Lowcountry Mysteries (Boxed Set #1)

by Lyla Payne

  “I didn’t think so.” I’m gulping air now. My heart slows down, and all of the implications of seeing a dead Glinda trickle into my head. It’s horrible that I’m more worried about what it means to my life than the fact that it means Glinda’s dead. I am going to hell. Again.

  “Gracie Anne. You can tell me anything. What is going on?”

  The mayor handled my being dragged around town by the swashbuckling ghost of Anne Bonny fairly well earlier this summer, but when it came to light that my cousin Amelia and I are her descendants and Anne moved on, we both assumed that would be the end of my ghost-seeing days. Beau doesn’t know yet that it wasn’t.

  It’s a mystery whether I’ve always been destined for ghost-therapist duty or if Anne put out the word on the spirit version of Twitter, but when the unidentified man showed up a week or two after Anne disappeared, I’d known.

  My days walking the fine line between life and death, between my teetering sanity and embracing life as the town kook, were not over. It might never be over if the spirits keep coming.

  I can’t ignore them. They won’t let me.

  “Graciela,” Beau insists.

  “I think we should go check on Glinda.”

  Confusion twists his too-strong features. “Who?”

  “Come on, I thought you were Super Mayor. Glinda, the woman who owns Sonny and Shears? The hair salon?”

  “No, I know who she is … but not why we should check on her.”

  I close my eyes, then open them. Disappointment, more poignant than any feeling aside from the loss that’s visited me in the past couple of months, makes my blood sluggish. Makes me tired. “I’m still seeing them. The ghosts. And I saw Glinda in your foyer just now.”

  No amount of biting my lip will stop the tears, and they scald my cheeks. It’s dumb to be upset about something as idiotic as my love life at a time like this—and probably evidence of my widening psychotic break—but we’d been so close. It’s almost like the spirit world is on a quest to form my own personal ghostly chastity belt.

  Beau’s face pales, but he controls his expression except for the slightest grimace. “You saw Glinda?”

  “Yes, and not just her. There’s a man dressed in period clothing who showed up right after Anne left, but I can’t figure out who he is. He’s not pushy like she was. He mopes in the corner of my bedroom and occasionally points at me, but doesn’t try to tell me anything.”

  The ghosts only appear when no one else is around, and the man seems to prefer the complete privacy of my grandparent’s old home. Anne Bonny had appeared to my cousin, Amelia, but after we learned the truth about her connection to our family, that made sense. She hasn’t seen the man once, the lucky snot, and I can tell she’s starting to wonder if I’m bats, too.

  “When were you going to tell me this?” Irritation swirls through his concern, darkening his gaze. It feels heavy, and his disappointment joins mine.

  “Never?” I sigh, pushing away from him and swiping roughly at the tears slipping off my eyelashes. “I like you, Beau. And I like that you like me, in spite of my craziness. But you’re the mayor. I’m not even close to the kind of girlfriend you need.”

  He scoots forward, denying me the necessary distance to drive a wedge between us. “Hey, slow down. I’m interested in seeing where this thing with us goes, because I like you, too. Not in spite of anything, but the way you are. Let me worry about what kind of girlfriend I need.”

  “But—”

  “Gracie, seriously. You’ve got to calm down and stop worrying about things that haven’t even come up. Haven’t you ever heard the expression ‘don’t go borrowin’ trouble’?”

  I nod, wiping my nose and managing a smile. “My grams used to say that.”

  “Everyone’s grams says that, and for good reason. Let’s deal with the problem in front of us. Which is what?”

  Dropping the subject of how wrong it is for the mayor to date a mental patient isn’t easy, but when the real issue at hand hovers in front of my face, it stings like a hornet. “Glinda’s dead.”

  Mayor Beau nods, his expression grim. “I think we’d better go check.”

  Chapter Two

  Darkness shrouds Glinda’s modest, turn-of-the-century two-story, but given that it’s after 11:00 p.m., that’s not exactly a surprise. The woman’s somewhere in her sixties, and she had appeared to me in her pajamas.

  Not that I pretend to understand how this whole haunting thing works. Anne had preferred full pirate garb even though she’d died on the mainland. The unidentified man wears something different every couple of days and there’s no congruity. Maybe Glinda just likes her nightgown.

  Beau knocks a couple of times and rings the doorbell once. The longer the silence stretches, the more the stillness of the house speeds up the beat of my heart, and the farther it creeps up into my throat. I’ve known Glinda my entire life. Even if we weren’t close, she gave me my first haircut, as well as my first bangs, first perm, first drastic style change, and first highlight—each of which had been horrible enough to talk me out of letting her near my hair. Ever again.

  “We should call the police,” Beau says, his tone clipped and nervous.

  “And tell them what?” I hiss. “That I saw her ghost and we rushed over here to see whether she’s really dead or I’m just nuts?”

  “You know, it doesn’t have to be one or the other,” he comments, struggling to suppress a smirk.

  “How can you joke at a time like this? Let’s just go in and check.”

  “The door’s locked.”

  I pull a hairpin out of my pocket. “No problem.”

  Beau’s hand covers mine. “Stop. I’m the mayor of Heron Creek, which you’re so fond of pointing out. I can’t be an accomplice to breaking and entering.”

  I blow my hair out of my eyes and cross my arms. “You’ve got two choices, Mr. Mayor. You can break and enter—or at least watch me do it—or we can lie to the police about why we’re here.”

  He considers for a moment. “Or you could tell the cops the truth. You’ve spent enough time in the south to know people take things like spirits in stride. They won’t break out the straitjacket if you admit to seeing a ghost. You’ll be quirky. Odd, at worst.”

  “I’m already quirky and odd,” I huff. “Which was exactly my point back at the house. But believe it or not, there are a few people in town who don’t know about my new side business, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

  His mouth tightens, making little lines around his lips. They’re not nearly as sexy as the dimples, but there’s something about his sternness that touches my heart. “So if we make something up, what will we tell the police?”

  I hesitate, cooking up a story in my head. It’s one of my greater talents. Or it was, before communing with the dead counted. There was a time when I told a new lie to a different cop every other weekend and twice on Sundays. “We’ll say she was supposed to call me to set up an appointment, but she didn’t, and when I tried her and she didn’t pick up, I had a bad feeling and made you come over here.”

  “That’s a terrible story. They’re going to find out you didn’t call her.”

  “Hmm, you’re right. Are you sure you’ve never done this before?” I raise a playful eyebrow, wondering whether being able to give each other a hard time in this situation means there’s something wrong with us.

  I’m happy as long as it’s not just me that has the issue. For once.

  “You haven’t unearthed all of my secrets just yet, Gracie Anne.”

  It’s tempting to start tugging on the threads that are woven together to create the tapestry of Beauregard Drayton here and now, but it’s not the time or the place.

  “Fine, then we’ll say we found her dog and were bringing him back, then got worried when she didn’t answer the door.”

  “Who found the dog?”

  “I did.”

  “Where?”

  “On my way home from your house.”

  “Fine. Bu
t where are we going to get her dog?”

  “All we have to do is open a backyard gate,” I huff, nodding toward the side of the house. “That’s not technically breaking and entering, right?”

  Beau makes no comment but doesn’t stop me as I round the house and push open the chain-link fence. If it’s true that people are supposed to resemble their pets, Glinda didn’t get the message. The woman is five foot nothing with a head of graying curls and a slender frame. Her dog, Toad, is some kind of huge pit bull mix. He looks ferocious and sounds ferocious, but when the tan-colored mutt gets a whiff of my outstretched hand, he wriggles his way onto his back for a belly rub.

  “Hey, Toad,” I whisper. “Want to come with Gracie?”

  I grab his collar and drag him around the front of the house, then join Beau on the top step. Glinda’s house looks like it fell out of a Nicholas Sparks novel, albeit one that needs a little spit and polish. It’s old, boasts a wraparound porch and porch swing, and probably rents closets to a few ghosts of its own.

  “Hiya, Toad.” Beau greets the dog with a scratch behind the ears, and the mutt flops at our feet. “I called the police.”

  “Okay.”

  We don’t have to wait long. A Heron Creek cruiser—one of two total, I think—pulls up at the curb. No lights or sirens, but Tom and Ted Ryan make plenty of noise as they tumble out and approach, shaking their heads.

  “Is this going to be a thing now, Harper? You’re back in town, so every time there’s a call about something weird, you’re going to be on the other end?” One of them, maybe Tom, squints from under his bushy red eyebrows.

  The sight of the twins, who caused more than a few instances of me spraying soda through my nose during my childhood summers in Heron Creek, does its best to calm me. It’s still startling to see them in their cop uniforms but, despite the fact that there’s likely a bloody body in the house behind me, I feel the tension in my limbs ease. “You know y’all were getting super bored with this job until I came back.”

  “That’s true,” Ted says with a nod. “Now, what makes you think we should wake up poor Miss Glinda in the middle of the night?”

  “Yeah. If she doesn’t get enough sleep, her haircuts will go from bad to worse,” Tom replies.

  “Come on, guys.” I snort. “We all know Glinda’s skills start at worse and tumble from there.”

  It feels wrong to make fun of her, but it’s an old habit, well-worn and comfortable. I’m too jumpy to hold my tongue.

  Beau stands next to me, fidgeting and unnerved by the situation.

  Whether Glinda’s death or lying to the police has him more on edge is hard to say.

  “She didn’t respond to us knocking or ringing the doorbell, so we’re worried,” he explains. “She’ll forgive us for waking her up, I promise.”

  The Ryan twins react to the mayor’s stern voice the same way they once reacted to the poor man who tried to keep us out of the local swimming pool after hours when we were kids—with dual eyerolls.

  “Forgive you, maybe,” one of them grumps on his way up the porch.

  Bitterness edges the teasing nature of the remark, reminding me what my ex-best friend, maybe future best friend, Mel said about Beau’s penchant to be overeager when it comes to the law and that not everyone in Heron Creek loves their mayor. A quick glance at the twin who made the half jest reveals nothing further about his feelings or intent.

  The Ryans are experts at the innocent who me expressions, though. Masters, really.

  I shake my head, focusing on the task at hand. “The door’s locked. You gonna break it down, Rusty?”

  Tom shakes his head in mock horror while Ted glowers at me over the nickname.

  “Come on, Harper,” Tom says in his best imitation of an exhausted middle school teacher. “How many people in this town leave a key either on top of the door frame or under some knickknack on the porch?”

  “How many burly, full-grown men use the word knickknack in normal conversation?” I mutter, striding toward an ugly ceramic turtle resting on a little stand beside the porch swing.

  As expected, there’s a key underneath, which I hand over to the Ryans. It’s a little bit odd when anyone in the Creek locks their door at all.

  I’ve been inside Glinda’s several times in my life—the first time when she hired me to dogsit Toad’s predecessor the summer after my sophomore year in high school, a job I was fired from after throwing an unauthorized kegger in the backyard, and then I subsequently spent some quality time painting her fence as penance. In the months since I’ve been back she’s coerced me into more than one odd job—grocery put-away, weeding her vegetable garden, moving her living room furniture around, or one of the other little tasks she prefers not to tackle on her own.

  The cops push open the door and lead us inside. The house looks exactly the same tonight as it always does, even though I’ve never seen the way the pale moonlight washes out the dim entryway before. Housekeeping has never been a priority for Glinda, either here or at Sonny and Shears, and dust glitters on the long table to one side of the hallway. The Oriental rug in the sweeping foyer is shabby and faded, and we’re all crowded onto it when someone finally thinks to speak.

  “Mrs. Davis?” one of the Ryans asks the dark hallway past the stairs.

  I whack his arm. “Who the fuck is Mrs. Davis?”

  “Glinda?” His brother tries. “Anyone home?”

  He raises his voice for the second question, making me jump. I guess he’s starting to worry about her lack of response, too.

  “We should check the bedroom,” I say, sobered by the cold, silent house that, at least to me, reeks of death.

  I even glance around, half expecting to see Glinda in her bloody nightgown, but it’s unlikely she’ll show herself to others. Only Anne’s ever done that, and then just to Amelia.

  It’s as though the ghosts don’t want anyone else to know I’m actually sane.

  Beau’s been silent since encouraging us to get a move on outside; now his hand slips around mine and squeezes tight. Strength trickles from him to me, helps me stand up a little taller and quit feeling sorry for myself when Glinda’s having a far worse day.

  It’s still surprising how having him beside me can make me feel, no matter what the circumstances. Like maybe things won’t be all that bad.

  Tom casts me a nervous glance. “Like I know where her bedroom is.”

  “Follow me,” I say, moving past the guys and beyond the rickety staircase that leads to the second floor bedrooms and a study.

  The main floor consists of a front parlor, a library, a formal dining room, a kitchen, and the master bedroom. Glinda’s house is over a hundred years old, and every single board creaks as we creep down the hall. My heart refuses to accept what we’re going to find, thudding as though it’s one of those rubber balls attached to a wooden paddle by a piece of elastic.

  A slight draft exhales through the ajar bedroom door. It smells stale and sweaty, tinny, and the combination forces me backward until my shoulder blades connect with Beau’s solid chest. He settles a warm hand on the back of my neck as the cops take the lead, nudging the door open wide and stepping into the room.

  I don’t follow, and neither does Beau, but the tone of their voices inside the room says it all.

  Glinda’s dead.

  Based on the green faces and lack of a single quip in the past hour, it’s pretty obvious the Ryan twins have never found a dead body before today—not even a regular corpse, never mind someone who’s been murdered. I’m no expert but twelve stab wounds made by a sharp, unidentified weapon don’t seem like an accident.

  Beau and I share Glinda’s porch swing in silence, our toes pushing us slowly back and forth under the clear, starry night. The moon is waxing, nearly full, and illuminates the scene of blue flowering hydrangeas and bright pink peonies; the quiet, sleeping homes and the sleek, black, unmarked police vehicle that joined the Ryans’ squad car almost an hour ago.

  “I guess we know what t
he hot topic of conversation is going to be at my birthday party this weekend,” Beau comments with a grimace.

  My skin itches at the thought of the soiree and the unspoken reminder of my required attendance. The gossip will be awful but unavoidable. “It’s going to be the hot topic of conversation everywhere in Heron Creek until the end of time. But at least that means it will no longer be all about why the dashing, smart, has-his-shit-together mayor wants to date the resident crackpot hot mess.”

  His hand covers mine, threading our fingers together. “It’s sweet that you think I have all my shit together, Graciela. But no one does. We’re all still figuring things out.”

  We lapse back into silence, still waiting to talk to the detective, a man who didn’t bother introducing himself when he arrived a while ago. There’s not much to say, and my mind wanders back over the events of the evening before the newest ghost of Heron Creek showed up. Beau and I were about to hit the sheets—finally—and even now my skin warms at the thought. It’s what we’ve both wanted, what we’ve been waiting for, and I hate that it was interrupted in such a gruesome fashion.

  It makes me wonder whether the mayor and I are ever going to catch a break.

  And the fact remains that I did see Glinda’s ghost. That, combined with my lingering mystery spirit, means I have to face the possibility that the spirits are not going to stop.

  That train of thought brings me back around to the idea that Beau’s reputation is going to suffer because of mine, which has been circling the drain since my return, but maybe it’s time I trust him when he claims to have it under control.

  Lord knows there’s plenty of my own shit to examine and flush.

  “Mrs. Harper?” The unfamiliar voice strikes me as scratchy. Dusty, as though it often goes unused.

  I turn to discover that the voice belongs to the new detective, who was hired less than a week ago. Which makes him a stranger, a fact that makes me oddly uncomfortable.

  Discomforting or not, the man is good looking. His jet-black hair is long—too long for a clean-cut cop looking to impress on a new job—and curls slightly around his ears and pressed shirt collar. The steely gray eyes are anything but soft as they reach out and snare me, pin me down until it’s hard not to squirm.