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No.

Strange.

“Haywood’s funeral is on Thursday,” I said to Avery as I stood up. “At the Ezekiel cemetery. I know you said you were never going back to Hitching Post, but maybe once more?”

“What time?” she asked, standing, too.

I woke up Louella and she didn’t even growl. “I’m not sure. I’ll ask Hyacinth and get back to you.”

“Thanks.”

Delia looked at Haywood. “Are you coming back with us?”

“Does he have to go?” Avery asked. “He has until midnight, doesn’t he? I mean, I can’t see him or anything, but I can talk to him. I didn’t get to say good-bye to him the other night before . . .” She sniffed. “He’s the only family I had left, and I barely got to know him.”

“He doesn’t have to go with us,” I said softly, “but it’d be nice to have him around if I have any more questions to ask him.”

Tears filled her eyes, spilled over.

Haywood’s too. He tapped an arm, mimicking pointing at a watch.

“You want just a little more time here?” Delia said.

Yes.

Oh geez. I was such a softie. “Okay. Then I guess I’ll see you sometime later?”

Yes.

“I’ll call,” I reminded Avery.

She wiped a tear, but the shimmer in her eyes remained. With the light coming in the window just so it reminded me of . . . My breath caught, and my knees went suddenly weak. I grabbed on to the back of the couch to keep from falling.

“What’s wrong?” Avery asked, grabbing my arm.

“Carly!” Delia rushed over. “Breathe!”

I gasped in air.

It couldn’t be.

Oh my Lord. It
could
.

It explained
everything
.

“Avery,” I said, barely able to get the words out. “Do you still have that picture of your mama kissing that man?”

“Yeah, why?” she asked.

My body trembled. “Can I see it?”

She looked at me oddly, but nodded. A few moments after darting down the hallway, she returned, a grainy color photograph in her hand. “Here.”

We all looked—even Haywood, who’d floated over.

“Is that . . .” Delia’s voice trailed off.

It was.

The man in the picture was Harris Jackson, and I’d bet my witchy senses that Twilabeth hadn’t been pregnant with Avery in the photo.

She’d been pregnant with Dylan.

Chapter Twenty-three

I
t had been a long car ride home, filled with bursts of chatter and long stretches of silence as Delia and I tried to process what we had learned.

It wasn’t too difficult to imagine how Twilabeth and Harris had met. It had to have been at the courthouse. He’d been a judge; she a secretary.

After that, however, everything was fuzzy.

I recalled Patricia’s panic at hearing Twilabeth’s name, and it made so much sense now. Twilabeth was tied to the biggest secret of Patricia’s life.

Dylan wasn’t her son. Not by blood, leastways.

Patricia had to have kept tabs on Twilabeth over the years, which was why she flipped out when Avery showed up at the ball. She recognized her as Twilabeth’s daughter.

Between the blackmail and Avery’s presence, Patricia had probably thought her carefully constructed world was starting to crash in on itself.

It reminded me of what I was thinking earlier, when my mama had threatened to kick ghostly booty . . .

There’s nothing fiercer than a mama protecting her baby.

Patricia’s vile behavior toward Avery that night at the ball had been an attempt to protect Dylan from learning the truth of his parentage.

I ached to think of how Dylan was going to react to the news, and I didn’t know how to tell him about it either.

I refused to keep secrets from him, but figuring out how to break this to him would take time.

Time I didn’t have right now.

Later. I’d think about all of it later.

Right now, there were other things I needed to do.

Delia had dropped me off at home and promised to check in later. She needed to go to her house to take care of Boo, and then she was going to see if there were any ghosts wandering around town that she could help cross over before midnight.

I had my hands full with the one ghost I had left, but wished her luck.

Dylan had left a note on my kitchen counter that the warrants for the Harpies’ bank accounts were being processed that afternoon. I wrote him a quick note telling him to check the Ramelle account first. I didn’t mention anything about Twilabeth and felt guilty already.

I left Louella in the care of the cats while I went looking for answers.

The first stop was Potions. I’d walked in just as my daddy was getting ready to lock up for the day.

The herbal scents that usually soothed me did nothing. I was in too much of a panic, feeling like the answers I was looking for were right under my nose.

“I don’t have long,” I said, collapsing dramatically across the counter. I’d clearly been spending too much time with Eulalie. “I just need to know if Doug Ramelle was with you and Mama when Haywood was killed. Not just before . . . and not just after. But during.”

I appreciated that my father didn’t fuss over my distressed state. Instead, he pursed his lips, squinted his eyes, and searched the recesses of his brain. “He left for a bit to get a fresh drink. As he came back with one just as Patricia let out that scream, I didn’t think anything of it. Did he kill Haywood?”

“It’s what I’m trying to figure out,” I said, leaning up to kiss his cheek. “And you just connected another piece of the puzzle. Thanks, Daddy.”

“Be careful!” he yelled as I dashed out the door.

I put my sunglasses back on, then took them off again. I knew if I came across a ghost right now that I would have to help it.

Delia would be proud.

I went directly to the Delphinium from Potions, rushing along the Ring with determination in my step. I needed to read Doug’s energy. All I needed to know was whether he was guilty or not. If he was, Haywood would have an answer and be able to pass on.

If he wasn’t . . .

I couldn’t even fathom that, so I didn’t dwell on it.

The Delphinium was packed, and I squeezed my way through the crowded entryway and made my way back to the bar. It was loud, the lighting was dim, and something smelled fantastic.

Sitting, I looked for Doug but didn’t see him around. When the bartender approached, I said, “Is Doug working tonight?”

“He is,” the young man said, “but he stepped out a minute ago. He’ll be back soon. You want a drink while you wait?”

“No, thanks.” I was already wound up enough without adding alcohol to fuel my fire.

“He’s driving Hyacinth home,” someone said as she slid onto the stool next to mine. “I passed them on my way here.”

“She’s been drinking again?” I asked.

“Still,”
Mayor Barbara Jean corrected as she ordered a vodka tonic and glanced my way. “She hasn’t stopped since Haywood died. She was bad off tonight. Her grief is killing her.”

I didn’t think it was the grief so much as the booze.

A second later, Barbara Jean asked, “Why are you looking for Doug?”

“No reason in particular,” I said, evading like a pro.

The mayor slid me a dubious glance. “PJ told us how you’re trying to investigate Haywood’s death to help clear her name, bless your heart. But don’t you think stalking all her friends—and their husbands—is taking it a bit too far?”

“That depends.”

The bartender set her drink in front of her and she picked it up. “On what?”

“On whether one of you killed him. If one of you did, then no, it’s not too far.”

“You’re not serious?” she said, sipping her drink.

“Deadly.”

A group at a table nearby erupted in laughter, and it seemed so at odds with the conversation I was having that it almost made me smile.

Leaning back, Barbara Jean draped one arm over the back of the stool. “Why? Why would one of us kill a friend?”

“The blackmail.”

“Not that again,” she said. “I heard how you peppered Hyacinth and Patricia. Ridiculous.”

“Is it? And how about your blackmail letters?” I asked, suddenly exhausted. “How did you feel about someone threatening to expose your gambling addiction? Ridiculous?”

Her mouth dropped open, but she didn’t say anything. She just kept staring.

I sighed. “Look, I don’t care what you do in your free time, as long as you do it with your own money. You’ve never used Harpies’ or town funds to gamble, have you?”

Through clenched teeth, she said, “Never.”

A lie.

Dang.

I could practically feel the time slipping away. I pushed harder. “Okay, let me run this theory by you. Let’s say your wife’s a gambler. Maybe she’s racked up some debts, and you’re having trouble paying them off . . . You need cash quick. Your friends are loaded but you just can’t ask for a handout straight-out. Pride’s on the line. So you concoct a plan to use some secrets you know to bring in some money. No harm. No foul. Except what if one of the people you’re blackmailing suddenly stops paying? And threatens to track you down and expose your identity? Your house of cards is about to collapse. You panic. And you kill him.”

Barbara Jean set her glass down and started clapping. “That’s not a theory. That’s a wonderful work of fiction. You get your storytelling skills from your mama.”

Anger surged through me, and I forced myself to calm down. It had been a low blow, bringing my mama into this. “Why were you breaking into Haywood’s house on Sunday? At first I thought it was because you were looking for the papers that proved Haywood was an Ezekiel, but that couldn’t be. You didn’t know.”

She stared at her fingernails, cleared her throat, and said in that beautiful voice of hers, “Let’s theoretically say I might have been looking for evidence that Haywood was in fact the blackmailer.”

I understood. She’d have wanted to get rid of any proof he might have had against her. “But he wasn’t the blackmailer.”

“Then who was, Carly?” she asked.

It was a good question. One I didn’t have an answer to.

I glanced toward the door, wondering what to do next, and saw a bald head bobbing through the crowd, the light glinting off the bare skin.

At first I thought it might be Doug returning, but it wasn’t. Just a man passing by to use the restroom.

“You’re forgetting one thing, however,” she said.

“What’s that?” I asked, distracted by what I’d just seen. The bald head. The glare.

It sent me back to yesterday when Virgil was talking about the man who’d hit him. A bald man in a black SUV.

The Ramelles had a black SUV. I’d seen it myself parked yesterday at the Ezekiel house. And their house was just a block from where Virgil was killed. It was nighttime, and he’d been wearing dark clothing while out walking Louella . . .

“I was blackmailed too,” Mayor Ramelle said. “Why would a husband blackmail his own wife? That doesn’t make sense. Besides, if we were in financial straits—which we’re not—I wouldn’t have had the cash to pay anyone.”

It took all I had to focus on what she was saying. Annoyingly, she made sense. I’d been so sure Doug was the blackmailer, that I’d overlooked some key facts.

Okay, I relented. So maybe Doug wasn’t the blackmailer who killed Haywood.

But was he the man who killed Virgil? “Where did you and Doug spend Founder’s Day? That night, specifically.” I’d been in the Ring, watching the fireworks.

She stared at me as though my neck had sprouted another head.

“Have you been drinking, Carly Bell?” She sniffed the air around me. “Were we not just talking about a blackmailer?”

“Founder’s Day?” I asked impatiently. “Where were you that night?”

“I was at the town fireworks for my duties as mayor, but the Harpies had an event at the country club that night, too. Doug filled in for me until I could join them later. Why?”

“How late were all of you there?”

“Until midnight or one. Well, except Hyacinth left early, around eleven, because she had a little too much to drink and got into a fight with one of the waitresses.”

Hyacinth who lived less than a block from where Virgil had been killed.

A bald man . . . Glare. “Who drove her home? Was it Doug who took her? It was Doug, wasn’t it?”