Not Quite Clear (A Lowcountry Mystery) (10 page)

We’re going to ask Clete for help with the Middletons, and I’ll come clean to Beau tonight about that. There’s no reason to keep him in the dark. It would hurt him unnecessarily, to learn later that I’ve been going behind
his back again with Leo. He’s insisted that he’ll find a way to walk the line between his duties to the town and my, shall we say, questionable acquaintances, so I’ll let him.

I don’t know what all this means for him and me going forward, can’t even guess. I suppose none of us really knows what’s going to happen tomorrow or the next day, I reason as I navigate down the stairs and head into the
kitchen.

Which is true, but it seems to me that most people have more of a fifty-fifty shot at either good or bad. It’s hard to believe Beau and I have odds that good at this point. Or odds at all, really.

Men do not stay with women who put awful, unbreakable curses on their families for all eternity. Because that’s just rude.

He’s standing next to Amelia as she drains noodles over the sink,
his back pressed against the counter and his feet crossed lazily at the ankles. He’s traded his work pants for well-fitted jeans but left on the crisp white shirt, rolling it to his elbows to expose toned forearms.
 

I never knew a man’s forearms could be so sexy until I met Beau. I never knew so many unexpected things about a man could turn me on, actually.

A beer rests in Beau’s strong fingers,
sweating a little around the label, and he’s laughing at something my cousin must have said the second before I stepped into the room. When he sees me, his face lights up with a smile that triggers a sparkle in his hazel eyes. “Gracie Anne! You look beautiful.”

I think I look tired, but I’ve been trying to be better about accepting compliments.

He takes a second look as I get closer, then frowns.
“What happened?”

I brush it off, not wanting to talk about Mama Lottie or my ghosts at all, really. “Nothing. I judged a corner wrong while I was cleaning up this afternoon and clipped a door. You know me.”

He rubs a soft thumb over my mouth, then bends to press a gentle kiss to my lips. I try not to flinch in order to buoy my “no big deal” assessment and we linger long enough for my cousin
to issue a pointed clear of her throat.

“Are you two done? Because I’m about at the horny stage of pregnancy and I’m going to have to kick you out.” Amelia dumps the spaghetti into a serving bowl, then plops it on the table.
 

I step out of Beau’s embrace, reluctance running through me like sludge. It makes no sense, and obviously it’s not true, but it’s almost as though his arms have some sort
of magical ability to hold the rest of the world at bay.

Now isn’t the time to trust in magic, though. Not when it’s trying to kill us.

“What can I do?” I ask my cousin, ignoring the sense of melancholy tugging at my heart. “Ask Leo if he’s available? Rent a Channing Tatum movie? Hire a mimbo?”

“What’s a mimbo?” Beau asks, filching a crouton.

“A male bimbo. Amelia needs to get laid.”

“I’d
think Travis would be a more obvious choice than Leo. If she’s looking.”

“Would you two stop it, already? Just grab the garlic bread out of the oven, Grace. That’ll suffice for the moment.”

I do as she asks, pulling the pieces of pre-cut, pre-buttered bread straight off the rack. This isn’t the kind of meal Millie has taken to preparing lately. She’s been distracting herself by pulling Grams’s
old recipes out of the box, practicing until her apple pies and mac & cheese and pot roasts taste like our childhood.
 

Maybe she’s
not
doing better. Maybe teaming up with Mama Lottie, breaking the curse, won’t do any good at all.

One glance at her face tells me I’m wrong. She’s manic, flitting from one thing to the next as she sets plates and flatware and a dish of sauce on the table with the
noodles. Unlike the past several months, she’s working with an excess of energy, a tinge of lightness I recognize because it’s the same one flickering inside me—that damned hope.
 

The three of us sit at the table. Our happy moods join the filtered early-evening sun and surround us. I sit in the middle, basking while the conversation that needs to be had creeps closer and closer, slipping in under
the crack at the bottom of the sliding glass doors. It sits beside the table like a dog begging for scraps, impossible to ignore.

We’re halfway through our plates of spaghetti and meat sauce when the dog finally wins. I put down my fork and meet Amelia’s eyes. She understands the warning in a blink, swallowing a piece of bread that looks as though it might be stuck in her throat. The nod she
gives me is sure, though. Maybe proud.

“Beau, Amelia and I have something to tell you.” He responds to the dread in my tone, putting down his own fork to look me in the face. Waiting, patient. Like always. “When we met with Phoebe the other day she made it clear that while she’s doing everything she can to win Amelia’s case, it’s not going to be enough unless we can come up with some way to discredit
the Middletons.”

“Like, prove they were abusers, or that they have drinking or drug problems, earned or spent money illegally,” Amelia pipes up, clarifying. Hyper. “We need to be able to say they’re morally corrupt.”

Beau stays silent, sipping his beer a couple of times while the wheels turn in his head. He figures out what we’re saying without my having to outline it, the same way Leo did at
the bar, and it strikes me how similar they are sometimes.

He doesn’t give in to a response for a long time and when he does, there’s no judgment in his posture. Only concern. “And knowing my beautiful, headstrong, loyal girlfriend as well as I’ve come to, I can only assume that means the two of you are going to try to get something on them yourselves.”

He smiles, but it’s sad. Like he knows.
 

I meet his gaze, unafraid. Wanting him to see how much he means to me, how hard all this is, but also how necessary. “Phoebe pretty much said we’re the last resort. I’m going to see if Clete has anyone in the city offices that can check records for us. Mel offered to help, but I don’t want her to get involved unless we don’t have another choice.”

Amelia’s mouth falls open, but she closes it fast.
It’s the first time I’ve admitted that we might have to involve Mel, despite my protestations. Our friend is right about this being more important than anything else. If we have to, I’ll ask her for help. Last resort.

Beau’s frowning now, the concern deepening into lines around his eyes. “You know I don’t like you messing around with those guys. Last time we asked them for help Will lost his
job. What’s it going to cost us this time?”

Every time he uses the word
we
or
us
it’s like a dagger straight through my chest. I breathe through it, knowing in my soul that after I get into bed with Mama Lottie, this conversation is going to seem like a walk along the river at sunset.
 

“I don’t know, but we are sure what it’s going to cost us if we do nothing.” I shoot a pointed glance at Amelia,
let it linger on her belly. “This is family, Beau. It means as much to you as it does to me, and I’m not giving up without a fight.”

He drains the rest of his beer. “Let me guess. You don’t want my help.”

“I
want
your help, handsome. I want to be able to talk to you, to have you to work things through with when they don’t make sense. I want you to make me laugh, to sit and watch the World Series
with me and a plate of hot wings.” It’s hard to talk as the lump in my throat grows. How much longer would he be willing to do those things for me? “I want you to be my normal.”

“And that’s important because Grace has very little normal of her own.” My cousin tries to lighten the heavy, dark clouds that have swirled in, pressing against us like suffocating cotton over our mouths.
 

I feel it
the moment my boyfriend gives in. His shoulders relax. His frown disappears. The love in his face pushes the darkness away—not until it’s gone, but to the edges of the room, where we can continue to pretend it’s not there.

“I think, for the two of us, a little bit of normal would be like a slice of heaven.”

The next morning, I get up early to see Daria before Amelia and I have to open the
library. It’s easier now that sleep has broken up with me, and Beau barely stirs when I slip from between the sheets, get dressed, and close the bedroom door behind me. He’s alone, since Henry—like all my ghosts since Anne—only hangs around when we’re alone.

I wonder if I’m avoiding solving Henry’s mystery because he’s so unhelpful with directions or because his presence has gotten so familiar
the thought of losing it rattles my moorings. Things that ground me are few and far between in my life now, with my mother turning out to be a huge liar, Gramps gone, and everyone in town starting to see me as a functioning member of society. It’s all off.

It’s going to be a busy day, too, with Daria this morning, work, then going out to see Clete with Leo later tonight. But like my cousin, newfound
energy shoots through my blood like a drug. The thrumming pulse keeps my eyes open half the night, pushes my feet to the floor early in the morning, makes me want to throw up if I sit still too long. I recognize it for what it is: I’m anxious to move. To get started, so we can get finished.

The neighborhood is quiet when I close the heavy front door behind me and breathe in deep as I stand on
the front porch. Life in Heron Creek should be like this. Coffee on the porch swing before work, the crisp scent of a new season on the air. A stroll into town, maybe a stop for those pancakes before work, where I spend my time researching new articles instead of checking out books. Go out on a date with my boyfriend after work.

Mrs. Walters schleps into view, pausing on the sidewalk in front
of my grandparents’ house and squinting toward me as though she’s wishing
I
were a ghost. “Graciela.”

I suppose it’s too much to ask that Heron Creek not include run-ins with my nosy neighbor even in a daydream.

“Good morning, Mrs. Walters. How are you?”

Her lips twist, suspicion heavy as she lobs it my direction. “You just now gettin’ in? Been out boozin’ it up all night, maybe out there in
the woods with your criminal friends?”

I can’t help but roll my eyes. “No one says ‘boozing it up’ anymore, and I certainly have no idea who you’re talking about.”

Her gaze strays to Beau’s black sedan in the driveway, then her frown deepens. “I see you’re continuing to corrupt our young mayor.”

“I see that finding a dead body hasn’t stopped you from snooping.”

That startles her, and it takes
her several moments of opening and closing her mouth to sputter out a reply. “Your grandparents would be ashamed of you, Graciela. Just like they were of your mother.”

This time her barb hits hard, tucks into my skin, and snags. She’s gone before a retort forms, and whatever I was going to say dies on my tongue.
 

The truth is, some days she’s probably right, but not most of them. Not anymore.

If there’s one thing my grandparents
would
have approved of, it’s our family coming together again, fighting for one another. Whether they would approve of using outlaws to do it, or helping to place a curse on the family of the “nice young mayor”… That’s harder to say. I suspect Gramps would level me with one of his rare, serious gazes, his blue eyes sinking into mine as though he’s trying to
share thoughts without speaking. He would remind me that there’s always another way out if you look hard enough.
 

It’s not bad advice, but I’m not sure it applies to the realm of the lingering dead.

The drive to Daria’s is pleasant once the bad juju left over from my encounter with our neighbor lets go of me, catching on the wind howling by my open windows. It plops on the side of the road somewhere.
Hopefully it will get smashed to smithereens.

This is maybe my fifth or sixth visit to Daria’s place, a building in the middle of nowhere between Heron Creek and Charleston, but each time I visit my nerves about this part of my life settle a bit more. Daria’s everything I’m not yet, but perhaps what I was born to be and never knew it. She’s been aware of her gift for communicating with the other
side of…whatever we want to call it…since childhood. She talks to ghosts on purpose—something I’m still working on, takes on their pain and grief and hopes, and helps them to move on.
 

“You’re here early,” she grumbles when she answers my knock. The sign out front says she doesn’t open until noon, which based on her Alfalfa bedhead, hot pink bike shorts, and braless state, might even be pushing
it.
 

She lets me in, though, and we traipse through the front reception area—which has never been manned on one of my visits—and into the space that feels mostly like her living room. There are two dusty love seats, a coffee table spotted with sticky rings left behind by glasses, a desk piled two feet high with paperwork, and a wet bar.

Despite the fact that it’s not yet eight in the morning,
Daria’s at the bar.
 

“Do you want a drink?”

“Isn’t it a bit early?” Before I can register the fact that I’m officially turning in my young-cool-person card, the words are out of my mouth. I cringe.

She turns halfway, one pale blond eyebrow raised. “Ever hear of a mimosa? A Bloody Mary?”

“I’ll take a Bloody Mary, sure.” This is what desperation to hang on to one’s youth sounds like, but my
manic energy might benefit from a depressant.

“That’s more like it.”
 

Daria tinkers for several minutes, then comes over with her hands full of drinks—a Bloody Mary for me that’s so spicy my eyes water after a single sip, and a glass of what appears to be gin or vodka mixed with water for her. So much for morning-appropriate beverages.

“So what brings you to my door at this cotton-pickin’ hour?
You do know that I work late, right?”

“I know. But I ran into an invisible, yet not metaphorical wall yesterday, busted up my face, and then received a message scrawled in my own blood. Forgive me if I’m having trouble sleeping.”