Murder on the Sugarland Express

by Angie Fox

  “One second,” I told him.

  We couldn’t leave Molly standing out on the porch while her out-of-his-mind boyfriend chased down chocolate-covered birds and tried to set fire to however many candles he had scattered all over my house.

  He was lucky I liked his girlfriend. And that the mess was his to clean up on the ghostly plane. Otherwise I would have been a lot more upset about what he was doing to my ancestral home.

  I pasted on a smile. “Let her inside the house,” I said through gritted teeth. “Ellis and I have to go.”

  “Why don’t you want me to meet your friends?” she countered. “Suds likes me.”

  Frankie dug a finger under his collar. “Suds ain’t like the rest of my friends.”

  That was true. Suds hadn’t even known he was dead until Frankie and I unearthed him in the tunnel underneath the First Bank of Sugarland. Once Suds had gotten over the shock, he’d been as good an ally as I’d get on the other side.

  Molly’s face fell. “Are you ashamed of me?” she asked Frankie.

  “Don’t be crazy,” he said, flinging a hand out, chilling my arm when it whooshed past. “I’m ashamed of them.”

  “We really have to go,” I said, taking Ellis’s arm.

  “We do,” Molly agreed, holding her ground.

  I heard a chorus of squawks from inside my house and a bone-rattling crash.

  Frankie shot a wide-eyed look at me. “Do doves and swans get along?”

  “I’m getting your urn,” I said, ducking past him. “You’re coming with us.”

  “I’ve got it under control,” he insisted, watching me pluck his final resting place from my kitchen island.

  “We’ll leave your troubles behind,” I promised. He’d see. I deposited the small brass urn into my shoulder bag.

  “That’s not how it works.” He followed me out onto the porch as I locked the door behind us. “It never works out that way.”

  * * *

  Minutes later, Ellis had his radio tuned to classic jazz as his truck rumbled down the tree-lined road toward Southern Spirits. Frankie and Molly sat in the back, she with both arms wrapped around his bicep. He looking like he’d swallowed a bug.

  “Cheer up,” she said, giving him a shake. “I’m sure your friends are just as deliciously exciting and unpredictable as you.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” he muttered.

  Whitewashed fencing gave way to an old limestone wall. Moss clung to the top. The rock wall rose higher on both sides of an open iron gate.

  We turned into the elegant drive flanked with decorative greenery. A large brick building stood at the end, with wide wooden carriage doors at the front. Tall windows with green trim lined the first and second floors, sheltered under red brick arches, with a wood turret off the back. White, hand-painted letters on the red brick read “Southern Spirits since 1908.”

  A crowd of at least fifty waited outside. For us? I hoped not.

  “What’s going on?” Ellis murmured, slowing his truck. “I told them to relax at the bar. Have some drinks, enjoy the new place.” His mouth tightened when we saw Virginia Wydell out front in a white suit and heels, directing the crowd. “My mother, on the other hand, wanted me to make a big entrance.”

  But that wasn’t him. Neither were the spotlights shooting up into the night, nor the pole lights casting their glare over the crowd, obliterating the soft ambiance of the outdoor bulbs Ellis had strung at the entrance to his new place.

  Leave it to Virginia Wydell to turn everything into a spectacle.

  I spotted Ellis’s father among the crowd. He was a silver-haired, Armani-suited, older image of Ellis. The man was perpetually at work or out of town. People said he was unstoppable, but I always wondered if he was just avoiding his wife. He hovered on the edge of the crowd, his cell phone to his ear, per usual. Most likely on a business call.

  Ovis Dupree, guest reporter for the Sugarland Gazette, pointed his camera at us as we pulled up. Ellis’s mother leaned over the wiry, eagle-eyed Dupree, her sleek blond bob brushing his ear, as she no doubt delivered last-minute instructions.

  As if Ovis listened to anyone.

  Near the edge of the crowd stood my ex, Beau Wydell. Sugarland’s golden boy, he was tall, with Chris Pine good looks and a cocky smile he currently directed at me. Heaven knew what he was up to.

  I was well on my way to ignoring him when Crazy Louie, the gangster ghost who had once vowed to end me, emerged from the crowd right behind Beau.

  I sat up straighter and gasped. “No.”

  “Don’t worry,” Ellis said, parking the truck. “He won’t bother you.”

  I stiffened as Beau hurried to open my door. A lock of blond hair fell boyishly over one eye, making him appear as playful as he was handsome. It was a calculated move.

  “I’m not worried about your brother,” I said.

  I mean, normally, playing nice with the man who’d made a pass at my sister then let his mother try to ruin me would be enough to make me want to run.

  But this time, it was the gangsters who emerged from the crowd behind Louie that made my muscles seize up and my mouth go dry. Two dozen of them, dressed in suits and packing heat. Crazy Louie had promised to make me pay after I’d knocked his skeletal head off what was left of his body down in the speakeasy. It had been an accident—I was trying to pick his pocket at the time—but try explaining that to Lou.

  The gangster didn’t “do” apologies.

  Lou glared at me with murder in his eyes, and I stared down the gaping barrel of his gun.

  “Frankie!” I pleaded. “Unhook me. Now!”

  Beau opened my door. “Good to see you, sweetheart.” His expression was warm, his voice mocking.

  Lou grinned and took aim.

  I lurched out of the truck with nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

  Frankie ripped back his power at the same moment Lou opened fire.

  The shock of the ghostly energy rushing from my body sent me stumbling sideways. Needles of pain whipped down my body. Beau caught me before I hit the ground, and I swore I felt the icy sting of ghostly bullets an instant before they became harmless phantoms of the lethal slugs that would have killed me.

  I gasped and stared up at Beau. I wasn’t hurt. At least I didn’t think so.

  A laugh bubbled out of me as I gripped hard onto Beau’s arms.

  I was alive!

  Beau smiled back at me with bright-eyed delight, and the pop-pop-pop of the reporter’s camera guaranteed that a picture of me swooning in the arms of my former fiancé, on the anniversary of the biggest wedding scandal in Sugarland history, would be all over the front page tomorrow morning.

  My only hope was that the Sugarland rumor mill was finally tired of me.

  Chapter 2

  “How bad is it?” I asked the next morning.

  My little skunk snuggled in the covers next to me while Ellis grabbed the newspaper from my front porch and walked it back in. At least he didn’t have to go far; we still slept on my futon in the parlor because I’d been forced to sell most of my furniture to pay for the botched wedding.

  “Let’s see,” Ellis said in that carefully neutral tone he’d no doubt perfected on the police force, the one that usually meant trouble.

  Lucy toddled toward Ellis as he slid the plastic wrapper off the newspaper. She liked crinkly things.

  “It could be worse,” Ellis said, the futon cushion dipping as he sat next to me and scanned the front page. “You didn’t get shot by a gangster.”

  “If that’s the bright side, we’re in trouble,” I said, scooting over to see.

  He tossed the rest of the paper down next to him, and Lucy snurfled between us, shoving her nose into the plastic wrapper and whipping her tail back and forth.

  Sure enough, the front page of the Sugarland Gazette featured a large black-and-white picture of me in Beau’s arms, holding on for dear life, gazing up at him. The headline read “The Past is Alive and Well at the New Southern Spirits.”<
br />
  How awful. It was one thing for Beau to publicly humiliate me. He’d made a sport of it. But to pull his brother into it was a new low.

  “At least they mentioned your new restaurant,” I said, unfurling the page all the way. “And look. There’s a picture of it here on the bottom.” It was small, but it was there.

  “Look at him,” Ellis ground out, glaring at the image of his brother, who wore the hungry expression of a hero on the cover of a romance novel. “He’s way too happy to be swooping in to rescue you.”

  For Ellis’s good and the good of everyone, I’d tried to get along. I’d tried to be friendly, but one hard stumble and Beau had taken advantage.

  My ex liked to think everything that happened with the wedding was all a big misunderstanding and that I was really secretly still pining for him. Never mind the fact I avoided him whenever I could.

  Ellis’s baby brother could turn a blind eye to almost anything as easily as he could turn on the charm. His brash, fun-loving attitude was what had snagged me in the first place. Still, I’d learned what he was really like, and there was no danger of me ever getting close to Beau Wydell again. Ellis knew that. But I suppose even the most confident man needed to be reminded now and again.

  “Okay, so your brother is a jerk.” I climbed over the paper and into Ellis’s lap, crushing any and all mention of yesterday. “It’s you I want,” I said, wrapping my arms around his neck. I captured him in a kiss. “You realize that, don’t you?” I asked against his lips.

  “I do,” he said, his arms snaking around me. But he was still tense. I could feel it in the way he held me.

  “Talk to me,” I said, brushing a lock of hair from his forehead.

  He sat rigid, staring at a spot past my shoulder. “I’m not angry that you tripped into his arms. I’m not angry at Ovis for taking a picture, or the paper for publishing it.” His gaze found mine. “I’m angry that my baby brother thinks he can take you back.”

  I shifted on his lap. “It makes me mad too,” I admitted. But Ellis needed to get along with his brother even more than I did. Family was important. I didn’t want to see his broken. “Tell him how far out of line he is,” I suggested. “Lay it out there and give him a chance to see his mistake.”

  Ellis sighed, letting some of the tension unwind. “I’d explain how well that usually works with him, but you already know.”

  All too well. “At least I ended up in a pretty good spot,” I said, nipping at his ear.

  “That you did,” he murmured, flipping me over onto my back, smiling as the laughter bubbled out of me.

  Whenever we were alone—just the two of us—our relationship worked. It was wonderful.

  Then the temperature of the air dropped ten degrees, and Frankie shimmered into existence right next to the bed.

  “Well, that was an unmitigated disaster,” the wiseguy groused, cigarette in one hand and his Panama hat in the other.

  “Do you mind?” I asked, shooting the ghost the stink-eye.

  Ellis plopped his face against my shoulder. “I thought you said he promised to stay out of the bedroom.”

  “This is the parlor,” Frankie countered, taking a drag, as if he were the one who should be offended. “I got an afterlife, you know. You two have been holed up all night.”

  Ellis sat up reluctantly and I did the same.

  “It’s called sleeping,” I said, adjusting the straps on my nightie.

  “Then you’re doing it wrong,” the gangster countered, blowing a smoke circle.

  “What do you want, Frankie?” I asked, giving up any pretense of civility as Lucy flattened herself against Ellis. He sheltered her against his chest and grabbed for the wrinkled paper with his other hand.

  “I need to go by Molly’s place.” The gangster stepped closer and rubbed his jaw. “She said she was fine after last night, but I don’t think she liked it when I tackled Crazy Louie.”

  I’d have liked to have seen that. “Did you explain to her that you were only trying to protect me?” Surely she’d understand.

  “Who said anything about you?” he scoffed. “Lou had my gun! I was this close to getting it back. But then the band started up, and once your head was off the platter, the guys just started fighting for the fun of it.”

  “Sounds lovely.” I was familiar with his gang’s shoot-’em-up parties. Gun battles were a sport for them—it wasn’t as if any of them could die again. According to Frankie, gunshots stung “like a mother,” and fatal shots would only knock a ghost out for a couple of hours. Then a terrible thought occurred to me. “Molly wasn’t hurt, was she?”

  “I lost sight of her until Sticky Pete clocked me over the head and I fell down at her feet. She wasn’t too happy. Said fighting wasn’t romantic.”

  “I’d have to agree with her there.”

  “I was winning, too.” He flicked the end of his cigarette with his thumb, and the half-inch of ash at the end fell off and disappeared into nothingness. “She ran back to her place, said she wanted time to think. I need to go by there and make a grand romantic gesture before she decides I’m some hooligan.”

  He was a hooligan.

  “Frankie,” I began, weighing his request. This didn’t exactly mesh with my plans for kissing my boyfriend until we forgot all about this morning’s headline.

  I glanced at Ellis, who was reading the article in the paper. His shoulders stiffened as he studiously ignored his phone rattling on the hardwood by the bed, buzzing with incoming texts.

  We couldn’t catch a break.

  Frankie cleared his throat, and I returned my attention to the squeaky wheel. “So your urn is in my purse, and you need me to drive you to Molly’s so you can attempt some outlandish declaration of love.”

  “He’s not leaving until you do,” Ellis said, eyes on the paper.

  True. But in all honesty, I didn’t think another dozen doves was the answer.

  I also knew he wouldn’t let up until we’d tried. I slipped out of bed and attempted to locate my shoes. “Frankie, you’ve got to stop it with the grand romantic gestures. Go to Molly this morning, but talk to her. Take her on a walk. Just be yourself.”

  He barked out a laugh. “You and lover boy might get your kicks lying around in bed all day, but I got Molly to like me by taking her on that picnic in the cemetery, by drawing her picture, by doing stuff.”

  I retrieved a clean sundress from the laundry room off the kitchen. “I get that, but none of those gestures matter if you can’t be yourself.”

  He furrowed his brow. “Like I was last night?”

  “No.” Maybe he didn’t need to show her all sides of himself. At least, not right away.

  “Then I need a gesture,” he concluded.

  The newspaper crinkled as Ellis held it up. “Hey, I found the real article about my restaurant. Buried on page 18A.”

  Seeing as the town newspaper had only one section, that didn’t bode well. “Some people start reading from the back,” I pointed out. Or maybe that was just magazines.

  “At least the story is positive,” he said, folding the paper back. “The food critic liked the bacon macaroni and cheese.”

  “What about the shrimp and grits?” I asked.

  “Also a hit.” He smiled. It was his grandmother’s recipe. “They did a nice paragraph on my uncle, and Ovis even included a few pictures of the ghost bar.”

  Ellis had surprised me by decorating the large antique wooden bar with photographs and memorabilia dedicated to the lives of some of the ghosts we’d met in Sugarland. He’d framed pictures and letters from Colonel Clinton Maker, the Rough Rider who kept an eye on the place. He’d put a replica of Frankie’s second favorite gun in a glass case, surrounded by vintage pictures of my wiseguy and his gang. He’d also included tintype photographs of Molly and some of the “forgotten” girls we’d met on our last adventure.

  It was so personal. So thoughtful. So him.

  I slung my dress over my shoulder and went to wrap an arm around him. �
��Now we need to do something for you.”

  He deserved it. Ellis worked so hard.

  “I want to get away.” He plopped his head back against me. “Just you and me and no one else,” he added, directing a look about five feet from where Frankie actually stood.

  “We need it,” I agreed.

  The ghost rolled his eyes.

  Ellis adjusted the paper and showed me the quarter-page advertisement on the back of the paper, near the story about Southern Spirits. “Take a look at this.”

  Need an escape?

  Board the newly restored Sugarland Express vintage train for a luxury rail journey you’ll never forget. Explore the wilds of the Tennessee mountains from the comfort of your own lovingly restored railcar.

  “I could stand to escape for a few days,” I told him, now more than ever. I took another look at the ad. “‘Be a part of our once-in-a-lifetime maiden voyage from Kingstree, South Carolina, to our hometown of Sugarland.’ It sounds expensive.”

  He leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “It’d be my treat. I have some vacation time coming at the police station. The restaurant is finished. I have all my permits. We don’t open until next month.” He drew me down onto the bed. “Just think of it: no work, no responsibilities. No Ovis.”

  “No Beau,” I said, watching his phone buzz with a text from his brother.

  “My mother will be too horrified about this morning’s headline to even bother with being scandalized about this,” he added cheerfully.

  “I could ask Lauralee to take Lucy,” I said, warming to the idea. Lauralee was my oldest and dearest friend. Recently, she’d bounced the idea of taking my little skunk for a weekend, just to see if her boys were responsible enough to commit to a pet of their own. It would certainly be a good test.

  “I’m going, too,” Frankie said, snuffing out his cigarette on the wall. “A trip out of town will make Molly forget all about the gang fight. Plus, I owe her for the incident with the band.”

  “No offense, but you’re one of the people we’re getting away from,” I told the ghost. “And what happened with the band?”