Rocks & Gravel (Peri Jean Mace Ghost Thrillers Book 3)

by Catie Rhodes

  Paul and Jesse exchanged an eyebrows raised glance.

  “What do you think happened to the stones?” Jesse asked Isaiah.

  “She had to have hid them on her property, which I now own,” Isaiah said. “Now, I’ve done told you boys you can go over there and poke around, and now I’m telling you what I think you might find. Keep what you find, long as you tell folks I helped you find it. My daughter gives you any trouble, you tell her to come up here and talk to me.”

  Tubby turned off the video again. “There’s not much more. They thank each other.”

  “You think you’d be willing to give me a copy of it? I don’t have much to remember my father by.”

  Tubby nodded and set about making a copy of the video, looking so much like the young man I’d spent a long-ago summer with, the one who helped me forget a horror I still didn’t like letting into my mind, it made my heart ache for what we’d both lost as we learned the ways of the world. He caught me watching him.

  “Was I right? Did you learn something you wanted to know?”

  “I did. Now tell me how you came by the keychain and the video.”

  “You know my momma moved out of Texas last year?”

  “Yep. I helped her haul a bunch of old furniture to the dump.” Mrs. Tubman told me her wonderful, sweet son bought her a condo in a Colorado resort town. She couldn’t wait to escape the Texas summers.

  “She didn’t clean out half what she had. I found this box of stuff in her house after she left. Had the video, your daddy’s keychain, and a couple other items.”

  “What was the other stuff?”

  “I’d be willing to show you for a price.”

  “Forget it. How’d your mother get the box?”

  “I wondered the very same thing and called her. You remember we both lived on the road that goes to the cemetery when we were real young?”

  I nodded even though I’d forgotten until he mentioned it.

  “Momma said she saw Barbie set the box out with the garbage the day after Paul died. Momma can’t resist digging through junk, trying to find something valuable, so she picked it up. Once she figured out what was in it, she kept it, planning to give it to you when you were old enough. Guess she forgot.”

  And Tubby Tubman sure as shit wasn’t going to honor her wishes after the fact. More than ever, I wanted to get away from him so I could think this through. Plus, I worried if I hung around too long he’d blackmail me into burning down the town for him.

  “I won’t say it was a pleasure, but it sure was an education.” I stood and held out my hand for him to shake. He took it and gave it a squeeze.

  “Come again sometime. We’ll catch up.”

  I dropped his hand and walked out of the room without answering. Tubby’s teenage girlfriend was standing on the stairs, right outside the room. It wasn’t hard for me to guess she’d had her ear pressed to the door, trying to hear what she could.

  “Whore,” she hissed at me.

  “What did you say to me?” I widened my eyes and got in her face. My pity over her bad taste in men didn’t extend to me taking crap from her. She tried to dart around me, but I blocked her way. “Say it again.”

  She refused to look at me, hunching her shoulders.

  “Look at me.” I waited until she did. “It’s not a good idea to talk shit to people when you don’t know what they’re capable of. You’re with dangerous people.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she squeaked out. I moved my arm and let her by, wondering why I bothered.

  Seeing it was after eleven and too late to call Julie, I left a message for her at Silver Dreams antiques saying the box I was looking for was once in the possession of an Archie Mahoney and to call me with any information she had. I walked out to my car, still enjoying the somewhat cool night air.

  11

  I trudged through the dark alleys and across an unlit side street to get to my car, crossing into the pitch black parking lot behind the Catholic church.

  “You embarrassed me tonight.” Dean’s voice coming out of the dark scared me into dropping my phone. I caught it before it smacked down on the concrete parking lot. “I stood around waiting and waiting at the Main Street Association meeting, and you never showed. I tried to call you and no answer.”

  I glanced at my phone and saw I had five missed calls and five voice messages from Dean. I cringed. I’d been so wrapped up with Mysti and Brad, I never even heard it.

  “I’m sorry. Something came up. The whole thing slipped my mind.”

  “I was worried about you, so I called your grandmother. She told me you’d gone out with some people I never heard of before.” He slid off the hood of my car and walked toward me. I stood my ground, my heart speeding away in my chest. “I went looking for you. Saw you drive to this parking lot with those weirdos right behind you, stand around talking a while, and then go in Bullfrog’s.”

  My cheeks and lips went numb as adrenaline rushed through my veins. I swallowed hard. After all the trouble I went to, the one person in the world I didn’t want finding out what I was up to had seen me.

  “What? The three of you go drinking in Bullfrog’s?” He jammed his hands on his hips the way he did when he was super pissed. “You said something came up. What was it? Your friends looked like a couple of burnouts.”

  Anger caught fire and burned quickly, warming my insides, eating away some of the tiredness. Dean didn’t know Mysti or Brad. He’d simply made a judgment about them because he was Mr. Cop, and he knew all about everybody with a glance.

  “The woman’s been under treatment at a mental health facility. She just left today.” It wouldn’t do to tell him she’d been driven batshit by an evil spirit—who happened to be my father, by the way—and her brother broke her out so I could use my black opal to banish said spirit.

  “She was probably in there for abusing drugs. The guy’s probably her dealer.” Certainty hardened the lines around Dean’s eyes and thinned his lips. This was his cop face, and it made me want to punch him in the throat. Working with people gave him a lot of practice, but sometimes he missed the mark, and when he did, he couldn’t be budged even if someone proved him wrong. My general policy was to let it go. Arguing with him wasted minutes of my life I’d never get back. I was in enough of a mood to try to teach a goat to floss if it came up.

  “Mysti is not a dope head,” I said. “She had a mental breakdown.”

  “Whatever.” He turned away from me.

  “Why don’t we change your name to Dean Whatever? Tell you what, I’ll go get my magic marker and run around town crossing off Turgeau on your campaign signs and writing Whatever after Dean. What do you think?”

  “Sometimes I forget how young you are.”

  “Sometimes I forget what a petty jerk you are.”

  Dean’s face fell, and I immediately regretted my words.

  “Let’s not do this again,” I said.

  “Your choice.” He still had his hands on his hips.

  “Please accept my apology for missing your campaign talk. Eddie’s death really threw me for a loop.” I’d dealt with way more, but this was the only thing Dean would allow himself to process and relate to. “When my friends showed up asking for help, I got distracted.”

  “How could you possibly help those two losers?”

  “It’s to do with my being a medium.” I almost enjoyed how official and un-crazy the word sounded. Dean flinched and paled beneath his tan.

  “I can’t have you—”

  “Running around playing paranormal Nancy Drew,” I finished, keeping my voice as steady and confident as I could. “I know how you feel about it, but I call the shots about what I do in my life.”

  “Even if it drags you down?”

  I stared stupidly at him, not getting it. Helping Brad and Mysti felt right. My muscles and mind ached with fatigue, and the whole thing had scared the pudding out of me, but I survived and learned. I had no plans to seek out another situation like that one, but I sure didn’t w
ant Dean telling me I couldn’t or shouldn’t. He had no idea how it felt to be a freak, an oddity, and to finally find a good use for the freakishness.

  Dean wanted me to change to be more like him. Normal, straight-laced, and firmly planted in the here and now. For our entire relationship—my entire life—I’d wanted the same thing. Still did, but I also wanted to feel like this night made me feel over and over again. I wanted to help people who needed it and enjoy the accomplishment of facing and beating my own personal demons. I stared into Dean’s stormy blue eyes, looking for a shred of reason or flexibility and finding only unyielding ice.

  “Exactly how you did you help those two losers by taking them into Bullfrog’s Billiards? What does going in there have to do with you being a medium?”

  Gulp. My thoughts ran a wild, lightning fast lap around my head, looking for the way to explain the night’s events while not getting myself any deeper into Dean-doo.

  “See, baby? The panicked look on your face is all the answer I need. You go around doing all kinds of stuff, never thinking about how it affects me. You associate with all kinds of people, never thinking about how it looks. If people see you hanging out in Bullfrog’s—”

  “They’re going to wonder what kind of sheriff you’ll make.” I waited for the guilt to come, but it didn’t. Maybe I was too tired. I still wanted Dean to win the office of sheriff more than anything. He was an honest man who’d do his best to serve the people of this county. Losing this election would destroy him both emotionally and financially. Dean had a lot on the line right now, but I did, too, dammit.

  “This is a small town, and small towns thrive on gossip. They love a good scapegoat and all the drama that comes with it.” He reached out to me, glanced at my face, and dropped his hand. “Some people here would fight to the death for you, but others still…”

  I slumped as the truth of his words sunk in, poisonous hooks stinging. “I’ll always be Gaslight City’s favorite little Satanist, even though they don’t know what a Satanist is.”

  He snorted, but the stern expression stayed on his face. “All I’m saying is people will look for any reason not to vote for me. They decide you really are sort of weird and not in a good way, and then they think maybe I’m too weird to be their sheriff because weirdness is a scary thing.”

  I wanted to tell him he was wrong and couldn’t. Sheriff Joey Holze was the third generation of his family to hold the office of sheriff in Burns County. No matter how bad a job he did, no matter who he pissed off, the name Holze was synonymous with law enforcement in this county.

  My responsibility to help Dean warred with my responsibility to stand up for my own interests, and there was no clear winner. I had to find out who was behind everything from the theft of the Bruce family journals and Eddie’s death to somehow imprisoning my father’s spirit and making him do awful things. Not to mention what Priscilla Herrera’s ghost claimed would happen. Walking away would be a betrayal—to my friends, to my family, and to myself. I didn’t see why I couldn’t do both things and do them well.

  “Seeing you here tonight disappoints me. There are a thousand ways you could use your time more productively. If you want to help people, if you want to improve yourself, you could volunteer.” He waved his hands while he talked like some TV preacher working himself into hollering until he frothed at the mouth. “Hell, you’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. You could go back to college, get your degree and get into a helping profession. I’d pay for it.” He smiled, and I recognized the smile as one he used when he talked to kids he considered at risk. “You’re not going to like what I’m about to say, but step one to having a better life is throwing away old memories of slumming with Chase Fischer. Step two is getting people like those losers I saw you with tonight out of your life. Step three is to quit hanging out with Wade Hill and the Six Gun Revolutionaries. Get the garbage out of your life. They’ll turn you into what they are.”

  His words shocked me as much as if he’d thrown ice water in my face. All the guilt and understanding building in me did a nosedive into the black void of my growing fury. I crossed my arms over my chest, trying to hold in the hateful things I wanted to say, hoping much of what Dean said tonight came out of anger and hurt over my forgetting his campaign event. I opened my mouth to speak, but anger flashed, so strong it almost blinded me, and I closed it again and swallowed hard. Dean took the opportunity to keep driving home his point.

  “Chase is gone. Eddie is gone. There’s nothing to keep you from turning over a new leaf.”

  Eddie? Dean thinks Eddie wasn’t worthy, too? Fury cauterized the festering sore of my indecision, closing it off from further infection. There was no way I’d let Saint Dean Turgeau tell me what to do. He could go sip some monkey butt juice.

  “Dean, go home.”

  “Wha—”

  “Please close your mouth and go home. We’ll talk about this some other time.”

  The confidence slid off his face and anger pinched his handsome features. “Fine. I’m wrong and you’re right. I’ll go home, sleep alone like I do most of the time anyway, and then we’ll do things your way tomorrow.”

  It was damn good bait. I actually wanted to assure him this wasn’t about getting my way but was about this not going further than it had, but I knew him too well to fall into his trap. One word of explanation, one word of self-defense, and he’d be off to the races, telling me everything I’d ever done wrong in my life. So I said nothing. A loud engine cut the silence, slowing as it approached. A lone headlight appeared at the edge of the parking lot.

  I stared at the headlight, the muscles between my shoulder blades knotting painfully. The stiffness moved down my back and settled in the spot where Veronica Spinelli kicked me last year. I groaned and put my hand to my back as the pain took up residence. The motorcycle made slow progress into the parking lot and to the spot where Dean and I stood scowling at each other. I closed my eyes and wished I could be somewhere else. There were only a few people I knew who rode motorcycles, and all of them were the kind of people Dean just finished chewing me out for knowing. Next to me, Dean let out a nasty snort.

  “Hey, looks like the whole gang is here.” He raised his eyebrows and smiled in a mockery of happiness. “Guess I do need to go so I won’t put a damper on the party.” He waited for me to answer, but I knew better. His fake smile dropped to a glare. He stomped away from me, got into his Trans Am and slammed the door way harder than necessary. Wade Hill drove his motorcycle up to me and shut off the engine.

  “What’s his problem? He lose the Short Man Syndrome poster child contest?”

  “Cut me some slack, please.” I leaned against my car and took out my cigarettes.

  “You okay?”

  “How is it you always show up when I’m in trouble?”

  “Trade secret.” He lit his own cigarette and we stood polluting the air together. He finished his cigarette, dropped it, and stepped on it. “Sorry I made it worse between you and Dean.”

  “I’m not sure you did. You might have saved me from saying something I’d regret later.”

  He got on his bike. “You want me to follow you home? Make sure you get there okay?”

  “Nah.” I opened my car door. “I need to cool off. I may go drive for a while.”

  Wade nodded and left in a roar of tailpipes. I got in my car and started it, not sure at all where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do, so I cruised.

  I drove down streets I hadn’t been down in years, took little used cut-throughs, and went past Dean’s house. All the lights were on. He was probably inside sulking, watching TV with the sound off. The thought I could go knock on the door and apologize made me slow down and stop a few houses down. Past experience and arguments exactly like our most recent had taught me Dean would accept my apology without offering one of his own. I put the car back in gear and drove on, turning left on Blackburn Street.

  I didn’t need Dean in my head. More than anything, I needed to figure out the ne
xt step toward setting this whole mess straight. Learning Archie Mahoney stole the mini treasure chest didn’t help me unless Julie could figure out if one of her distant relatives still had it. I crept down Blackburn, unable to shake how Tubby said he got my daddy’s keychain. Barbie throwing my father’s stuff away didn’t surprise me exactly. She threw me away and acted like it was the normal thing to do.

  Mosby Circle came up to the right, and I turned at the last second. The Gaslight City Gossip grapevine said my mother had rented the old Sugar Shack on Mosby. I wondered if the woman who didn’t want me was home and if I should stop and pay her a visit. She said, after all, she wanted us to start over. Maybe this was a good time.

  I drove past 9811 Mosby two times, circling out to Blackburn and coming back to the street’s other entrance, before I decided to pull in to the empty driveway where I sat in my car contemplating my next move. The lights gleamed from inside the 1910s era Sears and Roebuck six-room house, the TV flickering in the living room. Barbie might have left her car with a mechanic. Maybe she was sitting inside the little bungalow watching TV or looking at herself in the mirror.

  Who was I lying to? Her car wasn’t in the driveway, so she likely wasn’t home. I got out of my car and went up to the front door and knocked and waited. No footsteps inside the house. I went around back, letting myself into the fenced backyard, walked up the concrete steps to the stoop, and looked underneath the ceramic frog. Sure enough, the key was still there.

  The Sugar Shack’s owner rented the little cottage out to tourists or short-term residents. She hired me to clean up after guests when her regular cleaning lady was booked and always said, “Use the key under the ceramic frog but be sure to put it back.”