Lowcountry Mysteries (Boxed Set #1)

by Lyla Payne

  “No.” Another glance at our son, whose tongue sticks out between his lips as he concentrates on coloring a patch of peonies bright pink. “Running away isn’t going to help anything. Even if you need a new job either way.”

  There’s actual venom behind the quiet, hissed words that round out her thoughts. This conversation is far from over and the fact that she falls silent, finishing the salad and pulling dishes out of the cabinet to set the table, just means we’re not having it in front of Grant.

  The muscles in my neck are tense. Hard. I’m going to be sore tomorrow even if the only thing I did today was gather the sad box of personal shit from my sad desk in my even sadder cubicle and trek out into the woods in Berkeley County to talk with Clete. Avoiding this discussion with my wife isn’t possible, and more than that, it’s not advisable. Mel and I have a good, strong marriage that’s built on a decade of solid friendship, and neither one of us has plans to screw that up by trying to kick our problems under the rug.

  Not that we even own a rug. The dog chews them up for some stupid reason.

  A glance at the oven shows twenty minutes left on the timer. I catch Grant picking cucumbers out of the salad while his mother’s back is turned and sweep him up, digging my fingers into his sides while I hold him upside down.

  Once I stop and he quits giggling, I pull him up so I can look him in his blue eyes. My eyes. “How about you and I go wash up for dinner?”

  “No.”

  I shake my head, almost amused by his staunch, immediate response. He’s two. It’s still his favorite word, the one that comes out before he even thinks about it. He said no to ice cream the other night and the panic in his chubby little face once he slowed down and actually heard the question almost made me pee my pants. “Sorry, buddy. No choice, I’m afraid. But if we shower now that means you’ll have more time for stories before bed!”

  His face lights up. “Shower? No bath?”

  “Not tonight, Superman.”

  I fly him out of the kitchen, catching a look of gratitude from Mel that she may or may not have meant to shoot me. She’s not an unreasonable person, not usually, but as much as we both love Gracie in our own ways, our old friend’s return to town hasn’t done much to smooth out the road beneath our relationship. Partly because it had already gone a bit bumpy, what with our financial struggles, and partly because of a nasty little thing called insecurity.

  Grant and I take a shower, cleaning backs and bottoms, sudsing up hair in between goofing around with a couple of cheap water guns, but I make sure that we’re toweled off and dressed before the timer goes off downstairs. He’s a cute little stinker in his footed pajamas and I’m comfortable in my College of Charleston T-shirt and mesh shorts. The three of us enjoy dinner, our son prattling on about his day with Grammy, while dread pools in my middle.

  I let Melanie put Grant to bed, taking the time to read him three stories while I settle at the small desk in our bedroom and try to pay a few bills. There are more than a few more that are going to have to wait—it’s a game at this point, knowing how many days certain creditors allow without penalizing, knowing the utilities will send a turn-off notice with a deadline before those actually have to be paid.

  Except games are supposed to be fun. Logging in to my online banking account gives me so much anxiety I have to count to ten before opening the page that shows our balance, praying the entire time that there isn’t going to be a minus sign in front of my balance.

  We’re okay for today. But in two weeks I’m not going to have a paycheck deposited, and I’m really not sure what we’re going to do then, except the obvious—ask my parents for money. They don’t have as much lying around as Mel’s Aunt Eula, but that old bird wouldn’t drop a nickel in Grant’s paper cup if he was holding it out on a street corner.

  “I swear he comes up with more random questions every night. Tonight he wanted to know where monkeys get bananas if they live in Africa.” She collapses on the bed, kicking her sandals off. They land with two soft thuds, and Nell leaps up on the bed, licking my wife’s face. She pushes her away, then relents and scratches behind the dog’s ears. “Apparently he asked my brother if there were banana trees in Africa and he said only in some of the countries, but then Jonah didn’t know whether monkeys only lived in countries with bananas or not. So one of us needs to look that up with him tomorrow. I promised.”

  “Desperate mothers will promise anything.”

  She gives me a weak smile, her gaze falling to the computer screen. Our bank’s logout page is still up and in her eyes, I see a reflection of my worry. It makes me feel like a failure. Not being able to take care of my family the way they deserve, having to look at my wife’s face as it crinkles in concern, cuts deep into my soul and leaves a mark that won’t ever totally heal, not even if we end up millionaires through hard work or by some trick or luck.

  “Everything okay?”

  I nod, guilt mingling with my anger and making it worse. “For now.”

  A silence settles between us. I wait, because this is how Mel works. She’s a sweetheart at her core, a woman who prefers peace over strife, and when the time for confrontation or a serious conversation is nigh, it always takes her a minute or two to force the words from her heart out into the open. My Mel’s not afraid of the tough talks or rough words, not if the people she loves need them, and especially not if the people she loves are getting the short end of somebody’s stick.

  “We need to talk about what we’re going to do now. Even if I get the job at Harrington’s, I won’t be making as much as you were with the state. My first paycheck won’t be until the end of the month at the earliest, and I hate the idea of asking your parents for money. Again.” Her gooey chocolate gaze is hard, like a marble shined up and shellacked.

  My heart flattens, beats sideways. It’s painful to watch her struggle. I’m struggling myself and hate not having the answers. What’s worse is that even though I hate this outcome, being able to leave that job feels good. And that makes me a bad guy. Or at the very least, a selfish one. “If we have to ask them we have to ask them. They won’t tell us no, and you know they’re happy to help.”

  “Happy. Right. They always dreamed of having children that are a drain on them well into their twenties.” She looks down at her swollen belly. “Children who are so irresponsible that they chose to bring another baby into a house they can’t even afford.”

  Tears fill her eyes. My heart squashes flatter. It’s hard to breathe, and even though instinct and track record warn me she’s not ready for comfort, not from me, I can’t help but move from the computer chair to the bed. I reach out to touch her golden hair but stop short, letting my hand drop between us. Our pinky fingers are close enough to share heat if not contact, making me feel the slightest bit better.

  “We’re going to get through this, Mel. You and me. Grant and Mary. In twenty years we’ll look back on these tight times and it will be one of the things we got through together.”

  “I don’t…” This time when her gaze finds my face, it burns with accusation. “How could you do it, Will? You got fired for Gracie. Put her first, in front of me and our children and our life and just…When is it going to stop? When will you really and truly be able to put her behind you?”

  The heat of her fury tangles with the coldness of mine. The combination, the fact that she’s not entirely wrong, should obliterate my fury. It should explode it into fragments of guilt and remorse but it doesn’t. It gets colder.

  “How can you say that?” I take a stab of my own. “There’s nothing going on between Gracie and me, and there hasn’t been for years. You can’t blame me for your own insecurity.”

  Her eyes blaze, fingers clenched around our comforter, wrinkling inside her fists. “How dare you, William Gayle? I don’t think anything’s going on between you and Gracie, not in that way. But the fact is that you knew she was in trouble and you bumped that redneck moonshiner’s application to the top of the pile to help her out. You lost you
r job because of her.”

  “What was I supposed to do? Let Clete come after her? After Amelia?” I shake my head. “I had the power to keep them safe and I used it.”

  “You’re supposed to talk to me before you make decisions like that.”

  Her voice is soft. So is mine. It’s one of the strange things about parenthood, being able to have fights that might have once escalated into yelling take place entirely in venomous whispers. The truth of her last accusation cuts deeper than the rest. It’s the root of her hurt: I didn’t include her.

  All of the fight bleeds out of me. The anger stays, seethes, but it’s leashed and locked up. Under control, at least for now. “I’m sorry. I should have talked to you first but I…I guess I didn’t want to fight about it.”

  A wry smile turns my lips up and after a moment of fighting, Mel returns it. “Well, that worked out well for you, huh?”

  “As usual.” I scoot my hand out, link our littlest fingers. She doesn’t pull away. “Gracie’s our friend, no matter what she once was to either or both of us. I had to help her.”

  Mel nods, but the insecurity lingers in the lines around her pretty eyes. No matter what she tells me or herself, no matter how hard I ignore it, a rift will always separate her and Gracie. It pains me, to know that I’m the thing that put a crack in a friendship that could have conquered the world. But my heart was drawn to one of them, then the other, and I’m not sure what I could have done to avoid it.

  The truth is, I love my wife, and I’m happy with the twists and turns my life has taken since Gracie walked out of it on her own two feet the summer we were eighteen. The truth also is, my feelings about and for Graciela Harper are complicated. I’m coming to the conclusion that perhaps they always will be, and I’m lucky to have a wife who loves the woman in question as much as I do.

  “So, what are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. We can’t afford the time or tuition for me to go back to school, but the chances of me getting another job for the state are pretty slim. I was thinking about talking to Travis about whether the department is thinking about hiring someone to replace old Tom Wilkinson.”

  The suggestion is out of my mouth and in the air between us, surprising me as much as my wife, by the drop of her jaw.

  “You want to be a cop?”

  I take a deep breath and a moment to think. “I think it’s a good job. I think in a town like Heron Creek—where you want to stay—it’s steady but relatively safe employment.”

  Now that the idea is rolling around in my mind, I also think it’s a way to finally get on the right side of Cletus Raynard. Or the wrong side, as he’ll see it. That might belie the statement about danger in Heron Creek, but letting that man boss me around always stuck in my craw. It would be nice to know that I can keep him and his influence out of this town, at least.

  “I don’t know, Will. With how things have been going with Mrs. LaBadie and then Hadley Renee, are you sure about that?” Her eyes narrow. “Are you doing this to protect Gracie?”

  “No.” That’s the truth. No one can protect Gracie from her own lawless, wild streak. I was the first guy to try, not the last, and the fact is that she can take care of herself. Most of the time. “I think it would make me feel good, if there’s an opening. I don’t need a new degree, just a few months of training. In the meantime I can start substitute teaching now that school’s back in session.”

  The newness of the suggestion starts to wear off. It settles in my mind, in Mel’s, and the relief of having a plan—even an uneven, stitched-together one—brings back my earlier exhaustion.

  After a moment, she gives me a smile, and a nod, then pats my cheek. “You’ll look quite handsome in a uniform, Will Gayle. And I, for one, would be proud to be protected by you.”

  “Is that right?” I look down into her eyes, wondering when and how I got so lucky.

  “Mmm-hmm. In fact, I’m a little bit turned on.”

  Her gaze falls to my lips and my heart reinflates. My wife kisses me, moving as close as she can with her belly between us, and sucks on my bottom lip. Blood drains out of my head and all of a sudden, I’m not that tired at all.

  Chapter Eight

  Amelia

  “What on earth possessed you to invite Dylan to dinner? Or lead him to believe that you and I usually cook?” Grace barely looks up from the stack of papers and books in front of her, the tone of her voice distracted.

  Even so, it’s a valid question.

  “I don’t know.” I trail a finger over the pages nearest me, resting on the corner of the desk. It’s a file of legends about Dr. Ladd. She has another one stuffed full of genealogy, a fair portion handed over by his descendants. The rest of the documents are mysterious, although I suspect they’re other journal articles, maybe her grad school research on certain topics, or maybe the latest mystery novel she’s got her nose buried in. “Do you remember Sunday dinners with Grams and Gramps?”

  That gets her attention and she looks up with green eyes that are almost a perfect match of my own. They’re clouded, at first. Stuck in the past with Dr. Ladd and who knows who or what else, but my question clears away the cobwebs fast enough.

  “Of course.” A ghost of a smile finds her lips as she remembers those elaborate spreads and how we could never, ever guess who would show up or who wouldn’t. Grams would never reveal who she’d actually invited versus who showed up on their own, either. Everyone was welcome. Grace’s dreamy expression goes dormant as she pins me with an exasperated look. “But neither you nor I is Grams. Or Gramps, for that matter. Are you cooking?”

  “As a matter of fact I am,” I snap, indignation making my cheeks hot. Or maybe it’s just the buckets of sweat pouring out of me like I’m a faucet. “I’m making Grams’s fried chicken and potatoes are boiling on the stove.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. But I need your help mashing because my belly gets in the way.”

  Grace casts one longing look toward her research before pushing the chair away from the desk in the study and standing up, stretching until I lose count of how many bones crack. “Okay, Coach. Put me in. I prefer shortstop.”

  I snort, following her through the living room and into the kitchen. “I really think you’re more of a right fielder, Grace. As much as you like baseball, athletics were never really your thing.”

  She heaves a sigh. “I know. I always felt like Grams loved me a little less for that fact, too.”

  The sentiment makes me crack up, mostly because it’s kind of true. Grams was a tomboy at heart, the oldest daughter of a man who never managed to have any sons—for reasons that seem quite obvious now—and did her best to fill the role. She always lamented the fact that the two of us couldn’t throw a baseball straight no matter how many hours she winged them at us in the yard. Grace’s idiotic reaction to insects with stingers and my insistence on bedazzling every garment in our closets didn’t help matters, but she loved us anyway.

  Just maybe not quite as much as she would have loved a girl who could have played Division I collegiate sports.

  “You got corn, too?”

  I nod. “It’s a little late in the season, I know, but what the heck. And Mrs. Walters brought over some tomatoes. At least she says they’re tomatoes.”

  Grace follows my nod to the giant red fruit on the end of the counter, enjoying the midday sun that’s streaming through the kitchen’s yellow curtains. “Good gracious. Are those tomatoes or dodgeballs? And since they came from Mrs. Walters, are you sure there aren’t nanny cams inside them?”

  “You’re awful to that poor old woman. She only spies on everyone because she’s bored. She used to work for the Air Force, right? She’s like a retired general or something.”

  “Or something,” Grace mutters under her breath, getting a colander out of the cabinet and plopping it in the sink. “I’m betting that she had something to do with spying. Maybe torture and interrogation.”

  “Stop it,” I admonish, but
I can’t help but smile. This is the best I’ve felt, honestly been happy and in the moment, since…college? Well, not counting the days I learned I was pregnant. It’s nice, Grace and me continuing this tradition of our grandparents—making dinner and taking in strays—even if we only do it today.

  Just like that, I decide that we will. Grace will do it if I ask her, especially now that everyone in the world is tiptoeing around me like they’ve glued cotton balls to the bottoms of their shoes. She might give me a hard time about not cooking, but even if it’s true that I’m out of practice, I know what I’m doing. There were plenty of afternoons when Grace was off gallivanting with Will or having her secret meetings with Leo that I spent right here in this kitchen with one of Grams’s extra aprons tied around my waist.

  She taught me how to make flaky pie crust and just how sweet to make a lemon pie. There are patches of wild blackberries less than an hour away that make the best jams and pies and syrup you’ve ever tasted, and there’s a pot that makes tea in the sun that tastes better than anything that ever came out of any brewing device.

  And that’s just what she taught me about food.

  Grace drains the potatoes and then dumps them back in the pot, setting to mashing them with the kind of ferocious single-mindedness that only she can muster in just about every situation. At least there’s no way a single lump will survive.

  I check on the oven-fried chicken, which is sizzling happily in its pan in the oven, then slice up the giant tomatoes, which, incidentally, contain no recording devices. I’m shucking ears of corn on the back deck, dropping the silks and husks into a paper grocery bag resting on the lawn when my cousin sneaks up behind me, creaky boards giving her away.

  She sits, dragging an ear of corn out of the plastic bag and peeling away the top layer of green husk. “You never answered me about Travis.” Her thin shoulder nudges mine. “Do you like him?”

  She draws out the word like in a way that would make a twelve-year-old girl squeal. I shake my head. “I’m not going to dignify that with an answer.”