Cloudy with a Chance of Ghosts (Destiny Bay Cozy Mysteries Book 4) (12 page)

“She had never felt so exalted before. He put her on a pedestal and made her feel like a star. And she loved it.”

“Who wouldn’t?”

“Yes. But your mother made a big mistake. She wanted a new dress to wear to De Ponce’s final service or performance or whatever you would call it. She’d seen what she wanted in the store. She just had to have that dress. She had the money saved up to buy it, but the morning when she planned to go get it, John, your father, he found her hiding place and he took it.”

I could hardly breathe. “He took her money?”

Aunty nodded, her eyes huge and sad. “She was so upset by that, so angry, that she did something bad. She took the dress from the store to wear it that night. She was going to wear it and be very careful with it and take it back the next day. She sang her solo and it was beautiful. And she looked so wonderful in that dress. But when she finished singing, the police were waiting for her.”

“Oh.” I felt tears threatening and I held them back with all my might. “All for a dress?”

“Yes. It was a small town. Everybody knew everybody else. They knew what she’d done and they came.”

Aunty shook her head. “I’ve never been very clear on what happened after that. I know she was taken to the police station, and that they were accusing her of having stolen other things. She came looking for you the next day. I think she’d already made her plans to leave. If she stayed, she knew she might have to go to jail. She wanted to take you with her. But she couldn’t find you in time. Your father was acting crazy and I think Grandma Kalena had hidden you.”

I listened numbly, wondering if all this was true or if it was just Aunty’s way of trying to soften the truth. My mother abandoned me. My father never really cared much anyway. But my Grandmother loved me. At least I had that.
 

“So she went with that man?”

Aunty nodded. “He got her out of the islands somehow. And we never heard from her again.”

I nodded. That part I knew. I looked at Aunty Jane. I knew she was telling me all this to help me understand. She wanted me to love my mother. She wanted me to forgive her. But somehow, this really wasn’t helping. When I didn’t know anything, at least I had room to dream. Now the cold, hard facts would keep that from happening.
 

“So whatever became of De Ponce?”

She shook her head. “I’ve never been able to find out anything at all. Both of them just seemed to disappear.”

“Okay then,” I said, knowing my tone was not going to please her but totally unable to do anything about that. “Thanks for telling me. At least now I know.”

I couldn’t sleep any more after that. My mind was racing and my emotions were in turmoil. I got up and did some work around the house, made breakfast and tried to pretend to be cheerful. And all the time, I was thinking about what Jagger had told me, what he’d asked me to do for him. I was resolved not to do it. No way.
 

I’d woken up with a headache and things hadn’t improved much since. Jill had already been up and she was ready to go to work. I knew if I didn’t tell her about Jagger’s visit she’d never forgive me, so I forced myself to join her for a quick chat before she left. I told her about everything except the brunette. That could wait for later, if at all. And there was no way I was going to do what Jagger had asked of me.
 

“Why not?” she asked, her eyes huge and worried.
 

I hesitated. I wasn’t going to tell her about the brunette, remember?

“I don’t think I can get onto the grounds anyway,” I said.

She looked sad. I felt like a brute.
 

“Maybe I’ll go over later and give it a try,” she said.

I knew that wasn’t going to fly. “Uh…okay.”

I gave her a ride to her coffee shop and watched her walk sadly up the steps and cursed softly.
 

Okay, so my strength of resolution lasted only a few hours. That was it. And then I was at Carlton’s Castle, trying to puzzle out a way to get onto the grounds myself. There were guards on all sides and road blocks on all roads leading inside. It didn’t look good, but I was going to give it the old college try.
 

And then I was parked outside of the castle. I’d pulled in a good way up the hill, out of sight of the main entrance, and sat in my car for awhile, eyes closed, chanting. It had only been a few weeks since Aunty Jane had begun teaching me how to use my magic, and already the chant was becoming like second nature to me. I could go into a trance by snapping my fingers. I could focus and become one with the magic whenever I wanted to. When I was ready, when the time was right, I got out of the car and walked down to the entrance.
 

“Hi,” I said to the young man standing guard. “I’m a friend of Carlton’s.”

He stared at me impassively. “Sorry. No visitors.”

I nodded slowly and did the chant so softly, I don’t think he could hear. But whether he could or couldn’t he didn’t react at all.
 

“I’d like to go in,” I said in a calm, monotone voice. “I need to go in. Please open the gate for me.”

I saw him twitch, blink a few times, then shake his head. But he didn’t relent. “Sorry. No visitors.”

We went through the paces twice more and still he didn’t give. I was amazed. I hadn’t used the magic all that often, but I’d never had such a complete bust with it before. It was pretty disheartening. The only thing I could think of was that he had his own brand of magic and it was stronger than mine.
 

Finally, I turned and went back up the hill, retreating into a stand of black bamboo and watching the entrance from there. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I thought hard, trying to contact Aunty Jane in my own way, wishing for some help. Nothing was happening. I saw a police car arrive at the gate and go right in.
 

Hey! Maybe I should call Roy and ask for a ride.
 

But then I had another idea. Aunty Jane had been teaching me island magic—or was it ghost magic? Not sure which, probably a mix of both. There was a lot of learning ancient island chants, and brewing special teas and such. The innate ability to use magic was supposedly running rampant in my family, only dormant until someone actually took you aside and gave you lessons. And Aunty was giving me lessons all the time lately. There were some things that she hadn’t specifically trained me for yet. One of them was invisibility.
 

Yes, you heard that right. I know it sounds crazy. But according to her, I should be able to make myself invisible once I get really good at this stuff. She showed me how she’d done it. Now if I could only remember…

I worked on it, bringing up chants I didn’t even know I knew, putting myself into the proper mindset. I had some special tea in a thermos and I drank some of that. When another police cruiser showed up, I quickly left my car behind and went down the hill, reaching the gate just as the guard began talking to the driver.
 

It was Julian Cortez, a friend and fellow detective of Roy’s. My heart was pounding like a drum and I walked up beside him, on the driver’s side, and waited to see if he saw me.
 

“Okay,” the guard was saying. “Sign here. On the dotted line, please. Your name and the time of entry.”

Julian signed, joking a bit with the guard, and I started walking into the compound. My heart was jumping and I was listening so hard, expecting at any moment to have someone call me back, but no one said a word.
 

It worked. I was invisible.

Was it just to those people at the gate, or would it work on anybody else? I had no idea and I was half out of my mind with fear. Would it work? Would it?

I couldn’t take the chance. I ducked down into the orchard that swung down in front of the house and I kept to the shadows. Just in case.
 

“Hi,” said a voice, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

Whirling, I found myself face to face with Julia Geiger, the ghost girl I’d met in the bedroom the day before.
 

“Can you see me?” I asked, irrelevantly. Of course she could see me. Hadn’t she just proved that?

“Sure,” she said, coming up to walk beside me. “Where are you headed? Can I come with?”

I hesitated. I really didn’t want her to see me pick up Keri’s recorder. But I couldn’t very well tell her that. “Sure,” I said lamely. “I’m just going down to take a look at the crime scene.”

She didn’t seem particularly interested in that.
 

“Things are crazy around here,” she told me. “Carlton is drunk at all hours of the day and Debbie it trying hard to help him cope. Things were starting to get better, and then they heard about Marilee and all hell broke loose again.”

“Has, uh…has Carlton left the house at all?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I see him around a lot, but I don’t pay that much attention.”

“How about Debbie?”

She looked at me blankly. Ghosts! They’re so weak on details.
 

“Okay, has anyone else been here yesterday evening or today? Any visitors?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t see any.”

We turned a corner and practically ran into Debbie. She’d been crying. Her eyes were red. I flattened myself against the adobe wall of the house and held my breath, letting her pass. She didn’t see me. Wow. This was a real kick.

Julia was talking. She hadn’t even noticed that I was invisible. I felt a giddy sense of empowerment. Maybe I could leap around like Spiderman and….

And what? Get myself killed, that was what. I had to calm down and pay attention to what I was doing.

The good thing was that Julia was fading. I didn’t want her with me when I went down and looked for Jagger’s hiding place, so that was a relief. Of course, the way things worked in this amazing level of reality, just beyond what most people saw, might mean that Julia could appear again at any time. I was going to have to watch out for that one.
 

But for now she was walking off up toward the terrace and talking as though she thought I was still with her. Or maybe she’d found some other invisible person to attach herself to. Whatever. I took advantage of the opportunity and headed down toward the area where Keri had been killed.
 

It was no problem finding the recorder. It was barely covered with leaves and moss, right behind a little frog fountain, just like he’d said it would be. I crouched down and took hold of it, rose again and slipped it into my pocket.
 

I’d barely finished doing that when Debbie came into sight, trudging through the brush. I’d been invisible to her before, so I didn’t panic. If I stayed very quiet, I thought I could get away without any real problem. The only things was, she came directly at me and it was soon apparent that she could see me just fine.

Chapter Ten

“You again!” Debbie cried, looking outraged. “How did you get in here? Why are you always showing up in places you have no right to be in?”

Somehow, my invisibility had abandoned me. I turned crimson. It was so unexpected and I wasn’t prepared to be challenged like this.
 

“I...I…just…”

She was reaching for a walkie talkie that she carried in a fanny pack. If she got hold of a guard, I knew I was done for. They would find the recorder and everything, grab it and then toss me out on my ear.
 

But just how much was I prepared to do to prevent that from happening? Was I going to try to beat her up? Not likely. Run? No. So….what?

“Hello, hello,” she was yelling into her receiver.
 

I was still trying to get her to cooperate. “No, Debbie, please listen to me. Let me explain.”

“I don’t need to listen to lies. Hello!”

I reached out and grabbed the thing from her hand, turned and threw it as hard as I could. It went right over the wall and down toward the beach below. I watched it fly, amazed that I’d actually done that. And when I turned back, Debbie looked just as amazed.
 

“What are you doing?” she screeched. “Are you crazy?”

“Maybe just a little.” I pushed my hair back. “But I need you to listen to me.”

“You destroyed my property!”

“I’ll buy you a new one. Honest. Will you just listen to me?”

“No!”

But she wasn’t running away, and something in the way she was looking at me now told me I might have a chance of getting through to her.

“Please, Debbie. I think it’s important. I want you to know.”

She threw her hands up but she was listening. “What? What should I know?”

 
“That Jagger… .”

“Jagger! That bum!”

“No, I don’t think….”

“Isn’t he the prime suspect? My father won’t give up on him but I say cut him loose. If the police think he did it, that’s good enough for me. We’ve got the officers here right now, asking questions. Even the staff has seen things, heard things, and they’re ready to talk. From what I’ve seen, Jagger is going down.”

That put a horrible, sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I was going to have to talk to Roy. But what could I possibly say? And what if he knew incriminating evidence against Jagger? How was I going to counter that?
 

I had to try to help him, for Jill if for no other reason. She was my best friend and I was going to do what I had to do to preserve her peace of mind. If Roy and the others came in with stark evidence that proved to be against him…well, I would cross that bridge when we got there. In the meantime, I had to stick up for Jagger.
 

Anyway, I was just here to get the recorder. What did that have to do with whether Jagger was guilty or not? Unless there was something I didn’t know about, the recorder was packed full of truth about Carlton—at least, that was what Keri had thought when she put it on there. And that truth contained something so bad, people seemed ready to kill for it. Or to keep it suppressed. Or whatever.
 

Maybe that was the key. If we produced the recorder and let the chips fall where they wanted to, maybe the truth about everything would rise to the surface and we could all go home and take it easy and go on with our lives.