Rocks & Gravel (Peri Jean Mace Ghost Thrillers Book 3) (3 page)

I knelt on the floor and began gathering towels, pushing them into a canvas bag I’d spotted hanging on the wall. Amanda leaned against the door frame and watched me.

“I never realized you and Barbie had issues.”

“I didn’t realize you and Barbie were such close friends.” I finished loading the towels and slung the bag over my shoulder.

“We aren’t.” The lines around Amanda’s eyes deepened into what would have been a smile had her mouth not remained still. “When she lived here, she came to me for haircuts. Came in here for a perm the day she left town. Never said a word about moving away.” She moved away from the door. “Come on. I’ll open the door for you and help you get them into your car.”

I waddled through the shop, mulling over what Amanda said. It rang true in my ears. Maybe Barbie didn’t really make friends. Too self-absorbed? Too conniving?

“What’s she doing in here?” The raspy, squeaky voice jabbed into my thoughts like sharp ice.

I dropped the towels on the floor and turned to face its source, even though I knew exactly who’d spoken.

Felicia Brent Fischer Holze smirked at me from underneath her red-streaked mousy hair. She’d smeared oddly colored makeup over her angular features, and her gut had grown considerably since I’d last seen her. Either she’d made good friends with after-work beer drinking or she was pregnant again. I didn’t care which it was. All I cared about was not doubling up my fist and hitting her with it. I got away with beating up my childhood tormentor once. It wouldn’t happen again. She was married to a sheriff’s deputy, and her father-in-law was the sheriff of Burns County. I had a feeling I wouldn’t escape prosecution if I hit her.

“What’s around your neck?” She took a few steps toward me and plucked the black opal from my shirt.

“Don’t touch me, Felicia.” I tightened my grip on the canvas bag holding the towels.

“Is it a substitute for an engagement ring on your finger?”

I turned my back to her and stood in front of the door. Amanda appeared next to me and held it open. She held my elbow as I took the step down onto the stoop.

“He’s gonna lose, Peri Jean,” Felicia sang after me. “Are y’all going to live out there in your Memaw’s house and be jobless together?”

“That’s enough, Felicia. We have customers.” Amanda’s voice brooked no argument. She followed me out of the shop.

“Thanks for ignoring her,” she said when we reached my old Nova. “She’s a good stylist, brings in a lot of clientele, but sometimes I could wring her neck.”

“I’m glad I’m not the one who has to work with her.” I handed Amanda the keys and let her pop the trunk.

“Sometimes you have to work with people you don’t like because of who they’re related to.” Amanda stared at the Nova and ran her hand over the flank. I hefted the canvas bag into the trunk and closed it.

“I ever tell you how cool I think it is for you to drive your daddy’s car?” Amanda stared at the street, eyes unfocused and misty. She didn’t seem to expect an answer, so I didn’t bother thinking of one. “Paul Mace. Your daddy was the best looking guy in town. He’d rev up the engine on this baby, and you could hear him a mile away.” The corners of her mouth turned down. “Too bad he died so young.”

Yep, too fucking bad.
I kept the comment to myself and walked around to the driver’s side door and waited for Amanda to dismiss me.

“Look…I hate it when people tell me what I ought to do, but right now I’m about to do it. Try to make friends with your mom. My situation growing up was a lot like yours. My mom left me for my grandmother to raise while she went off and got remarried.”

I would rather bathe in hot garbage than open the door for Barbie to crucify my emotions.

“Did you make up with her?” I couldn’t help asking. Amanda never, ever discussed her past, and it remained a mystery because she didn’t grow up here.

“Nope. Last time I spoke to her, when I was about nine, I told her I hated her guts.” Amanda took a breath and let it out. “She died two years later in a house fire. She, her new husband, and my half-brother.”

Would I regret it if Barbie turned up dead? I didn’t think so. I barely knew her, and what I did know was negative. But I could never be sure until the situation presented itself.

“Sometimes we forgive people, not to give them a pass for whatever wrong they committed against us or to get them to do a certain thing, but to be kinder to ourselves.” Amanda watched my face and then nodded. She patted my arm. “Think about it. Okay?”

“I will.” I opened the door climbed into the car. “I gotta get on this if I want to finish. Thanks for the talk.”

“You bet.” A car pulled into the parking lot, and Amanda walked over and talked to the person, following them inside her business, still chattering.

I started the car, a little fear tingling at me. I tried to remember why I’d been scared again, hoping it would come with Barbie gone, but I couldn’t access it. It was gone, as though it had never been. Just as well. If it had to do with the Mace Treasure, I was better off forgetting it. I put the car in gear, and my cellphone rang. I checked the caller ID. Eddie Kennedy.
Uh oh.
“Hi, Eddie.”

“What do you mean telling Hannah you can’t help her? Don’t you know what this is about?”

“Something I don’t want any part in.” I cringed as I said the words. Back talking Eddie felt wrong no matter how old I got.

“I want you to meet me at Hooty’s.”

“I have a job. I’ll spend the day at the laundromat doing Amanda’s towels from her beauty shop.”

Eddie slapped his hand over the phone, nearly deafening me, and said a few things. I heard Hooty Bruce’s deep voice answer.

“Hooty says bring the towels here. And, Peri Jean? Darlin’?”

“Yes?”

“Move your skinny ass.”

H
ooty’s
graceful two-story house on Spence Street usually made me smile. I helped paint the gingerbread trim white and the house its lovely wisteria color when Hooty and his wife Esther restored the 1920s home. Today, the sight of Eddie’s beat up old truck in the house’s driveway settled a heavy weight onto my shoulders. Much as I didn’t want to argue my duty to help find Hooty’s lost family heirlooms, I knew the only way to extract myself from the drama was to listen to what they had to say.

Gaslight City residents called Hooty’s neighborhood Bed and Breakfast Row. True to its namesake, and despite the hellish late summer weather, tourists determined to get in one last vacation before school started swarmed the street. I had to drive five miles per hour to keep from hitting any of the nitwits wandering around holding up their cameras and cellphones, totally unaware of the world around them. I caught a mini SUV vacating a parking spot right in front of Hooty’s house and slipped into the space, slick as mayonnaise.

“Hey!” A guy wearing a golf visor leaned out of his huge diesel truck. “We’ve been waiting for that spot for five minutes.”

“There’s a public lot a block over.” I locked my car and started up Hooty’s stone walkway.

“Ma’am? Ma’am?”

Groaning, I turned back to them. A woman with perfectly straight, perfectly tinted blond hair, and super white teeth leaned over her husband, her coral tank top sliding to reveal a matching bra strap.

“Are you Peri Jean Mace? Of the Mace Treasure?”

“No.” I spun around and jogged up the walk. I got to the door and realized I’d forgotten Amanda’s towels. I sure as hell didn’t want to go back for them. I knocked on the door, and Esther Bruce opened it.

“What’s going on out there?”

“Tourists. Mace Treasure.” I pulled out my cigarettes, took in Esther’s ick face, and put them away.

“It’s like a TV show to them. We aren’t even real people. My advice? Ignore it.” She motioned me inside, closing the door behind me, and pulled me into a gentle hug, which I returned just as gently to make sure I didn’t make her injuries flare up.

“How are things?” I gestured at her hip, which seemed to give her the most trouble.

“Quite well. I’m trying a new therapy. It’s given me some relief.” Her smile seemed less forced than when I saw her last. I hoped the treatment continued to help.

“What’s the therapy?” I knew nothing about medicine but thought it polite to ask.

Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open, but she recovered quickly and smiled again. “One of those new age type things. Your grandmother’s the one who told me about it.” Her shoulders cranked up nearly to her ears, and her jaw clenched. She obviously didn’t want me to ask any more about her therapy.

“Hooty’s expecting me.”

“Oh, he sure is. They’re back in his study.” She led me through the antique-filled foyer and living room. The ugly limp she picked up with her injury was absent, and she moved faster, even kneeling to pick up a piece of paper from the floor.
What is this mystery treatment?
We walked down a short hallway off the living room and she tapped on a closed door.

“I saw her drive up.” Hooty’s deep voice floated through the door. “Peri Jean, come on in.”

Esther patted me on the shoulder and got away from me before I could ask her more about her miracle healing. I made a mental note to ask Memaw what treatment she was taking and hoped it wasn’t a regimen of expensive vitamins. I opened the door to a roomful of people.
Should have known Eddie would bring out the heavy artillery.

Hannah sat in a leather chair leafing through a huge book. Rainey Bruce, Hooty and Esther’s daughter, sat in a stiff, carved wooden chair next to the bay window. Eddie, head lowered and scribbling in one of his many notebooks, took up most of the loveseat. Hooty half rose from behind a paper-piled desk.

“Do you want coffee? Or a cool drink?” He gestured at a restored Art Deco bar, which held a coffee maker with a full pot of coffee.

“Don’t do it,” Eddie said. “He buys the cheap shit. Apparently, his congregants and his customers from the funeral home don’t rate the good coffee.”

Hooty doubled up one fist and shook it at Eddie, but he wore a smile. I went to the mini-fridge and took out a bottle of water. Hooty motioned me toward a Victorian-style, high-backed chair upholstered in lilac velvet, roses carved into its rosewood trim.

“Let’s get down to business.” Rainey checked the slim watch on her wrist. “I’ve got paperwork to finish before Dean’s campaign barbecue tonight.”

A sharp reminder I had to get my poop together before the barbecue kicked me in the chest. Sour acid oozed into my stomach and burned. I dug into my pocket, found a roll of antacids and crunched one.

“Pressure getting to you, short stuff?” Rainey’s steel gaze flicked over me and amusement lit her face. “Get used to it. When he wins, you’ll be in the public eye all the time.”

I ate another antacid.

“Rainey.” Hooty stared down his daughter who turned her gaze to her expensive, high-heeled shoes. He turned to speak to me. “Hannah said you have some inside knowledge about the loss of our family heirlooms.”

“Nice way of saying I saw a ghost steal them.” I glanced at the roll of gut soother, considered it, and slipped them back into my pocket without taking another one.

“Hannah also said you don’t want to help find the journals or the book of folk medicine.” Eddie glared at me the same way Hooty had glared at his own daughter. Though Eddie and I weren’t related by blood, he was the only father I remembered having.

“Hannah knows everything I know,” I said.

“There’s no chance you could do more?” Eddie set aside his notebook. “I see you got your black opal necklace back on. Don’t it make your powers stronger?”

I retrieved my antacids from my pocket and ate three.

“Peri Jean used the black opal to enhance what she could see.” Hannah gave me an apologetic glance, looking away when I bared my teeth at her. “But she couldn’t identify the ghost.”

“Even if I could,” I said, “I have no idea who’s controlling it.” The tortured voice and the shadowed figure in the backseat of my car popped back into my mind, almost like it had never been gone.
How did such spooky shit slip away from me? Am I so stressed out I can’t remember stuff from an hour ago?
I rubbed my aching shoulders.

“Do you think you could contact the ghost itself?” Leave it to Rainey Bruce to cut to the heart of the matter. A barracuda in the courtroom and in life, she didn’t care who she offended. She set her course and never stopped.

“Maybe, but I don’t want to.” I played it Rainey’s way, subtle as a jackhammer at dawn.

Eddie pressed his lips together and narrowed his eyes at me.

“If somebody were dead over this, I’d try, but contacting ghosts ain’t my business. Matter of fact, it’s gotten me thrown in the loony bin before. I don’t think it’s a fun way to pass the time.”

“This isn’t for fun.” Hannah’s voice tightened. “This is justice. Someone stole from the museum, which is the same as stealing from this town.”

I thought back to the curious stares in Amanda’s Hair Flairs and assessed my give-a-shit level. It wasn’t too high. Rainey rolled her eyes.

“Forget about the people in this mud hole who can’t stand you because they’re afraid. What about your friends?” She gestured around the room, silver bracelets jangling on her dark arm to punctuate her point.

I lowered my head, face flaming. “Dean’s on it.”

“Oh come on. Don’t play stupid,” Hannah said. “He’s doing all he knows to do—contacting pawn shops, encouraging us to make the theft as public as possible so people will know to be on the lookout, but he can’t do what you can. And you know it.”

“Listen.” Rainey pointed one sharp, red fingernail at me. “I will not let my family’s heirlooms disappear and not fight to get them back. Just because you don’t care about your family, doesn’t mean I don’t care about mine. I’m proud of my family’s heritage in this county.”

“Would you be so proud of it if people treated you like an attraction at a carnival?” My voice raised. All the fatigue and hurt of the last few months bubbled, its steam becoming anger.

“Enough. Both of you.” Hooty stood behind his desk. “I know you like to stay away from the Mace Treasure. I respect your reasoning, though I don’t necessarily agree with it. I’ll ask you to try to understand the reason we want our heirlooms back so badly. It isn’t so much the connection to the Mace Treasure but their historical value we care about.”

“Hooty, I brought the video from last night’s Museum board meeting.” Hannah dug in her bag and came up with a DVD in a plastic jewel case. “Maybe we could let Peri Jean see the part where you read from the journal.”

“I’m willing if she’s willing.” Hooty stared at my face, waiting for my answer.

I wanted to say no so badly it hurt. Getting embroiled in the Mace Treasure nonsense and communicating with the spirit world did not appeal to me at all. Rainey’s reminder this room was filled with my friends stopped me. I needed to at least hear them out.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll watch.” I ate the last two antacids from my roll and washed them down with water, mindful of Eddie’s worried gaze lingering on me.

Hooty took the DVD from Hannah and plugged it into a combo DVD player/TV sitting on a converted antique sewing table. The video began to play, and I sat back in my chair, wondering how I’d gone from wanting to step away from the crazy to sitting here watching its tendrils sneaking into my life.

* * *

T
he scene showed
the long oval table in the museum’s main classroom, each chair taken by a museum board member.

Felicia Holze and her father-in-law Sheriff Joey Holze both wore sour expressions. It probably rubbed their asses raw to attend the meeting, but I bet they’d allow their fingernails to be yanked out before they gave up their spots on the museum board. They got their jollies making other folks miserable.

Amanda King sat at the table, ignoring everyone else and tapping on her cellphone. It surprised me not to see her animated and socializing. Maybe she got enough of it at the salon.

Eddie Kennedy and Julie Woodson sat huddled together, smiling and whispering. The two dated on and off but wouldn’t commit to each other. It made me feel sorry for Eddie because I thought having someone to come home to would do him good.

Hooty sat with a battered book in front of him. Its cloth cover had worn away in spots, revealing the cardboard underneath, the page edges faded to yellowish tan. The book reminded me of the picture-book sized ledgers I sometimes saw in antique stores, and I could almost imagine the dry, musty smell coming off it.

Rainey sat next to Hooty, staring at something she held out of sight in her lap. I assumed it was a cellphone until she raised it to table level and saw it was a card-sized photograph. I couldn’t make out any details. She leaned over to Hooty, and the two had a whispered discussion. Rainey shook her head and slipped the photograph into a padded envelope and put it in her purse.

“Okay, Hooty, we’re ready,” Hannah said from somewhere off screen.

Hooty nodded and opened the journal to a marked place and began to speak. The door opened before he could, and Benny Longstreet rushed in.

“Sorry y’all. Had an emergency at the plant. Almost thought I wouldn’t make it.” He glanced around the room, embarrassment dawning slowly on his long, homely face. “Oh. Y’all done started, ain’t you? Lemme just set down.” He pulled a rolling chair away from the wall and sat next to Amanda who scooted away from him. I didn’t blame her. Benny turned my stomach, too.

“Okay, then,” Hannah said. “Hooty, please continue.”

“All right. First I’d like to introduce what I’m about to read.” He held up the journal. “This journal belonged to Hezekiah Bruce, the first of my family to settle in Burns County. His parents were slaves freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. They instilled a sense of entrepreneurship in him. He saved his money, came here, and opened a general store. He was the first black business owner in Burns County. He used these ledgers to record the goings-on he saw.” The barrel-chested man’s voice boomed through the room, and it sounded like he was getting ready to deliver a sermon at church. Hooty took a deep breath and began to read from the journal.

“When I settled in Burns County to raise my family, I knew I would run into some of the same problems my parents suffered in Mississippi. But I never expected to see the horror I saw last night.

Around dark time, men came on horses and rode past our store and home. Usually nobody rides past because the last house on this road is that of Priscilla Herrera and she is thought to be a witch. My children ran out to see the commotion, but my wife shooed them back inside. I told her to hide them. Everything about these men and their horses scared me. As a boy, I saw a mob come take a man away who they decided had abused a white woman. This had the same feeling.

After I made sure my wife understood to keep the children and herself out of sight, I sneaked through the woods, going as quiet as I could, and found the men crowded in front of Priscilla Herrera’s, just where I expected.