Under the Cheaters Table

by Etta Faire

  Rosalie reached for my hand and pulled me out of the basement, quickly closing the door and locking it.

  I practically collapsed onto the first step as I assessed my injuries and took my helmet off.

  Rosalie mumble-screamed through the sweater still draped over her face. It sounded like, “What in the hell was that all about?”

  “I’m not sure,” I replied. “But you were right. I’m going to need more than this bike helmet.”

  Chapter 23

  The Stories We tell ourselves

  My head and shoulders still ached the next day when I stumbled into the library like a woman finally coming home from a week-long bachelorette party. I scratched at my still-numb head, trying to wake up and feel something.

  I had a ton of research to do before the channeling later that evening, but I was mostly there because it was the one place Jackson seemed to be able to reach, or at least that’s what I was hoping.

  I needed to tell him about the vortex while also looking up stuff on the Kentucky Derby, the author Feldman knew from New York, the side effects of sapientia formula…

  Children’s laughter interrupted my thoughts.

  “There she is,” Mrs. Nebitt said from across the library. “We thought you forgot about story time.”

  I looked around, stunned with fear. The children’s section was full. Shelby, Parker, and Lila sat in chairs with their children in front of them.

  Shoot. I’d forgotten about story time.

  I waved. “Sorry, I’m late,” I said, still unsure why I’d agreed to do these things for Mrs. Nebitt once a month anyway.

  Mrs. Nebitt waddled over to me, handed me the book she was about to read, and gave me the once-over. Then she curled her lip.

  I knew why. I was dressed like I wasn’t taking my library duties very seriously, in my torn jeans and stained sweatshirt. I smoothed down my curls that were probably all over the place from me rubbing my aching head.

  I always planned to step it up and look professionally cute, but it’s kind of hard when your days are filled with things like almost being sucked down the throat of the vortex to hell.

  I decided not to share my excuse. It didn’t matter anyway. She’d already made her way back to the front desk and I was left with a section full of children, staring at me. Fortunately, it was not a large section. But it still wasn’t where my mind was at.

  I glanced at the book in my hand as I walked over to my audience. “Hi everyone. Looks like Mrs. Nebitt picked out The Very Hungry Vortex of Evil…” I coughed over my words. “Of course, I mean caterpillar.”

  At least the faint laughter to my right was comforting. Jackson was here after all.

  Shelby looked healthier today. Her cheeks had natural color through her makeup and she was smiling when she approached me after story time with Bobby Jr. on her hip.

  “I cannot believe how many people signed up for the task force to find Bobby,” she said, making me feel guilty because I hadn’t done it yet. “It’s like the whole town cares.”

  Parker and Lila were right behind her as their children ran wild through the stacks. Mrs. Nebitt glared at me, like I was one of the children’s parents.

  “Told you it would get the community together,” Parker said, putting a hand on Lila’s shoulder. “And all thanks to the Donovan family.”

  I smiled politely even though I wanted to hurl, and it wasn’t because Parker was putting his hand on another woman. It was because that woman was a Donovan.

  “Yes, thank you, Lila. You too, Parker,” Shelby said, hugging them good-bye before leaving the library. She almost forgot to hug me. The friend she’d known for more than ten years.

  This was all about that stupid this task-force thing.

  Parker ran a hand through his thick, light brown hair. “I am the luckiest man alive,” he said to Lila, with the kind of voice that led me to believe he and Lila might be more than just task-force buddies. “First a job. Then our kids are best friends. And now, we’re helping the community together.”

  They kissed, and I almost fell into the carousal rack of paperbacks behind me. I looked away.

  “Ew,” Clarisse and Lil Mil said when they saw them kissing. They quickly turned around and ran in the opposite direction. And Mrs. Nebitt shot me another look.

  “So you two are a couple,” I asked. “Congratulations.”

  Lila smiled. Her short, sleek, yellow dress and bright blue jacket looked straight out of the pages of Vogue. And whenever she laughed at something Parker said (which was nauseatingly often), she’d flip her perfectly highlighted hair to the side, with manicured fingernails. I checked. She looked professionally cute, the way I always intended to look if life would stop tossing me into vortices already.

  The Donovans were by far the richest family on the lake. And Parker Blueberg was part of a family that still lived in their original, now-tilting house from the 1940s. Although it was completely possible these two were a legitimate couple, it was also very suspicious.

  I felt like Feldman watching Flo Donovan slumming it with his brother, right before he got his throat sliced.

  “I’m so lucky,” Parker said, again.

  “No, I’m the lucky one.” Lila laughed. Her voice sounded eerily similar to one of the voices in the backroom of George’s barbershop. She turned to me. “There’s another task-force meeting tomorrow. You should join us. Take a stand.”

  You should join us. Take a stand. That was the exact phrase someone had said to George that night, and in that exact voice.

  She looked at me sideways, almost as if she was daring me to call her out on it. I didn’t take the bait.

  “I would. That sounds incredibly helpful to the community, but I’m busy tomorrow,” I replied. I didn’t mention that I was busy trying to close the gates of hell, but I think it was understood.

  “Well, I hope to see you tomorrow at 10:00. Landover Park and Rec,” Parker said.

  As soon as they all left, I searched the library for my ex-husband, peeking around the cabinets in the periodicals section. “Jackson,” I whisper-yelled into the air.

  He barely appeared, only a very faint smoky gray outline over the table by the research computer. He had almost zero color to him, and I couldn’t make out any of his facial features, or even where his face was. It seemed to morph together with his neck. I gasped. “Are you okay?” I whispered.

  “Never better,” he dead-panned, voice barely audible.

  “At least you haven’t lost your snobbish jerkiness,” I said. “I’d be worried about you if that happened.”

  Truth was, I was worried now. But I tried not to show it. Instead, I told him about the gates to the hosts of evil, about how Rosalie and I visited the basement of Chez Louie, and that my breathing seemed to be in time with the thing in the wall.

  “So, how do I close the gates? And how do I help you get back to Gate House?”

  I glanced over at Mrs. Nebitt. She didn’t look up from her computer so I was pretty sure she hadn’t heard me talking to myself.

  “I’m not sure,” he said. He was right up next to my ear now, probably so I could hear him. “My gut feeling says you need to figure things out for Feldman, but you must maintain control throughout the channelings when you do them now. It’s this giving up control that’s energizing him, that’s giving him links to this world, and power over it. It also might be the sapientia formula. Who knows?”

  I gasped.

  “By spraying it in both Gate House and the speakeasy, you might have given Feldman a way to create a kind of backdoor into channeling there.”

  “He’s forcing his way in,” I said. “So if he’s leaving Gate House then you can come back home, right?”

  “I have no idea, Carly doll. I think Feldman created the hole at the speakeasy, but I think the stronger entity is the one who takes it over.”

  “Either way, I need to figure this out,” I said, watching as my ex-husband faded away.

  “Who on earth are you talking to?”


  I looked up. Mrs. Nebitt was standing directly over me. She smoothed out her mauve, button-down shirt while she stared at me sideways. Her eyes looked hugely judgmental in her glasses. “You’ve been muttering to yourself for a good five minutes. This isn’t the first time I’ve observed this odd behavior either. The other day, too.”

  “I’m stumped by my research,” I lied. “Do you know any authors from the 1920s named Jeremy?”

  She studied me for a minute before answering. “Do you have a last name?”

  “No.”

  “Then no. And good luck,” she said, waddling off again. “Try Google.”

  Problem was, I had tried Google.

  “And stop mumbling.”

  Taking a meditative breath, I looked around for my ex, but I could tell he was no longer there. And he hadn’t told me how to close the gates of hell yet.

  I sat at one of the library’s computers and quickly looked up the Kentucky Derby. The Wikipedia page included a list of winners. I started with 1922 and went backwards. But I stopped immediately when I saw the name of the horse that won in 1915. Regret. That was an interesting, and appropriate, name.

  I clicked on the link, and a page popped up about the horse, along with a photo of it, a dark filly with a rose garland and a number three tag.

  My heart jumped when I saw it. That had to be the one.

  Regret.

  What was Feldman supposed to regret? Or did the killer regret something?

  The note said “You gamble. You lose.” And it had been tucked into a horse named Regret.

  I needed to find out from Feldman all the people he had cheated and how. Someone wanted Feldman to regret something. And they wanted to taunt him with it before slicing his throat.

  I tried googling Jeremy next. But Mrs. Nebitt was right. Without a last name, it was pointless.

  Chapter 24

  Task Force

  I was doing this for Shelby, I reminded myself. Not for the Donovans or the gym membership. And definitely not for Bobby.

  About twenty people stood around a picnic table at the outskirts of Landover Park and Rec where the basketball court met the swingsets. I parked next to Shelby’s beat-up, pink Cadillac that was still pretty cute despite its rusty tail fins and not-quite-white, white-wall tires. And I gulped. What in the hell was I doing here when I had the gates of hell to take care of?

  Somehow, I got myself to open my car door and walk over. Parker waved enthusiastically to me, like I might miss the only group of people shivering in the park.

  Even though it was mid-morning and the sun was starting to burn off the clouds, a cold wind smacked my face and my boots crunched along stiff, half-frozen grass. Lila was dressed in a long brown sweater over her leggings and boots. Her hair draped her shoulders in perfect blonde waves under a white knit cap as she yelled out orders, like “Search-Party Barbie,” complete with megaphone.

  I looked down at my oversized sweatshirt and skinny jeans that I’d deemed “clean enough” even though I’d picked them out of the hamper. I wasn’t even cute enough to be Skipper.

  Shelby hugged me as soon as I got to her, making me feel guilty all over again for not going to one of these sooner.

  Parker pointed to a spot at the picnic table next to George and a couple I knew as locals who frequented the Spoony River a lot. I sat down and smiled politely as Lila continued talking.

  She motioned toward a red oak tree where a group of about ten people stood wearing orange vests. They were Landover’s regular volunteers, the ones who came out for lake clean-ups and lost pets. They were the do-gooders, and judging by their eager expressions and already-opened maps, they knew it.

  “Group one will look behind the Home Depot where Bobby and his brothers were last seen on surveillance video and group two will look around the outskirts of the Dead Forest where this item was found by the old drive-in.”

  She held up a Ziplock bag with a thick silver chain in it.

  She continued. “This might be Bobby’s wallet chain. I don’t know if you can see it, but there’s an eagle’s head on the end. No wallet, though.”

  There were only twenty of us in the search party so I wasn’t entirely sure why Lila was bothering with the megaphone. In fact, it kind of made her voice muffled and harder to hear.

  Shelby added without the megaphone. “It’s definitely the chain I gave him for Christmas, or one that looks just like it.”

  Her shoulders slumped and she looked down at her combat boots when she said that. Christmas was when Bobby’s brothers came to visit and stayed long past their welcome. It was why Shelby had issued Bobby an ultimatum in late January. And it was also why I thought this whole search-party thing was bogus.

  Bobby was a ne’er-do-well who left jobs and relationships when they got too hard, and this was probably no different. He would come back to reclaim his taxidermied grouse foot when he was good and ready, but not until he’d blown through every dollar he stole from their mattress bank.

  Lila put a hand over my head. It smelled like the perfume counter at Saks. “Like I said, group two over here at the picnic table will head over to the old Bear Rock Drive-In…”

  I looked up. Yep, the hand was right over my head. “Nope,” I said. “Group two did not volunteer to go anywhere near the Dead Forest. Did we, group two?” I looked around for confirmation from the people sitting with me at the picnic table.

  Nobody nodded back, so I coughed and tried to make my voice as loud as a megaphone. “Group one looks much more equipped to take that particular task on. They’ve already got maps and safety vests…”

  “You don’t really believe in rumors,” the woman from the Spoony River said. She laughed like Landover did not have a track record for having creepy rumors come true.

  But to make matters creepier, the Bear Rock Drive-In was also where I’d found a dead body last summer. It was right around the time I figured out just how close to the Landover stripper murderer I was in life.

  Shelby’s face was paler than anyone else’s. “Y’all, please don’t go inside the forest. That’s not what Lila is saying. We don’t need to test rumors in this city. Just look around the perimeter for clues,” she said. “Sheriff Bowman told me the wallet chain could be anyone’s. We need to link it to Bobby.”

  “Parker and I will go with group two, and Shelby will go with group one,” Lila said, through the megaphone. “Remember, don’t touch anything that looks like evidence. Just take a picture of it. Everyone should buddy up.”

  “Want to buddy-up and ride together?” Old George asked, like I was actually going. “Patsy couldn’t come. She had to work.”

  I stared at my fingernails a second before answering. I was here for Shelby. And Bobby’s wallet chain was a definite sign, no matter how dumb the sheriff was being about it.

  “I guess so, but I’ll drive,” I said because George’s Buick looked like a rummage sale on wheels. “Just so you know, we’re not going anywhere near a tree or a path. And you’d better run fast if we see anything weird in the Dead Forest, or I’ll be gone and you’ll have to shift forms and fly away…”

  He raised a thick, graying eyebrow at me. “Fly away? I don’t know what you’re talking about, Carly Mae.”

  “Sure, George. Just know, my Civic waits for no bird.”

  Some sort of a mist drifted around the trees and shadows in the Dead Forest when we pulled up alongside the other five cars from group two. I tried not to look at it. My plan was to keep focused on the perimeter. There was no reason to even shift my gaze into the forest.

  Old George hopped out of my car and motioned for me to do the same. I was not in the same hurry.

  I slowly grabbed the mace from my glove compartment and my Swiss army knife that I was pretty sure was too dull to do any real protecting.

  Lila waited by her SUV next to Parker. He smiled when George and I approached. “Sure nice of you both to come out and help Shelby,” he said.

  “Shelby’s’ a good person,”
George replied, his voice sounding smooth and rehearsed. “She deserves something good in life. She deserves to know what happened to Bobby.”

  Oddly, I thought I saw Lila mouthing the words before George said them. My gaze went from her to George and back again. “Yep, what you guys said,” I said, nodding to the both of them.

  There was something going on here. I had no idea what, but I kept my finger on the mace in my pocket.

  “I’m surprised to see you two out here. Who has your kids?” I asked Parker.

  “Shelby’s parents are watching them all. Isn’t that so nice? We’re very fortunate,” Parker replied.

  I thought about how sweet the Winehouses genuinely were, a huge difference from the way the family used to be.

  Lila no longer had the megaphone, thank goodness. She pointed a gloved hand around the perimeter where the rest of group two was already in action. Most had flashlights and walking sticks. “Stick together when you walk the perimeter, and keep your eyes open.” She handed us a walkie-talkie, a map, a couple of bottled waters, and a walking stick. “The stick’s for turning over rocks and stuff,” Parker said. “Lila and I are gonna stay back here. Radio in if you see anything.”

  I looked at the map while George and I hustled to catch up with our group. Most of the people in group two were older, which made sense. I was able to come out on a random Tuesday because I worked retail and had slow days off. Most other people my age held nine-to-five jobs.

  I felt a pang of guilt over that one. With two degrees under my belt, I had cost my mother tens of thousands for my education. And she’d done it so that I wouldn’t have to work a minimum-wage job. Yet, there I was. She didn’t even bother to lecture me on it anymore. She’d just throw in a couple sighs of disappointment every once in a while so I’d know her feelings hadn’t changed.