Not Quite Clear (A Lowcountry Mystery)

by Lyla Payne

  “Noted. Melanie is an exceptional person.”

  The look Odette gives me, full of sorrow and something more—pity?—sticks my tongue to the roof of my mouth. It takes me a few moments to shake off the dread, and Daria jumps into the silence.

  “Lots of people think they don’t like me at first but they usually come around,” she offers. “I could buy you lunch, if that would help.”

  I’ve said nothing to Daria about my monetary-based relationship with Odette. It’s more than a little strange how she picks up on the nuance, but it does change Odette’s frown into a smile.

  “I was jus’ thinkin’ how good sum lemonade would be. Wouldn’t it be good?”

  “Sure.” Daria hides a smile.

  We help her up and walk toward a little shop that offers lemonade and tea, among other treats, then sit with Odette at one of the wrought iron bistro tables on the patio. She slurps lemonade, studying some of her fellow basket weavers still hard at work.

  “Odette, let me be frank. You know how much I enjoy this little dance that you and I do, with the information and the treats and the twenty-dollar bills, but things in my life are going to hell in a handbasket. I need your help.”

  She nods, her big eyes serious. “Got that woman mad at ya, din ya.”

  My throat clogs, but I swallow hard. I’m done crying. “Yes, but I don’t know how. I did what she asked, what she said she needed to cast her curse, but it’s not working. She thinks I’m trying to pull one over on her, but I’m not.”

  I pull the amulet out of my pocket and lay it on the table. I’m no expert on these things but it doesn’t feel powerful. It feels like any other trinket on a chain.

  Odette leans over it, careful not to touch, while she sucks her plastic cup dry with loud slurping noises. After taking a deep breath through her nose, she does reach out and touch it, tugging it toward her for closer inspection.

  “Ain’t workin’, that’s for sure. Don’ smell like a Gullah spell, neither.” She sets it down and pops the lid off her drink, going in for the ice. “Close, but not.”

  “Is it some other version of African religion?” Daria asks the question, which sounds more PC than what would come out of my mouth.

  I call it all voodoo, which has always rubbed the strange woman the wrong way.

  Odette frowns, then finally shakes her head. “Don’ think so. Maybe, though. Lots of ’em and I ain’t claimin’ ta be no expert.”

  “Great.” I sigh, gathering it back up. “So you don’t know what’s wrong with it?”

  “I know ’bout curses, girl, and they ain’t all that differnt.” She considers. “It’s missin’ sumthin’. Incomplete, that’s what it tell me.”

  “Nothing’s missing!” I cringe a little at my own pouty tone.

  A voice in the back of my mind whispers that something could be missing. Maybe the next step was to talk to Anne and verify that they hadn’t missed anything.

  I sigh. Sebastian the singing crab is right—you want something done, you’ve got to do it yourself. A person can’t even trust her own personal pirate ghost. Apparently.

  “Sumpthin’ missin’,” Odette insists, setting her jaw in a tight line. “It is. Don’ know what. It won’ tell me, ’cause it ain’t my spell.”

  “Thank you,” Daria says, pushing back her chair and stretching her legs. “It was nice to meet you, Odette.”

  “Not sure is nice ta meet ya, but Imma work on it.”

  “Thanks.” Daria’s smile is wry, but I can tell she likes Odette.

  Despite the amount of money she’s cost me and the gray hairs her obtuse answers have caused, I like her, too.

  “I’ll see you around,” I tell her with a warm smile, putting a hand over her gnarled ones. “I appreciate everything you do, and if you ever need anything, you know where to find me.”

  “Yep. That girl from up the creek, I tell people.”

  We leave her shuffling back to her spot at the market, which apparently no one ever worries about losing. People greet her with waved hands or hellos along the way. I’ve worried about her off and on, with the transient, outdoor life she seems to lead, but there’s nothing that’s led me to believe she’s unsafe or unhappy. The opposite, actually.

  Unlike my own life, even with four walls and a pantry full of food.

  “If it’s not Gullah and it’s not voodoo, she’s right—no one in that community will be able to tell you what’s missing.” Daria walks fast on the way back to the car, leaving me to wonder if I’m not the only one with plans this afternoon. “I’ll ask around the Wiccan community and get back to you.”

  “Okay.”

  A modern day witch might be the best person to tell us what’s wrong with Mama Lottie’s spell so that I can try my best to fix it, but the thought of sinking deeper into this strange world of the occult makes me want to put on the brakes.

  Then I remember that my other plan includes asking a ghost whether she tried to pull a fast one with that jar of Drayton bits and figure it’s too late for that, anyway.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The clock on my dashboard promises I’ve made it back to Heron Creek with about fifteen minutes to spare. I find a parking space near Pete’s and hike the couple of blocks to the library, reveling in the fact that I can stroll without melting. When I came back at the end of last May, still being here in October, long after Gramps left me, wouldn’t have entered my mind. Now it’s hard to imagine being anywhere else.

  Well, except for the lack of career options. That kind of blows, but the opportunity to publish every once in a while will keep me content for a while.

  The library is where I left it, another comfort in the raging hurricane of the rest of my life, and Amelia’s behind my desk with her purse on top, as though she needs to run out the door. I’m smiling, feeling decent this afternoon, until she looks up at me.

  All the color has leached from her face. Even her lips are pale, and her eyes are bloodshot as though she’s been crying. She shoots to her feet faster than any almost-seven-month-pregnant woman should and is around the desk, her hands around my biceps so tight they make me squirm.

  “Where have you been?” Her voice is strangled.

  “I told you, I had to run an errand. Why? What’s going on?” My stomach is in my chest before she opens her mouth again, dread pulsing through the building.

  It’s coming straight off my cousin. She’s acting so strangely I worry she’s been possessed for real this time.

  “It’s Mel.”

  My stomach drops. “What’s Mel? Millie, what happened?”

  “They arrested her.”

  “Who? Why?” I know, though. I know this is because of me.

  “Travis. The Middletons filed a complaint against Harrington, he checked the computer logins and key card logs, and they figured out she was the one snooping. They’re going to press charges.” Her eyes fill with tears. “We did this, Grace. We’re going to ruin our best friend’s life, and for what?”

  I grab her arms so that we’re locked in an odd embrace. Force her to look at me, swallow so that only one of us is losing it. “For Jack.”

  She sniffles a bitter laugh. “Jack. He might not even live past the age of thirteen, but Melanie… She has a child, Grace. Another one on the way, a husband who loves her. A husband we both love. How could we think this was okay?”

  It’s not okay. I hadn’t wanted Mel to get involved but when she’d insisted, I hadn’t gone out of my way to stop her, either. The guilt crushes me, smashing my heart through my rib cage. I think of Leo, and it’s hard to breathe. “Leo, too.”

  Millie’s eyes go wide. “What?”

  “The Charleston police arrested Leo last night. Beau told me.”

  My cousin lets go of me, leaning on the desk for support until she makes it back to the chair, then drops into it. “Holy… We have to fix this, Grace. Have to.”

  I sit right on the floor because there isn’t another chair in sight. “We will. We will fix thi
s, Mill, but first we’ve got another problem. With a serious deadline.”

  “Lay it on me, because there’s no way in hell I’m missing those psych appointments after all this. The custody hearing has been scheduled for first thing Monday. I want it done and over with before the Middletons decide they can use Mel’s and Leo’s involvement to their advantage.”

  “Beau doesn’t think it will change anything with you or the baby. He thinks they went after Leo—and probably Mel—because they’re pissed off that they can’t go after you.”

  “That’s something.”

  Before I can lose my nerve, I tell Amelia what happened last night—except for the part about her being escorted around by Carlotta’s ghost—and about going to talk to Odette this morning.

  “Okay. So we’ve got four more days to figure it out. Hopefully Daria’s witch friends will be able to help.”

  I gnaw on a finger, sure it’s something I’m not seeing. “Odette said the spell is missing something. That it’s incomplete. We can assume Mama Lottie didn’t leave anything out on her end, so that means the jar I gave her was missing something.”

  “Are you sure you did the genealogy right? You got all the lines down from Sarah?”

  A frown tugs at my lips, but my brain is in too much disarray to double-check in my head. “Get to your appointments. I’ll go back over my work and we’ll go from there.”

  She nods, her gaze absent as she stands and gathers her things, then sweeps past me and out onto the street. I push all the horror I’m feeling over Mel, over Leo, down into a cabinet inside me and lock it tight. The worry over the failed amulet and Mama Lottie’s anger forces me off the floor and into the chair behind the desk.

  I’m thankful, as usual, that there are only a couple of library patrons wandering in and out, none of whom ask for help. I check out their books, make small talk that may or may not make sense based on their confused expressions, and between, I go over the Drayton family tree to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

  Sarah had two sons. They each had four children. Beau’s line, from Charles Henry Drayton, resulted in fewer children because one of Charles Henry’s daughters died young and another—the infamously named Charlotta—never married. It ended up even all the way at the bottom, with six branches shooting off each of Sarah Parker Drayton’s sons.

  Twelve. Like I’d decided before, and like I’d collected—with Anne’s help.

  Frustration balls in my gut like sticky dough, causing discomfort and, worse than that, impotence. I need to talk to Anne Bonny, but she’s always been one to simply show up when she feels like it. I wouldn’t even know how to contact her other than shouting into the void and hoping she hears me.

  People think I’m crazy enough already.

  It’s almost closing time. Mr. Freedman left a few hours ago, pretty soon after Amelia, so I need to go around and do a check of all the windows and doors. My movements are on autopilot, hands pressing locks, tugging closed doors, resetting the thermostat to a higher temperature, just in case.

  Back in the lobby, the sight of Will and Travis, both in their uniforms, almost gives me a heart attack.

  Will looks wrecked. His skin is white, his whole body is rigid, like if he relaxes at all he’ll collapse. He looks at me with eyes red and brimming with anguish but defers to Travis.

  “Miss Harper.” The new detective should know better by now.

  “Oh for fuck’s sake.” He flinches at my curse, but the minor victory gives me only the smallest of satisfactions. “What?”

  “I assume you’ve heard about the arrests of two of the citizens of this fine town.”

  “Yes, Detective Travis, I have.”

  “And it’s not lost on you that they are two people you consider close friends.”

  “Are you intent on asking me idiotic questions for much longer, or do you have a point?”

  He glowers. “My point is that, once again, my gut says that you’re at the center of all of this.”

  “Excuse me? As in, you think I intended for my friends to end up behind bars?”

  He shrugs. I harness all my inner strength and manage not to claw his eyes out.

  “I don’t think you ever mean for bad things to happen, Miss Harper. They nevertheless do, though, and with startling frequency.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, casting a worried look toward Will. “Melanie wants to see you. Normally I wouldn’t allow it, but I think we can make an exception.”

  “Okay. I was just locking up here.”

  “If you know something that could make this better, even if it gets you in trouble, now is the time to confess,” he adds.

  Travis has no idea what’s going on, but he’s a cop with cop instincts. He knows that neither Mel nor Leo would go out on their respective limbs without reason, and that they share only one of those in common: me.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I tell him, not risking a glance at Will. He’s breaking my heart just standing there, trying his best to stay upright and pulled tight together when his life is lying in torn chunks around him.

  What Travis doesn’t know is that I could confess all I wanted, but all it would do is land me in jail with them. I was with Leo when he broke into that house. Regardless of whether I knew what Mel was doing at Harrington’s office, she still did it. No one is getting out of jail without consequences, and every sacrifice they’ve made will mean nothing if I give in to the guilt and wind up in the cell next door.

  Travis sighs, turning to leave without comment. He’s pissed at me, maybe more than he ever has been before, but that’s about the least of my worries.

  It would be even on a normal day.

  Will catches my arm as I brush past him. “Say you can fix this, Gracie. Please.”

  The broken words stutter into my chest, crack some ribs. I breathe through the pain, accepting it because I deserve to hurt at least as much as he is hurting. At the same time, determination swirls through me. It coats my insides with steel, straightens my spine.

  “If the Middletons think they’re going to get away with this, they’re about to learn what happens when they mess with Gracie Harper from Heron Creek. They’ve got skeletons, and we know where to find them.” I squeeze his hand. “They’ll cave.”

  I drop his hand as we leave the library, figuring we don’t need anyone to start rumors about the two of us getting Mel tossed in the clink so we can rekindle our romance or some other such nonsense, and follow them to the police station.

  The single jail cell is in the back, past the Ryan twins, who avoid my gaze. Travis gives me space, but Will stays at my side all the way to the outside of the bars.

  For her part, Melanie looks the best of anyone I’ve seen since Amelia broke the news. Her eyes are clear, her hair looks fabulous, and her expression suggests the opposite of a girl on the verge of falling apart.

  She purses her lips at the sight of Will, perhaps because she’s tired of talking to him, or maybe it’s that he’s dragging her down with his melancholy, then comes to the bars. Her hands wrap around mine, around the bars, and strength passes between us.

  “Hey, Mel. Keeping my cell warm for me?”

  “Yeah. You don’t get to have all the fun in this town, Gracie.”

  She’s putting on a brave face and trying to act like this is the old her and the old me, but at least one of us has gone and grown up. Melanie has a kid. What is Will going to tell Grant when he puts him to bed tonight? How are they going to pay the bills or afford a lawyer?

  “Gracie, stop. I can see you freaking out.” Mel squeezes my hands tighter, until it pinches. Grounds me. “I wanted you to come see me so you could look me in the eye while I tell you that I’m okay. This is fallout, but don’t lose sight of the bomb that curse set off to cause it. I haven’t. I’m not going to rat, so the Middletons won’t have anything on Amelia.”

  “You’re amazing.”

  “Get that kid. He’s one of us, and we’re not letting him go.”

 
I swallow hard, then do it three more times. Melanie Massie. What a badass. “You’re right.”

  “I’m always right,” she says with a smile.

  Will’s watching the two of us with increasingly wide eyes, shaking his head slightly. “You two…you’re acting like Mel’s not in jail.”

  “Will, calm down. I’m going to be out of here before dinner, and we’ll deal with the rest of it.”

  “Calm down. Sure. No problem.” He throws up his hands, stalking off down the hall.

  “He’ll be okay.” Mel looks after him, looking sad for the first time.

  “He will be okay. He’s Will.” I pause, wondering how much to tell her about what’s happened. “We’ve got some setbacks to deal with as far as the curse, but I swear we’re going to get you out of this. And I don’t mean with a record or probation, I mean out.”

  She lets out a shuddering breath I had no clue until now that she’d been holding. “Yeah. That would be really nice.”

  Monday morning shows up, relieving all of us from going stir-crazy. Beau was over on Friday night, and we all commiserated about the arrests of Mel and Leo. My boyfriend had some legal thoughts and advice on their situations, as well as Amelia’s upcoming trial. My cousin, for her part, seems shell-shocked over Mel and Leo bearing the weight of our success but not terribly worried about what’s going to happen during the custody hearing in an hour or so.

  I haven’t gotten anywhere as far as Mama Lottie and the amulet. We’ve got another twenty-four hours, max, and I’m going out on a limb and guessing Mama Lottie’s not big on extending deadlines. My ex-fiancé was a real asshole about giving students extra time to turn in papers or research projects, too. Unless you were willing to sleep with him, it turned out.

  “Grace, we’ve got to go! Phoebe wants me there an hour early and you promised!”

  “I’m coming!” I holler back, pawing through a drawer in search of the earrings that match my dress perfectly. I slam it shut, not finding them, then spin around to find Henry Woodward holding out his palm. The earrings glint in its center.