Lowcountry Mysteries (Boxed Set #1)

by Lyla Payne

  Beau sees the change in my face, or feels it on the air, and sits up a little straighter as I slide onto the bed but keep to my side.

  “Should I put my pants on for this?” he asks, only half joking.

  “Honestly, you’re probably going to want to leave after I tell you what I’m going to tell you, so that would be a head start.”

  “Nothing you can say is going to make me want to walk out on you, Gracie, but a guy does feel more prepared when his junk’s not swinging in the breeze, generally speaking.” He looks around, locating his red boxer briefs where I pushed them off near the door, and I take pity on him and retrieve them.

  “Okay.” I take a deep breath after he’s covered up. He watches me, face arranged as though he’s planning to try really hard not to react. “I broke into Jasper Patton’s house with Leo last night.”

  His eyes bug out, and his mouth falls open, totally negating his attempt to remain calm. “You what? Why would you do that?”

  “I need to find another suspect for Travis, and if we’re considering that Will could be involved because he knows about the moonshiners and works on their property without getting killed, that means Patton’s just as likely a suspect.”

  Beau doesn’t reply, but the redness in his cheeks can’t be good. I rush ahead, thinking that maybe telling him what we found might buy me a little understanding. “He definitely knew Glinda. I found a thank-you card from her to him that’s pretty suspicious. Plus he’s a hunter, and he lives way above his means.”

  “That’s it?” Beau is calm, even though it sounds as though someone’s stepping on his throat.

  “Um, yeah. Pretty much.”

  “I asked you not to pull Jasper into your legal troubles, Gracie. He’s a friend of mine, and I trust him. Is that not enough?”

  I swallow hard, unable to meet his gaze. “I know, but the note from Glinda said—”

  “I don’t care what it said. I don’t want to hear what it said, and you should forget what it said because if you try to make trouble for him based on it, all you’re going to do is wind up in deeper shit yourself, trying to explain how you know about it.” Beau sucks in a deep breath.

  When I look up, his eyes are ablaze. My own anger, smoldering at his snappish refusal to listen, lights. “So, defending your old chum is more important than the fact that if I don’t figure out who killed Glinda I’m going to go to jail for a crime I didn’t commit?”

  “I’m not going to let that happen, but going around accusing innocent people isn’t the way to handle this.”

  “How do you know he’s innocent?” I grind out, my teeth clamped together so hard my jaw aches. “You don’t.”

  “His parents died in a small plane crash when he was twenty-one. The house he lives in was theirs, and after an investigation revealed the plane’s maintenance company was falsifying records, he received a pretty big insurance settlement.”

  “Okay, fine.” It’s a sad story, but it only answers one of my questions. “That doesn’t explain what arrangement he and Glinda had—or how they even knew each other—since everyone claims Glinda never went out to her house in the hills.”

  “Or the fact that he’s a hunter, like 90 percent of the men south of the Mason-Dixon line?” Beau snaps, his lips pursed in disgust. “You’re grasping at straws, and you know it. And I’m asking you to stop.”

  My guts twist and pinch, aching, because for all of his anger and all of the venom that’s being directed toward me, I’ve hurt this man who has never been anything but good to me. Except for now, when he refuses to see the potential in another option when my freedom is on the line.

  “Let me ask you this, Mr. Mayor. If I didn’t kill Glinda, and Will didn’t kill Glinda, and you’re sure Sheriff Patton didn’t kill Glinda, then who on Earth did?”

  “How about your new moonshiner friends, Gracie? Why are you so determined to believe it wasn’t them?”

  “They have no motive, Beau. Nothing’s changed in their relationship with Glinda over the past months, and even if they were going to kill her, this isn’t exactly their MO.”

  “How do you know that? Because you watch reality television?”

  The insult, flung in a raised voice, stings. He’s right that I don’t know anything about Clete’s world. Not really. But I do know my gut, and it says that while those guys aren’t going to be modeling their lives after Mother Theresa’s in the foreseeable future, they’re not responsible for Glinda’s death or the knife that was left in my car. Someone’s framing me because I know something I shouldn’t, or they’re afraid I’m close to finding out, but I have no idea what … or who.

  If they knew what a numbnuts I am, they might not have bothered.

  “I just know it’s not them, Beau.”

  “Like you know it’s not Will. Like I know it’s not Jasper.” His gaze softens, fists letting go of the sheets wrinkled inside them. “Trust me, Gracie Anne.”

  “I want to. I do. But I want to stay out of jail most of all.”

  Sadness touches the corners of his mouth, soaks his hazel gaze. It spills out, seeping into the bed until it’s made its way to me, forcing tears into my eyes. He gets up and gets dressed while I watch in silence, desperation clawing at my lungs. There has to be a way to make this right, but the only option I see is to solve the mystery. Figure out who killed Glinda and why, and find the proof before Detective Travis gets the forensics back that prove the knife they found in my car is the one that killed my hairdresser.

  Until then, maybe Beau and I aren’t on the same side. And maybe that’s the way it has to be, but it kills me.

  He slides on his boat shoes, then bends over to press a lingering kiss to my temple. “I’ll see you later, sweetheart.”

  I’m at a loss for words. Shouldn’t an argument like this, one that has no resolution and has neither one of us budging, end with more doubt? Or with more certainty that things are looking pretty bad?

  Beau pauses in the doorway, staring at me as though he knows exactly what’s going through my mind. He gives me a shake of the head and a small smile. “I’m not walking out, Graciela. I’m going to work, and if you don’t get that sexy ass in the shower, you’re going to be late, too.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “What was that all about?” Amelia asks, pale and wide-eyed when I pop into the kitchen an hour later.

  We’re both going to be late to work if we don’t get out of here in the next five minutes, which would be bad considering that, aside from Director Freedman, we’re the library’s only employees.

  “It’s nothing. The usual disagreement: I like to fudge the law, and Mayor Beau’s a bit of a stickler for it, as you know.”

  “Are you okay?”

  My cousin’s stricken, almost panicked expression slices open the pieces inside me that are barely sewn back together. Her potent fear breaks my heart—the fact that she hears a couple fighting and her immediate response is to assume the worst, to break down, makes me wonder whether she’ll ever be the fearless, confident girl we all loved.

  Maybe neither of us will be that girl again, and maybe that’s the way life’s supposed to be. We grow up, we change, we leave childish ideas where they belong—in the past. But the idea that we can retain our wonder and at least some of the trust that made meeting new people, experiencing new things, an exciting prospect doesn’t seem like that much to ask.

  “I’m fine, Millie.” I cover her trembling hand with mine, then take the knife away and finish buttering a piece of toast. “We were having an argument. A normal kind of argument.”

  She blows out a heavy breath and sinks into a kitchen chair, sipping a glass of grape juice. Color returns to her cheeks before it’s halfway gone, and she gives me a haunted, apologetic look. “I’m sorry.”

  I slide into the chair across from her. “Don’t be sorry. I’m sorry that your husband was such a mean asshole that it’s left you full of fear. Questioning what’s normal. If you need to talk to someone other than me, ther
e’s no shame in it, Millie.”

  “Tell that to my mother.”

  “Screw your mother. You were living in hell for years, and that’s before what happened when you finally got out.” I stare at her until she meets my gaze. “I love you. You’re going to have my cousin in a few months. Get better.”

  She swallows. “I’ll think about it, okay?”

  I nod, then take her glass over to the sink and rinse it while she crunches toast. As hard as my brain lectures that I’ll be starving before lunch if I go without breakfast, there’s no conjuring an appetite after the confrontation with Beau. It hurts to go against his wishes, but Jasper Patton’s the only other plausible link I have to Glinda. It might be best to just talk to him.

  “You know, I’ve been thinking,” Amelia says, getting up from the table and putting her empty plate in the sink, then screwing the lid back on one of our Grams’ last jars of strawberry jam and setting it in the freezer.

  “About?”

  “What Beau said last night about the council approving the park renovations after Glinda’s death and her opposing it beforehand. I mean, I don’t know if there’s enough money or whatever involved to kill over, but …” She trails off, letting my brain make the connections on its own.

  “What if I’ve been chasing the gray rabbit instead of the white one this whole time? Maybe her death has nothing to do with her moonshining and she just pissed off one of the councilmen or architects or whoever else stands to make some kind of profit from the park project?”

  “It’s worth a look, don’t you think? At least find out who stands to benefit the most, or who the council is going to give the contracts to? Or even who owns the land?” She bites her lip. “You think Beau will help you find out?”

  “I think most of those answers will be in the last council transcript, which will be on file as public record. But yes, Beau will tell me.” Beau will be only too thrilled to help me go a direction that has nothing to do with his old friend Jasper. Unless my questions end up raising uncomfortable information about someone else he considers above question.

  The new angle fills me with hope but also frustration. It’s going to piss me off if I’ve been traipsing around the damn foothills consorting with the likes of Big Ern and Clete this whole time for nothing. Then I remember that Glinda’s the one who took me out there the first time, and that yesterday she showed me that locked door. This whole thing started with her ghost coming to me for help, and maybe what she needs from me has nothing to do with solving her murder after all.

  It seems as though all of her pointing at me yesterday morning, when I asked her whether or not she wanted a knife-toting lunatic running around Heron Creek, might indicate she doesn’t want me chasing down that particular truth because she’s worried.

  Of course, she couldn’t have foreseen my being framed. Knowing Glinda, she’s more interested in whatever she wants me to find out at the cabin even if it has nothing to do with what got her killed.

  “Let’s go, Grace. We’re going to be late.” Amelia grabs my car keys off the hook in the kitchen, then leads the way through the house and out the front door.

  The swap from air-conditioning to outdoor sauna turns all the air in my lungs to water, and it’s several moments before my body remembers how to breathe. I crawl behind the wheel and turn us toward town, frowning at the dashboard clock that reveals we do not, in fact, have time to stop at Westies for coffee.

  As much as this new park renovation angle intrigues me, doubt nags the back of my mind. I want to trust Beau’s gut the way I trust mine, and it’s going to kill me if my curiosity or suspicions about Jasper turn out to be totally off base and cost me what could be the best, most grownup relationship of my life.

  But I can’t get that thank-you note from Glinda out of my head.

  It’s almost 11:00 A.M. before the desire for coffee completely overwhelms me. The crap in the break room isn’t going to cut it, but Mr. Freedman refuses to buy more supplies until we use up the old stuff, even though the coffee Mrs. LaBadie left is in an unmarked plastic baggie. It could be ground up compost and sticks for all I know.

  That’s kind of what it tastes like.

  It’s Monday, which means there’s no kiddie time to interrupt our afternoon. It sometimes means that we have more patrons than usual—all of the old ladies who spent their weekends reading while their husbands dozed under quilts bring in their smutty romance novels and swap them for new ones—but the morning has been quiet.

  Mrs. Walters wandered in a little while ago, but as usual, it’s more to make sure we’re both at work and not wasting hard-earned taxpayer dollars goofing off. She’s made herself scarce, holed up in one of our reading nooks with one of our three tattered copies of Great Expectations. Amelia and I are more than a little curious why she’s hanging around the library but not harassing the two of us, but are afraid to talk about it while she’s still here. The woman has the ears of a two-year-old learning to talk. Or a bat.

  I emerge from the archives, where I’ve been trying to distract myself, and find my cousin reading at the front desk. “Millie, I’m dying for a coffee. And lunch. Will you be okay?”

  She gives me a wry smile and glances toward where Mrs. Walters disappeared a while ago. “Go, Gracie, and bring me back a green tea. I’ve been handling that woman as long as you have.”

  “That woman? Is that how you disrespecting girls refer to your elders now?”

  She clomps up behind Amelia from among the closest stacks, where she must have been lurking. The whole scenario reminds me a little too much of the way Mrs. LaBadie used to skulk around corners, the comparison sending a little zip of fear up my spine even though Mrs. Walters is largely harmless.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” Amelia says standing up and turning around with a horrified expression. “We didn’t see you there.”

  “Didn’t see me the other night after that hooligan left with his friend, either, or when she put on a display, practically gettin’ that handsome mayor naked in the driveway few weeks ago.” She pins me with a disgusted stare that makes me squirm, despite the fact that I’m an adult. “Or when little Graciela got herself carted away to jail. Again. But I saw you.”

  “That doesn’t make you respectful,” I manage, finding my tongue and my dignity. “That makes you a nosy neighbor.”

  “Grace,” Millie admonishes, pursing her lips at me.

  “No matter, Amelia. You’ve always been the better-behaved Martin girl, though neither of you gonna be winnin’ any awards in that arena.” Mrs. Walters shuffles past us, her twisted spine impeding her process. “Your grandparents were too lenient with you. Turned out weak girls, and at least one criminal. Poor Glinda.”

  “I didn’t kill Glinda.” My voice is hard, detached from me, somehow. Anger roars in my ears like the ocean during a storm, blotting out my better sense.

  “Hm. That’s not up to me to decide, unless I end up on your jury at the trial.”

  She’s almost out the door before something she said clicks. “Mrs. Walters?”

  “What?”

  “You said you saw a hooligan at our house the other night. Was it a kind of rough-looking guy in cutoffs and a baseball cap?” She nods, lips twisted as though she’s sucked on a lemon. It’s hard to blame her when it comes to Clete’s appearance—and she couldn’t even smell him all the way from her house. I don’t think. “And he met someone when he left?”

  “Yep. Hopped in a Lexus ’round the corner. Couldn’t see who was drivin’ but wasn’t the kind of vehicle that man drove, tell you that. He probably stole it.”

  I restrain my eye roll. “No doubt.”

  Mrs. Walters hesitates another five seconds and then pushes out into the daylight, assuming correctly that we’re done speaking with her. It’s insulting the way she comes in here every day and lurks around, but for once, something interesting has come from her “observations”.

  “Who in Heron Creek drives a Lexus?” Amelia asks, sinking back in the chair
behind the front desk.

  “I don’t know off the top of my head, but I doubt that it’ll be too hard to figure out. But it doesn’t have to be someone who lives here.” I’m feeling down and more than a little hopeless about solving this mystery before my butt lands in jail. “I’ll be back with your tea.”

  “Oh, Gracie?”

  I turn back to find her holding a little cloth pouch between two fingers, her nose wrinkled.

  “Yeah?”

  “Stop leaving these things in the desk. I keep throwing them out, but they stink to high heaven.”

  My heart seizes as I cross the few steps back to her and hold out my hand. She places the pouch on my palm, and it oozes brown juice, kind of like the mushy piles that I’ve been sweeping off the porch. It does smell—like rotten earth and decay. “I didn’t put this here. Why would you think it’s mine?”

  “Because it’s not mine and no one else uses the desk?” Her pretty face pales, bright eyes frozen on the item in my hand, and I know she’s remembering as well as I am that we cleaned that desk top to bottom over a month ago. “It’s her, isn’t it? The witch.”

  My throat constricts. I swallow, shaking my head and dumping the pouch in the trash, because Millie’s too fragile to handle this right now. “Don’t call her a witch, Millie, it only gives her more power over your mind. She’s a crazy old woman, and when I get back from lunch I’m going to have Mr. Freedman check the security logs.”

  She nods, fear dancing in her eyes, refusing to vacate. “Okay.”

  I walk out the door, scared out of my wits, too. Because no matter what I told Millie, the experiences I had with Mrs. LaBadie convinced me that, while she might not be a witch, she’s something more than a regular person, too.

  If she’s been leaving us presents at work and at home, we’d better find out what it means. And catch her before she catches us.

  Westies is packed, and instead of waiting I head to the diner three doors down even though the coffee situation there is less impressive. I hate leaving Amelia alone for longer than I have to, especially after the revelation of a few minutes ago.