Sweet Tea and Spirits

by Angie Fox

  “Figures I’d get the rude one,” Henrietta huffed.

  “I beg your pardon.” I hadn’t meant for my words to come out harsh. I’d been battling to keep the truck—and myself—in one piece. Besides, I didn’t appreciate leaving the house with a stowaway ghost.

  She shot me a holier-than-thou look. “Your friend acts sweeter than honey, but I’m sure I can’t trust him if he associates with the likes of you.”

  Unbelievable. “So now I’m the bad influence?”

  The spirit eyed me suspiciously. “You left your friend behind. You said you’d take him with you.”

  Oh. That. “I’m coming back,” I assured her. I slowed as the road curved. “This is just a quick trip out.”

  “We need to return immediately.” She narrowed her eyes. “They’re sequestered in his gentleman’s retreat right now,” she hissed.

  “You mean the outhouse?” I asked.

  Frankie was having girls over to the latrine?

  “He’s saying things to her no proper gentleman should,” she added ominously.

  Sakes alive. We couldn’t have him seducing a sweet orphan girl. “I’ll take care of it first thing.”

  She lifted her chin. “I’m staying with you until you do.”

  “Oh no.” I hit the gas as we came up a hill. “I don’t need another ghost following me around.”

  “I can be persistent if you cannot.”

  Fine.

  She sat primly next to me. Or at least I assumed so. She was still only a head.

  I kept my eyes on the road and my focus on what I could control, which didn’t seem like much at the moment.

  Henrietta, for her part, delivered the occasional glare as I took us the rest of the way to the turnoff for my house.

  Still, there was one question I was dying to ask her.

  “So what’s Mother Mary like?” I asked, starting down the long road to my house. “And if she’s so powerful, how come she’s not showing herself? I mean, I saw her hands. That was it.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I’m not talking to you until you solve the problem with Rudolph Winkelmann.”

  “Who?” I asked, slowing as we passed a hitchhiking ghost.

  “Molly’s beau,” she said, as if I were daft, “your friend, the lawyer.”

  “Right,” I said, focusing once more. Franklin Rudolph Winkelmann was his real name, although the lawyer part was pure fabrication.

  What was he trying to pull?

  It was bad enough to shoot Mick ‘The Angel Maker’ in the foot, but lying to that innocent girl, pretending to be someone he wasn’t… He couldn’t be serious about her if he was doing that. No doubt it was the 1930s version of giving the wrong phone number. The rat.

  He could expect a visit from me at his gentleman’s quarters soon.

  I sighed. It would be such a tease to pull up to my lovely, peaceful home and then have to leave to sort out Frankie’s issues, not to mention a murder.

  But as I neared my house, I saw that it wasn’t quite the haven I’d expected.

  Ghostly sedans crowded my lawn—Lincolns, Delages, and Triumphs shimmering gray in the moonlight, as transparent as the men who took cover behind my hydrangeas and in the begonia bushes surrounding my front porch. I’d never seen anything like it.

  Frankie’s friend Suds sat on the front porch steps, looking forlorn.

  I parked out front, behind a Ford Model A. “You’d better wait here,” I said to Henrietta. No way she was used to this kind of crowd.

  Neither was I, but I didn’t have a choice.

  My pulse quickened as I eased down out of the truck. I was tuned in to the other side, which meant those ghostly guns were deadly to me. I should just turn around and leave. I would. Except they’d already seen me.

  Act casual.

  Maybe they’d let me slip past them and into the house. I just wouldn’t look at them. They wouldn’t even know I could see them.

  The mobsters watched me as I walked slowly past them. One grizzled gangster with a five-o’clock shadow and a fat neck tipped his hat at me, while his other hand hefted a Tommy gun.

  I gazed about, as if I were enjoying a perfectly lovely summer night.

  Poor Lucy. I hoped she was all right inside.

  Suds stood when I approached. Dirt and grime streaked his tan pleated pants and chambray shirt. That didn’t bother me. He always looked like that. Suds had died while tunneling into the vault at the First Sugarland Bank. Besides, I couldn’t help him right now.

  “They’re looking for Frankie,” he said, his snub-nosed face shining with sweat.

  I fumbled for my keys, wishing I’d kept hold of them, cursing myself for not thinking.

  I pushed open the door and entered quickly, shivering from the chill of the ghosts.

  “Lucy.” I hurried down the hall. “How are you doing, baby?”

  I turned on more lights than strictly necessary and found her in the parlor, in a nest of blankets. She raised her head, her fur smushed with sleep, and toddled out to greet me.

  “Baby,” I said, folding her in my arms, “I’m so sorry I left you with these ghosts.”

  “Did you hear me?” a man demanded. I turned to find Suds standing behind me. “Frankie’s been named.”

  I glanced behind him to make sure he was alone. “I have no idea what that means,” I said, clutching my skunk. I’d known he was in trouble, but this was a full-mob stakeout. At my house!

  At least Lucy didn’t seem to mind. She nuzzled my arm, not even bothered by Suds.

  “Frankie has a mouth,” Suds explained as a chunk of ghostly dirt broke off his pants and landed on my floor.

  And a temper. “He told me he shot Mick in the foot.”

  “We’re lucky he didn’t pick a more sensitive area,” Suds said.

  “So far nothing I’ve heard gives Mick the right to hunt Frankie like this.” I mean, if Frankie were to get into this kind of trouble, I figured it would involve theft, embezzling, or something else Frankie loved to do. “Yes, Frankie showed bad judgement.” What else was new? “But it’s over.”

  Suds shook his head and the spiderweb dangling from his bowler hat swayed. “He embarrassed the guy. Frankie’s got to find a way for Mick ‘The Angel Maker’ to save face or he’s history.”

  He couldn’t live like this. I couldn’t either.

  “Let me talk to this Mick,” I said, fully aware that I still had Frankie’s powers and that Mick could hurt me too if he wanted.

  Maybe he’d be a reasonable guy. Although staking out my house over a couple of choice words and an ill-mannered gunshot to the foot wasn’t exactly a point in his favor.

  I went to the refrigerator and pulled out a bowl of cut fruit for Lucy. She tucked into the treat and I watched her eat, her fluffy tail writhing with delight.

  Why couldn’t all our lives be as simple as Lucy’s?

  I glanced to the back door. Perhaps I didn’t have to deal with this tonight.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Suds said. “They covered the back. And I have a feeling they’re onto you anyway.”

  “Why?” I asked, straightening.

  “Because they can hear you talking to me.”

  I turned and in the doorway to my kitchen stood a trio of wiseguys.

  All right. I took the long way, through the parlor and the front room. I could feel them cold at my back as I walked out onto my porch. A dozen guns lifted, aimed right for me.

  “Can anyone here tell me where to find Mick ‘The Angel Maker?’” I asked, proud when my voice remained calm and steady.

  We’d come to some kind of truce. We had to. I was feeling okay about my chances until Henrietta’s head appeared next to me, looking flustered and nervous.

  “I told you to wait in the car,” I told her.

  “No,” she said, voice shaking. “I told you, you are not going to leave my sight.”

  Just then, the door of a Packard in the front opened up and a good-looking man in a three-piece suit go
t out. He had an angular face, movie-star hair, and a hard look in his eye.

  Henrietta gasped.

  “Stay behind me,” I told her.

  “He’s so handsome,” she gushed.

  What was up with these repressed widows?

  “He’s a terrible, terrible man,” I muttered to her.

  Mick ‘The Angel Maker’ took his time approaching us, no doubt to make us nervous. It was totally working on me.

  He nodded to his men as he passed, and they tipped their guns to their boss. When he reached the bottom of my porch, Mick stopped directly in front of me, his gaze pinning me to the spot.

  Chapter 17

  Are you Ida Jane?” Mick asked, as if he wanted me to say yes.

  Up close, the hardened gangster had an almost boyish look to him, with full lips and an eager glint in his eye. I still knew better than to trust him.

  I tried to focus on Mick, and not his men behind him with the dark, deadly barrels of their guns pointed straight at me. I cleared my throat and spoke in a low, soothing tone as if he were a feral dog or a rabid coyote. “My great-grandmother’s name was Ida Jane Butler.” Ida Jane had been born on this property in 1912. “Did you know her?”

  His mouth hardened and his face lost all expression. “You’re the spitting image of her.”

  I really hoped she hadn’t ticked him off.

  He reached for my neck and I froze, bracing myself against the contact, knowing I could do nothing about it. But he stopped just short of me, his fingers curling into a fist. “She meant a great deal to me,” he hissed, pulling his hand back as if it were difficult for him not to touch me. “Pray, love. Tell me where I can find her.”

  He swiped up a hand and his men lowered their weapons. At least most of them. The guy behind my hydrangea kept his Tommy gun aimed square at my chest. It wasn’t like he even needed to be accurate with that thing. One pull of the trigger and I was history.

  “Ida Jane,” Mick said, his attention flicking to my lips, as if he wanted to kiss me. “Please tell me I haven’t…frightened her.”

  I would have loved to tell him that he had scared the bejesus out of dearly departed Ida and that she demanded he scram and take his men with him. But it wasn’t as if I could exactly produce the ghost of my great-grandmother.

  “I live here now,” I said. “I haven’t seen her lately.” Truthfully, I hadn’t seen her at all, but I really didn’t want to irritate Mick any further. “It would be just like Ida to check in, though,” I added, giving him—and myself—a bit of hope. I could use some help from Ida right about now. “I’ll kindly mention I saw you,” I said, thinking I could perhaps just ease past him with a quick and friendly goodbye.

  And then race down the driveway and move in with my sister for the foreseeable future.

  He blocked my way. “I’m Mickey Stuart.” A muscle in his jaw twitched. “I grew up down the road. Your place still looks the same.” He glanced past me to my house. “Ida and I used to walk in the peach orchard together,” he added quietly. “I’d give anything to do that again.”

  I gasped as my family’s old peach orchard sprang to life in shades of gray right there in my front yard. The houses down the way fell out of sight, taken over by rows and rows of ghostly trees, gorgeous and full, heavy with fruit. A dirt path ran up the middle, right where my driveway stood today.

  Long-gone bees buzzed in and out of the branches and I spotted my grandpa’s old bucket at the end of the first row, filled to the brim with peaches. The old tool belt he’d inherited from his father-in-law hung from a low branch, ready and waiting to be strapped around great-grandpa’s waist.

  “Oh my.” I brought a hand to my mouth. It was beautiful. My land—restored to what it had been, to what it could never be again.

  For a second, I really believed Ida Jane might come walking out of that orchard. I think I wanted it as much as Mick.

  I could feel the coldness seeping off him as he stood next to me. “It’s something, isn’t it?” He looked down with an emotion I couldn’t place. He hesitated for a moment and then offered me his elbow. “Would you care to walk the orchard with me?”

  “I’d be honored,” I said, meaning every word. “Only…” I paused, not sure how to reject his touch.

  He caught my drift and withdrew. “Right. I’m not used to the living.”

  “We grow on you,” I told him, careful to stick close to him as he walked me down the steps and through the posse of mobsters out for blood.

  “What happened to the orchard?” he asked, leading me down the driveway.

  “The family needed money.” I marveled at the thick branches of the trees and just how much fruit they must have produced. I always knew they’d been here, but seeing them was another matter.

  Mick cursed under his breath. “I shoulda come back sooner.”

  A lot could happen in more than one hundred years. Although I didn’t have the heart to remind him Ida couldn’t spend his money now.

  I glanced back at the house surrounded by the hit squad. But they didn’t follow us.

  “Check this out,” Mick said, leading me off the path, through a thick row of trees. We had to duck to avoid the branches. He stopped near a tree trunk that twisted and then broke off in a Y. “Stand next to this one.”

  I did and noticed initials carved in the wood. IJ + M

  Two branches of the same tree, their initials glowing white in the shimmering bark.

  “Did you love her?” I asked quietly, knowing I was treading in dangerous territory.

  His expression hardened and I feared I’d made a grave error.

  “I was going to ask her to marry me.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked up to the night sky. “But the depression was on. I headed to Chicago to make some money first. Fell in with a rough crowd.”

  “I know how that is,” I said, following his gaze, marveling at the glittering stars through the branches. These were the same stars my grandparents and great-grandparents had seen, through these same trees. “A rough crowd moved in with me.”

  His eyes flicked down to me, like cold, hard rocks. “Frankie the German. He insulted me. He shot me.”

  I nodded. “I’m sorry for that.”

  He slammed his eyes closed. “That’s not enough.”

  “It can be,” I offered.

  “No. You haven’t been around the block like me. Weakness gets you killed.” He drew a revolver out of his jacket, as if the movement pained him. But when he opened his eyes, they’d gone cold, like the eyes of a killer.

  I froze. “Don’t.”

  He aimed the revolver at my chest. “I didn’t choose this. Frankie did, and he wasn’t man enough to stick around.” He cocked the trigger. “Now I gotta prove a point.”

  “By killing me?” I took a step backward, but there was nowhere to go.

  “It’s nothing personal, sweetheart.” He shrugged. “I’m just sending a message.”

  There was no use running. No use fighting. If he wanted to kill me, he would. It was the most helpless, awful feeling, and I suddenly knew how Frankie must have felt in his last moments.

  Mick narrowed his eyes. “What? You’re not going to argue with me? Plead for mercy?”

  “Would Ida do that?” I asked him.

  He frowned. “You look too much like her.”

  “Would she be proud of the man you’ve become?” I pressed. It was all I had. I wasn’t a beggar or a pleader, but I would hold him accountable.

  “It was tough times. You know that.” He adjusted his aim, but he didn’t fire.

  Yet.

  He eyed me, as if I were trying to get one over on him. I was, in a sense. I needed to get out of here alive. But I also had a valid point to make. “I don’t know you like Ida did, but it seems to me like you have the power to be whoever you want to be.”

  “I came down here to find her,” he said, jabbing the revolver at me like an accusing finger. “Hell, I come down every decade, hoping she’s here. And what do I
see this time? Horse races and Frankie the German tossing cigarettes into the pond where Ida and I used to swim.”

  Welcome to my world. “I get he’s a jerk sometimes, but I grounded him on this property by mistake, so he’s here until I can find a way to fix it.”

  “So I should just let you go,” he shot back. “I should just let Frankie go,” he said, as if it was the most absurd idea in the world. Well, screw that.

  “I put up with him, I don’t see why you shouldn’t have to.”

  He barked out a laugh.

  “That sounds like something Ida would say,” he told me, his grin fading. “Damn, I miss her.” He lowered his gun.

  My head went light from sheer relief. “She sounds amazing,” I told him.

  He wiped his forehead with the side of his gun hand. “She was…is,” he corrected himself, refusing to believe she’d moved on.

  “Mick!” one of the men called from down the row, swishing tree limbs out of his way as he ducked through the row toward us. He stopped short when he saw me. “You didn’t whack her?”

  “No,” Mick snapped. “I didn’t.”

  “Oh.” He straightened. “Okay.” He stood awkwardly for a moment. “Um, Bones is down from Chicago. He needs a word about the Milwaukee shipment.”

  “Yeah, all right,” Mick said, the peach trees fading, their limbs retreating, so that we stood in the middle of my yard, a distance from the house, in bare grass that used to be the center of so much more. “Tell him to wait in my car,” Mick said, as resigned as I felt.

  I folded my arms over my chest, shaking a little. I’d never had a gangster try to revenge whack me before, much less someone my great-grandmother used to date.

  “You okay?” Mick asked, which was ironic considering the circumstances.

  “You’re a little intimidating,” I admitted.

  “I am.” He shot me a predatory grin. “Come on. I’ll walk you back.” He replaced his gun in his side holster. “You know, just in case one of the guys gets trigger-happy.”

  How comforting.

  The summer grass swished at my ankles. I really shouldn’t push it, but I had to know. “Does this mean you forgive Frankie?”