Not Quite Clear (A Lowcountry Mystery)

by Lyla Payne

  “I have to say, I forgot how rewarding loving your job can be until I got the chance to publish in a journal.”

  “What, ordering books and checking out inspirational romance novels doesn’t blow your skirt up? I’m shocked.”

  “Ha-ha. It pays the bills.”

  “You deserve more than paying the bills.”

  “So do you.”

  We sit for the space of a few breaths, contemplating life in each other’s presence the way we used to. It’s comfortable and familiar, like a worn pair of boots.

  As hard as it is to admit, he’s right about Clete. About all of it.

  “I’ll talk to Clete,” I say, leveling him with my best bossy stare. “One condition.”

  “I’d expect nothing less.”

  “I go alone. You, Mel…you both stay out of this.”

  He heaves a sigh but doesn’t argue. “Fine. But I have a condition of my own.”

  “Do you, now? Let’s hear it, then.”

  “You come to me if you get in too deep. Ask for help, Gracie. We’re here for you.”

  For some reason, tears gather in my eyes. I swallow hard, refusing to meet his gaze and have him realize that, after all this time, he can reduce me to a puddle of a girl. “Fine.”

  “Good.” He stands up and stretches, then starts for the door, pausing beside my chair. Without a word, he digs into his pocket, pulls out one of his grandmother’s embroidered handkerchiefs, and drops it in my lap.

  “Ass,” I whisper just as he slips out the door.

  The sound of him laughing on his way through the stacks makes me shake my head, but it also makes me smile.

  The library closes in about twenty minutes and I already sent Amelia home because she needs a nap like nobody’s business. Plus, she promised to cook dinner for Beau and me, too. I finish up the end-of-day duties and do a walk-through to make sure no one is hiding out in the stacks, then lock the door to the local history archives.

  Not gonna lie, there’s a certain satisfaction in having the key to the room that Mrs. LaBadie was so snotty and vigilant about keeping me out of earlier this year. The archives haven’t been so important to my ghostly investigations lately, but they do contain a wealth of information. My next research article and journal submission could wait inside the drawers.

  We need to get through this custody case, then I can look ahead. Will wasn’t surprised that working at the Heron Creek Library didn’t fulfill my historian’s soul. Neither am I, and all the possibilities that exist just outside the town limits are looking shinier all the time.

  For now, all my focus belongs here. Family. Ghosts. Curses and doomed relationships. The usual.

  I might have told Will I wanted to go without him into the mountains, but the longer I think about facing Clete and his cronies on his turf, the more going alone doesn’t feel smart.

  There’s really only one option, and I type the request into my phone before I can second-guess it.

  Hey, Fart Face. What are you doing tomorrow after work?

  It takes Leo less than a minute to respond, choosing not to acknowledge my name-calling, as usual.

  Why, you dying to get your ass kicked all over the tennis court again?

  I snort. Tempting, but I was thinking more along the lines of a drive. Out to the mountains.

  The dots that promise he’s replying appear and disappear three times before a response comes through.

  You know I’ll go, but how about we grab a quick drink. Talk about it. You wouldn’t send me into the lion’s den without a whip, would you?

  Definitely. Those poor lions don’t deserve to catch the brunt of your bizarre sexual fantasies.

  Take it easy. I was going to leave the ball gag and sex swing at home.

  The message leaves me with an odd, residual tingle that leaves me unsure how to reply.

  Okay, that’s far enough down this road. Pete’s in twenty?

  I have to wait for Lindsay to get home. Give me thirty.

  You got it.

  I while away the remnants of my workday scrolling search results on Randall and Bette Middleton—all accolades, donations, foundations, and a few articles on the tragic loss of their promising, only son. My stomach roils at the glowing descriptions of Jake. It’s wild that people can be so willfully stupid. Do they really think my cousin killed a loving, faithful, upstanding member of the community and got away with no charges?

  The whole process leaves me feeling gross, and the search didn’t turn up one single useful shred of information, besides. I hadn’t expected it to. Phoebe’s got a whole staff on the project, so if dirt was easy to find, they would have found it. He did fail to cast a vote in over half of the opportunities last congressional session, but that’s not news, sadly. Or outside the norm for a sitting senator.

  I flick off the lights and take a couple of steps toward the door. Then a wall pops up out of nowhere and slams into my face, throwing me backward onto the gritty, torn carpet.

  Pain explodes out of my face, which turns into one giant throb in time with my heartbeat. I taste blood, feel hot, sticky wetness dripping down my chin. I get to my hands and knees, rocking a little to try to dispel the worst of the wooziness, and squint toward the door.

  There’s nothing between the glass portal to the outside and me. Nothing blocking me inside the library. Nothing visible, anyway.

  Then I see a shimmer to the right, just out of sight in case anyone would happen by on the street. The entity doesn’t look like my ghosts normally do, but it’s not human, either. The white, wispy mist hovers there, in constant, writhing motion. Fear stakes my heart, and another wave of dizziness takes me over. I put my head down, then shriek.

  It takes all my focus to push away from the droplets of my own blood, rearranged on the carpet to form a demand: Make Your Choice.

  By the time I gather the scattered pieces of my composure, clean myself up, and mop the bloody message out of the carpet—it takes an entire bottle of carpet cleaner and four separate attempts—the white mist has long disappeared. Not only that, but I’m late to meet Leo.

  I’m going to be sporting a couple of shiners by tomorrow, but for now, the only evidence that I was smacked in the face by an invisible wall is a cut on my lip and a tiny red line across the bridge of my nose. Maybe no one will notice.

  “Gracie, shit. What happened to your face?” Leo exclaims, leaping up from the corner booth he always snags if it’s available. He’s been known to stare people down until they move.

  It seems the damage Mama Lottie—I’m assuming—inflicted might not be as minor as I hoped.

  “Would you keep your voice down? It’s just my regular face,” I snap, flopping into the booth and tossing my purse against the wall.

  Leo sits like a little boy admonished in class but continues to gaze at my nose with more than a normal amount of concern. “It is not your regular face.”

  “Fine. I ran into a wall.”

  “That’s completely believable given your level of coordination, but even so, I don’t believe you.”

  “Well, deal with it,” I grump. “Have you ordered?”

  “No, I just got here. Thought you were going to bust my ass for being late.”

  Dave yells from the bar, and we both shout back that we’d like whiskey and ginger ale. The sweaty glasses are on the table a minute later, brimming with sweet liquor. Two swallows and my belly is warm. Another and the anxiety has let go of every single muscle in my body, settling in the back of my neck and down my spine.

  “So tell me why we’re going to talk to Clete? I thought you were looking for a way to, shall we say, disentangle your interests.”

  “I was, but you know…things change.”

  “Things like what?”

  I should have known it was too much to ask, hoping Leo would follow me into the woods without wanting to know where and why and who. He probably would, if I put my foot down, but he deserves better. He’s got a sister and a niece to think about, and being friends
with me—and Clete—is definitely risky. On a good day.

  “Things with Amelia’s custody case are heating up. She’s got a good lawyer now who seems to think we’re going to need a bump to get us over the finish line.”

  Leo frowns, his blue, blue eyes keen as he struggles to read between the lines. In the end, I lose my patience before he puts it all together.

  “We need something on the Middletons. I don’t know how to go about getting it, short of trying something dumb as shit like breaking into their house, and Will suggested the moonshiners might be able to help.”

  “They have those kind of contacts?”

  “Will seems to think so. People in state offices, even, so if they’ve ever been investigated by child services or anyone, it should show up.”

  Leo stares into his drained glass with an expression of woe, then motions to Dave for another. “What makes you think there’s something to find?”

  The question takes me aback. No one else has even brought up the possibility that the Middletons’ closet would be skeleton-free. It’s possible, I suppose, but I can’t think about it right now.

  I just got knocked out by a ghost who claims to want to help my family. One bridge at a time seems like the best policy.

  I manage a shrug. “I don’t know. I guess we’re going with the theory that normal people don’t raise monsters.”

  “Solid. And what are you going to offer Clete in return for his help?”

  “I don’t know yet, Leo. I’m kind of playing this whole thing by ear, but I can’t sit at home and do nothing while Amelia needs my help. Are you in or not?”

  “Jesus, I don’t know who pissed in your grits today, Gracie, but it wasn’t me. So chill out.” He grabs his drink from a harried young waitress I don’t recognize and sips it.

  “Sorry,” I mumble. “It’s been a hectic couple of days.”

  He studies the bridge of my nose again but doesn’t comment. Instead, he looks into my eyes in a way that’s almost hypnotic. “Of course I’m tagging along. I’m dying to meet this fellow, for one, and for another, you know I’d never let you walk into the lion’s den on your own. Whip or not.”

  Chapter Eight

  Based on Leo’s reaction at the bar, it’s pretty clear there’s going to be no hiding the injuries to my nose and lip from Amelia or Beau. I managed to avoid my cousin so far by hiding in my bedroom while she cooks some pasta in the kitchen, but my boyfriend will be over any minute.

  As long as we’re going to have an inevitable heart-to-heart, I’m thinking that it will be best to come clean with him as far as me looking into the Middletons. I can’t tell him about Mama Lottie. Can’t look him in the eye and say the only way for my family to be free is to place his in bondage.

  It hits me again how unfair this all is—to us, to future little Draytons, if Beau or his siblings decide to have any. Maybe that’s the point. Mama Lottie feels as though they weren’t fair to her. They stole her childhood, her freedom, and refused to return it because of the assets she brought into their lives.

  Questions without answers, without real foundations, flutter in my mind like pieces of paper blown into a naked tree, pinned and tugging fruitlessly against bare branches. Like, if Mama Lottie is from up North as she says she is, how did she get so good at casting spells and hexes, curses, even? The Gullah culture, which is what Odette and the other local women practice, came straight from Africa and thrived in the lowcountry.

  My research into voodoo and hoodoo and Gullah and witchcraft has been both interesting and frustrating because the religion differs so drastically depending on where it came from and where it landed. Hoodoo was native to New Orleans, but it blended with African voodoo, mainly from Haiti. The Gullah people kept much of the pure, African religion but were certainly influenced by the Christianity practiced by their masters.

  All voodoo-type religions were born on the African continent and practiced on the coasts from where slaves were stolen, and even though I’d always assumed its roots were in Christianity, it seemed that some of the Gullah beliefs came straight from Islam.

  Fascinating, to be sure, but none of that makes sense as far as Mama Lottie. She was a Northerner. A free woman, born to a free family—in theory. I needed to do more research, try to find out where she came from, verify her story. Knowledge is power, and right now, I could use a little bit of that.

  Maybe you’ll also figure out whether she’s your relation, a voice whispers in the back of my mind. It sounds as though it might belong to my father, the man who’d told me to start my investigation into his family with a woman named Carlotta Fournier.

  I brush it aside, knowing there isn’t time to solve my own family mysteries at the moment.

  Henry Woodward’s in the corner again, wearing my least favorite of his outfits—nothing but a bleached loincloth, a single plait in his hair, and a beaded necklace that reaches his navel. It’s his Native American look, and one that reveals far too much of his nether regions when he shifts a certain way. Henry, for his part, seems unaware of the discomfort he causes me. That or he doesn’t care.

  “What do you say, Henry? Is honesty always the best policy?” He doesn’t answer, of course, but his expression turns from disinterest to a twist of the lips that can only be interpreted as, Duh.

  I put my hands on my hips. “What do you know, anyway? I bet you never even had a girlfriend.”

  He looks so sad then that I regret teasing him. Could he really have lived his whole life without love? All those adventures, such an amazing legacy, but no woman? Too bad.

  There’s no time to dwell on poor Henry’s long-lasting troubles, either. Not today, not when the sound of Beau’s voice wanders up from the foyer. It follows Amelia’s footsteps into the kitchen, buying me a few more minutes, and I let out a slow breath.

  Despite the shitty couple of days, it feels good to have made some decisions. Amelia’s doing so much better. There’s no way I can turn away from this chance and shove her back into the darkness that we both know was about to eat her alive, no matter what happens to me. If that means agreeing to Mama Lottie’s terms, whatever the consequences, then so be it.

  We’re going to ask Clete for help with the Middletons, and I’ll come clean to Beau tonight about that. There’s no reason to keep him in the dark. It would hurt him unnecessarily, to learn later that I’ve been going behind his back again with Leo. He’s insisted that he’ll find a way to walk the line between his duties to the town and my, shall we say, questionable acquaintances, so I’ll let him.

  I don’t know what all this means for him and me going forward, can’t even guess. I suppose none of us really knows what’s going to happen tomorrow or the next day, I reason as I navigate down the stairs and head into the kitchen.

  Which is true, but it seems to me that most people have more of a fifty-fifty shot at either good or bad. It’s hard to believe Beau and I have odds that good at this point. Or odds at all, really.

  Men do not stay with women who put awful, unbreakable curses on their families for all eternity. Because that’s just rude.

  He’s standing next to Amelia as she drains noodles over the sink, his back pressed against the counter and his feet crossed lazily at the ankles. He’s traded his work pants for well-fitted jeans but left on the crisp white shirt, rolling it to his elbows to expose toned forearms.

  I never knew a man’s forearms could be so sexy until I met Beau. I never knew so many unexpected things about a man could turn me on, actually.

  A beer rests in Beau’s strong fingers, sweating a little around the label, and he’s laughing at something my cousin must have said the second before I stepped into the room. When he sees me, his face lights up with a smile that triggers a sparkle in his hazel eyes. “Gracie Anne! You look beautiful.”

  I think I look tired, but I’ve been trying to be better about accepting compliments.

  He takes a second look as I get closer, then frowns. “What happened?”

  I brush it off,
not wanting to talk about Mama Lottie or my ghosts at all, really. “Nothing. I judged a corner wrong while I was cleaning up this afternoon and clipped a door. You know me.”

  He rubs a soft thumb over my mouth, then bends to press a gentle kiss to my lips. I try not to flinch in order to buoy my “no big deal” assessment and we linger long enough for my cousin to issue a pointed clear of her throat.

  “Are you two done? Because I’m about at the horny stage of pregnancy and I’m going to have to kick you out.” Amelia dumps the spaghetti into a serving bowl, then plops it on the table.

  I step out of Beau’s embrace, reluctance running through me like sludge. It makes no sense, and obviously it’s not true, but it’s almost as though his arms have some sort of magical ability to hold the rest of the world at bay.

  Now isn’t the time to trust in magic, though. Not when it’s trying to kill us.

  “What can I do?” I ask my cousin, ignoring the sense of melancholy tugging at my heart. “Ask Leo if he’s available? Rent a Channing Tatum movie? Hire a mimbo?”

  “What’s a mimbo?” Beau asks, filching a crouton.

  “A male bimbo. Amelia needs to get laid.”

  “I’d think Travis would be a more obvious choice than Leo. If she’s looking.”

  “Would you two stop it, already? Just grab the garlic bread out of the oven, Grace. That’ll suffice for the moment.”

  I do as she asks, pulling the pieces of pre-cut, pre-buttered bread straight off the rack. This isn’t the kind of meal Millie has taken to preparing lately. She’s been distracting herself by pulling Grams’s old recipes out of the box, practicing until her apple pies and mac & cheese and pot roasts taste like our childhood.

  Maybe she’s not doing better. Maybe teaming up with Mama Lottie, breaking the curse, won’t do any good at all.

  One glance at her face tells me I’m wrong. She’s manic, flitting from one thing to the next as she sets plates and flatware and a dish of sauce on the table with the noodles. Unlike the past several months, she’s working with an excess of energy, a tinge of lightness I recognize because it’s the same one flickering inside me—that damned hope.