The ghosts, minus Haywood, were out on the front porch. Haywood had once again pulled a disappearing act.
I supposed I should be grateful he had been there for me when it truly mattered, but I was growing weary of him hiding out.
Yesterday when I had sent Virgil to find Delia, she’d still been asleep. The sound of the cats freaking out at the ghostly presence woke her up, and she quickly realized that Virgil wanted her to follow him. When she was leaving, Dylan was pulling up after springing his mama from the pokey, and lo and behold, Haywood had been with him.
They’d all converged on the Ezekiel house and saw the smoke. Haywood showed Delia the secret tunnel that led beneath the shed out back to the house, and Dylan had gone in after me.
Mr. Butterbaugh was still in the hospital. He hadn’t only hit his head during the fire—he’d also had a heart attack. My aunt Eulalie had volunteered to sit with him, and I resurrected hopes that there might be a love connection between them yet.
Neither Virgil nor Jenny Jane had seen who tossed the bottle bomb, and I don’t know why my witchy senses hadn’t kicked in, either, other than maybe I was too far away from the source of danger.
“Is there anyone you didn’t talk to?” Dylan asked, smirking.
I smiled. “A couple of people . . .”
“You upset someone with your nosing around. What did you find out about Haywood’s case?” Delia asked.
I once again refrained from pointing out that Mr. Butterbaugh could have been the intended victim. It was a bit of a stretch. “What did I find out? Well, let’s see. Hyacinth might be a lush who hates Avery Bryan. Avery is angry and grieving. The Kirbys didn’t know about Haywood inheriting the house, and I think I volunteered to adopt Louella, Virgil’s she-devil dog.”
Delia nearly choked on her tea. “You what?”
“Long story,” I said, waving it off. I was supposed to have been at the kennel this morning, but I was sure Dr. Gabriel would understand my tardiness. “Mayor Ramelle might have a gambling problem and you already know about the secret room in the Ezekiel basement and how someone had searched it.”
Fortunately yesterday afternoon after the fire broke out, someone passing by the Ezekiel house had spotted the smoke and called the fire department. The majority of the damage had been contained to the basement, and because the house had been so solidly rebuilt, the structural integrity hadn’t been compromised. The basement needed a complete overhaul, but the rest of the house would need only a professional restoration service to get rid of the smell and soot. On the whole, the place would be just fine. A miracle.
“Oh,” I added, “and there’s something going on about letters. Hyacinth and Avery talked a little bit about them, and Doug hinted that Haywood had been the one who sent them and deserved what he got.” Suddenly I bolted upright.
“What’s wrong?” Dylan asked, concern filling his eyes. “Are you having pains?”
“Doug told me that when you played with fire, you got burned. He said it in reference to Haywood, but it seems a bit coincidental . . .”
“I’ll kill him,” Dylan seethed.
“Not if I get to him first,” Delia added in a stone-cold tone of voice.
I held up my hands. “We don’t know anything for sure. Let’s see if he has an alibi before we go killing anyone. And really, I should get first dibs.”
We fell into silence for a moment before Dylan said, “I don’t like this letter business. The crime techs went back to Haywood’s house yesterday after I gave the sheriff the info on Haywood’s family tree. The ashes we had found in the trash can? Remnants from typed letters.”
“Haywood said he didn’t burn them, so someone broke in just to set them afire?” I asked.
Was it possible it was the same person who’d tried to set me afire?
“Must have been something incriminating in them,” Dylan said, rubbing my feet.
“Incriminating letters that are upsetting people? Sounds like blackmail,” Delia theorized, glancing up from the computer screen.
Dylan and I looked at her. She was absolutely right.
He shifted and worry lines creased his forehead. “Yesterday when I signed on to my mother’s online bank account to transfer money for her bail, I noticed a series of withdrawals. About a thousand dollars a week for the past six months. When I asked her about it, she wrote it off as spending money.”
“A thousand dollars a week? That’s quite a shopping spree,” Delia said. “What’d she say she was buying for four grand a month?”
Dylan’s mama could spend that in an hour at the right boutique. Four grand a month was a drop in the bucket of her fortune.
“I didn’t push it,” he said. “Figured it really wasn’t my business what she was buying. But if she’s been paying off someone, then that’s definitely my business.”
That it was. But how did it factor into the case as a whole? “We need to look at the bigger picture. If Hyacinth got a letter, Haywood got a letter, and Doug hinted that he and the mayor got a letter . . . and Patricia’s doling out a thousand a week, then I think we need to assume all the Harpies are involved. I can ask Dr. Gabriel about it when I go pick up Louella in a little bit.” I shuddered.
“You’re not seriously adopting her,” Delia said, eyebrows raised.
“I have to.” I rubbed Poly’s head and hoped he wouldn’t hate me come tonight. “Virgil isn’t going to cross over until she’s settled in a home. I don’t suppose Boo wants a playmate?” I batted my eyelashes.
“Oh hell no. You’re not dumping that dog on me.”
“But didn’t Doug say Haywood sent the letters?” Dylan asked out of the blue. He’d apparently been stewing on the letters and not listening to the news about the dog.
Hmm. I wondered if he’d take her.
“Yeah, but that’s the opposite of what I heard at the Silly Goose yesterday,” I said. “Avery mentioned that Haywood had gotten a letter, the same as Hyacinth. Hyacinth intimated that it was Avery who sent them. If those ashes at Haywood’s were from letters, then I tend toward believing Avery’s version of events.”
Yet, why did Doug think Haywood had sent them? It was something to look into.
“Who is this Avery?” Dylan asked, looking at Delia. “She seems to be in the thick of things. You find anything on her yet?”
“Not much. Just calling up property tax records now.” She tapped away.
Dylan glanced at me. “Okay, let’s say the Harpies are being blackmailed. Why? Is it as a whole or individually? Did the group do something they’re trying to hide? Or did each person in the group do something they don’t want known?”
“I vote individual,” Delia said. “Your mama wouldn’t pay out of her personal account for all the Harpies. That money would come out of the Harpies account.”
“Four grand a month for each of them . . .” I did quick math. “That’s a haul of twenty grand a month. Someone’s making a boatload of money. Either of you know anyone who’s been flashing extra cash lately?”
They shook their heads.
Delia looked up. “How do I know the name Twilabeth Morgan?”
“Twilabeth? That was the name of Haywood’s former wife, wasn’t it?” I asked. “I think he said it the other night, but didn’t mention a last name. Mayor Ramelle told me that Haywood’s ex used to live here in Hitching Post until she and Haywood divorced twenty-some years ago. Why?”
Delia said, “Twilabeth Morgan previously owned the house Avery Bryan is living in, bought it in the late eighties. Avery took ownership last year. It can’t be a coincidence.”
“Hand me the phone, will you?” I asked Dylan.
He reached across the table, grabbed the cordless, and handed it over. I dialed quickly.
“Law offices of Caleb Montgomery,” a voice on the line said.
“Hey, John Richard, it’s Carly. I need a favor.” Attorney John Richard Baldwin and I had forged a friendship last May during a particularly rough patch in both our lives. He ended u
p quitting his fancy job in Birmingham and moved to Hitching Post. He was now working for one of my closest friends. Caleb Montgomery was the best divorce lawyer in Darling County and his office had access to all sorts of online records that I didn’t.
“Okay, but only because you almost died and all yesterday,” John Richard said.
I rolled my eyes. I’d already heard a lecture from Delia reminding me that she didn’t want mine to be one of the ghosts she helped cross over this weekend.
I’d had to remind her that I didn’t particularly want that, either.
“Can you look up a divorce record for me?” I asked John Richard and gave him Haywood’s name. “The wife’s name is possibly Twilabeth Morgan.”
“Hold on a sec.” I heard tapping in the background. Then he said, “Married in May of ’eighty-seven. Divorced in November of ’eighty-seven.”
Mayor Ramelle had mentioned the marriage had been brief. She hadn’t been kidding.
Twenty-eight years ago, though . . . “Can you do me another favor?”
There was silence on the line.
“Oh, come on, John Richard.” I coughed dramatically, which wasn’t too difficult considering I’d been hacking since being pulled out of the fire. “I almost died, remember?”
“Okay,” he said, dragging out the word. “But don’t breathe a word of this to Caleb. You know how he gets about personal favors on company time.”
“Don’t you worry none about him,” I said. Caleb was all bark and no bite. “Can you look up the birth certificate for Avery Bryan? She might have been born Avery Morgan or Avery Dodd. She’s twenty-seven and possibly the daughter of Twilabeth and Haywood.”
“It’s going to take me a minute. Can I call you back?” he asked.
“Yep. Thank you.” I hung up and found Dylan and Delia staring at me. “What?”
“His daughter?” Dylan said.
“It’s the only thing that makes sense.” I stuck out my thumb for example number one. “It explains why Haywood was so protective when your mama tore into her.” I added my pointy finger. “It explains why she was grieving after his death.” Another finger. “Why she had an invitation to the party—Haywood invited her.” Another finger. “It’s why his ghost was watching over her at the Silly Goose.” I thought of the way Hyacinth had treated Avery at the Goose and shared it with the two of them. “Hyacinth must know she’s Haywood’s daughter, and isn’t too happy about it.”
Suddenly, I was very cranky with Haywood for lying to me when I asked him about Avery yesterday. He’d known her, all right.
“If it’s true that Avery is his child,” Delia said, “why didn’t he tell anyone that he had a daughter? Haywood has lived in this town all his life, and I never heard a word about a daughter.”
“I never heard anything, either,” Dylan added.
The phone rang, and I quickly answered it.
John Richard Baldwin said, “Avery Lee Morgan, born May of ’eighty-eight to Twilabeth Morgan. No daddy listed. And I’ll do you one better on account of you coughing up a lung. At age twenty-four, Avery Morgan married Dale Bryan and divorced him last year.”
That explained her differing name perfectly. “Thank you, John Richard. I owe you big-time.”
“You know what I want,” he said solemnly.
What he wanted was a date with Hitching Post’s newest resident, Gabi Greenleigh, who was currently living in the apartment above my mama’s chapel. Gabi was still nursing a broken heart after a particularly nasty breakup, however, and I wasn’t pushing her into dating. Not yet. “Keep dreaming.”
“So much for owing me,” he grumped and hung up.
“Twilabeth is Avery’s mama, but there’s no daddy listed on the birth certificate,” I shared with Delia and Dylan. “By my math, she’d have to have been conceived near the end of her parents’ short-lived marriage. September or October.”
Delia closed the laptop. “You think it’s possible Haywood didn’t know about her?”
Before I could answer, Dylan chimed in. “You think it’s possible that’s what he was being blackmailed about? You just told us how Avery said she’d been dragged into this situation when Haywood got a letter.”
I said, “I don’t know what to think, but if she is his daughter, we’ve got a bigger issue.”
Looking drawn and tired, Dylan dropped his head back on the sofa. “What’s that?”
“Avery would now be the rightful heir of the Ezekiel mansion. And if someone killed Haywood over that fact, then she could be in danger, too.”
Chapter Fifteen
An hour later, Dylan went to work and Delia left Boo with me while she went off to the Pig to pick up some chili fixin’s for supper. After being constantly surrounded by people for the past couple of days, the sudden silence seemed unnatural.
Boo followed me as I went into the kitchen for another cup of tea, his tiny toenails clacking on the wooden floor. I was dismayed at how slowly I moved.
As much as I didn’t want to worry anyone, I had to admit—at least to myself—that I wasn’t well. My chest ached, breathing proper was a bit of a struggle, and I couldn’t shake a rib-rattling cough.
I didn’t like it.
Not the symptoms so much as feeling weak.
Which was why when my daddy walked through the back door, I had never been happier to see the man in all my life.
He gave me a big bear hug, and I didn’t mind at all when he held on just a little bit longer than usual. When he finally let go, he said, “I brought your bike back, but the cupcakes you left at the shop didn’t make the trip.”
“Why not?” I asked.
He grinned like a mischievous little boy. “Ainsley and I ate them for breakfast. They’re damn fine with a hot cup of coffee. Don’t tell your mama. She’d get all fired up that I didn’t save one for her.”
“I won’t tell,” I promised.
“And I brought this.” He pulled an apricot-colored potion bottle from his coat pocket and held it out. “Special delivery.”
My hand closed around the warm glass. I tugged the stopper and sniffed, picking up the predominant scent of New England aster, which was an excellent choice to soothe my lungs. I drank the potion, feeling its effects almost immediately. The pain in my chest eased, and my throat stopped aching. I drew in a deep breath, held it, and marveled at the magic that was in my life.
“Better?” he asked.
“Better. Thanks, Daddy.”
He dropped a kiss on top of my head. “So help me God, if I find out who did this to you . . .”
“You’ll have to get in line,” I said, smiling.
“Any leads yet?” He bent and picked up Boo, who then bathed Daddy’s chin in kisses.
“Not really. Partial sneaker footprints were found outside the kitchen windows at the Ezekiel house that support the theory someone had been out there looking inside. Spying on Mr. Butterbaugh and me. A deputy took casts as evidence. The kitchen was full of fingerprints because of the party the night before and it’ll be weeks before that’s all sorted out.”
Still holding Boo, he leaned against the countertop. Quietly, he said, “I’m guessing the fire had to do with you nosing into Haywood Dodd’s murder?”
The kettle began to whistle. “We don’t know why the fire was started yet,” I evaded.
“Carly Bell.”
“Daddy.”
Shaking his head, he said, “You’re as stubborn as your mama. Where was Patricia when the fire started?”
I pulled the kettle from the burner. “Dylan had just dropped her off at Hyacinth Foster’s home. Apparently Patricia wanted to check on her in light of Haywood’s passing. There wouldn’t have been time enough for her to get to the mansion and start the fire. Besides, when have you ever known her to wear sneakers in public?”
“I’ve been thinking. Have you ever considered that Hyacinth and Patricia could be in cahoots?”
I couldn’t help but smile.
Boo’s round black eyes were drif
ting closed as my father rhythmically rubbed his head. “What’s so amusing?” he asked.
“The way you say cahoots. Cah . . . hoots. Almost like a sneeze. Say it again.” I pressed my hands together in a praying gesture. “Please?”
Stone-faced, he didn’t so much as blink. “Carly.”
“Daddy,” I echoed, using the same no-nonsense tone.
“You have to at least acknowledge the possibility the two are . . .”
Ever hopeful, I lifted my eyebrows.
“. . . working together.”
Let down, I said, “It’s something to consider.” Any or all of the Harpies could have worked together to kill Haywood. Tag-teaming, as it were. I needed to find out which one of them knew Haywood was Rupert’s heir. That would narrow down suspects in a hurry. Because of my conversation with the Kirbys yesterday, I could already cross Idella off that list. That left Patricia, Hyacinth, and Mayor Ramelle. They could all easily lie to my face, but they couldn’t keep me from reading their energies. It always told the truth. “Tea?” I held up the kettle.
“No, thanks. I need to get back to the shop to relieve Ainsley. She has to pick up the Clingons.” He put Boo on the floor and reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “I do want to show you something before I go. Take a look.”
I set the kettle back down and picked up the paper. It was a copy of an official-looking letter from a genetics company. It was dated a week ago.
Daddy said, “I found it in the stack of papers you photocopied at Haywood’s house. A DNA paternity report. It was the only thing that jumped out as interesting in that entire pile.”
Wide-eyed, I read it quickly. With ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent certainty Tyson Ezekiel was the father of Haywood Dodd. “Who’s Tyson Ezekiel? Is that Rupert’s son?”
“I believe so.”
“How is that possible?” I asked. “Mr. Dunwoody said Tyson had been at war when Haywood would have been conceived. It doesn’t make sense.”
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