by Tegan Maher
Closing the book with a thump, she breathed out a sigh. "You're right." She tilted her head and studied me. "Wait a minute. What are you doing home? It's not even midnight."
"Yeah, I know," I said, setting the untouched picnic basket on the table. "Funny y'all mentioned life or death. Fred Sykes and Boone Steed were out on the lake with us, and Boone hauled in a little more than a fish." The girl's face flashed in front of me, and I shuddered.
Twin looks of impatience crossed their faces, and Addy made a rolling motion with her fingers, telling me to get on with it. "Don't beat around the bush. What'd he—" Realization dawned. "Oh, no. Who was it?"
"Wait, what?" Shelby asked, digging through the basket and pulling out a strawberry danish. "For us brain-fried folks, finish the sentence."
"They hauled up a body. At first, we thought it was a tire or a bag of trash, but when he got it to the surface, well, that's not what it was," I said. "Nobody recognized her. She looked young, but that could have been deceptive. She was ... rough."
"I'm so sorry, sweetie," Addy said. "Are you okay?"
I lifted a shoulder. "Better than her. She had a wallet on her—Kasey Ball—but that doesn't ring any bells. Shel, do you go to school with any Balls?"
She shook her head, and Addy rubbed her chin. "I think there used to be a family by that name on the other side of the lake, but I'm not sure."
"At any rate," I said, pulling a fried chicken leg out of the basket, "that's why I'm home early. And Hunter's no doubt gonna be busy for the next couple hours, so I'm gonna drink a cup of Rae's herbal tea and call it a night."
"Yeah, me too," Shelby said, gathering her books and papers into a pile. "The test is at ten, and the last thing I need is to doze off halfway through. That'd be just my luck."
"Knock it off," I said, giving her a little shove. "You're gonna be fine."
She lifted a corner of her mouth. "I know. I just ... it's important, you know?"
"I do," I answered, pulling the bag of lavender and chamomile tea from the cabinet. "Want a cup?"
"Sure. I'm so strung up I don't think I'll be able to sleep if I don't."
Raeann, my cousin and best friend, was an awesome herbalist, and I had a few different coffee and tea blends in the cabinet made for everything from destressing to treating a head cold. She owned Brew4U, a kitschy little coffee shop, and she was making a name for herself because of them. Ah, man—speaking of Raeann, I needed to call her and tell her what was going on. If she heard it through the grapevine rather than from me, she'd have my head.
I flicked a wrist, sending the full tea kettle to the stove and turning on the burner while I pulled my phone out of my back pocket. She answered on the fifth ring, groggy. Since she'd had to open Brew at 6 a.m. for the last couple of years, she'd gotten in the habit of going to bed early, even though she had help now.
"Somebody better be dead," she grumbled, "or you're gonna be for callin' me in the middle of the night."
I scoffed. "It's barely midnight. I can remember a time when we'd be sneaking out of our rooms right about now. And anyway, somebody is dead."
"What?" She sounded much more awake, and I gave her to 411 on the situation.
"I don't know any Balls, either," she said after a few seconds. "What'd she look like?"
"Eww! Rae, don't be morbid," I said, wrinkling my nose.
She heaved an impatient sigh. "I don't mean I want to know how gross it was. I mean, what did she look like pre-dunkin'?"
"Oh," I said, relieved I wouldn't have to relive the details. "Kinda generic, since she'd been in the water. Long black hair, thin, no boobs. My height, maybe. She was wearing all black. Black jeans, black sneakers, and a hoodie."
"A hoodie? It's too hot for a hoodie," she said. "Had she been in there since it was cold?"
"No way. Jim said no more than a couple days."
"Hmm. Well, at least it happened now and she was found by local grown-ups. Can you imagine if it was some kid from Atlanta out there fishin' durin' the tournament? Holy cow, that woulda been a hot mess."
"Well," I replied, "leave it to you to find a silver lining."
"Yeah, yeah. Cup half full and all that." She yawned. "I'm goin' back to sleep."
"Okay," I said, yawning just because she did. "I'm having a cup of your night tea and hittin' the sack too. I'm beat."
"Yeah," she said, drifting off. "Findin' dead bodies'll do that. Add a pinch of passionflower. It'll help with nightmares."
"Okay. See ya tomorrow," I said, pulling out the rolling herb shelf Matt, my friend and tenant, had built for me.
Visions of floating hair and pale, almost blue skin drifted through my mind, and I added two pinches of passionflower instead of one.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE TEA WORKED, BECAUSE my sleep was dreamless. Still, I felt groggy the next morning as I climbed into the shower. I closed my eyes and let the hot water pound on the back of my neck for a few minutes, then lathered up. I loved the old farmhouse, but it didn't have the best hot water heater, and if I dallied too long, I'd be rinsing in cold water.
I finished up and wrapped a towel around my head, thinking about where I was going to start my day. I needed to go to my shop, and I knew I was gonna have to put in an appearance at the Clip N Curl to answer any more questions Coralee'd thought up overnight. No doubt Belle, the former owner and resident ghost, was going to have some of her own. Best to start there, then.
After pulling a comb through my hair and climbing into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, I went to make myself some coffee. Somebody'd beaten me to it; the smell of fresh java floated up the stairs, calling to me. I thunked downstairs barefoot to find Matt sitting in the kitchen. Max, my talking mini donkey, was trying to con him into making pancakes.
Max was unique; he'd been a lesser noble in the sixteenth century whose less-than-gentlemanly behavior had earned him an eternity in the body of an ass; the form his witchy mistress felt best suited his rakish ways. How we came to be saddled with him, pardon the pun, is a long story, but suffice it to say he was with us to stay.
We loved him, but he was an acquired taste.
"Mornin' Matt, Max," I said. "Thanks for coffee."
He must have heard me coming down the stairs because he already had a cup full and was blurping a generous dollop of caramel creamer into it. He smiled when he handed it to me, and I marveled again at how far he'd come. The first time I met him, he'd been squatting in our cabin by the lake, broken but looking for his way back.
Addy'd found him and, as she's prone to do, took him under her wing. He'd moved into the apartment above our barn and ended up working for Wheeler Construction as foreman. It hadn't been easy for him all the time, but the shadows of the past didn't haunt his eyes so much, and his smile was now easy rather than forced.
And he was awesome to have around the place.
"So, what earned me coffee this morning? Not that I'm complaining." I dropped an ice cube out of the icemaker and slipped it into the cup in an effort not to peel the hide off my tongue or roof of my mouth.
He grinned. "What, I can't just make coffee because I want to be nice?"
Cocking a brow at him as I took a sip of caffeinated deliciousness, I said, "Yeah. But you didn't. What's up?"
"While he's beating around the bush about asking you to help him throw Anna Mae a birthday party, you should make pancakes," Max suggested, nudging me with his nose.
I pulled out the flour, eggs, and blueberries, not because Max was begging for them but because he'd made me hungry for them.
Max wobbled his ears back and forth and gave me a donkey-grin. "Bacon, too."
"Don't push it," I said, pointing the whisk at him. "I still have to feed the horses and clean the stalls, and I can't do that in this heat on an over-full belly."
We had a twenty-stall barn, and though there were only thirteen horses in it right then, it was still a lot to clean, and we were sticklers about it. We did it every morning.
"Oh," Matt said, "I've
already done that."
I glanced out the window into the gelding pasture, and sure enough, they were all out there, grazing without a care in the world. And that wasn't just because he wanted something; if he was off, he jumped in and helped. He also fixed gates and acted as handyman in general.
He said it was like therapy to him, and I could completely relate. There was something about the repetitive, mindless task that gave your brain time to chew on problems and process concerns. Addy always said it was cheaper and more productive than a shrink, and she was right.
"When's her birthday?" I asked, a little embarrassed that I had to. She was my friend; I should have known that. I sucked at dates—and names too, for that matter. I never forgot a face though. Matt and Anna Mae had started dating a couple months before, and I was pleased as punch for both of them. Anna's last husband had been a pimple in the armpit of humanity, and when somebody'd up and murdered him, it was the best thing that could have happened to her. And the town, too.
"Next weekend," he said, heaving a big sigh. "I wanna have a little get-together here, then do something special for her. That's where I'm stuck. And I have no idea what to get her, either."
"The special part is easy," I said, folding some blueberries into the batter. “Take her to the cabin up in the mountains that Hunter and I go to. It's not far away, but it's out of town and feels like it's on another planet."
He turned the idea over in his head for a minute, then nodded. "That's good. She'll like that. Now, what should I get her?"
I held up my hands, palms out. "That's all on you. I'm horrible at picking presents. I'll get her a gift card or take her for a girl's day at Coralee's. That's as creative as I get. Why can't the cabin be her gift?"
The iron griddle sizzled when I dropped a test blob of batter on it, so I poured out six puddles and turned the heat down a little.
"That's gonna be part of it, but I want her to have something she can keep, too."
"Then you're on your own. I'll think on it, but I'm horrible. Ask Addy or Gabi. They're better at it than I am."
"Ask Gabi what?" the girl in question said as she padded into the kitchen. Gabi, or Gabriela, was a long-time friend who'd recently moved in with us when the farm she was working and living at was sold. The owner had died, and the son had liquidated the place, then decided to turn up dead in our barn, but that's another story altogether.
"I'm trying to think of the perfect present for Anna Mae," Matt said.
Gabi crinkled her brow. "Anna Mae's tough. She's one of those people who just buys herself something when she wants it, and she's not hurting for money. How about a day dedicated to her, or maybe a custom piece of jewelry?" Another upside about Hank—Anna Mae’s husband—kicking the bucket was that he'd left behind a butt-load of money. She was set for life.
He lifted a shoulder. "I don't know. I'll let it simmer in the back of my mind. Maybe somethin' will pop in."
Gabi scooted past me, grabbing a handful of blueberries on her way to get a cup of coffee. "How was night fishin'?" she asked.
I realized they didn't have a clue what had happened yet.
"Great, for the first forty-five minutes or so, until Boone Steed fished out a body instead of a bass." I ran through the story for them, and Gabi frowned.
"I used to work with a girl named Kasey Ball," she said, "back in high school when I worked at the Piggly Wiggly. She was older than us, though, and blonde. Of course, she could change her hair color easy enough."
I shook my head. "No, I may be wrong because she didn't look so hot, but I'd bet my bottom dollar this chick was younger than us by several years."
She shook her head as I slipped the plate of pancakes into the middle of the table. "Not her, then. Last time I saw her, she had some serious miles on her and she was still workin' at Pig's."
"Well Kasey's a popular name," I said, tearing up a couple pancakes for Max and drizzling fresh mixed-berry syrup over them. "And Ball's not uncommon, either. I'm sure Hunter will turn something up."
Max dug into my pancakes, and we spent the rest of breakfast making plans for the birthday party.
CHAPTER FIVE
"I CAN'T FIND ANYTHING on this girl," Hunter growled, frustrated. "I pulled up every Kasey Ball in the area—every Ball, for that matter—and can't match her to anybody. The address on the license matches a girl from here in town, but she's alive and at least ten years older than the girl we found last night. She just didn’t exist. At least not in any database."
I put him on speaker and set my phone down on my vanity so I could get dressed. "Did you talk to the Kasey Ball on the license or to her family?"
"Yeah," he said, huffing out a breath. "Both. They all said there are no relatives matching our girl's description and that Kasey had a problem a while back where her bank account was hacked. She didn't have much, but they got her for a few hundred bucks."
"What about prints?" I asked.
"Nope," he said, "Nada. Jim had a friend in Atlanta who ran them through his databases, and she's not on file."
"And I suppose their fancy facial recognition software won't work?"
"They're trying, but they said not to hold my breath," he said.
"So now what?" I asked, spritzing some frizz reducer into my hair and scrunching it.
"I have no idea," he said. "Jim's going over the body, and he took dental impressions, so we're sending those out to Doc Simmons and other dentists in the region. That's pretty much all we have left."
Sighing, I tried to think of any other way we could find out who she was, but I came up as empty as Hunter. "Something will break. It has to. This is a small region, unless she was from Atlanta. What about anybody reported missing?"
"Nobody popped up in our area, but I enlarged the picture on the fake ID and sent it to all the neighboring counties, too. We'll see." He sounded defeated, and my heart went out to him. He was one of those people who became a cop because he cared about people, so something like this would eat him up.
"You'll get it, sugar," I told him. "Maybe now is one of those times when living in a place where everybody knows everybody else will pay off."
We disconnected, and I finished getting ready, then headed to my shop.
When Hank, Anna Mae's scourge of a husband, was put out of our misery, I helped find the murderer in a backhanded sort of way. His parents had a reward out, and I collected it. That chunk of money changed my life.
I'd been driving a beat-up old pickup I'd called Bessie. She'd been a rattletrap, and every time she’d started, I'd wondered if it was the last time. Thanks to my good friend Skeeter, who owned Skeeter's Garage and Appliances, Bessie had gotten me back and forth. When I got the money, I traded up to a new-to-me pickup with a hundred thousand fewer miles and nary a spring poking through the upholstery. You don't know what a luxury that is unless you've had a spring poke you in the butt when you hit a pothole.
It had also given me the wiggle room to cut back my waitressing shifts so I could focus on figuring out what I wanted to be when I grew up. Everybody seemed convinced I'd open a bakery, seein' as how I'm a kitchen witch and already provided the goodies for Raeann's shop. I loved baking though and didn't want to turn what I loved into something I had to do.
So, I thought about it. Two of my favorite quasi-reality shows are Flea Market Flip and Pickers. I liked the idea of breathing new life into old stuff that most people would consider junk, and so my upcycling store, Reimagined, was born. I went to estate sales, yard sales, and even one storage unit sale—never again!—looking for antiques that I could turn into something beautiful.
I pulled around behind my shop, hoping to avoid Coralee and Belle for as long as possible. I should have known better—I swear, the two of them can smell fresh gossip from a mile away. I'd no sooner made it through the back door than Belle floated through the wall separating our places.
"So what have you learned?" she barked without preamble.
Scowling, I slid my purse onto the counter and tur
ned to Erol, the former owner of my shop, as he floated in from the back room. Another casualty of Hank and his cronies, he'd been murdered because of who he was—or rather, who he chose to date—and had hidden in the store, afraid to "come out" for the second time in his life once he'd figured out he was a ghost.
We'd found him when I'd bought the building, and he'd thrived since joining the local post-life community. My idea of business attire and how to run my shop were often mild points of contention between us. He looked me up and down and sighed. "You know, it wouldn't kill you to at least try to look the part of a professional. You have a showing today."
"Hello to you, too," I said. "Jeans and a T-shirt are fine. I'm running a furniture and craft shop, not a fashion boutique."
"Thank the Lord," he said, rolling his eyes. "Otherwise, we'd be out of business in a week."
His pet rat, Norman, hopped onto the counter and begged for a cracker. I pulled a Tupperware container off the shelf behind the register and shook a few Goldfish out. Until I'd met Norman, I'd assumed the movie Ratatouille was fantasy, but now I wasn't so sure. He picked one up and gave me a huge rat grin before chomping into it.
Shaking my head, I wondered how my life had gotten so crazy.
Speaking of crazy, Coralee rapped on my front door, waving. Don't get me wrong—she wasn't crazy; she made me crazy sometimes. She was a good egg, but when it came to a good story, she was a dog on a bone; she wouldn't let up until she got every last morsel.
"What's all the hubbub about?" Erol asked. "I mean, I know you didn't work yesterday"—was that censure in his tone? Probably—"but what did you go and get yourself into now?"
"Nothin'!" I said, twisting the lock before Coralee knocked the window out.
"She found another dead body," Belle said, talking over me.
Erol raised a brow. "Technically, for her, that could be considered practically nothin'. It's sort of a regular practice."
