Dead People (30 page)

Her belly lurched. This had been her dream when she was a child. A part of her must still cherish that dream, because she yearned to be a part of this. Her whole life she’d stood on the outside, watching other people laugh and socialize. Why not join them for one night?

They knew what she was and so far no one crossed the street when they saw her walking toward them. No one pulled out a silver cross and held it up to her. No one left the diner with their food uneaten when she entered, making her feel like a pariah. As if a sign painted on her forehead said WITCH.

“Sure. Okay, I’ll go.” Even if the townspeople of Bliss did any of those things, right now she didn’t give a damn. She’d spent the last couple hours grieving afresh for her mother. The journal’s revelations had consumed her. She hadn’t thought of Luke and what they’d done more than once every five minutes. And when she did, it didn’t bother her much.

They were adults and had sex. Big deal, so what, who cared? No one. Least of all, each other.

Kurt circled his arm around her shoulder and drew her toward the tavern.

“Wait.” She held up her boxed pie. “My dessert.”

He winked. “I’ll ask Archie for two forks and share it with you.”

The word “incorrigible” came to mind. So did “opposite of Luke.”

Exactly what she needed.

Inside the tavern, a few people looked at her oddly. She smiled and held her head up high. Never again would she try to blend into the wall as her mother had done. In the last few pages of the journal, her mother wrote:
I never get premonitions about myself. But last night I dreamed I died in a car accident going to the dry cleaners. I remember feeling serene for once in my life. A white light came and was filled with such love... I can’t explain it, but it was the most wonderful feeling.

The entry was dated the day before her mother’s death.

She’d died driving to the dry cleaners.

“Care for a drink?” Kurt interrupted her thoughts, steering her to an empty square table where they could see two of the four big screen TVs angled from the ceiling.

Grief settled in her throat like a ball of Silly Putty, she took a chair. The stools at the bar were filled with what she guessed were the regulars, many of them wearing Green Bay Packer green and gold.

“What’s good for healing hearts?” she asked.

“Yours is broken? Join the crowd.” His gesture took in the crowd. “This is Wisconsin. Wisconsin natives don’t need water, they’ve got beer.”

“I’ll remember that next time I brush my teeth.”

Snickering, he headed to the bar and left her to watch the crowd. It looked like half the town was gathered inside, waiting for the game to start. She even recognized the elderly librarian and a nurse from the Dr. Rudolf’s clinic. Yet more people were streaming in.

Kurt came back with Diane and Wendy, two thirtyish women who sat at their table. Diane said she taught third grade, and Wendy said her daughter was a third grader in Diane’s class.

They knew about Cassie already. Their eyes avid, they asked about Isabel. She told them the confidentiality clause in her contract barred her from saying anything about her current job. Nodding their understanding, they asked her about heaven.

“Can’t tell you that either. Not having died.”

“Don’t be so selfish,” said Diane, a thin woman with a narrow nose and an overbite.

Cassie’s stepmother had a narrow nose and an overbite. “heaven is what everyone thinks it will be.” She paused. “And more.”

Wendy, a soft-looking blonde, squealed and asked another question. Cassie groaned inwardly, berating herself for lying. What had she been thinking? Now she had two choices: Tell the two women she’d lied and look foolish, or lie again.

She lied again.
 

A buzz traveled through the bar. People gathered around their table. Even Tricia and Darleen hovered as people asked her questions.

After the first beer, she told them flowers sang in heaven. After the second beer, she thought maybe she should go back to her room, but Kurt was at the bar getting another beer and the librarian asked her about streets of gold, greed sharpening the planes of her face.

Cassie had been asked this question before. It always seemed odd, because what good was gold to a dead person? But she answered that people walked on sidewalks made of rainbows and authors were treated like kings and queens. The librarian raised her eyebrows with disbelief, but the corners of her wrinkled lips turned up.

Kurt came back with more drinks for both of them. What a great guy! All men were wonderful.

After finishing the third beer, she told the group that childhood pets ran free in heaven. Tears escaped an elderly man’s eyes. He leaned over the table and talked about Smokey, the best damn duck hunting dog ever.

Another woman grabbed a napkin and blew her nose.

This was fun! Cassie should have done something like this a long time ago. Everyone liked her.

Then the game started and she wasn’t the center of attention anymore. A good thing because her body was burning up. The last time she’d felt this hot she’d been naked in Luke’s studio. She fanned herself with a napkin and glanced around, but none of the sweatshirt-clad patrons seemed to notice the heat. Her pulse speeded too. Her head spun slowly, as though her brains were rotating inside her head, and she laid her palm on the table to stop herself from tumbling off the chair onto the floor.

Normally one beer was her limit, but three shouldn’t affect her this badly.

Maybe her body was punishing her for lying.

Oh God, now her stomach felt yucky. As though fire ants were holding a convention inside her abdomen. Every second she felt worse, a screw turning inside of her belly, tighter and tighter. The pain was worse than when she got her period. Worse than her first roller coaster ride when she threw up on her father’s shoes. Worse than—

She clapped a hand over her mouth and shoved Kurt out of her way. As she staggered to the bathroom she heard a few laughs directed at her. She didn’t care. All she cared about was finding a toilet and—

Shoving open the bathroom door, she sprinted into the first of the two empty stalls and bent forward, making it just in time.

Instead of feeling better, she became sicker. Ten minutes later the nurse from the clinic came in. “Someone told me you’re sick.”

Huddled on the floor next to the toilet, holding onto her stomach, Cassie looked up. The small motion set off a wave of pain in her stomach. Beads of sweat popped up on her skin. She was on fire from the inside out.

“I’m dying,” she whispered.

The nurse knelt down and took her wrist, holding it and looking at her watch. She paled as she dropped it, but Cassie was riding another wave of pain. They were coming faster, closer, lasting longer. Her body burned like a funeral pyre. Her funeral pyre. She heard the nurse open the bathroom door and yell for someone to call 911.

By the time the paramedics ran into the bathroom stall, she puked everything she had in her into the toilet.

The paramedics carried her out on a stretcher, and through the layers of pain she was vaguely conscious of a corridor of people watching them. The paramedic asked what she ate and if she took any drugs. At the hospital, after a trip that took ages while she moaned and held onto her stomach, the nurse and then the doctor asked the same thing.

Hours passed. At first she thought she was dying, then she hoped she was, then she was sorry she was still alive.

Chapter Thirty-nine

Cassie no longer wanted to die, though her eyes were crusted as she opened them to strains of morning light that seeped into the sterile hospital room. The back of her hand smarted, a needle stuck into it attached to an IV. Every muscle in her body ached, and her mouth was as dehydrated as Death Valley in August.

“I shouldn’t have left you.” Joe floated by her bedside.

She tried to talk, and a sound like a sick frog came out of her mouth. She swallowed several times. “What could you have done?” she whispered.

“Protected you.”

“From what? A bad turkey meal at the diner?” She saw a glass of water on the tray next to her. It took her at least two minutes to lift it to her mouth and sip enough to clear the dust from her throat. Every small movement brought an ache to her body. She felt as if she’d tumbled down a steep and rocky hill and landed in hell.

“From poison,” Joe said.

“What?” Her croak ended in a squeak. Did he think that was funny? Joe joked more than anyone she knew, dead or alive. And he specialized in bad jokes, so this would be perfect for him.

His usual “got you” grin didn’t appear. Instead his brow remained furrowed, and he was a shade bluer than normal, radiating concern. “I heard the nurses gossiping. They have orders to call the Sheriff when you wake up.”

She whimpered, hating the sound. Like a sick kitten instead of a strong woman.

“It wasn’t your turkey sandwich. No one else got sick. They tested the contents of your stomach and found something that heart patients take. If you’re not a heart patient, it can kill you.”

She clamped her mouth shut to stop another whimper.

“Who wants you dead?” he asked.

Voices came from the hall as she shook her head.

“No one,” she whispered. Not even her stepmother would kill her...although if someone else killed her, a bottle of Dom might be uncorked in the Grosse Point suburb where her father and stepmother resided.

Kurt? He’d invited her to the bar. He bought her beers. He wanted to look at the house.

But how would her death benefit him?

Oh God. She was considering it. She believed it. Someone really did try to kill her.

A man in a deputy’s uniform walked in with a muscular nurse who looked as if she could bench press Cassie. Joe vanished but Cassie felt his presence.

“You’re awake.” The nurse checked her pulse and held the glass of water to her face to allow Cassie to easily sip from the straw, for which Cassie silently blessed her. The nurse asked if she needed help to go to the bathroom and Cassie shook her head. No need to use the bathroom. She felt empty all the way down to her toes.

The nurse nodded at the deputy, and he stepped forward, his face smooth, not one line, and Cassie wondered if he were old enough to vote.

The nurse put her hand on Cassie’s shoulder. “If you feel tired or don’t want to talk, just tell Deputy Powers and he’ll leave.” She removed her hand and Cassie wanted to cry at the loss of the impersonal comfort. “Is that understood?” The nurse glared at the deputy.

He gulped. “Er, yes, understood. Last night, you told the doctors you don’t take any, er, medications. Do you want to change that, er, statement?”

“No,” she croaked.

“Are you, er, certain?”

Joe appeared behind the deputy, rolling his eyes.

Cassie held back a giggle and it hurt. She indicated to the deputy she wanted more water. In his rush to give it to her, he tilted it too far, the straw, ice chips and cold water spilling onto her cotton hospital gown.

Joe disappeared, silently laughing as the deputy apologized profusely and nervously. Stuttering apologies, the deputy grabbed a wad of Kleenexes and wiped the spilled water and shards of ice from her front. Cassie didn’t think he was using the incident as an excuse to cop a feel, but she slapped the deputy’s hand away from her breasts, envying Joe for being able to leave.

Then Cassie remembered... She’d almost joined him.

She shuddered, no longer envious.

Aching all over and having ice water poured on your chest was still better than death.

***

“Go away,” Luke muttered to the male voice that kept telling him to wake up.

“Get up now.”

The next words Luke muttered weren’t nearly so polite.

“Someone poisoned Cassie. Gave her an overdose.”

“
What?
” Luke sat straight up in his king-sized bed, his covers sliding down his naked chest. He found himself staring into the face of Cassie’s ghost friend.

“Where is she?” He threw aside the covers and jumped out in his black boxers.

“Hospital.”

“Is she...” He swallowed, unable to finish.

“She’s weak but recovering.”

Relief shuddered through him, but he kept his gaze on the ghost. What the hell was his name? Joe, that was it.

“Who poisoned her?”
 

“I thought you’d tell me.”

“What the hell do you mean by that?”

“Something’s going on between you and her.”

“Nothing’s going on.” His gaze slid from Joe’s. Jesus. He was being interrogated by a ghost.

“You got a heart problem? You take any medication?”

“No.” Luke grabbed his jeans off the floor and pulled them on.

“You telling the truth? I got no qualms about searching through your drawers and cabinets. One good thing about my condition is there’s nothing anyone can do to hurt me.”

“Search away.”