“Yes, sure honey,” he said, as he dug a pickle out of the pickle jar. “Want one?”
“No, thanks, I’m good,” Tara finished off the last bite of her sandwich.
“By the way,” Pat said. “Have you seen my glasses? I thought I laid them here on the table before I went outside, but I can’t find them anywhere.”
“I’ll look in a sec,” Tara said, as she carried her dirty dishes to the sink. “Maybe they’re in the living room,” she said. “I’ll look there.”
“I already did,” Pat said. “But you might as well have a go at it, too.”
Tara stomped into the living room, then shoved her finger into the air in a gesture of defiance and hissed in a low, angry voice.
“Henry! Glasses! In my hand now!”
She held out her hand and closed her eyes. Seconds later, she felt them land in the middle of her palm and quickly curled her fingers around them as she looked up.
“I am not going to thank you for something you shouldn’t have taken in the first place,” she whispered. “Please don’t do it again.”
A magazine slid off the coffee table onto the floor.
“And pick that up!” she growled, as she stomped out of the room and back into the kitchen, holding the glasses in a gesture of triumph. “Look what I found,” she said.
“For goodness sake. Where were they?”
“On the coffee table . . . under an open magazine,” she said, irked that she’d had to lie. If Uncle Pat wasn’t so closed-minded about her being psychic, it would be a lot easier.
She was anxious to see Emmit Broyles face to face—to see if she would pick up anything from his behavior or thoughts. She might be all wrong about what she’d been thinking, but it was definitely strange that someone’s sister would go missing and no one seemed to care.
“Okay. I’m off to do research,” she said, gave her Uncle Pat a kiss and a hug, took the car keys from the counter, and headed for the driveway.
“Drive carefully,” he called.
“I will,” Tara answered, then smiled. He always said that and she always answered the same way which cracked her up. Like, if anyone was planning to drive like a maniac, they would admit to it before they left? What kind of logic was that?
Thanks to MapQuest, she knew where Western Avenue was, and headed South down Duck street to 12th Avenue, then 12th Avenue to Western, while her head was spinning with opening scenarios as to how she would greet Emmit Broyles.
Her confusion was compounded by the sudden appearance of Henry, who popped up on the hood of her car like a hood ornament. If he knew how distracting it was to try and drive through traffic with a ghost staring at you through the windshield, he would have at least gotten into the car beside her.
“Henry! Move! I can’t be looking at you when I’m supposed to be paying attention to traffic!”
Henry popped out of sight and then into the seat beside her so fast that she jumped.
“Crap! You scared me.” She braked for a red light.
Don’t go, Millicent said.
Tara rolled her eyes. Now Millicent was in the back seat, adding her two cents into the situation.
“Look you two. I am not sharing the rest of my life with an angry entity. DeeDee deserves some justice. All I’m going to do is talk to her brother. Either I’ll get some info from him, or I won’t.”
You can get murdered like DeeDee.
Tara’s heart skipped a beat. “Are you saying he killed her?”
We don’t know.
Tara frowned. “Why don’t you know?”
Because DeeDee doesn’t know who killed her, either.
“Oh great. Why couldn’t this be easy?” Then another thing occurred to her. “Does she know exactly where she’s buried?”
She used to.
Tara snorted lightly. “Either she does or she doesn’t.”
The yard doesn’t look like it used to.
“You mean . . . like, maybe she was buried under the rose bushes, or something like that, only the rose bushes aren’t there any more? Is that what you mean?”
Ta da!
“A simple yes would have been sufficient,” Tara muttered, and then her heart gave an erratic thump as she saw the house number she’d been looking for. “We’re here!” she announced, and turned up into the driveway and parked.
The house was a plain red brick with green shutters. The grass was neatly mowed and the small flower beds up around the porch were full of blooming pansies and periwinkles. There was a hummingbird feeder on the south end of the porch and two huge pots of Boston ferns on either side of the bottom step. It didn’t look like the house of a killer. Then she frowned. Exactly what was a killer’s house supposed to look like?
This isn’t a good idea.
“Yes, Millicent, I know. We’ve already had this discussion.” Tara got out of the car and headed for the front door.
Henry kept darting in front of her, then moving just before she’d walk through him, then back in her path again.
“Yes. Yes. I get the message. But you’ve also gotten mine. Now both of you back off and let me do my thing!”
The moment they disappeared, worry settled firmly at the back of her mind. No one knew where she was. If she opened Pandora’s box with her questions, she didn’t want to find herself planted in this back yard like DeeDee had been planted in hers. But it was the thought of poor DeeDee, unsettled and in unhallowed ground, that made her keep walking—right up the steps, and then ringing the bell.
She listened as the chimes echoed within the interior of the house, then patiently waited for someone to answer. And she waited. And waited, then rang again.
After all the fuss and bother coming over here, this was something of a letdown. She peeked into the windows, then exhaled in frustration and headed back to the car. She was all the way off the porch when she heard the door suddenly open behind her.
“Can I help you?”
The voice was obviously from someone of the elder generation—a little shaky and weak. She turned abruptly.
The woman in the doorway looked like a good puff of wind would blow her away. She was stooped from the weight of her years, and verging on skinny, although her navy blue dress gave the impression of substance. Her gray hair was obviously long, because she wore it braided, then wound up on the top of her head. Fragile, wire-rimmed glasses perched on the bridge of her slightly hooked nose, and the hand that was clutching the cane on which she was leaning had some serious bling on every finger.
“Does Emmit Broyles live here?” Tara asked.
“Why, yes, he does. I’m his wife, Flora.”
“Is he here, Mrs. Broyles? I’d like to speak to him.”
The old woman frowned. “He’s out back in the garden, but he doesn’t like to be disturbed.”
Tara hurried back up the steps. “I really need to talk to him,” she said.
“About what?”
“His sister, DeeDee.”
The old woman frowned. “Oh, you must be mistaken. He doesn’t have a sister named DeeDee. In fact, Emmit doesn’t have any siblings at all.”
Tara frowned. According to the census info she’d found, she knew different. “Would you just ask him if he’d speak with me? Tell him that my uncle and I are living in his family’s old house.”
“The one on Duck Street?” Flora asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Flora frowned. “Wait here,” she said, and then shut the door in Tara’s face.
Tara could hear her scooting across the floor and knew it would take a few minutes before she’d even make it to the back of the house to deliver the message. She shoved her hands in her pockets and then started to sit down on the steps when Millicent’s voice cautioned otherwise.
I would
n’t turn my back if I were you.
Tara flinched, then turned and faced the doorway. “If you don’t know anything about this guy, then why do you insist on making such a fuss?” she muttered.
Oddly enough, she didn’t answer, which bothered Tara more than if she’d continued her complaints. Then suddenly Tara began to hear footsteps approaching and unconsciously, her fingers curled into fists.
The door opened.
Whatever Tara had been expecting, it wasn’t this.
Emmit Broyles was the physical opposite of his wife, Flora. Where she was frail and stooped, he was tall with a military posture. His shoulders were so wide that he barely fit in the doorway, and the extra weight he carried just made his presence even more impressive. But it wasn’t his size that Tara picked up on. It was the angry glare in his eyes and the jut of his jaw. She felt the antagonism before he ever opened his mouth, but oddly enough, she couldn’t get anything from his thoughts. Those were completely shut down.
Hmm, a man with secrets, she thought, and then smiled politely.
“Mr. Broyles . . . Emmit Broyles?”
“What do you want?”
Nothing like getting right to the point. Tara took a step forward, just to show him she wasn’t intimidated by his behavior.
“My uncle and I are renting the house that used to belong to your family . . . the house on Duck Street.”
“So?”
She shuffled her feet, pretending to be a little embarrassed, she looked up at him from the corner of her eyes and played stupid.
“So . . . when you lived there, did either you or your sister, DeeDee, ever feel like the house was haunted?”
If she’d slapped him in the face with a dead fish, he couldn’t have looked any more shocked.
“What did you say?”
“Haunted. As in ghosts. I didn’t think I believed in such stuff until we moved there. But I’d swear there’s a ghost in the house and she’s not happy we’re there. I’ve been trying to find out some history to the place . . . maybe so I could help the ghost move on . . . you know, like on The Ghost Whisperer. I just love that show. Do you ever watch it? Jennifer Love Hewitt is like, so gorgeous and she’s always helping spirits pass over. So, I was thinking maybe I could do the same thing and wanted to talk to your sister, DeeDee, because women are usually more open to talking about things like this, but no one seems to know where she’s gone.”
His voice was barely above a whisper. “I don’t have a sister.”
“Oh! I’m so sorry! I didn’t realize she’d passed away.”
“No . . . no. I don’t have a sister.”
Tara frowned. “But that’s not what the court records state. That’s how I found you, you know. Records. At the courthouse.”
Emmit took a step outside, pulling the door shut behind him, then moved until there was less than a foot between them.
“I don’t know what you’re game is, but you need to get off my property and don’t come back.”
He loomed over her, using his size to intimidate. It was working. Then suddenly, Tara felt Millicent’s presence and knew she’d better move before Millicent went into action.
“I don’t have a game and there’s no need to bully me. It’s upsetting enough living in a house with a ghost. I thought with you and your family living there for so long, you would be able to help me. I’m sorry I bothered you.”
She lifted her chin and turned abruptly, pretending indignation as she headed for her car.
Suddenly, she heard Emmit Broyles shout.
Tara turned around just as the old man began flailing his arms wildly, ducking and hopping and trying to get to the front door.
“What the hell?” he roared, as the porch was suddenly filled with wasps, diving at him from every direction. As if that wasn’t enough, the blossoms on the flowers in the flower bed suddenly spewed into the air like lava erupting out of a volcano.
Tara grinned. Way to go, Millicent.
Get yourself in the car and go home.
For once, Millicent’s advice was on target. Tara jumped in, locked the doors, and then drove away.
“I think that went well,” she said, as she reached down to turn on the radio, but before she could, it came on by itself.
She didn’t recognize the song, but some rapper kept repeating the words, run, boy run. She hoped it wasn’t the universe trying to tell her something. What she needed to do was get back home and try to communicate with DeeDee again. She wasn’t sure how to go about finding her grave, but she had to figure something out. It was the only thing she could think of that would convince the police that there had been a crime committed—that DeeDee Broyles had been murdered—most likely by her own brother.
Unfortunately, the weekend didn’t go as Tara wanted. After that brief moment in the kitchen when DeeDee had revealed her true self, she’d suddenly made herself scarce. Even Henry and Millicent stayed absent. Tara was beginning to feel abandoned.
On Sunday she slept in, then Uncle Pat insisted on taking her back to Eskimo Joe’s for lunch. Tara now knew for certain he had a thing for Mona O’Mara. To her relief, Mona wasn’t working the noon shift, which meant Tara could enjoy her food without thinking about Uncle Pat hooking up with Flynn’s mother. That was enough to make a girl freak.
Sunday afternoon, Tara headed to the backyard, but no matter how many times she walked it, she couldn’t see anything that would lead her to where DeeDee’s body was buried. And, she kept sending DeeDee messages to check in, but DeeDee remained AWOL. As frustrating as it was to wait, she didn’t have any other options.
When the alarm went off Monday morning, Tara bounced out of bed, expecting Henry to be sitting on the foot of her bed. Within seconds, she knew she was still alone.
“Fine,” she muttered, and headed to the shower.
By the time she got to school, the chip on her shoulder was riding high and wide. How positively bunk was it to be such an outcast that even dead people refused to hang with her? Just because she’d told them to back off didn’t mean she’d meant forever.
She was on her way to her locker when the blonde mafia turned a corner and came down the hall toward her. They were walking three across, expecting everyone else to make way for them, which they did. But Tara wasn’t in the mood to bow and scrape. She didn’t miss a step or break stride. She just set her jaw and kept walking.
Right up to the three blonde cheerleaders. Until they were standing face to face.
“Hey! Lunatic! Can’t you see we’re walking here?”
“Move,” Tara said.
“Ooh, I am so scared,” Prissy said, and rolled her eyes.
Tara leaned forward until her mouth was only inches away from her ear.
“You cheated on your test Friday and your teacher knows it.”
Prissy’s face turned white as her eyes widened. This was the second time Tara had revealed something no one but Prissy could possibly know. “What are you . . . a witch?” Prissy whispered.
“I said . . . move.”
“What did she say to you, Prissy? Did she threaten you?” Bethany asked. “I’ll get the principal. She’ll—”
“No,” Prissy said quickly as she moved aside. “Let it go.”
Tara walked between them and kept on going without looking back. The stand-down hadn’t gone unnoticed, and by the time Tara got to first hour, word was spreading. Tara Luna was a witch, as in some kind of Satan-worshiping goat-sacrificer, although real wiccans weren’t into that stuff. Mrs. Farmer kept giving her curious looks. Even though everything Tara had told her about her babysitter had turned out to be true, she’d hadn’t mentioned any of the end results to Tara. Tara sighed. Mrs. Farmer probably believed she was a witch, too. It wasn’t the first time this had happened to Tara, and it wouldn’t be the last. The worst thing ab
out it was seeing the look of shock on Flynn O’Mara’s face when he walked in the classroom for their second period class. As if that wasn’t enough, instead of talking to her like he usually did, he ducked his head and looked away. She smelled the scent of his aftershave and wanted to cry as he slid into the seat behind her.
Fine, Tara thought. Join the club. Nobody else wants to be friends with me, either.
Cold, Tara. We’re still here.
Millicent. Tara had never been so glad to hear that nagging little voice in her life.
“The word isn’t cold. It’s chill. You say, ‘Chill,’ when you want someone to calm down.”
Whatever.
“Are you talking to yourself, Lunatic?”
Tara looked up. It was secretly bulemic Mel, the third and least vocal member of the blonde mafia.
“I’d tell you to drop dead, but hey . . . if I’m a witch, then that might be called a murder attempt, wouldn’t it?”
Mel’s smirk fell like a curtain. “Stay away from me,” she mumbled, and scurried to her desk.
Tara slumped in her desk.
Why do you do that?
Do what? Tara thought.
Antagonize them. They’re idiots, you know.
Yes, I know.
They’re going to keep spreading rumors about you.
I can’t control other people’s behavior.
The last bell rang, the teacher closed the classroom door, and the class began. About thirty minutes into the class, Tara began getting a panicky feeling. Something was wrong somewhere close, but she couldn’t pick up on what was happening.
The teacher got up from the desk and began writing an assignment on the board. Tara began copying down the instructions, when all of a sudden she wasn’t looking at the words on her paper any more. She was seeing a scene unfolding inside a bathroom. There was a kid on the floor and he was having a seizure. There were more than a half dozen bathrooms in the building. She had no idea which one, but she knew as well as she knew her own name that the boy was dying.
She bolted out of the seat and headed for the teacher as fast as she could go.
“Mrs. Wyatt, I need to be excused.”
Sharon Sala - [Lunatic Life 01] Page 6
