She smiled and laughed as if she’d said made the most amazing statement and waited for them to react. To her relief, they reacted exactly as she hoped and laughed with her, although there wasn’t anything funny about what she’d said.
Pat had already paid the ticket Mona left at their table, but he began shelling out some more money for a tip, then nodded at Flynn as he stood up. “Nice to meet you, dude.”
“You, too,” Flynn said.
Tara got up, smiled at Flynn, and started to follow her uncle when Flynn called to her.
“Hey, Moon girl!”
She was still smiling as she turned. “Yes?”
He pointed at the napkin dispenser she had clutched against her chest.
“You might wanna leave that here.”
She looked down, realized she was still holding the napkin dispenser, then rolled her eyes.
“Oh. Right. What was I thinking?”
She set it on the nearest table and then waved goodbye before heading to the door. She wouldn’t look back for fear she’d see more napkins running amok. Lunatic, Prissy had called her. Maybe that twitch was closer to the truth than she knew. Tara’s life was something of a lunatic existence.
She might have felt a little better if she’d known Flynn watched until the taillights of their car disappeared down the street, and that he thought about her smile as he walked home with his food.
The next morning, the Superintendent of Stillwater Public Schools issued a bulletin on local TV as well as radio, informing the high school students that yesterday’s fire had been a localized electrical short and that the second flare-up had promptly been contained as well. The hope that school would be closed for another day soon faded as notice was given that classes would resume at their regular time. Tara wasn’t the only one groaning at the news as students all over town began getting ready for school.
There was one other newsworthy item that caught Tara’s attention. That of an attempted robbery at Beckman’s Jewelry on Main Street, and the arrest of two men caught on the premises. She had a moment of satisfaction, knowing she was responsible for their arrest, but it didn’t last. As she was eating breakfast, she felt the dark shadow’s presence even before she saw it. Luckily, Uncle Pat was in the shower, getting ready for work.
She jumped up from the table with her fork in her hand, then grabbed the medal around her neck.
“Don’t even think about it! I don’t know what your deal is, but you have no business being ticked at me! You do not dis me like you did yesterday . . . ever again! Got that?”
The shadow swirled up toward the ceiling like a mini-tornado, then tried to move forward, but Tara’s fury was stronger. She came at the shadow with her fork in one hand and her cross clutched in the other.
“If you wanted my help, all you had to do was communicate. Swiping through my head like a sneak thief won’t cut it. Get out! Now!”
The shadow swirled, then disappeared so quickly it was startling.
“Good morning to you, too,” Tara muttered, but her appetite was gone. She cleaned up her dishes, then went to her room to brush her teeth. It was almost time to leave.
A short while later she was on her way out the door with Flynn’s denim jacket over her shoulder and her backpack slung over her arm.
“You sure you don’t want a ride to school?” Pat asked.
“No. I like the walk,” Tara said, as she pulled out her iPod. “It gives me time to listen to my tunes and I don’t want to get there too early. Someone might think I liked it.”
Pat laughed out loud, then waved as he drove away.
One to school. One to work. And one dark angry shadow left behind to contemplate more trouble.
The day passed without incident. After the throw-down she’d given the blonde mafia in Davis’s car, no one seemed to want to mess with her. They were still stunned by what she’d said about their secrets, and wondering how she’d found out.
She gave Flynn his jacket in second hour, but not before half the class noticed the byplay. Before class was over, text messages had been sent to half the senior class stating Flynn O’Mara was after the lunatic girl, and that for all intents and purposes, she was letting him catch her.
All in all, it was a strange beginning to the first few weeks of Tara Luna’s senior year.
Saturday finally arrived. No school.
It was the first thing Tara thought when she opened her eyes. This meant no classes to hurry off to. No gossip about her and Flynn to deal with. She rolled over, intent on trying for another hour or so of sleep, but Millicent had other ideas.
I know about the dark entity.
Tara sat straight up in bed. “You have my undivided attention.”
If a ghost could smirk, Tara knew Millicent would be smirking. But Millicent didn’t believe in wasting her energy and rarely appeared in anything more substantial than a wisp of pink smoke.
She’s not evil.
“So, my dark entity is a she?”
She was murdered.
“Oh man,” Tara whispered. “Now I get the anger, but why at me?”
You’re living in her house.
“Well, great,” Tara muttered. “But why hasn’t she moved on?”
Because no one knows about the murder.
“Why?”
No one ever reported her missing, so they never found her body.
“And that’s my fault, how?”
It’s buried somewhere on this property.
“Front yard or back?”
I believe she stated the one to the west.
“That would be the back yard. Oh! Ugh! This is so not okay!”
Tara jumped out of bed, shuddering as the implications of what she’d just learned washed over her. “Why does this always happen to me?” Um . . . excuse me, but I think her situation tops yours by a butt load.
Tara sighed, then sank back down on the side of the bed. “You’re right. I was just thinking out loud.”
You still lose. You’re alive and well, and she’s not. She’s worm food.
“Double ugh,” Tara muttered, as she shivered again. “So, what does she expect me to do?”
Duh. Tell someone, dummy.
Tara ran her hands through her long, tangled hair, then got up and paced.
“Does she have a name?”
Actually, she’s had several incarnations.
Tara frowned. “I’m talking about this last one, thank you.”
A strange name. DeeDee Broyles.
“I deserve points for solving the mystery of my teacher’s missing money and the robbery of a jewelry store. But now I have to get a shovel and start digging holes in the lawn to find a body? Have I missed anything here?”
Gratitude for a job well done?
Tara sighed. Right. She had asked Henry and Millicent to find out what the dark shadow was about.
“Thank you.”
Humpf.
“Very much.”
Much better.
“Do not freakin’ push your luck. I’m the one with the degree of difficulty here.”
Her dresser drawer came open and her panties began flying across the room. She started to laugh. “While you’re at it, get the dirty ones out of the clothes hamper and do the laundry. Don’t forget to put the water on cold, please. Hot ruins the elastic.”
With that, she headed for the shower. She had a lot to do before the day was over, including how to tell Uncle Pat that a lot more than squash had been planted in their back yard.
As soon as breakfast was over, Tara headed for the county courthouse to check some records, leaving Uncle Pat in the backyard with the lawn mower. If he only knew what was buried under the grass, she thought.
So she and Uncle Pat were living in what ha
d been DeeDee Broyles’ home. Tara needed to find out how long ago it was when the Broyles family owned the property, and if there were any members of the family still living in Stillwater. And why had no one ever reported DeeDee missing? A clerk at the courthouse helped her find the ledgers that were kept for registering property owners to particular addresses, then showed her how to look up the specifics. Tara thanked her for the help, then took out a pad and pen she’d brought with her and began making notes.
She and Uncle Pat were paying rent to a man named Sam Whiteside, so his name must be the most recent to be listed as owning their house. Then she began to trace ownership backward. From Whiteside to Fornier, and then there it was. Broyles. From 1946 to 1986, the house had belonged to the Broyles family. The last to own it was Emmit Broyles
Next she could hunt for a census record online, which should tell her all the names of family members in the Broyles household. It made no sense that DeeDee would disappear and no one would ever file a police report about it.
Tara gasped. Unless someone in her family was the murderer.
“I’m beginning to feel like a detective on CSI.”
By the time she got out of the courthouse it was almost noon. Her stomach was growling from hunger, but she didn’t have time to eat. The sooner she got DeeDee’s angry spirit pacified, the easier her life was going to be. She made a dash toward home. She needed to get online and find census records for the years that the Broyles family had owned the property, and see what came up there.
When she got home she heard the lawn mower running out back. Uncle Pat was still cleaning up. She grabbed a couple of cookies from the pantry, then headed for her room to get her laptop. She crawled into the middle of her bed, turned on the laptop, and began munching on one of her cookies as she waited for the system to come online. As soon as it did, she Googled Census Records for the State of Oklahoma.
After a few hits and misses, she finally found information relating to the years in which the Broyles family had owned her and Uncle Pat’s house. Once again, she pulled out her little pad and pen to jot down the names. To her surprise, during the last census, there were only two recorded names for that family at that address. She assumed they were husband and wife.
“Emmit Lee Broyles. Sarah Delores Broyles.” She frowned. “No DeeDee. Shoot. Maybe DeeDee was a visiting family member or . . . oh. Wait. DeeDee could be short for Delores.”
At that point, her cell phone began to vibrate. She pulled it out of her pocket, saw there was a text message, and frowned again. Uncle Pat didn’t know how to text her, so what was up with this? She opened the message.
Ewe R knot write.
Tara stifled a snort. Millicent thought she was all that because she could manipulate electricity to the point of being able to send text messages, but she so did not get the language.
“It’s not ewe, that’s a sheep. It’s U, and . . . oh crap. Never mind. What am I not right about?”
Another text message appeared.
Not H and W. Sibs.
“Oh. Wow. Thanks,” Tara muttered. “Emmit and DeeDee were brother and sister. Now to find out if Emmit Broyles still lives in Stillwater, or if he is even still alive.”
She rolled over to the side of the bed, grabbed the phone book from the table and flipped through the B’s. Within minutes, she’d found an address for an Emmit Lee Broyles on Western Avenue.
“Could I be this lucky?” She made a note of the address.
Then she Googled Map Quest and downloaded a city map of Stillwater, looking for where this address was in connection to her address on Duck Street.
To her dismay, the address on Western was quite a distance to walk. She decided to make some lunch for her and Uncle Pat, then see if she could use the car this afternoon. Satisfied that she was on the trail of what was turning into quite a mystery, she headed for the kitchen.
Chapter Four
Tara was fired up and on a mission. It never occurred to her that she could be putting herself in mortal danger by asking the wrong questions of someone who might turn out to be a murder suspect. The only thing on her mind was solving a mystery and getting an angry entity out of their house.
The mailman was on the front porch as she hurried through the living room. She went outside just as he dropped the lid on the mail box.
“Hello, little lady,” he said.
“Hi,” Tara thanked him, fished the mail from the box, and headed for the back yard.
She wondered what it was going to look like once it was cleared out. It was creepy to know there was a body buried here. But it wasn’t like there’d be a tombstone or anything. Murderers weren’t in the habit of calling attention to their deeds, and according to her information it had been years and years since the Broyles family had lived here.
She stepped outside on the back porch, then smiled with surprise. It looked really great. Uncle Pat hadn’t just mowed the grass. He’d clipped bushes, trimmed tree limbs—even trained some wild ivy vines so that they were now climbing through the slats of a small white arbor in one corner of the yard. Mowing had uncovered something all right, but not a grave. It had revealed a narrow, winding path paved with natural stones. She could only imagine what it must have once looked like, with flowers blooming in the beds and birds and butterflies flitting about.
Uncle Pat saw her and waved, then cut the engine on the mower and started toward the house.
“The yard looks amazing, Uncle Pat.”
Her praise brought a smile to his face as he pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped the sweat off his brow.
“Quite a little surprise, wasn’t it?” he said, as he stepped up on the porch, then he pointed to the north corner of the yard. “See that little arbor back there?”
“Uh-huh.”
“There’s an old iron bench in the shed out back. I’ll drag it out and scrub it up a bit and then put it out there under the arbor. It’ll make a nice place to sit in the evenings.”
“That’ll be great, Uncle Pat. I like this house, and the school has possibilities, although I don’t have to put up with it for more than a year. After that, I’m off to college. Do you think we might actually stay here? Oklahoma State University is right here in Stillwater. It has a great rep and it would save a lot of money if I could still live at home and attend classes.”
His expression fell. Tara sensed his sorrow. She’d been his “little girl” for so long, it was difficult for him to imagine what life would be like without her. And he knew she didn’t like his gypsy ways. She hoped he’d stay put for a few years, motivated by the idea that she’d live at home while going to college, if he remained in Stillwater.
“Maybe so. Maybe so. Being a city employee means a good retirement plan, and I don’t mind reading meters. In fact, I sort of like the job. So we’ll see how it goes, okay?” he said, and then put an arm around her shoulders as they walked inside. “I’m hungry, how about you?”
That was more of a promise than she’d gotten out of him in years, and for the moment, she had to be satisfied with his answer.
“Starved. I’ll make sandwiches. Want some soup heated up, too?”
“Yes, please. There are some cans of chicken noodle and vegetable beef. You choose. I’m gonna go wash up.”
Tara washed her hands in the sink and then got the lunch meat and mustard from the fridge and the bread from the cabinet. She was layering slices of pastrami on the bread when the back door suddenly came open. The hair rose on the back of her neck, and she knew before she turned around that the dark shadow was back.
She dropped the mustard-smeared knife onto the counter as she turned.
“Just in time for lunch, DeeDee. Do you want mustard or mayo?”
Tara’s heart was thumping erratically. She didn’t know what had made her say that, but now that she knew the circumstances of
the dark shadow’s passing and understood the anger that drove it, she wasn’t afraid of it anymore.
The shadow shifted in the opening, then slid toward the pantry. Tara held her breath. Either the dishes would start flying at her, or it was the beginning of a new friendship. Whatever happened, it was DeeDee’s call.
Tara waited for a second, and when nothing happened, she shrugged and turned back around, reached for the can opener, then took two cans of soup from the cabinet.
“The back yard looks great, doesn’t it? I’ll bet it was beautiful when you lived here as a child. Did your Mother have a vegetable garden, too? There’s certainly room for one.”
Nothing hit her in the back of the head, and she didn’t hear anything either. That gave her the courage to continue.
“I’m heating the vegetable beef soup. It will go good with pastrami, I think. It’s one of Uncle Pat’s favorites.”
There was a thump behind her. She took a slow breath, looked over her shoulder, then gasped. The dark shadow was gone, and in its place was the wispy image of a young woman with sad eyes and short, curly hair. She was wearing a simple dress and flat-heeled shoes. She pointed at Tara, then put her hand over her heart.
Tara sighed. “I’m sorry, too,” she said. “I know this was once your house. I know you were murdered. I’m trying to help. Can you tell me who killed you? Why weren’t you reported as missing? Where did they bury your body?”
“Who are you talking to?” Uncle Pat said, as he strode back into the kitchen.
Tara stifled a groan. DeeDee disappeared.
“Oh, myself, I guess,” Tara said, and then dumped the soup into the pan and set it on the stove. “Do we have any dill pickles? I made pastrami sandwiches.”
“Yep. Got some the other day. I’ll get the pickles. You stir the soup.”
Tara finished heating the soup and dished it up while her uncle carried the sandwiches to the table, then filled their glasses with lemonade. They sat down together and began to eat. “Uncle Pat, may I use the car this afternoon? I need to do some research and it’s too far to walk.”
Sharon Sala - [Lunatic Life 01] Page 5
