotten to know him better.”
“He was a really sweet guy.”
“He was a really smart guy.”
“He was a really funny guy.”
After sifting through all of the messages, I realized that not one person that actually knew Shane really well had posted. That actually didn’t surprise me. In the dramatic world of teenagers, they often create high profile ways to make themselves feel more important when tragedy strikes those amongst them. Teenagers are an example of narcissism at its finest.
Edith had wandered into the office and was now looking over my shoulder as I read.
“Doesn’t seem very genuine, does it?” I looked to her expectantly.
She was enthralled by the page, though. “That’s really wonderful that all these people are mourning that poor boy.”
I guess she didn’t see what I saw. “You don’t think it seems a little fake? None of these people actually seem to know Shane.”
“I think that maybe you’re a little too cynical,” she pointed out.
She had a point. I reread some of the messages. No. I was right, after all. “Not one of these messages actually conveys a genuine feeling for the person Shane was – or the mother he left behind.”
“These people have the right to grieve, too,” Edith said. “They’re teenagers. When something like this happens it makes them question their own mortality. This is how they do it.”
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