Not Quite Gone (A Lowcountry Mystery) (5 page)

The day is overcast and muggy, but the temperature has dropped to somewhere in the seventies. People are out and about with smiles on their faces, which
for the first time in months, aren’t dripping with sweat. I stride past the burned remnants of Sonny and Shears, trying not to think about how I almost died in there just weeks ago. The diner and Westies are both bustling, which means if I’m going to get back in an hour with our lunches in tow—and to fail in that mission would not be good based on my cousin’s obsession with food lately—I need
to put a little skip in my step.

I met Daria—a local, self-professed medium who has the endorsement of an online psychic directory that I sincerely hope never to be included in—a week or so ago. She was supposed to make me feel more comfortable in my new role as undead liaison, but in truth, meeting with her just exposed all the sides of this ghost business that remain mysterious to me. My cousin
and I already know that curses can last generations, that the dead can reach out and affect the paths of the living. It worries me that it could happen again. That one of my ghosts could insert his or herself into my life, or my family’s lives, in a more real—and destructive—way.

All the spirits I’ve met, at least thus far, have been nice. I mean, I wouldn’t invite them all over for hair-braiding
and margaritas, but even though they often startle me, they don’t
frighten
me. But who knows what else lurks in the space between this world and whatever’s next?

Before dark images of devils and demons can claw all the sense out of my head, I’m at the police station. One of the Ryan twins grabs me when I step through the door, pinning my arms to my sides and squeezing me until I screech in actual
discomfort.

“It’s Gracie Lou Who, Ted! Come tie her up before she claws my eyes out.”

“Put me down, you big oaf!” I squeal, trying unsuccessfully to kick him in the shins.

“Tom, please. Some decorum. We do not manhandle Heron Creek citizens, no matter how they might deserve a little good-natured trouble from the police.” Dylan Travis, a recent addition to Heron Creek and the police force, glowers
at my red-haired, freckle-faced old friend. Tom’s twin stops in his tracks three feet away, no longer sure he’s supposed to grab me now that we’re being chastised. Or they are.

“Sorry, Boss. Maybe you’ll understand after a few more months in the Creek.” Tom shrugs, elbowing me in the side. “Right, Gracie?”

“Yes, I can’t wait until everyone in town greets me with lung-crushing pain.”

“You’re
such a baby these days,” he huffs, sitting down at his desk and wolfing down a glazed donut in a single bite.

“And I see you’ve decided to become a full-on cliché.” Despite the exchange, I can’t keep the grin off my face. These boys are like the big brothers no one wants but everyone loves, and if they ever left the town I feel like the sun would stop shining. Which would also be less annoying,
on some days.

“Damn the man! Eat the donuts!” Ted chimes in, grabbing a chocolate-frosted one for himself.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I inform him, looking to Travis for another rescue.

He doesn’t seem to get the hint as it takes at least two minutes of pointed looks before he interrupts the twins’ banter. “If you’ll excuse us, fellas, Miss Harper and I have some police business to attend.”

“Ooooh, Gracie Lou, what did you do now? Set something else on fire? Steal Leo’s dumb guitar?”

“That would be a public service, not a crime,” Tom chides, stroking his chin as though he’s deep in thought.

Before I can come to Leo’s defense—he’s never going to get a record deal in Nashville but his singing isn’t exactly painful—Travis motions me away.

“We’re expecting a Miss Daria…” he says to
the twins. He looks to me as though I’m supposed to finish the sentence, but I don’t even know if she has a last name. She could be like Cher or Madonna.
 

“A Miss Daria,” Travis finishes lamely. “Please bring her to the A.V. room when she gets here.”

“Sure thing, Yank.” Tom shoots a glance at his brother.

The looks on the twins’ faces say their curiosity has been piqued, and that’s definitely
a bad thing. They’re going to know what’s going on and who Daria is before I leave here today, no reason to doubt it.

Travis grunts at the use of the nickname, maybe because he’s from Texas and not anything like a real Yankee, but doesn’t protest before leading me into one of the three closed-off rooms in the small station. It’s filled with outdated video equipment and a couple of laptops that
would rival Sean’s for the World’s Oldest Working Computer award.

He sits and kicks out a matching folding chair for me, which I claim. “Should we wait for her?”

“Yeah. I’m on my lunch break so I don’t have time to go through it twice.” I check the time on my phone, noticing a text from Leo. “If she doesn’t get here in the next five minutes, though, we can start.”

I swipe open the text message.

How’d the first day go at the Drayton estate? Everything you hoped for?

It was…interesting.
 

As interesting as the reason Daria’s running around town? She just caused quite the stir at Westies when she informed old Mrs. Blount that her dead dog is really upset she didn’t cremate him with his favorite ball.

I can’t decide whether to pass out from horror or laugh.
 

Oh God. She
didn’t say anything about me, did she?

You know it. The ladies of Heron Creek wouldn’t let a stranger escape without an interrogation, you know that.

Fabulous.

You want to play tennis later and catch up? I have a feeling I’m missing out on some excitement, and you know how I feel about being in the loop.

I pause, biting my lip. Beau and I are supposed to hang out but I’ve barely
spoken to Leo since his sister, Lindsay, got home from prison, and I haven’t seen her daughter, Marcella, at all. It’s left a bit of a hole in my life, even though it’s clear their little family needs some time alone.

Sure. Before dinner, though?
 

I can squeeze in both. Leo’s exactly the person I’d like to tell about the creepy dead girl on the Drayton property. I saw Beau last night and
told him everything else about my first day but left her out…I don’t know why. It’s his family and the death is fairly recent, which means she should be easy enough to track down. It might be better to make sure it’s not a sensitive family matter before ruining one of our precious nights together.

I meant to look up documented deaths on the property this morning but the library was actually a
bit busy, with a meeting with Mr. Freedman to discuss when newly purchased books would be arriving—hopefully this afternoon—and the first school-year meeting of a mommy book club.

“How is Amelia doing, in your estimation?” Travis asks.

“In my estimation?” My tone is mocking but it goes straight over his head, not budging his earnest expression. I sigh. “Not well. She does seem more together
as far as the nightmares and the sleepwalking, but I don’t know… I feel like she’s just getting better at faking it. She’s hiding something, and that scares me.”

He frowns. “I agree. That’s not ideal. Perhaps I’ll drop around this evening. Do the two of you have dinner plans?”

“I’m supposed to go somewhere with Beau.” I pause, a little unnerved by how much I’m starting to depend on Travis, despite
all my efforts to the contrary, at least when it comes to my cousin. He’s good for Amelia—anyone can see that—and he really seems to care about her. Leave it up to my gorgeous, charming Southern belle of a cousin to snag the interest of a man when she’s six months pregnant. “But I think she’d like the company.”

He gives me a wry smile. “Well, I’m not confident enough to say that, but perhaps
she
needs
the company, at any rate.”

“Hello?” Daria pokes her head in the door, halting any further conversation about my cousin, which is fine. There isn’t much left to say, sadly, though it will be nice to be able to check in with Travis later this week. Get his assessment on her mental state.
 

I wish there weren’t things like stupid doctor-patient confidentiality laws so I could just pry
it out of her therapist myself, but alas.

“Hi,” I reply, realizing then that she and Travis haven’t met. “This is Detective Travis.”

“Pleasure,” he manages, his eyes wide at her appearance.

Perhaps because she’s dyed her hair bright purple since the last time I saw her and she is, for some godforsaken reason, wearing a ruby red, formal satin gown. With running shoes.

“Um…did I accidentally
mention a dress code in my e-mail?” Inside, I’m wondering why Leo didn’t think to warn me about this development. The answer is, of course, that it would be exponentially less fun.

“No. I have plans after this,” she huffs, dropping into a chair and pulling a handkerchief out of her bag to mop the bridge of her nose. “I have a life, you know.”

“I don’t doubt it.” I choke out the words, unsure
what the appropriate response is in this situation.

She shoots me a glare, but Travis breaks in before we can get into a ghost-hunter snarkfest. We should get a reality show on TLC or something.

“Okay, so I just want the two of you to take a look at this video from a break-in we had at the hospital last week. We have a moving image of what appears to be an apparition going into the supply closet—through
the door—and emerging a few minutes later.”

“And you want to know if it’s real?” The expression on Daria’s face is skeptical. “Hard to say for sure without being there.”

“Well, this is our only option,” Travis snaps, leaning forward to press play on a VCR.

A
VCR
. Sometimes I wonder if maybe Heron Creek is part of a secret government time capsule experiment. Life here ambles along about twenty
years behind the rest of the civilized world. The fact that the image is black and white does nothing to disprove my theory.

On the screen is an empty, slightly fuzzy hallway over at the three-story building that passes for a hospital in Heron Creek. There are doors on either side and, at the edge of the frame, an empty nursing station and another hallway.

It doesn’t take long for the apparition—or
whatever it is—to appear. It looks like a semisolid glob that’s slightly person shaped as it flows down the hall. It doesn’t really have legs, per se, but it moves like a human being and not goo.

I squint, scooting my chair as far forward as it will go, until my nose almost presses against the screen.

“You know, I can’t see if you do that.”

“Sorry.” I’d almost forgotten Daria was here, despite
the fact that she’s mouth-breathing behind me.

She shoulders her way next to me, pushing Travis out of the way, and copies my squint. We watch the goo-figure slide through the middle door on the left. About three minutes later it pops back out into the hallway and slinks back the way it came.

“It’s not carrying anything.” The surprise in my voice startles Daria, who turns to look at me. “What?
I mean, stuff was stolen but whatever that thing is, it didn’t take it.”

“We noticed that, too, but no one else goes in or out of that room, and it was completely ransacked. Bunch of stuff gone, mostly painkillers and their whole supply of EpiPens.” Travis frowns at the screen before switching it off. “Well, what are your thoughts?”

“Like I said, it’s hard to say based on this.” Daria purses
her lips, trying to look serious but failing, mostly because of her getup. The outward strangeness is what I expected from her from the beginning, but when we met at her office she had looked so…normal. “But I don’t think that’s a real spirit.”

“I agree, not because I’m an expert or anything.” I ignore Daria’s gaze, hot on the side of my face. “But items were stolen, and this thing didn’t take
them. So, if whoever did this managed to doctor the tape to hide the actual theft then they could have put this fake ghost thing in at the same time.”

“That makes sense, and it’s in line with what I’ve been thinking since I’m not much for believing in ghosts. No offense to the two of you.”

“Ghosts are kind of like God, Mr. Travis. You don’t have to believe for them to be real. And, like God,
they believe in you.”

“That’s very existential, ma’am. Thank you for your perspective, and for your assistance in this matter.” He shakes her hand, as formal as ever.

Daria looks at me the way she did at her place of business the other day; she’s trying to work a puzzle, but what exactly stumps her about me remains a mystery. “Call me, okay? I’ve just…got a feeling.”
 

With that cryptic statement,
she’s gone, off to whatever venue requires formal attire, sneakers, and purple hair.

To his credit, Travis makes no comment on my new friend’s appearance, just shakes his head a little as though trying to put his world back to right, then nods in my direction. “Thanks for coming down. I wanted to eliminate the supernatural since there are some folks on the force who couldn’t let it go, with the
tape and all. Your reasoning is solid. Someone stole drugs from that room and it wasn’t an apparition.”

“Who do you think it was?” I ask, small fingers of suspicion and curiosity starting to dig into my mind. It worries me that whoever burgled the hospital chose to use a ghost as a distraction. Perhaps my sensitivity is charting off the scale, but the discomfort wrapped around my spine whispers
that this could, somehow, be about me.

“I don’t know. We’re looking at some local dealers, mostly small-time stuff. They’d be able to get decent money for those kinds of prescription drugs.” He stands up, pushing the folding chair out of the way so he can move toward the door. “We’ll figure it out. Don’t worry about it.”

Easier said than done, but there’s not much choice but to follow his lead,
climbing out of the uncomfortable chair and sliding back into the station hallway. “Okay.”

His heavy hand lands on my shoulder, his gray eyes intent on mine. “I mean it, Graciela. This isn’t the time to go all amateur sleuth. You got lucky dealing with the Carusos. People who would steal drugs aren’t the sort you want to mess around with.”