by Liliana Hart
“So what you’re saying is you’re psychic?”
“I knew you were going to say that,” she said, nodding. It was a little hard to take her seriously considering her face was covered in mud. “I wasn’t going to say anything because I don’t like to brag, but—”
“Alrighty then,” I interrupted. “So you’re being followed. What happened when you left the police station?”
“They told me not to leave town and to keep my nose clean. And then they watched me like hawks as I left the building. As soon as I turned the corner I felt the tail. They think I’m just a music teacher, but I’ve got skills. I watch TV. I know when an unmarked cop car is trailing me.”
She had me paranoid by this point, and I hadn’t even done anything wrong. I kept looking around at the trees, waiting for the pop of the flash bang just before SWAT burst out of the trees to take us both down.
“So I pulled the old switcheroo on them and drove straight here. I needed a good place to hide out, but I didn’t realize you had cannibal trees. Never noticed before, but once it started getting dark I felt their presence. I’m rethinking my hiding place.”
“It’s not good to hide from the cops,” I said, looking at my phone to check the time. “If it looks like you’ve got something to hide it’ll make them think you’re guilty.”
“Do you think I’m a killer?” she asked, her lip quivering. “What if I did it and I don’t even remember? Like one of those Lifetime movies, where she goes on a killing spree in her sleep and wakes up with blood on her hands. And then she can’t remember where it came from.”
I knew things were about to go downhill in a hurry. Big, fat tears rolled down Rosemarie’s cheeks, leaving a trail through the mud. She was pretty emotional lately. And come to think of it, I was pretty emotional lately too. Maybe I wasn’t the best person to talk her down from the ledge. If she caught me in the wrong mood I might try to jump off with her.
“Okay,” I said firmly, straightening my shoulders. I decided enough was enough. It was time to get out of this funk that had been plaguing me. And I needed to be there to support Rosemarie in her time of need. “This is what we’re going to do.”
“I knew you’d have a plan,” she said, bouncing slightly in her white sneakers. When Rosemarie bounced her whole body bounced with her. “You always have the best plans. You don’t even have to tell me. Remember that I’m psychic. Or at least half-psychic.” She looked off and a frown marred her face. “Sometimes I’m wrong.”
“Trying is half the battle,” I nodded. “I’m half Irish and half English, so that means I’m only half good at drinking and half good at speaking in a fake British accent. And that almost makes me a whole person.”
I looked at the time again and realized if I didn’t get a move on I’d be late for dinner. And then I realized I hadn’t heard from Nick all day. Which wasn’t unusual if he was in the middle of a big case, but he usually called to check in and give me an update.
“That’s really sweet of you to come to my rescue like that, Addison,” Rosemarie said.
I shook myself out of my Nick thoughts and tuned back into Rosemarie. “What?”
“I told you I can read you like a book. It doesn’t take a half-psychic to know that you were about to volunteer to find out who the real killer is and clear my name. I just want you to know that I’m here to help in any way possible.”
I opened my mouth to speak but closed it again. I knew better.
“Look at me,” she said her face crumpling again. “Is this the face of a woman who will do well in prison? My skin is soft as butter. And Leroy says my natural fragrance reminds him of cotton balls. They’ll snatch me up in a red-hot minute and use me in unnatural ways. I’ve watched both seasons of Orange is the New Black.”
“I was going to suggest you come along to dinner with my family, but I guess it won’t hurt to see if I can find out any information from Nick about the case. I’m sure you have nothing to worry about. Unless you woke up with blood on your hands this morning and don’t remember where you went last night.”
“Right,” she said, nodding. “Innocent until proven guilty. Where are we eating? I’m starving.”
It only worried me a little that she didn’t deny waking up with her hands covered in blood. Rosemarie was an enigma.
Chapter Five
Rosemarie managed to get most of the twigs out of her hair and the mud off her face before we headed out to Whiskey Bayou to meet my family. Her yellow Beetle wasn’t exactly the best car to go unnoticed in, but I had her drive us anyway just to see if there was any reality to her suspicions of being followed.
The theme from Dragnet sounded from the bottom of my purse and I dug around until I found my phone.
“Are you seriously cancelling on me?” I said as greeting. My intuition was usually pretty spot on, which is how I managed to do my job so effectively without actually having any real skills.
“I never said anything about cancelling,” Nick said. “You know what they say about people who make assumptions.”
There was something about Nick’s voice—the sexy southern drawl that rasped across my skin and sent tingles straight to my lady parts—and I immediately felt the tension I hadn’t realized I’d been carrying around release from my shoulders.
The thing that I’d come to realize about Nick was that he was my equalizer. I had a tendency to be overemotional and dramatic at times, though I’m a rock during a crisis or lots of blood loss. Nick was steady and had the ability to reel me in without me knowing he was reeling me in. I’ve been told I’m a handful.
“So?” I asked.
I heard his sigh on the other end of the line and felt bad for giving him a hard time. He sounded tired. “I just caught a bad one. Double homicide and there may be a third victim we haven’t found yet. There’s too much blood for only two bodies. I won’t make it to dinner. Maybe not until next Tuesday. Things aren’t pretty.”
I grimaced at the thought of how much blood must be at the crime scene and decided maybe I wouldn’t eat again until next Tuesday too.
“Not a problem,” I said. “Rosemarie is going to pinch hit for you.”
“Thank God for the crime in this city. I almost felt guilty for cancelling.”
I looked over at Rosemarie to see if she’d heard any of what Nick had said, but she was humming along to Cindy Lauper and checking her rearview mirror every five seconds. I’d just checked the side mirror myself and saw a non-descript beige Crown Vic merge into traffic from the onramp and settle in a couple of cars behind us.
“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about why Rosemarie has a tail would you?” I asked. There was about three seconds of pregnant pause and that was enough for me to know the answer. And that he was probably going to lie.
“Nope. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“That’s what I thought you’d say.”
“I don’t know when I’ll be home. Call me if you need bail money.” He disconnected and I figured that was just as good as saying I love you.
“You think I should try to lose them?” Rosemarie asked.
Her eyes narrowed and her grip tightened on the wheel. The car lurched as her foot pressed a little harder on the pedal.
“Or maybe we should just let them follow,” I said. “Maybe they’re not following you for the reasons you think. Maybe it’s a protection detail.”
I mentally smacked myself in the head. No one would believe an unmarked Crown Vic was providing a protection detail on a woman who’d been questioned for murder.
“You know, maybe you’re right,” she said, perking up a little. “Maybe Priscilla’s murderer wants to silence me since I’m probably the last person who saw her alive. I could be in real danger.”
“Why would her murderer want to silence you? Did Priscilla say something?”
“Only that she was impressed that I had the vaginal capability to burn out the motor on the merchandise. I do have superior muscle control. I could s
nap a twig right in two if I set my mind to it.”
“Jesus,” I muttered under my breath and closed my eyes, trying to clear the mental image from my brain.
We passed the Welcome to Whiskey Bayou—The First Drink’s On Us sign and the Crown Vic was still behind us. The great thing about small towns was that any outsiders stuck out like a sore thumb, and if the cop behind the wheel was brave enough to get out of the car the entire town would know his life story by the time we finished our hamburgers. That was also the bad thing about small towns.
I’d been born and raised in Whiskey Bayou, just like my mother and her mother before her. It was one of those places people liked to live to raise their children and pretend everyone around them was living the American dream. In reality, it was a hotbed of affairs, illegitimate children, and both extreme poverty and wealth—all within a two-mile radius.
It was like living every day of your life under a microscope, only the people watching weren’t doctors or scientists, but instead nosy neighbors who could offer no solutions or support but were happy to spread the gossip anyway and flavor it with their own opinions.
I’m not saying it’s true, but it’s possible I might hold some resentment towards the citizens of Whiskey Bayou. Let’s just say I wouldn’t shed a tear if the bayou swallowed it whole one day and it sunk straight to the bottom like Atlantis. After the fiasco that had been my almost wedding and after losing my teaching position, there was nothing short of kidnapping me and locking me in someone’s basement that would get me to move back.
We passed the railroad graveyard and a few businesses that had already closed for the evening—because nothing but the Good Luck Café stayed opened after six o’clock—and I found a parking spot just in front of the café.
I could see my mom and her husband Vince at a back booth through the plate glass window. Phoebe was already there and a guy I didn’t recognize was sitting beside her. This was not news. Phoebe had paraded a lot of guys through family dinners over the last fifteen years.
The Crown Vic backed into a parking spot across the street and I rolled my eyes. He wasn’t even trying to be subtle.
“Go on in,” I told Rosemarie. “I’ll be just a minute.”
I didn’t recognize the plainclothes cop behind the wheel, but by the way his eyes widened I was willing to bet he recognized me. Nick was well respected in law enforcement and because of his role as media liaison everyone knew who he was, despite the large size of the department.
He rolled down the window and I got a better look. I recognized him for a cop immediately. It was in the eyes. He was somewhere in his mid-forties or early fifties and his skin was sun darkened and sagged just a bit beneath the eyes and jawline. His hair was light brown and sprinkled with gray and his eyes were the color of aged whiskey. He had on a tan polo shirt and jeans. A guy meant to blend in with everyone else.
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
“Lester Graham,” he said, tipping his head in my direction. “Detective Sergeant.” He showed me his badge and I glanced at it briefly. “I told Nick this was a bad idea.”
I smiled and watched the tension drain out of Lester’s face. I’d found over the years that my smile was my best weapon at disarming any situation, and Lester was just following orders. Nick, on the other hand, was in a whole lot of trouble.
“Why don’t you join us for dinner, Lester. Looks like you’re out of Twizzlers.” There were three empty bags of Twizzlers laying on the passenger seat and about forty-two Styrofoam coffee cups tossed onto the floorboard.
He grimaced and looked a little uncomfortable. “That wouldn’t be the best idea. Socializing with a suspect is frowned upon.”
“She’s seriously a suspect?” I asked. I knew when you lined up the facts that it made sense for Rosemarie to be the prime suspect, but no one paid attention to the facts. It’s why the world was going to hell in a hand basket. “Have you spent any time with her? If she’s a killer then I’m Jack the Ripper.”
“You are the girlfriend of death. Maybe that’s not the best comparison.”
I snarled before I could control myself and Lester jumped back in the seat. “I am not the girlfriend of death. So I’ve found a couple of bodies. It’s not like I killed them. How about a little sympathy?”
Lester nodded frantically. “And just to be clear I’ve never called you that. I’ve just heard it around. You know how it is with cops.”
“Right. Who came up with the name?”
“Jacoby in Homicide,” Lester said, throwing Jacoby under the bus to save himself. I nodded and walked back toward the café without saying goodbye.
The little bell above the door jingled and I was immediately smacked in the face with the smell of grilled meat and pine trees. A fat Douglass Fir sat in the corner, listing to one side, and was covered in ornaments of all shapes and sizes, and brightly wrapped packages of all shapes and sizes were placed underneath for the toy drive they sponsored every year.
The café was divided into two sections—the dining area where four-tops and booths with cracked red vinyl seats were located, and the bar area that catered to those coming in for a quick meal or drink. The wood floor was scarred and stayed sticky no matter how many times they mopped it, and the white paint on the walls had long since turned dingy. Black and white photographs of Whiskey Bayou from more than a hundred years before were framed and hung from the walls.
Business wasn’t booming on a Monday night, and only a few families occupied booth. They all turned to stare at me as I made my way to the back of the café. I was still a hot topic of conversation in the area, and all the chatter stopped as they bored holes into my back. Then the whispers started with a whoosh, and I knew it wouldn’t take very long for the curious to stop by our table on the pretense of asking about my family.
Up until the last year it had always been Phoebe who’d be the most gossiped about Holmes. Phoebe carried it off with a cheeky smile and a shrug of her shoulders. She didn’t care what anyone thought and she did as she damned well pleased. Sometimes I thought she purposefully made the wrong decision just to live up to everyone else’s expectations.
I made it to the table just in time to hear Rosemarie mention Priscilla Loveshack and the fact that she was a murder suspect. Rosemarie wasn’t the kind of woman who eased into anything gently. All attention was focused on her camouflaged tracksuit and animated retelling of how we came across the body.
My mom’s new husband Vince looked at me with a raised brow and I gave him a tight-lipped smile. Vince had been my dad’s captain for a lot of years, and he was retired from the force now. Apparently he’d had a thing for my mom for a while, and after my dad died a few years back he kind of eased into her life as a friend until she came out of the fog of grief. Then he made his move and that was that. I was happy for them both.
Vince looked like James Brolin—ruggedly handsome with a full head of silver hair—and he was extremely vocal during sex. I knew this because of the fact that the walls are thin at my mom’s house.
“They’re tailing me as we speak,” she said. “You know they’ve probably got the whole restaurant bugged and are listening to this very conversation.”
I took the seat at the end of the table between Rosemarie and Phoebe’s date. I didn’t need to look at the menu. Anyone who had a lick of sense ordered half price burgers and dollar beer on Monday nights.
“I don’t think Savannah PD has that kind of surveillance budget,” Vince said. “I’m sure our conversations are safe.”
“At least from Savannah PD,” my mom chimed in. “I saw that 60 Minutes special about how the government was monitoring our every move. Big Brother is watching. Gives me the skeevies to know some politician is sitting in his office watching me do naked yoga every Tuesday and Thursday.”
My mom was an older version of me—enough to where we were often thought sisters instead of mother and daughter. She was in her early fifties, but looked a decade younger, and she’d recently gotten he
r hair cut in a sleek bob and added blonde highlights just to change things up a bit.
When Phoebe and I had been growing up mom had been an accountant and all around superwoman. She’d worn suits and pantyhose during the day, been homeroom mother, and kept the household running smoothly. She and my dad lived a very conservative lifestyle with a conservative outlook on life.
Since dad’s death a few years ago I’ve had to get to know a whole new Phyllis Holmes. She’d ditched the suits and pantyhose and started wearing yoga pants and flip-flops. She took paint by numbers classes, played golf badly, and went to naked yoga with a bunch of other fifty plus women. It was like she’d been living a lie her entire life and was just now getting to be herself.
“What’s the big deal?” Phoebe asked. “People are seeing you naked anyway. What does it matter if it’s other people in the class or old guys wasting our tax dollars by sitting behind their desks with their pants around their ankles.
“Good Lord, Phoebe,” mom said. “What an image. And I’ll tell you straight out if any man can get it up watching Gladys Hinkle doing the downward dog butt ass naked then this country is in bigger trouble than I thought.”
Phoebe and I both snickered and Rosemarie gave mom a knuckle bump and said, “Amen, sister.” The man sitting to my left wasn’t quite so enthusiastic. He cleared his throat and tugged at the knot of his tie.
“I don’t know you,” I said to Phoebe’s date.
“Maxwell Gunter,” he said, holding out a well-manicured hand.
“Nice to meet you. How long have you and Phoebe been seeing each other?” What I really wanted to know was when Phoebe had stopped seeing Savage.
I won’t lie. Even though I’d picked Nick and we’d decided to have a committed relationship, it still smarted a little to know that my sister had been interested in the man I’d been thinking about sleeping with while Nick and I were broken up. My jealousy made zero sense. But neither did emotions for the most part. And mine made less sense than most people’s recently.
