Not Quite Gone (A Lowcountry Mystery) (19 page)

“Me, maybe. You’re just on a detour.” I give her a light smile. “Because one of us has to be sane, Amelia, and you and I both know that’s never been my destiny.”

“You have Beau to keep you on the straight and narrow, now. You don’t need me.”

My heart bangs into
my ribs, fear cutting off my breath. “I’ll always need you, Millie. Always.”

The doors open again, bringing a wave of heat and LeighAnn into the library with her four kids in tow. Millie doesn’t answer, just gives me a smile that looks like something else. “I’ll get them. You go talk to Mr. Freedman. But remember, you promised to be here on Tuesdays for story time.”

“Of course.” I watch her
walk away, my pulse refusing to return to normal. The last thing I should be doing is leaving her alone more. I know that, but I also know that this job at Drayton Hall is important for so many reasons—not the least of which is finding the woman who saved me the other night. I’m hoping that she’s going to be able to save Amelia, too.

Mr. Freedman,
unsurprisingly, has no issue with my taking some time off—without pay—to work for the Draytons. First off, Amelia was right in her assessment that both of us are not generally required to keep the library and archives functioning, and second, he mentioned that it would look good for one of the town’s staffers to be involved with such an influential local history project.

He’s not wrong, and my
steps lighten as they hit the pavement outside. I decide to walk over and grab a chicken salad sandwich for Millie before I leave for the day. And maybe one for me, too.

Westies is packed with all the usual suspects since lunchtime is now in full swing, and I don’t make it to the doors before I hear the strains of Leo’s guitar, which slides a grin onto my face. I step around the wrought iron
tables out front, crowded now that some of the heat and humidity have slunk out of Heron Creek for the season. Leo’s where he always is, in front of the windows to the left of the entrance, and he grins back when he sees me.

He finishes the song, tipping his hat and shooting a wink at some high school girls who toss change into his guitar case, then turns to me. “Well, if it isn’t little Miss
Harper. Have you come to renegotiate the terms of our old alliance?”

“Ha. No. I think now that we’re adults we can do away with official truces.”

“I don’t know which one of us you think is an adult, but okay. If that’s what you want.”

His statement pricks me, like a feather sticking out of your pillow at night. There’s so much more to Leo than he wants me to see—than he wants
anyone
to see—and
there has to be an answer to why he’s so damn determined to avoid all responsibilities. Other than Marcella, that is.

It never feels like the right time to ask him about his Peter Pan complex, because honestly, a case could be made for me having one, too. Smaller than Leo’s—I do have a passion and a career—but still. I’m too old to be drifting, at least in the minds of people who settled down
before they hit their twenties.

“What’s up?” he asks, picking up a songbook and thumbing through it. His musical tastes are pretty eclectic, ranging from pop oldies to Sinatra to more modern, boy band stuff that impressed those younger girls into tipping him.

“Grabbing lunch before I head out to Drayton Hall for the afternoon. You?”

“Not much. I’ve made, like, five dollars, so yay for cooler
weather.” He takes off his beat-up baseball cap and uses it to wipe his forehead.

“You hungry?” The question comes out without warning or intent, startling me. I manage not to look at the time on my phone because stopping here for more than the fifteen minutes it’ll take to get food isn’t on my schedule. Too late now.

“Yeah, I am.” He glances over at the outside tables. “Laurel and Dorothy are
leaving. You want me to snag their table? I don’t think I should take all this stink and sweat inside.”

“Ah, yes, please share it only with me.” My smile is back, because, well, Leo. He’s just…easy.

“It takes a special person to appreciate my aroma.” He strides away, taking the trash from the hands of the older women and depositing it in the receptacle for them, then deftly swipes the table
out from under a younger married couple—Karen and Brent, I think are their names.

“Nicely done,” I inform him, tossing my cardigan on the back of the chair. “You hold down the fort and I’ll get in line. What do you want?”

“Reuben and chips. Plain ones, not that crunchy hipster kettle-cooked shit.”

“Oh, the stink of sauerkraut will definitely improve my lunch experience.”
 

I go inside and wait
my turn without waiting for a response, making nice with the people around me. It almost feels as though things are back to normal, that people have accepted this new and sort of mostly grown-up Graciela Harper who’s inserted herself back into their ranks. Heron Creek is a friendly place, for sure, but much like neighboring Charleston, we prefer tourists to transplants. We want you to love our
city and please, come visit, but when it gets right down to it, we’d rather you didn’t stay.

It means a lot, actually, that they treat me like I’m one of them.

I’ve got my chicken salad sandwich and chips along with Leo’s rather fragrant Reuben and chips in red baskets lined with paper, and Amelia’s chicken salad on a croissant under my arm in a to-go bag. And it only took ten minutes, which
exceeded my expectation as far as wait time. Even if I spend another twenty eating with Leo, I’ll still have a good four hours out at Drayton Hall before I need to get home for dinner—and I
am
going to spend the evening with my cousin, especially if we’ll be seeing each other less during the day.

“One Reuben, sir.”

“Thanks.”

I sit across from him and we chew and people watch in silence for
several minutes. My stomach demands to be filled as quickly as possible, which means talking gets put on the back burner, but I do make room for a question after a mouthful of chips. “How’s Lindsay doing? Marcella seems happy.”

“Marcella is
ecstatic.
Kids are resilient, people always say that, but seeing it in action is pretty insane.” He looks thoughtful for a minute. “She’s got some anxiety
whenever Lindsay leaves her alone, like she thinks she’s not coming back.”

“That will get better the more she comes back. Marcie will get more and more confident.” My soul feels happy, thinking about Marcella getting the life she deserves. “I mean, she’s a Boone, after all. Overconfidence is in her blood.”

“Point taken.”

“And Lindsay?”

A slight frown flickers on his face. “She’s struggling
a little bit with trusting people.”

“Aren’t we all?”

“Yeah. Yeah, she’s working through it. She took a job in Driftwood, waitressing on the docks. Seems to like it.”

Lindsay having a job is great news, and there’s no need to ask why she prefers to work somewhere other than Heron Creek. Driftwood is small, too, but it’ll take some time for people there to figure out her life story, at least.
A small reprieve, hopefully one that lasts long enough for her to get her feet back underneath her.

“I’m glad she’s got a job. She deserves a second chance.”

He nods, taking a giant bite of his sandwich and staring at two little kids waiting to cross the street, their gray-haired grandmother or babysitter explaining loudly that they need to look both ways. When Leo’s bright blue gaze returns
to me, it’s clear of the emotions that clog it up when he talks about his sister and his niece.

Family is another thing I never seem to find the right time to ask Leo about. Why, with half a dozen other siblings, Leo was the one to take in Marcella… Why no one visited Lindsay or helped out…

“What’s up with you and old purple-haired Daria? Did she tell you anything useful yet?”

“As a matter
of fact, yes.” I give him a shortened version of the details I gave Beau earlier this morning, mostly because the fewer times I have to relive that experience, the better.

“That’s horrifying. Are you sure you want to learn how to do that yourself?” Concern lights his eyes and his fingers twitch, starting toward mine before he pulls them back into his lap.

My skin kind of tingles, the way it
did the other night before that first, awful scene appeared in the yellow house in Mount Pleasant. I look around as casually as possible but don’t see anything terrifying or evil. “No. Right now I’m thinking I’ll stick with the spirits who go out of their way to find me, though the stuff she taught me how to do might come in handy since my ghosts don’t talk.”

“Speaking of the spirits who go out
of their way to find you, how’s the little girl at Drayton?” He does a terrible impression of yanking a noose tight around his neck, then flops his head to the side with his eyes bulging and tongue hanging out.

It gets a laugh out of me in spite of how insensitive it is. “That is so wrong, Leo.”

“I know.”

“I got her police file, and get this, there were some cops on the case, along with the
assistant coroner, who didn’t agree with closing it as a suicide.” I relay their concerns—her fingers, the marks on her neck, the footprints, the tire tracks. He listens, rapt, even though several people wave on their way into the restaurant. “But it’s all circumstantial. Nothing proves she’s telling the truth.”

“First off, I still don’t know why a ghost would have any motivation to lie. Second,
sure, it’s circumstantial, but hell, Gracie. That’s a pile of questions that need answers.”

“I know. What do you think?”

“You know what
I
think.”

“That Brick was involved?”

“I’m not willing to say
involved
, but yeah, I think he knows more than he told the cops. Don’t you?”

The Draytons did act pretty weird when questioned, according to the report, and even Beau pretended not to really know
the extent of the relationship between his younger brother and Nan Robbins when it came up this morning. Some of the kids from the school made comments about them being as thick as thieves, while others said they can’t remember ever seeing the two of them together. It’s just…weird. But it does seem like the truth has to be in there somewhere.

The thought of using the whole door-opening scenario
to try to see what happened that night stays on my radar, but my stomach roils at the thought. I’d rather do this the old-fashioned way, and not only because I’m less likely to vomit talking to alive people.
 

The fact is, no matter how many police departments use psychics or how many people watch television shows about ghost hunters, no one is going to believe me—or Nan—if my only evidence is
an invisible, ghostly reenactment that only I can see.

“Yeah, I do,” I finally answer Leo. “I’m thinking about going to talk to some of the people who were interviewed back then. Get my own take. Do you want to come?” The second invitation pops out with as little thought as the first, but Leo has always been the best of the best when it comes to a partner in crime.
 

Not only that but he has
no vested interest in this case, the way Beau does, and he won’t constantly be telling me to mind my own business as Mel or Will would.

“When are you thinking?”

“I don’t know. I’ll try to get ahold of some of them this afternoon and set up times, then let you know?”

“Sure. That’d be fun. I don’t have nearly enough excitement in my life when you’re not chasing ghosts around hell’s half acre.”

“Well, I do live to serve.”

“I seriously doubt that.”

Chapter Thirteen

There are lots of people listed in the police reports who don’t live in the area anymore, and even more who prove hard to track down, which is unexpected in this day and age of Internet narcissism. I suspect that most of the women have probably married and changed their names, but somehow, by the next morning I have a list of three who answered their phones and agreed
to talk to me about the long-dead case.

It’s pretty obvious from some of the responses that most of the students at Charleston Prep wanted nothing to do with the investigation back then, maybe because of Brick’s family or popularity, maybe something else, and whatever reasons were good enough for staying out of it back then remain good enough now. I get several unreturned calls, a couple of hang
ups after I tell them what I’m bothering them about, and one cursing-out by an older man who starts a racist rant so awful I want to bleach my brain and then call the police just to warn them that he exists.

Leo’s in my passenger’s seat, sipping coffee as we trek up the coast on our way to the first appointment before seven in the morning. The early hour totally sucks, but Henry kept me up half
the night playing a trick he just learned—to turn the lights on and off. Once he learned that this also works with the radio, I may as well have given up sleeping. He and I are about to have a come-to-Jesus chat, because there isn’t anything I love more than sleep. If he keeps it up I’m asking Daria to get rid of him the way she’s going to get rid of that asshole man ghost and his poor, crazy daughter
for her clients.

“So, where are we going?” Leo asks.