Not Quite Clear (A Lowcountry Mystery) (3 page)

“Maybe afterward. To celebrate. Amelia and I will open the library a little late and Mr. Freedman will have to look the other way since his dog started this whole thing.”

“What’s that, now?”

We get dressed while I relay the rest of what Mel told me, which is, as she claimed, the best part of the story—at least as far as
humor is concerned. Then I follow him downstairs and decide to ride with him into town. I can walk back here later, or make Amelia drive me, or maybe we’ll both decide to stay over here since at least this place doesn’t have dead bodies floating in the river a few hundred yards away.

A shudder works down my spine as we traverse the few blocks into town, trying to focus on the sunshine, on the
silver lining. I have a sinking feeling that making that deal with Mama Lottie will mean inviting more darkness into Heron Creek. And that maybe I should be worrying about everyone, not only my family.

The police station is bustling with activity. Which is hard to achieve, considering the department only has three employees—well, four now, with Will—but the presence of Beau, Amelia, and myself
help. For once, neither of the Ryan twins pick me up like baboons. It could be because of the seriousness of the morning, but more likely it’s because Beau’s here. It’s not that he doesn’t have a sense of humor, but the twins have always been the doff-the-cap-and-avert-the-eyes types when authority figures step into the room.

It seems to have escaped them that
they’re
authority figures now. We
can only hope, for the sake of people everywhere who love decorum and good sense, they don’t realize that for a good long while.

“Good morning, Miss Harper. Mayor Drayton.”

“Oh, for the love of Pete, Travis. It’s Graciela. That’s Beau.”

“You can actually keep calling me Mayor Drayton,” Beau corrects, his jaw set and a glint in his golden gaze.

I roll my eyes. “Whatever.”

Amelia steps to my
side and takes my hand. Her green eyes are wide, unsure, an expression that’s somehow better than the depressed melancholy that’s been her norm lately. Her presence reminds me that we’re here for a reason other than to quarrel with the town’s detective, and we both turn stares on him.

“If you’ll come with me.” Travis glances at Beau. “You can come, too. I assume you’ll want to be briefed.”

“You assume correctly.” Beau steps closer to me, one hand hovering near enough to transfer some heat.

We tromp down the hall after the detective, into the only office with a door. Travis normally doesn’t use this room. Every time I’ve been here, he’s been sitting at one of the four desks in the main room—this one is really for whoever is in charge of watching the single jail cell across the hall.
So it’s basically always empty unless Strange Sal is sleeping off a bender or someone needs a few hours to cool off after a real bang-up domestic dispute.
 

It’s seen quite a bit less use since I moved away, according to…well, everyone.

Regardless of whether the desk belongs to Travis, he plops down into the spinning chair behind it and gets comfortable. A pile of manila folders is stacked on
the desk, and the old, boxy desktop computer has a layer of dust that even I find impressive.

Beau pulls out chairs for my cousin and me, letting us sit while he prowls behind us like a lion protecting his pride.
 

“Well, I’m going to assume that you’ve heard the basics since everyone in town somehow knew before I pressed the power button on the coffeepot this morning.” He looks to us for confirmation
but none of us move.

It makes him sigh. He looks tired, with dark smudges under his eyes and the skin on his face paler than usual, especially since he’s taken up fishing since coming to town. People say lots of things about fishermen, but you can’t accuse them of being pasty.

“Around five o’clock this morning, your neighbor, Mrs. Walters, was out for a walk along the river when she was startled
by a varmint of some sort and almost stumbled into the water. There, in the reeds, she found the body of Zaierra LaBadie who, as you know, used to be the town’s librarian.”

“Before she tried to kill us,” Amelia interjects, defensive.
 

I cut her a sidelong look, wondering why she’s feeling like she needs to explain anything. Travis wasn’t the detective here when the crazy shit hit the fan, but
there’s no way he hasn’t sniffed out all the sordid details. More likely they’d been offered up freely at one of any number of spots around town.

“Right.” Travis brushes her with a concerned look of his own before continuing. “There was an open case file when I took this job, so I’m familiar with the details. We’ve been looking for her, in conjunction with the state and federal authorities, with
no luck.”

My lips twitch in an expression of doubt. The woman had been leaving voodoo bags and hexing us for months, but no one seemed to be able to find her. Bang-up police work.

“At any rate, it’s not obvious from the state of the body whether there was any foul play involved. We’re doing a full autopsy before deciding how to proceed.”

“What did you want to see us about, then?” The question
comes from me, even though my thought process hasn’t quite caught up with my mouth. My brain is stuck on the uncertainty of whether foul play was involved, but as my devils so cleverly pointed out earlier, I’d be lying to myself to believe that Mama Lottie and this whole curse thing is somehow not involved, that Mrs. LaBadie died behind our house by coincidence.

Right.

“Well, the body was found
on your property, and as the two of you have a long history with the deceased…” It’s not hard to notice that Travis is avoiding calling LaBadie the “victim.” It eases the tension in my neck just a tad, enough that I don’t feel like baring my teeth. “The feds and state police were already involved and we notified them of the development earlier this morning. They’re going to be in touch since they’ve
got their own cases to close on this one.”

“Fabulous.” I close my eyes, feeling a headache coming on right between my eyes. “Do you want to go ahead and talk to me about that other case since I’m already here?”

Travis toys with one of the files on the desk. “I’ll get back to you on that. This is going to take priority for a few days, and I can assume you’re not going on the lam anytime soon.”

“Not planning on it.”

“This is getting out of hand, Travis.” Beau’s voice is gravelly and holds an edge that makes us all pay a little more attention. “Gracie and Amelia both have alibis for last night, and if you could actually figure out
when
the latest robbery took place, Gracie could give you one for that, too. This is bordering on harassment, and if you come near either of them again without
a legitimate, evidence-based reason, you and I are going to have a discussion about your future in this town.”

Amelia stiffens beside me, and my own heart sinks. He sounds so much like his mother right now, so much like the entitled, rich, Charleston snob that he swore he wasn’t when we met. He senses our disquiet a moment later and drops a hand to the back of my chair. Travis doesn’t respond,
and when Beau speaks again his voice is back to normal. Soft. Respectful.

“You know I respect your office, Travis, and you do a fine service. I’m sorry. It’s just that so much has been happening, and it all seems to surround my girlfriend. I’m frustrated.”

“As am I, Mayor Drayton.” Travis’s gaze travels from Amelia, to me, to Beau. “As am I.”

Chapter Three

Beau goes to work, leaving me with a kiss and a whispered apology, the tight, worried feeling of his hand around my bicep lingering after his departure. Amelia trails by my side like one of my ghosts as we step lightly along the stone sidewalks on our way to the library. We’re early; it’s ten minutes until eight. Neither of us suggests we stop off at Westies to grab tea
or coffee, and my craving for pancakes with blueberry syrup seems as though it must have belonged to some other girl.

Some girl who didn’t spend her nights talking to vengeful dead slaves and her mornings facing vague accusations across the desk from a policeman. That girl
got
to enjoy a leisurely breakfast with her handsome, powerful boyfriend before they both went to work. She probably didn’t
even mind when he got protective because really, that’s normal.

But I’m not normal. My life
isn’t normal, and my brain
definitely
isn’t normal. This whole situation has me feeling like all of Heron Creek is poised at the edge of a cliff. Worse, after what happened with Mama Lottie—and Mrs. LaBadie—it feels like I might be the only one who can pull it back toward safety.

Or push it off.

Amelia
drops into the chair at what we generally consider my desk—the one up front, with the old computer on top that we use to look up books and place new orders—and puts her head in her hands. “I don’t know, Grace. I don’t know. Is this good? Is it bad? Doesn’t it just mean that someone else, someone we don’t know enough to be afraid of, is going to take her place?”

Her questions tumble around in
my head, and when she doesn’t get an answer, Millie opens her eyes. They’re confused, the way they were in the police station, but not desolate. Worried but not defeated. A piece of my heart lifts up, as though turning its face toward some invisible sunlight, and for the first time in weeks, hope sparks.

“I have to tell you something.” I bite my lip, glancing around to make sure no one has snuck
into the library. Our boss isn’t even here yet, and we’ve got the place to ourselves. Even so, I move closer, around the back of the desk, and lower my voice to a near whisper. “I think Mama Lottie killed LaBadie.”

Her emerald eyes go wider and her mouth falls open, but only for a moment. Then she snaps it shut, raises an eyebrow, and gets down to business.
 

The transformation is so
Millie
that it makes me want to cry. “Why do you think that?”

“I went to talk to her last night, with Daria. She’d said that she knew about the curse and that she could help us, remember?” I’m not sure she does, because the last time we tried to discuss it she’d just gotten the news that no one would take her custody case against her ex-in-laws. At least that hurdle is behind us, thanks to Beau talking
to one of his law school friends.
 

Unfortunately, his family’s law firm did take the case
against
Amelia…

But now my cousin nods, focused this time. I swallow. “I had to go back because she said she wanted something in return for her help, but the cops showed up the last time and interrupted us.”

“Grace, seriously. Could you please get to the point before I die waiting?”

The snappish words
make me wince. The worry that she’ll die, either by her own hand or by some mysterious one, has not been far from my mind since this whole curse came to light.

“She says she’ll help us break our family’s curse if I help her put a new one in place. On Beau’s family.”

It hurts to say the words, as though uttering them could breathe life into them, send them scurrying into the corners of Beau’s
office, into the eaves of the big house by the river. They might be tumbling down the side of the highway toward Charleston, catching rides on sunbeams as they bounce off the water, each on its way to seek out a person that my boyfriend calls family.

Before my cousin can formulate an answer or I can let out the breath growing cold in my lungs, a gush of fall air blows in from the street. The
smell of sweet peas and crisp fruit trees threads through my hair. Before I turn around, the look on Millie’s face tells me that whoever’s intruding on our conversation is a friend.

So, not Mrs. Walters, then.

“What are you two talking about? LaBadie? Hurry. Tell me everything. I have to be at work in ten minutes.” It’s Mel, her blond curls falling out of her haphazard bun and holding her heels
in her hand.

She never did like wearing shoes.

Her earnestness would make me giggle, if everything weren’t such a tangled mess. Amelia does give in to a sort of half snort before climbing out of the swivel chair and walking around the desk. I follow, poking a gaze at the door over Mel’s shoulder. It’s fallen closed, and from here, there’s no one visible on the street. We don’t typically get
patrons until midmorning at the earliest, but these days it certainly feels as though the walls have ears.

“So?” Mel presses.

“Grace here was just telling me that she thinks a voodoo ghost killed Mrs. LaBadie.”

To her credit, Mel takes this information pretty much in stride, with the exception of losing her hold on one of her sensible, nude, accountant heels and dropping it to the cheap carpet.
“What?”

It’s only now that I realize how long it’s been since Mel and I have really talked. She’s been busy with her family—plus, she and Will both have new jobs—and since Amelia has been doing so crappy, it seems as though the two of them haven’t been chatting much, either.

“I met a ghost on the Drayton property the night Beau got bitten by that snake. She was trying to save me, it seemed like,
since she killed the snake, and then later she told me she knew about the curse on my family and that she could help us break it.”

“
If
Grace helps her put a curse on Beau’s family,” Amelia clarifies.

Mel stays quiet. Her eyes lock on me, waiting patiently for the rest of the story before she makes a comment or gives any advice. That’s the way Mel is, but in my heart, I already know what she’ll
say. Amelia is family. Little Jack is family. We do what we have to.

I harden my heart and keep going. “According to Mama Lottie—the ghost—she was a free girl living up north somewhere when she was kidnapped and sold into slavery. She thinks the Draytons knew it but kept her enslaved anyway because of her ability to heal and other things she did for the family.”

“So she wants revenge,” Mel observes.
We stand together in silence for so long Mel checks her watch and sighs. “I’ve got to get to work, but is there anyone we can ask about this? Didn’t you two make friends with some voodoo lady in Charleston?”