by Amy Boyles
“Very little,” Ruth agreed.
I pieced it all together. “Since Farris lives with Homer, Homer could’ve easily stolen what he needed, put it in Neal’s drink and left. Voila! We have a murder.”
“Right,” Ruth said.
I stared at the two women. “Okay. We’ve got a plan. First thing tomorrow we head over to the Hicks’ house, find what we’re looking for and turn it over to Kency. Easy as pie.”
Ruth and Alice rose.
“Sounds perfect, Blissful,” Alice said.
They shuffled toward the door. “Are y’all leaving? Where’re you going?”
Alice cast Ruth a guilty look. “We’d better leave,” Alice said. “Kency’s looking for me. It’s only a matter of time before she shows up here. I don’t want to put you in an awkward situation, so we’ll be going.”
“But to where?”
Ruth smiled mysteriously. “We’ve got plenty of hideouts; don’t you worry about us. If you’re found with us, Kency will arrest you, too. You’re too young to squander any of your life, Blissful. Us? We’ve lived a long time.”
As if that made a difference. I didn’t want either of them to get in trouble for something they didn’t do. Granted, they were evading Kency, but it was for a good reason—Alice hadn’t committed murder.
I gave them each a big hug and said I’d meet them near the Hicks’ house in the morning. They gave me the address, and I settled in to put away the clothes I’d bought and to relax the rest of my day.
At least, that’s how I expected it to go.
“Sounds like you’ve got a big day ahead of you tomorrow.”
I hung the last sweater and turned to see Lucky standing in the doorway. He lit a smoke and took a long, luxurious drag.
I nodded to him. “I plan on catching a murderer.”
“Oh? Sounds intriguing. And exactly what are you going to do?”
I explained the situation. He listened quietly, sucking on his smoke every now and then.
“So you’re going to snoop in an old man’s house to find a drug he probably has. Then what? How does that make his son a murderer?”
The heavens collapsed around me. Lucky was right. How was that going to prove anything?
I deflated onto the bed. “I don’t know. It sounded great before you put it that way.”
Lucky flicked ghostly ash on the floor. “What you need is for the son to admit it.”
“How am I going to do that?”
Lucky sneered. Black grime coated slices of his ghostly teeth. “You need to scare him. What would scare him more than the murder victim appearing and demanding vengeance?”
“You think Susan should confront him?”
“Why not? It works in the movies.”
I laughed. “First of all, Susan doesn’t remember who killed her.”
He cackled. “A little memory loss never stopped anyone from unjustly accusing another of something that might or might not be true.”
“I don’t know. She hasn’t spoken to me lately.”
He shrugged. “I could look like her.”
My jaw dropped. “You?”
“Yes, you know, this is part of our bargain, after all. The part where I help you even if the world is exploding and you do your part to float me into the afterlife.”
I brushed past him into the living room. “I’m aware of our agreement.”
“You haven’t been talking about it.”
“I have better things to do than focus on something that might or might not be true.”
He smirked, recognizing that I tossed his words back to him. “So you don’t want to talk about it. I’ll give you that. Just remember what I said—I will help you, you help me. If not…”
“You’ll wreak unimaginable havoc on the planet? I don’t like threats. That’s not the best way to get out of me what you’d like. You know, like my help. Try accosting another clairvoyant to transition you into the afterlife.”
His lips peeled in a smile. “It has to be you, Blissful Breneaux. That way everything comes full circle.”
“Okay, whatever.”
He shrugged. “But I do promise I can create a believable Susan Whitby if I need to.”
“Like heck you will!”
My gaze flashed to the corner. There stood Susan in red heels, tight capris and a yellow shirt. She chomped her gum like she was going for a Guinness world record—Hardest Gum Chew Known To Man.
“Susan,” Lucky cooed, “great to see you.”
“It is not great to see you,” she snapped. “You are horrible, and there is no way I would allow you to play me if you were the last person on earth.”
“I am not the last person on earth,” he said.
“I hate you,” she spat. “You are the worst spirit ever. I thought we had something, Lucky. I thought it was special.”
Oh great. I was standing in the middle of an ex-lover’s quarrel. Awesome. What a way to spend my day.
“Susan.” He reached for her. “I explained the way I am before anything ever started between us.”
Susan pouted her lip. “I didn’t listen.”
I gestured my arms widely, trying to diffuse the situation. “Stop. Okay, both of you stop. First of all, I don’t want to get into the technicalities of ghosts doing it. There’s only so much my mind can take when it comes to that. Secondly—well, there is no secondly. Cool it, both of you.”
Susan glared flaming arrows at him. “Okay,” she mumbled.
Lucky nodded.
I exhaled. “Susan, we need you to do something important.”
She popped her gum and pulled a strand of it like she was working taffy. “What’s that?”
“Tomorrow morning I’m going to Homer Hicks’s home to retrieve evidence that he killed Neal Norton.”
She glanced nervously at Lucky.
“I shouldn’t have any problem finding what I’m looking for, but Lucky believes—and he’s right—that we need a confession from Homer. It’s been so long since your murder that there isn’t any evidence to be found. We need a confession.”
Lucky winked at Susan. “That’s where you come in, Sugar.”
She frowned. “How?”
I cleared my throat. I didn’t know if Susan would be comfortable with this. It was one thing to scare folks you didn’t know, but to face the man who killed you? Well, I didn’t know if Susan was capable of that.
“Susan, if we’re going to get Homer to admit to the murder, we’re going to need your help. You have to confront him—scare him to the point that he confesses. It’s the only way.”
Susan exhaled. She slumped against the wall. How did spirits do that? Interact with their surroundings in a totally cool way?
When she didn’t speak, I shot Lucky a look. He slid his hands into his pants pockets.
“All we need is for him to confess.”
“Homer is guilty, Susan. Surely you must feel that. Of all the men who were accused, he had the most motive, the most opportunity. I know he had an alibi, but heck, plenty of folks who’ve committed murder have had alibis. He’s our man. This is your chance, your one shot to be free of the weight you’ve been carrying around.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know if I can do it. Like, if you’d asked me years ago, I would’ve, like, totally said yes, but now? I don’t know.”
I wanted to rip my hair from my skull. Isn’t this what ghosts wanted? To vindicate themselves? To face the person who caused them horrible pain in life and make them pay?
What the heck, Hollywood? Have you gotten this crap wrong all along?
I looked at Lucky for something—anything. He’d known Susan longer than I had and had an in with spirits. If anyone knew the right thing to say, it would be him.
I tutted to myself. How time had changed. Here I was, asking Lucky Strike for advice and not trying to lasso him into a box of water balloons—a device Alice thought could contain ghosts.
A twinge of sadness filled me as I thought about Alice. Alice,
an innocent in this whole thing. Alice needed to have the warrant for her arrest dropped.
Susan could do that. She could make that happen.
“Susan, you can face your murderer and make him admit it. Make him reveal what happened that night.”
“I don’t know.” She nibbled her bottom lip.
I scratched my fingers through my hair. “He has the anchor tattoo. Remember what you told me? The last thing you remember is an anchor? Well, Homer Hicks has one on his bicep. It’s him, Susan. All you have to do is make him confess. Easy as pie.”
Susan’s lower lip trembled. “See, the thing is…”
I slapped my hands to my thighs. “What? What’s the thing? He’s guilty. All signs point to yes. Do I need to shake a Magic 8 Ball to prove it? Homer is the man you’ve been searching for. What do I have to do to make you confront him? He’ll fold in half as soon as he sees you.”
Lucky nodded. “I bet he does.”
“There’s just this thing,” she started to say again.
I sighed. “Okay. What is it? What’s the thing? Why won’t you just say, ‘Yes, I’ll scare Homer. I’ll make him so afraid he pees his pants’?”
“Because.” Susan formed the words slower than any I’d ever witness come from her mouth. “Because,” she repeated, “there’s this problem.”
I arched a brow. “Which is?”
“I should’ve told you before.” She chomped her gum. “I should have, but I couldn’t.”
“What is it?” Susan was lucky she was already dead because I was about to strangle her.
“You see, though I don’t remember the killer, I do know one thing.”
“And that is?”
In the background Lucky lit another cigarette. Smoke curled toward the ceiling.
“See,” Susan said, “the one thing I know is that of all the men who could’ve killed me, it wasn’t Homer Hicks.”
My jaw dropped. “You’re saying?”
She swallowed. “Homer Hicks is, like, totally innocent. It’s gag-me-with-a-spoon annoying, but it’s true.”
TWENTY-TWO
“There’s no way I believe that.” No one had moved since Susan made her revelation about Homer Hicks. Of course when I say no one, I mean two spirits and myself.
Susan’s doe eyes were earnest. “I mean, I don’t think he killed me.”
“Look, what are you working on here?” I said.
“A feeling.”
I rubbed my chin, doing my best to focus my mounting frustration on something other than Susan. “So are you saying you won’t do it? You won’t make Homer confess?”
“I don’t think he’s guilty.”
“But if you scare him, maybe he’ll confess. If he’s innocent, then he won’t confess; he’ll probably just cry at your feet or something tacky like that. Then we’ll know. We’ll know for sure—at least about him.”
“She has a point.” Lucky pulled on his smoke. “If you don’t want to do it, Susan, I can. I’ll pretend to be you. I could use a good laugh. The best way to do that is scare a few folks. There’s something about the fear in their eyes when they see me. It makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.”
I raked my fingers through my hair. “It’s great that other people’s terror amuses you, Lucky. But we’re dealing with a different situation.”
“Same thing to me,” he said.
I inhaled deeply. Could everyone just do what I wanted and not talk? “Susan, think about it. You have until tomorrow to decide what you want to do about Homer. Either way I’m entering that house. Homer won’t be there. We can get him later. Maybe tomorrow night—once I find the evidence.”
“Okay,” she said softly, “I’ll think about it.”
“Good. Stay close.”
“Will do.” She flashed a hideous look to Lucky. “And you, I hope not to see you around anytime soon.”
With that, Susan twisted into a cloud of smoke and disappeared.
Lucky’s gaze met mine. “She took that pretty well.”
I nodded. “She did. But I need you on standby in case Susan doesn’t want to scare Homer.”
His lips coiled into a smile. “You’re going to do it anyway? Terrorize the fellow into confessing?”
I picked up the remote control and snapped on the TV. “Yep. What other choice do I have? This is a thirty-year-old murder. If there’s any forensic evidence left, no one’s pulling it out and re-analyzing it. We need a confession.”
“You sound more and more like your father every day.”
I bristled from head to toe. “I’m not like my father.”
He hitched a brow. “Oh? Something happen to make you rethink everything you’ve ever known about good old Vince Breneaux?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but maybe.”
He floated over. The tails of his striped tuxedo jacket flared behind him. “Oh? Paradise not what you think?”
I dropped my head onto the back of the couch. “Look, let’s just say I may or may not believe you.”
“Sounds ridiculously complex.”
I shook my head. “I had some of his old files sent to me so I could search through them, see if what you said is true.”
Lucky leaned forward. The hunger in his eyes made me uncomfortable. He was waiting to latch on. He wanted me to tell him that my dad had been everything Lucky said he was.
“What did you discover?”
I plumped a pillow. “I hate to tell you, but there wasn’t anything in the files. It was all a bunch of reports. Everything was in order.”
His gaze sank to the floor. He took a moment and straightened, inflating with shoulders back and head high. “Every word I told you was the truth.”
“I know.”
He blinked. Lucky Strike had lived his entire life being cool. He’d been in control of that life, I was pretty sure. I mean, anyone who wore a striped suit with tails had a level of confidence that far outweighed my own.
So the fact that Lucky had been ensnared by my father and promised time and again that he’d be able to float on over to the afterlife with the completion of the next job, must have rankled him something fierce. To Lucky, it must’ve felt like someone had locked a choker around his neck and dragged him anywhere they wanted.
His loss of control would’ve been dehumanizing. Yes, Lucky was dead, but he still possessed a human spirit.
I sighed and switched off the TV. “I didn’t find any reports that suggested my father had done anything subversive.”
The tone in my voice must’ve pricked his interest. Lucky cocked his brows. “So what did you find?”
“Well”—I exhaled loudly—“I didn’t find anything in the report, but there was a yellow slip of notebook paper stuck to the back of a page.”
Anita had obviously overlooked it. If the director had realized she’d shipped it to me along with the rest, she would’ve had a conniption fit. No lie. She would’ve been so wound up her head would’ve popped off along with her fake boobs.
Lucky leaned over the couch. “And what did it say?”
I stared at him. “It was a note from my father to Anita.”
“Must’ve been good.”
My gaze narrowed. “It was a personal correspondence between the two of them.”
“How personal?”
“It’s not what you think. They didn’t have a relationship. At least not an intimate one.”
He pulled a pack of smokes from his pocket and fiddled with the crinkly container. “What sort?”
I shook my head. There was no point keeping a secret any longer. It would have to come out anyway.
“The note revealed my dad had plans to make sure you stayed around for a long time. There were more jobs to do, more chaos to create.” My stomach coiled into a pretzel. “And Anita knew all about it. She was in on it.”
Lucky clapped with glee. He popped the pack in his pocket and danced, spindly legs flying. “You see? I told you the whole thing was a setup. I told you, Blissful Breneaux. I
was used by the man!”
“It’s not just that, Lucky. I was used, too.”
He stopped dancing. His legs arched, and Lucky looked more spiderlike than human. He hovered as if held by string. The effect was eerie. It would’ve been more so if it had been nighttime.
“What do you mean, you were used?” Skepticism dripped from his voice and filled his gaze.
“What I mean is, Anita sent me here to find you and bring you back to headquarters.”
Granted, headquarters was nothing more than a mobile trailer that never stayed in one place for more than a month, but it was where business was done.
He slowly lowered his legs to the floor. “What do you mean, she wanted you to bring me in?”
I sighed. “You know I was sent to find you and take you to her. What you and I didn’t realize, however, was that my dad had lost you. He didn’t know where you were. My dad knew Anita would get the job after he died.”
Thinking of it filled me with anger, but I’d had half a day to think on it. The initial reading of the note cut me deep. I’d been raw inside. Raw with exposed nerve endings. But there was no mistaking what I’d uncovered in that note.
My dad knew Anita would take over for him. Once I’d finished reading his communication to her, I realized why I didn’t get the job as director.
Vince Breneaux never planned on me to take his place. My own father hadn’t wanted me to walk in his shoes. Oh, he’d said as much and in fact had promised me on his deathbed that the job would be mine.
It had all been a lie.
I inhaled a shot of air. “Anita Tucker’s first priority was to find you, Lucky. She sent me to do her dirty work.”
He arched a brow. “Why?”
“Guess? It’s incredibly hard to figure out.”
“I don’t appreciate sarcasm.”
I fisted my hands. “You’re not seeing what’s so obvious. I was supposed to haul you in for the Ghost Team. Once Anita had you in her clutches, she wasn’t going to let you go. The cycle my father started would continue.”
Lucky stared down. All the life that was left in him sloughed off and dripped into the floor. After a few seconds he lifted his gaze to mine.
“You’re saying you were supposed to deliver me to your father’s successor.”
