Haunted (A Bishop/SCU Novel Book 15) (2 page)

January 23

Melanie James shook her head and said to one of her best friends, “See, I think you stack the deck when you’re dealing out the cards.”

“It’s tarot, not poker,” Toby Gilmore objected. “Why would I stack the cards?”

“To give me the future you want me to have, of course.”

Toby sighed and looked at the other four people at their large table in the Friday-night-busy restaurant. “Help me out here, will you?”

Annabel Hunter shook her head solemnly. “Not me. I don’t care if you stack the deck; last week you told me I’d find that ring I lost, and I did the very next day.”

Xander Roth, dark eyes dancing, said to Melanie, “I’m with you. She cheats. I wasted my money on those lottery tickets.”

“I
warned
you about that,” Toby told him. “It’s cheating, and the universe doesn’t like that. Picking lottery tickets or winners in a horse race or anything like that is just not what tarot is for.”

“Then what
is
it for?” Scott Abernathy asked. “If the point is to see the future—”

“That isn’t the point. Always. And even when it is, the future is always fluid, I keep telling you that. You don’t plan your life with tarot, you just . . . let it guide you sometimes.”

Caleb Lee, the only one at the table not drinking wine or beer, said, “Toby is right; the cards are only tools to help you focus. When you’re centered and calm, then maybe the cards will tell you something helpful. Or maybe not.”

Scott rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Meditate and concentrate and all good things will come to you. We’ve heard the spiel, Caleb. Again and again.”

Caleb didn’t appear at all dismayed by the sarcasm. Which didn’t surprise anyone at the table, since he was virtually never dismayed. By anything.

Toby said, “Listen, I didn’t meant to start a fight or anything. It’s just that I thought reading for Melanie might be a good thing.” She kept her gaze on her friend as she shuffled the cards, smiling. She didn’t look at Scott at all.

Melanie said dryly, “You’re about as subtle as neon, Toby. Stop trying to give me the happily-ever-after, especially with Scott.” Even to her own ears, that last sentence had the air of flinty finality.

“Hey,” Scott said, “I thought the group rule was no rehashing over relationships, especially at dinner.”

Xander said, “Well, you
will
keep dating all our female friends, and then breaking up with them or pushing them to break up with you. God knows why they keep accepting you, but—”

Annabel, ever the peacemaker, said, “Can we please not talk about this? Scott and Melanie had a little fight, and the fact that we
all
know about it just underlines one of the perils of living in a small town. They deserve their privacy, and besides, it really is none of our business.”

Melanie sipped her wine, trying not to sigh out loud. They’d grown up together, her friends, and at times like this it really showed. She would have preferred her relationship with Scott—not exactly in the distant past—to remain between the two of them, but she had lived in Sociable for nearly three years now, and if she’d learned nothing else, it was that there weren’t many secrets.

Especially among a group of friends who had played together in the sandbox thirty-odd years ago.

“It wasn’t a
little
fight,” Scott said, mildly enough but with a glitter Melanie recognized in his eyes. Despite his earlier words, he was perfectly willing to pick a fight in order to rehash not only that final battle but all the others in their brief but tempestuous relationship.

She spoke up before he could enlighten the others about whatever they might not already know, saying firmly, “But it was a
private
fight. Can we keep it that way, please?”

“Now, see,” Xander said, “that’s just going to make it worse. Because we’ll all be imagining. And whatever we’re imagining is bound to be worse than the truth.”

“Don’t you have satellite TV to entertain you?” Melanie asked him, rather sharply this time.

“Yes, but it’s not nearly as much fun.” Xander was a good guy, most of the time, but he did have a streak of mischief in his nature that could be just this side of cruel, Melanie had decided. “I mean, usually it’s Scott’s conquests who get dumped; something he’s generally not as obviously pissed off about as he is right now.”

“You’re a menace,” Melanie told him.

“Just calling ’em as I see ’em,” he retorted.

Scott said to Melanie, “Is that what you’ve been telling everybody, that you dumped me?”

“I,” Melanie said evenly, “have not been discussing my private relationships. It’s a preference I have. Not unlike the preference to avoid discussions like this one in crowded restaurants.”

“Ouch,” Xander murmured.

“I don’t get dumped,” Scott said, a bit louder than he’d intended.

Or not.

“Fine,” Melanie said, “you dumped me. Happy?” The matter was clearly so unimportant to her that it caused Scott to flush a rather ugly shade of red.

“I don’t think he’s happy,” Xander noted helpfully.

With uncharacteristic fierceness, Annabel said, “Scott, can you please pack away your ego and just let it go? You were no more serious about Melanie than you were about Toby—or about Trinity. Notches on your belt—”

“Speaking as one of the notches, I should probably resent that. But what the hell.” Trinity Nichols joined the others, sliding in next to Annabel in the booth seating that enabled them all to fit around the big table. “Who knows—we all may hang in the Smithsonian one day, in the wing of Famous Conquests.”

Toby noted Scott’s lingering flush and wondered in satisfaction if he was finally catching on to the fact that the women who passed through his life and fleetingly shared his bed did so far more often on their terms than on his. Whatever he thought otherwise.

Xander laughed, but reached across the table to offer Trinity wine for the empty glass their attentive waiter had placed before her. “Off duty?” he asked.

“Yeah. And I could use a drink.”

Xander poured her wine but was unusually serious when he asked, “Trouble?”

“Not local.” She shook her head, as usual a bit hesitant to share the burdens of being sheriff of Crystal County with her childhood friends, even though the lifelong habit of sharing—even sharing Scott, as it turned out—was difficult to break. “It’s just that usually this time of year, the dead of winter, we don’t get reports of missing hikers along the Blue Ridge. That’s rough country, and in winter fairly miserable even this far south. Hikers are usually spring to fall.”

Toby lifted a brow at her friend. “You said not local?”

“No, it isn’t. Or—they aren’t, rather. Four young women reported missing from the general area of western North Carolina to just north of us. That’s a fairly small span of the Blue Ridge, even though it’s thousands of acres, and a little too close to home for my peace of mind.”

“All hikers?” Caleb asked.

“In two cases, it seems certain they are—or were. Hiking with friends, supposedly just a day’s outing during that warm spell we had around Christmas, so not that unusual; in a rough winter, people want to get out when the weather’s unexpectedly good. Except that according to their friends, they were there one moment and gone the next.”

“All four went missing, then?” Scott asked, making a clear effort to be casual.

“First two, just after Christmas, on the twenty-seventh. The latest two sometime between yesterday and today.”

“Both today? I mean, were they together?”

Trinity sipped her wine and nodded. “Apparently together when they went missing, but no witnesses. Still far enough north that the search is being concentrated miles away, with some very rough terrain between here and there. But these latest two . . . Not really hikers, or so it seems. They were together, on their way home from a ski trip, and stopped to pull their car off on one of the lookout points, apparently to take in the view. And the state police found the car today, this afternoon—two days after family members insisted they had left the ski lodge forty miles away and headed for home.

“They had no supplies except a couple of bottles of water and a few granola bars. Neither was even wearing hiking boots, and all the warm clothing they had taken to ski in was still packed in their luggage. According to the checkout desk at the lodge, when they left there, they weren’t really dressed for overnight in the mountains.”

“Dumb,” Scott said.

“Maybe they found shelter,” Annabel suggested, hope in her voice.

Sheriff Trinity Nichols swirled the wine in her glass and watched as it caught the light. “Maybe. Except they weren’t supposed to be there to hike, so why get very far from the car at all? A report came in just as I was leaving the office. Search dogs found a shoe belonging to one of the girls. About five hundred yards from the lookout, and heading straight up a mountain. No footprints or other signs the girls were in the area. And as far as the dogs were concerned, the trail ended there.”

—

SOCIABLE, GEORGIA, WAS
a small town by most any standards, boasting no more than five thousand or so permanent residents; during the tourist season a few thousand more passed through or even stayed awhile, drawn by spectacular scenery, friendly residents, and a number of shops offering stunning handwoven textiles and other locally handcrafted items.

Tourists passing through invariably left with a good opinion of the town and its residents.

Sheriff Trinity Nichols, on the other hand, not only had to deal with the usual practical and political irritants endemic even in small and friendly towns but had also grown up here—and knew the people better than many of them either liked or would have wanted to admit.

Such as Sociable’s mayor, who suffered under the burden of having the surname of Fish. It had not made his childhood particularly happy and had proven bothersome to his adulthood as well.

There was just no way to make
Elect Dale Fish Mayor!
look good on a campaign poster, he had discovered. And he’d probably always wonder in his secret heart if he would have won if he hadn’t run unopposed.

“It’s
vandalism
, Trinity. And you’re not going to do anything about it?”

She wanted to reply that she was in her office on a Saturday, her day off, in order to respond to his summons—in other words taking his concerns seriously—but instead kept her tone businesslike.

“What do you want me to do, Dale? I’ll replace the sign, but if you believe taking away a
NO TRESPASSING
sign with a ghost drawn on it is going to keep the kids away from the church and parsonage, you can think again. I’ve already replaced that sign three times—just since Halloween.”

“We need a fence around the place,” he fretted.

“Well, that’s more your bailiwick than mine,” she reminded him. “Talk to the commissioners. But I’m betting they’ll balk.”

“Why?”

“A fence around a church. Think about it.”

It was clear he hadn’t until just then, and he slumped in the visitor’s chair in front of her desk. “Dammit.”

“Why worry about it at all, Dale? No actual damage has been done to the property. In fact, from what I’m hearing, the kids dare each other to touch the front door and then haul ass, running halfway down to Main Street before they stop. It’s just to prove to each other how brave they are.”

“I just don’t like it. That might be what they’re doing now, but no more than a year before you became sheriff, a team of those ghost hunters decided to stay the night in the parsonage, and even if nobody knows what happened, they were gone by daylight.”

“Leaving the place undamaged, even if the front door was standing wide open. I read the report. And whatever did or didn’t happen didn’t end up on TV or YouTube, for which we can be grateful. So?”

“So how long will it be before some of the older kids dare each other to spend the night in the church or parsonage?”

“Don’t hold your breath. It’s just the younger kids trying to prove they aren’t afraid of ghosts. The older ones are way too caught up in teenage stuff to worry about whether a local landmark is haunted. Though I imagine the preacher’s story gets told around the occasional fireplace or campfire.”

“I wish you wouldn’t be so cavalier about it,” the mayor complained. “It was a tragedy, what happened up there.”

“Yes, I know. But it also happened a decade ago, and I’m being practical, or trying to. Dale, what is it you hope to accomplish? The Baylor sisters own the parsonage, and if they want to allow visitors—ghost hunting or otherwise—it’s their business. As for the church, it’s a respected historical landmark, kept in good repair, and hasn’t been vandalized in my memory. So?”

Mayor Fish rubbed the back of his neck, clearly uncomfortable.

Trinity eyed him. “Come on, spit it out. What’s really bugging you about the church?”

“I’ve just . . . heard things.”

“For instance?”

“At least two people I know aren’t imaginative have told me they saw the stained-glass windows of the church glowing in the middle of the night. A flickering glow, as if a fire burned inside.”