The Chick and the Dead

by Casey Daniels

  I was looking for a personal relationship with Dan.

  Dan, as it turned out, was looking to hook me up to machines with wires and buzzers to find out if what he called my "aberrant behavior" was in any way connected to my head injuries or my occipital lobe.

  I told him to get lost, and I honestly thought he had.

  Until the day he showed up out of nowhere and used a couple of amazing Jackie Chan-type moves to take care of the hit man who was about to blow me away.

  I was grateful. And confused. Especially after he kissed me and said goodbye.

  Was it the last I'd ever see of Dan Callahan? I hadn't had time to think about it, but I suppose in my heart of hearts, I thought that it was. After an exit like that, anything else would have been anti-climactic.

  Except for an entrance like this.

  I got over to the monument where I'd seen the man with the camera, but except for some trampled grass that showed that someone had stood there recently, there was no sign of Dan.

  "Shit." I looked around again, just to be sure. "Shit, shit, shit," I grumbled, and even though the sun was bright, I shivered. I turned to head back toward the picnic bench and the waiting PB & J.

  And nearly slammed right into Didi.

  "Don't do that to me!" I jumped back, well out of range of the iciness I knew would result if flesh-and-blood me happened to make contact with her ectoplasm. "Can't you clear your throat or something to let me know you're around? Sing a song maybe?"

  "How about Elvis?" Didi swiveled her hips the way I'd seen Elvis do it in the old movies. It was no easy task considering how she was dressed.

  "And why are you dressed that way, anyway?" I asked her, my brain segueing from one subject to the other so quickly, I didn't have time to explain myself. "Somebody die?"

  Didi sniffed and tugged at the white gloves that covered her arms all the way to the elbows. She straightened the hat that matched her brown and white striped dress. Like the last outfit I'd seen her in, this dress had a tight waist and a pencil-thin skirt that made swiveling—or pretty much anything else—something of a challenge. Over the dress, she wore a cropped brown jacket that was snugged tight with a belt.

  "Have things gotten that uncivilized in the years I've been dead?" she asked. "A lady doesn't dress up just for funerals. She always dresses properly for a social call."

  "I don't think I qualify."

  "As a lady?" Didi squealed with laughter at her own joke.

  I so wasn't in the mood.

  I took another look behind the monument, and because things weren't any different there than they had been last time I looked—empty—I muttered my disappointment and headed back toward my waiting lunch.

  "I meant as a social call," I told her when she fell into step at my side. "You don't have to dress up to come see me. I don't qualify as a social call."

  "This isn't for you, silly." When we got to the road, she turned toward the small lot where staff members left their cars. Don't ask me how she knew which was which, but she walked right up to my red Mustang. "It's for the social call the two of us are going to make."

  Before I had a chance to say, No way, Jose, the front door of the administration building opened and the news anchorwoman came out. So did her coworker, Larry. They backstepped their way toward the parking lot in front of Jim, who I knew had an appointment with the mayor that afternoon to plan strategy for Merilee's visit. Jim was followed by Ella. Ella was grinning (no doubt afterglow from her talk with Stone Phillips). She was followed by Jennine, who was reminding both Jim and Ella that there was a staff meeting scheduled for that evening so that we could all get on the same page and work like a well-oiled machine the day Merilee Bowman finally arrived at Garden View.

  I took one look at it all and grabbed my car keys out of my purse. "Come on," I said to Didi. "Let's get the hell out of here."

  Chapter 5

  Though I was more than willing to get in my car and head out on the road—and away from the hullabaloo back at the office—I had no idea where Didi and I were going. From her place in the passenger seat, she provided the directions, telling me where to turn and making me wonder (in a purely academic sort of way, of course) how ghosts kept track of one-way streets and freeway extensions that, as far as I could tell, hadn't been around back in the days when Didi was.

  I didn't ask. It didn't matter, and besides, I had all I could do to keep my mind on the road, what with Didi calling out the turns at the last second and urging me not once but twice to hurry through a light that had already turned red.

  I explained about red light cameras and mailed-straight-to-the-home traffic tickets, and when my ghostly navigator told me to, I got onto I-77, the north/south freeway that cuts Cleveland in half, straight through its old industrial heart.

  When it was time, I eased the car off the ramp and followed Didi's directions. We took another couple of turns and found ourselves in a part of town with narrow streets and postage stamp-size front lawns. On either side of us were rows of tiny houses that had—as we used to say in my world before my world fell apart—seen better days.

  We cruised down a street where four houses were boarded up, one from a fire, the others (according to the signs posted out front) because of drug violations. I swerved around broken beer bottles that sparkled like jewels against the blacktop. I slammed on the brakes, then eased up again when a couple of teenagers, wearing jeans so big they looked as if they were about to fall off their skinny butts, zipped in front of the car on their skateboards, gave me the finger, then raced away again.

  "There but for the grace of Daddy's six-figure income…"

  I hadn't even realized I'd spoken the words out loud until Didi looked my way. "Six-figure what? What does your dad do?"

  I didn't feel like a heart-to-heart, but it beat staring out the window at the old guy on the corner who was talking to himself. "My dad is… was"—I corrected myself—"a doctor." Enough said. "How about yours?"

  Didi smoothed a hand over the skirt of her brown dress. "Daddy was a business executive. He took very good care of us." The light changed, and she looked out the window. "That doesn't mean that I didn't have any ambition. After all, I was an author. I had a job, too. Downtown. Got it the day after I graduated from West Tech High. It was at Howell, Michaels, and Roose. You know, the big law firm. I would have been supervisor of the steno pool if I'd lived long enough."

  "Cool." I wasn't even sure what a steno pool was, but I figured supervisor was a good thing.

  The light turned green, and we continued on our way. The next block was dominated by a huge brick building, old and abandoned. At the street alongside it, Didi said, "Take a right," and when I did, she told me to stop the car.

  There was a parking place at the curb in front of a house where a rusted car sat up on cinder blocks in the middle of the lawn. Suddenly feeling awfully conspicuous in my shiny (and, thank goodness, paid for) Mustang, I eased my car into place, shut off the engine, and turned to my companion.

  "Now what?" I asked.

  Didi didn't answer. Her index finger tapping her top lip, she watched the house across the street.

  Like so many of its neighbors, this house was small and weather-beaten. The front steps were lopsided, the roof looked as if it needed to be replaced, one of the upstairs windows was cracked. Someone had made an effort to brighten things up. A couple of daffodils and some tulips that hadn't opened yet poked out of the soil near the porch.

  Before I could ask again what we were doing there and what we were looking for, the front door of the house opened, and a teenaged girl stepped outside.

  She was fifteen, maybe, though I have to admit, it was hard to tell. Her hair had been colored, and not professionally. It was a shade between black and brown with the sort of red overtones that make a girl look older and harsh. Not to mention cheap. The lack of professional styling didn't help. The girl's hair was spiked at the top and cut blunt at the shoulders. Her bangs were long and shaggy. They skimmed her pierced eye
brow.

  Stepping off the porch, she unzipped the backpack she was carrying and reached inside for a pack of cigarettes. She lit one and took a long drag, then slung the backpack over her shoulder and headed down the street.

  "Come on," Didi said, and when she did, she was already out of the car and standing at my window. "We've got to follow her."

  Do I have to mention that I didn't want to?

  Do I have to point out that I didn't have much choice?

  Following the girl—even with a ghost—sounded like a better idea than sitting there waiting for that same ghost to return from I-don't-know-where. And it beat me trying to find my way back to the cemetery. We'd taken so many twists and turns, I didn't have a clue where I was.

  I climbed out of the car and locked the door, tucking the keys in my purse.

  "Why?" I asked, scrambling across the street to catch up with Didi. "Who is she? And why are we following her?"

  "Her name is Harmony." When I walked a little too fast and got a little too close to the girl, Didi slowed me down, one arm stuck out in front of me. We waited while Harmony crossed a street before we started up again.

  "She's a foster kid," Didi pointed out. "The family is good to her."

  "They should offer some fashion advice." Harmony's jeans were riddled with holes, and the sunshine yellow halter top she wore with them was too small. Of course that bit of a fashion faux pas might very well have been planned. Though she had no boobs to speak of, the too-tight top showed off Harmony's nice flat tummy, her bellybutton ring, and the tattoo of a snake on her right shoulder.

  "They don't have much money," Didi said, as if she needed to remind me. One look at the neighborhood would have taken care of that. "But she's a good kid. A hard worker."

  "Why isn't she in school today?"

  "She called in sick."

  I slanted my companion a look. "And you know this how?"

  Didi shrugged. Something told me it was the only explanation I was going to get.

  After that, we followed the girl in silence. Across another street. Around another corner. There was a small grocery store up ahead, and I realized that it must have been later than I thought. School was already out for the day. There was a group of teenagers hanging around in the parking lot in front of the store.

  "Hey, ass wipe!" One of the girls was big and broad, with a square chin and hair that had been braided and was pulled away from a face that might charitably be described as plain. She called out, and though Harmony didn't respond, I saw her slender shoulders tense. "What are you here for, a box of crayons?"

  A couple of the other girls laughed. The boys they were with gave Harmony the once-over.

  She walked right by them.

  "Hey, Harmony. I'm talking to you!" The big girl latched on to the strap of Harmony's backpack and dragged her to a stop. "You think you can avoid me by not showing up at school? Shit, you're dumber than I thought."

  In one motion, the big girl spun Harmony around and reached inside her backpack. She pulled out a notebook and held it above her head, out of Harmony's reach.

  Harmony was half the girl's size, and until that point, she had been stony-faced and silent. Now she lashed out. Her eyes blazing, she lunged at the big girl. The big girl was slow and lumbering. But she wasn't stupid. She dodged Harmony's every move, and when Harmony saw that she was getting nowhere, she kicked Big Girl in the shins.

  "Fuck!" The big girl hopped around on one leg, and when the other kids laughed, she glared at them.

  "It's mine," Harmony said, making another grab for the notebook. "Give it to me, Shayla. Right now."

  "Give it to me. Right now." Shayla echoed Harmony's words in a singsong. She waved the notebook back and forth, careful to keep it just out of Harmony's reach.

  And I had seen enough.

  "Damn, but there's nothing that makes me madder than seeing somebody big and dumb pick on somebody small," I said, sauntering forward and making sure I acted like I knew what I was doing and like I belonged there.

  Of course, neither was true, and if these kids thought it through, they would have realized it. But hey, I was older than they were by ten years or so. And because there were no tours scheduled at Garden View that day, I wasn't wearing the standard-issue khakis and white polo shirt. I was dressed in my own clothes—denim skirt, hot pink shirt, and a pair of darling Moschino Cheap & Chic pink polka-dot slingbacks that added another two inches to my height.

  Needless to say, I made an impression. Especially in that neighborhood where they might know cheap, but they had no concept of chic. I was a princess in a sea of badly dressed (and poorly groomed, I might add) frogs, and just as I expected, the whole first-impressions thing worked like a charm.

  Though she acted tough on the outside, Shayla was apparently a marshmallow in the middle. She wasn't going to take the chance that I was either a social worker or a cop. She took one look at me and chucked the notebook onto the pavement. She walked away, and the show over, their fun spoiled, her posse followed along.

  "You shouldn't have done that." I was so busy feeling as if I was the David who'd whomped on Goliath, I almost forgot Harmony was there. I turned to find her glaring, not at Shayla, but at me. "I didn't need your help."

  "You could have fooled me." I poked my hands in my pockets and rocked back on my heels, hoping it was a less assertive pose and thinking it might smooth Harmony's ruffled feathers. "Guess I got it wrong."

  "Guess you did." Harmony stooped to make a grab for the notebook, but I was too fast for her. I scooped it up off the pavement before she could.

  It had opened when Shayla tossed it down, and I found myself staring at a pencil drawing of flowers. Daffodils and tulips rendered in detail and with amazing skill. I had seen the genuine article, and I knew that in real life, the flowers were sad and stunted. In the drawing, they were transformed. I felt as if I could reach out and touch each silken petal.

  I looked at Harmony in wonder. "Did you draw this? These are the flowers in front of your house."

  She backed up and eyed me carefully. "How do you know where I live?"

  I found you because of a ghost.

  It was the first thought that sprang to mind, but of course, I couldn't say it. I shrugged instead and decided to play on the image I'd already established. "My name is Pepper. I check on foster kids." It wasn't really a lie. For reasons I still didn't understand, I was checking on this foster kid. "I just wanted to make sure that things were going well. You know. At home."

  "With the Millers?" Sometime during her scuffle with Shayla, Harmony had lost her cigarette. She lit another one. "They're all right."

  "They didn't worry about you not being in school today?"

  She concentrated on taking a deep drag on the cigarette. "Doug and Mindy—the Millers, you know—they both work. They don't know I called in sick." She studied me through the thatch of brown/black hair that fell over her eyes. "They're okay people. They're not going to get in trouble because of me, are they?"

  This, I couldn't say. Rather than doling out false hopes or hollow promises, I thumbed through Harmony's sketchbook. Page after page was filled with drawings, each of them emotionally charged. There was one of the house where she lived, and I could practically see the hopelessness of the neighborhood with every stroke of her pencil. There was another of a dog with a long snout and shaggy fur that made me want to scratch it behind the ears. There was even one of Harmony herself, and written underneath it in curling teenaged script were the words Harmony in the Mirror.

  "You're really good." I flipped through a few more pages. At the back of the book was a drawing of Shayla. It wasn't a caricature; it was too precise for that. Still, it conveyed the big girl's personality perfectly, a cross between Baby Huey and the Jolly Green Giant. I smiled.

  "Don't let her see that one." Harmony looked over my shoulder, and I realized that Shayla and her gang weren't gone, they'd just backed off. They were hanging around over near one of those Salvation Army drop-off bin
s, the kind that look like giant mailboxes. "I don't want to hurt her feelings."

  "Why not?" I closed the notebook. "Shayla deserves to have her feelings hurt. She's a bully."

  Harmony's eyes were blue. She looked away. "I don't have many friends," she said.

  "And you want to hang with them?" I looked over my shoulder toward where Shayla and the rest of them were standing ten feet from the clothing bin, seeing who could light a match and toss it—still flaming—into the container. Luckily, none of them had very good aim. "They're jackasses."

  Harmony wrinkled her nose. I guess there was nothing she could say.

  I decided to change the subject and opened the sketchbook again. "You planning on studying art in college?" I asked.

  Harmony laughed. Not like it was funny. More like I was the jackass this time. "Doug and Mindy can't afford to send me to college. They can't even afford to keep me with them after I'm eighteen and the state stops paying for my care. I'll get a job…" She shrugged. "I dunno. Somewhere."

  It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that she needed a better plan than that. After all, aside from the fact that at Harmony's age, my plans had been more in the ballpark of rich husband than job, we were both on the same road.

  And I knew for a fact that it led to ruin.

  Or at least to a dead-end job in the deadest of all places in town.

  I hated to sound like Ella—honest—but I felt the first words of a lecture twitch against my lips. Shayla's voice stopped me.

  "Hey, Harmony! Come over here, will you?"

  "You're not going, are you?" I looked at the girl in wonder when she started across the parking lot.

  "I told you," Harmony said, "I don't have many friends."

  She snatched the sketchbook out of my hands and went to join the troop of her former tormentors, and that's when it hit me: the time I'd done pretty much the same thing.

  Sophomore year in high school.

  Tiffany Blaine and her buddies. The coolest, best-dressed, most socially influential girls at Beachwood High School, and I was dying to find my way into the inner circle.