Amazing Grace--A Southern Gothic Paranormal Mystery

by John G. Hartness

  “Oh good Lord, child, come here and let me get a look at you!” She squealed a little when I approached. She once confided to me that she got a little bored with the conversations she had in the cemetery and looked forward to my visits since I was alive and could actually talk with her, instead of just talking at her, like her daughter and granddaughter had to do. The dead are typically very much locked in to the world and opinions they held when they died, so I could see how talking to ghosts all the time could get boring. I often wished that the ghosts I talked to could be a little more boring and little less murdered.

  “Hey Miss Helen, how you doing today?” I said. Had she been alive, she would have hugged my neck. As it was, we just gave each other awkward little waves on account of her insubstantiality.

  “Fine, I’m fine, darling. Hope you are. And who is this little darlin’?” she asked, looking at Jenny.

  “I’m Jenny Miller, ma’am. Pleased to meet you.” Jenny stuck out her hand.

  “Oh sweetie, I’m sorry, but—” Helen’s mouth fell open as Jenny was able to touch her and shake her hand. “Oh my goodness, honey, I am so sorry! You know sometimes it is so hard to tell who is who, especially with y’all that ain’t been gone very long.”

  Helen turned back to me. “What in the world is going on, Lila Grace? Why did you bring this dead child to my plot? Do you need some help, honey?”

  I wasn’t sure whether she was talking to me or Jenny, but maybe it was both, so I just said, “Yes, Miss Helen. I do need some help. Jenny here was murdered last week, and I was hoping maybe you could help us figure out who did it.”

  “Oh, sweetie, I am so sorry!” Helen reached out and wrapped Jenny in a big-armed, muumuu-wearing hug that probably would have suffocated the child, or at least popped a rib, if she’d still been drawing breath. As it was, she was fine.

  “Thank you, ma’am. I appreciate that,” Jenny said.

  “Miss Helen, were you anywhere near the Miller place last Friday?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so. Which one is the Miller house?” she asked.

  “It’s over on Maple Lane, the brick house with the blue shutters,” Jenny said.

  “Oh yes, I know that place. What an unfortunate decision about them shutters. I really think they could have done better than that baby blue; it just clashes with the brick in all kinds of ways. I’m sorry, honey, I know that’s your home and all, but it just ain’t attractive.”

  “No, ma’am, don’t be sorry. You’re right. Mama told Daddy when he bought that paint they were going to be butt-ugly, and she was right,” Jenny agreed.

  “Okay, now I know the place. No, I wasn’t anywhere close. I was over watching the ball game. Is that when you died, sweetie?” Helen asked, turning her head to Jenny.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jenny answered. She turned to me, confusion all over her face. “How is it she can see and talk to me?”

  “Well, honey. It’s just like you could talk to Sheriff Johnny. Y’all all exist in the same plane. Of course she can see you,” I explained.

  “Lila Grace is too sweet to say that there ain’t been nothing happening in Lockhart for forty years that me and my girls ain’t seen,” Helen said with a laugh. Two other ethereal women appeared to stand next to Helen, all three of them with broad smiles on their faces.

  “She’s too polite to say that not even the grave can shut your big old mouth, Helen,” a slight, woman with a boyish haircut and a broad smile said, her grin denying her waspish words.

  “Oh, be nice, Faye,” the other woman said, a twinkle in her eye. She was a big woman, not round like Miss Helen, but tall and imposing. There was a presence to her that hadn’t diminished, even in death.

  “Ladies,” I said with a nod and a smile. “How y’all doing this evening?”

  “Fine, fine,” Faye Russell said with a nod, her bright blue eyes set deep in a wrinkled face. She wore much the same clothes she had on most days in life, a white striped blouse and a pair of blue jeans.

  “We’re all just excited to have some company with something to talk about other than how they died,” Miss Frances said. She wore a bright red and white floral blouse with dark slacks and comfortable shoes, the kind of outfit I’d expect to see on a woman attending a church meeting, which Miss Frances did quite a bit of before she passed.

  “Speaking of that, I need to talk to y’all about how this poor child died,” I said to peals of laughter from the trio.

  “Of course you do, sweetheart,” Miss Helen said. “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t need the assistance of the greatest investigators in Union County.”

  “Or the nosiest bitches in the Carolinas, if you want to be more accurate,” Miss Faye said with a wry twist to her lips.

  “Ignore those two, precious,” Miss Frances said to Jenny. “What do you need to know? If we don’t know it, we can probably find it out for you.”

  She wasn’t kidding, either. Being dead had done nothing to quell these women’s curiosity, and since a fair portion of their gossip network was also dead, they had a finger on the pulse of the town, as ironic as that sounds.

  “We’ve got a bunch of people, and I need to know where they were Friday night,” I said, showing the women our list of people who might hold grudges against the girls. “Anybody we can eliminate from suspicion in Jenny’s murder is almost certainly innocent of Shelly’s as well, and that will be better, since we don’t have a good timeline on when Shelly died yet.”

  “Oh, that poor child, drowned in her car like that,” Miss Faye said.

  “We don’t know that yet, Faye,” Miss Helen said. “They ain’t done with the autopsy yet. She might have been dead before she ever rolled into the lake.”

  “She’s right,” I agreed. “I hadn’t considered that before, but the lake might have just been a place to dump the body and not where Shelly was killed.”

  “Well, that would be good,” Miss France said.

  “Why’s that?” Jenny asked.

  “With as many hollers and old gullies and patches of woods as we’ve got around here, if they pushed her car into the lake to hide the body, then the killer is either stupid or ain’t from around here. Either one is good for us,” the woman said.

  “She ain’t wrong,” Miss Helen agreed. “Okay, Lila Grace, hold up that list. We’ll memorize it and put the Dead Old Ladies’ Detective Agency on the case!”

  They took another look at the paper, then each of them nodded at me. The women went off in three different directions to talk to the dead in their relative cemeteries. I turned to Jenny and said, “Well, if there’s anything known about your murder by any ghost in this part of the county, we’ll know it in a few hours.”

  “What’s next for us?” Jenny asked.

  “Well, sweetie, I reckon next for me is going to be a bite of supper. I ain’t had nothing to eat in a considerable time, and my belly’s going to start gnawing on my backbone if I don’t correct that oversight in the immediate future.” I walked to the truck and got in. “Besides, I think Sheriff Dunleavy owes me an apology, and maybe a steak dinner.”

  Chapter 14

  Sheriff Dunleavy’s car was one of about half a dozen parked in front of Sharky’s when I pulled up. I parked at the end of a row to make sure I wouldn’t have any trouble getting out, since I didn’t plan on staying long. Jenny cocked her head at me when I turned off the truck and opened the door.

  “I thought you said you were hungry.”

  “I am hungry,” I replied.

  “Well, Sharky’s don’t serve food,” the girl said.

  “How would you know? You ain’t never going to get old enough to go into a beer joint.”

  “You act like anybody’s checked an ID in Sharky’s in, like, ever. All you need to get beer in there is have a single hair on your chin or on your—”

  “Young lady!”

  “I was gonna say legs, but that works, too.” She gave me a saucy grin. “Now why are you really going in there?”

  “Like
I said, I think the good sheriff owes me an apology and a steak dinner for being rude to me earlier, and I plan to collect both of those things.” I closed the truck door with a hollow metal thunk and walked across the gravel parking lot to Sharky’s door. I looked down at what I was wearing and grimaced a little. I was in my normal weekday attire of a patterned shirt and blue jeans, with a pair of flat white tennis shoes. I didn’t look bad, but it wasn’t any real surprise from my wardrobe that I hadn’t had very many dates this century. Well, I wasn’t there to use my feminine wiles on the sheriff, even if he was a handsome, strapping man with a conspicuous lack of a wedding ring.

  Every head in the dim room turned to me when I pushed open the door. Sharky did a double-take, then jerked his head over to the right to where the sheriff sat in a booth with his back to the wall. It wasn’t like I couldn’t see him. Sharky’s place wasn’t very big, and there weren’t but about eight booths and four tables in the place. Somehow, I would have been able to figure out where Dunleavy was sitting among the ten people that were scattered through the room.

  Even so, I walked in that direction without bothering to pretend I was here to see anybody else. Hell, the only person besides Stan that I knew well enough to speak to in a beer joint was Edith Hardcastle, and she and I weren’t on the best speaking terms after she made disparaging remarks about my cherry pie three years ago at the Homecoming lunch after church. That biddy had the audacity to say I used a store-bought crust! I learned how to make that crust from my Gran in 1975 and have been rolling it by hand ever since I was tall enough to see over the counter. So I gave Edith a frosty nod as I walked over to see the sheriff.

  “Bring me a bourbon, Stan,” I said as I walked past the bar. “And not any of that Ancient Age shit, either. If you’re out of Knob Creek, just bring me Turkey.”

  I slid into the booth across from Dunleavy and gave him a smile. “Good evening, Sheriff. How are you doing?”

  He just sat there, watching me with a baleful eye. “What do you want, Lila Grace?”

  “Why do I need to want anything, Sheriff? Can’t I just come by and have a drink with a friend? Thank you, Stan. What do I owe you?” I said, taking my glass.

  “Lila Grace, you know I ain’t gonna take your money,” Sharky said.

  “I know, Stan, but it’s polite to offer, and I hold out hope that one day you’ll forget and let me start buying my drinks again.”

  “Not gonna happen, ma’am. But thank you.” Stan turned and walked back to the bar, leaving me alone with the sheriff again.

  “What did you do to him?”

  “I think you mean ‘for,’” I corrected.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I think you mean, what did I do for him, Sheriff. His mama passed, and she couldn’t move on because she didn’t leave a will, and there was some dispute between Stan and his brother Robert about what to do with her property. I called the three of them together and relayed his mama’s wishes to them, and they got over their differences and did what she told them to do. Stan credits me with saving his relationship with his brother, which was rapidly deteriorating on account of the money involved.”

  “So you drink for free?”

  “That was my fee, Sheriff,” I explained. “I don’t often charge people for what I do. I barter a great deal, and sometimes people do give me money, but usually I do what I do for one of two reasons. Either I have an overwhelming sense of justice and cannot let a wrong stand if I have the opportunity to make it right…”

  “Or?”

  “Or I have got some damn fool ghost hanging around at all hours irritating the ever-loving pee out of me to make things right with their loved ones.”

  “Which one is this?” he asked, sipping on his drink. It looked like a Jack and ginger from what I could see, and to smell his breath, it wasn’t the first sample he’d taken of Lynchburg’s finest since he’d got off work.

  “Excuse me?” I asked.

  “Which is this, Lila Grace? Are you poking around in Jenny Miller’s death because you can’t stand to see justice ignored, or because that poor dead girl won’t leave you alone?”

  “I’m going to ignore that question, Sheriff, and move on to the reason I am here. I—”

  “Don’t,” he said. He didn’t move, just sat there, his elbows on the table and his eyes trained on the glass in front of him.

  I took a closer look at the sheriff. He had aged since this morning. A fine brown-and-gray stubble poked out across his face. His shirt wasn’t creased, and there was a little gravy spot on his tie. All in all, it looked like he slept in his clothes, or didn’t sleep at all. I figured one of those was true. Sheriff Johnny spent more than one night laying stretched out in one of the two cells in back, trying to catch a few winks in the middle of a tough case. Looked like Sheriff Dunleavy was doing the same thing.

  I thought for a moment before I spoke. “Don’t what, Sheriff? Don’t ignore the question that you only asked because you want me to feel as miserable as you do right now? Don’t come back here and try to help you because I have contributions to your case that nobody else has? Or just don’t act like I give a damn what happens to my town? What do you not want me to do, Sheriff? So I can be sure of exactly what I am telling you to kiss my ass over.”

  His head snapped up and his brow furrowed, making a razor-sharp vertical line in the center of his brow. “Woman, I swear to—”

  His mouth snapped shut and his eyes went wide as my palm cracked across his face like a rifle shot. “If I wanted to be spoken to like that, I could have married one of these rednecks around here. If you have something to say to me, you can call me Lila Grace, or you can call me Ms. Carter. But if you call me ‘woman’ like it’s an insult again, you can be damn sure there’ll be a matching handprint on the other side of your face.”

  Dunleavy leaned forward, one elbow on the table, his eyes blazing. He stuck one finger out at me and started wagging it as he talked. “I should have you arrested for—”

  “You want to keep that finger, you best put it away,” I said, my voice cold.

  He stared at me long enough for it to be downright uncomfortable until he either decided we were both out of line, I was right, or that he wouldn’t likely be walking out of that bar full of hillbillies if he laid hands on the woman that taught most of them in Vacation Bible School when they were young’uns. He put his finger down and leaned back against the cracked and split red Naugahyde of the booth.

  “Lila Grace, I am starting to wonder if I was brought to this town as penance for something I did in a past life because I cannot for the life of me think of anything I did to deserve you in my life.”

  “Sheriff, I assure you, there is nothing that you could do to deserve me.” I smiled as I said it, and he just shook his head.

  A rueful chuckle escaped his lips, and he picked up the glass of brown liquid on the table in front of him and knocked it back. He waved at Sharky for another, then gaped at me when I shook my head. “What’s wrong, Lila Grace, you don’t approve of me getting drunk? I assure you I do not intend to drive home intoxicated.”

  “Sheriff, as pleased as I am to hear that you do not intend to wrap your patrol car around a white oak tree between here and your house tonight, and as little as I would generally object to you crawling inside a bourbon bottle on your personal time, I am afraid that you have other obligations this evening. Obligations that require you to maintain at least a modicum of sobriety.”

  He raised an eyebrow at me, then held up a twenty to Stan. The bartender nodded and came over with the check. “That’ll be fifteen, Sheriff.”

  “Keep the change, Sharky,” Dunleavy said. Stan smiled and nodded, then took away our glasses and headed back to the bar.

  “What, pray tell, are these obligations, Ms. Carter?”

  “You are taking me to dinner,” I said. The butterflies in my stomach were migrating north, south, and sideways all at the same time, despite my internal protestations that this was not a date, that I had no
interest in this man outside the professional, and that all I wanted out of him was a free meal and an apology.

  “I am?” Dunleavy asked with a slight smile. “Why exactly am I going to do that? And did you have a place in mind, or do I at least get some input?”

  “You are taking me to dinner to apologize for your atrocious behavior this afternoon. You are paying for dinner and dessert to apologize for your behavior this evening, and no, you do not have any choice in where we go to eat. There are only five restaurants in this part of the county, as I’m sure you know, and only one of them can prepare a steak with any semblance of skill. So you are taking me to The Garden Cafe.”

  “I’ve heard the spaghetti at the Pizza Empire is real good,” he countered.

  “You are not apologizing to me at any place with checkered vinyl tablecloths. I will settle for nothing less than white linen. Or at least someplace with cloth napkins. Our choices are limited, after all.”

  “Well, if that is what I must do, then that is what I must do,” he said, sliding out of the booth and standing up. He wobbled a little, not too bad, but just a little. “Why don’t you drive?” he said, putting a hand on the back of the booth seat. “I can pick up my car later.”

  “Good choice, Sheriff. I would hate to have to report you to the authorities.” I stood up and preceded him toward the door. Every eye in the place was on us as we walked out, the crazy ghost lady and the new sheriff. This would be all over the grapevine, living and dead varieties, within the hour.

  “Y’all come back soon,” Stan called as I opened the door. I threw a hand up over my shoulder in farewell and stepped out into the evening air.

  Chapter 15

  Tommy Braxton waved at us from the bar when we walked into The Garden Cafe. I was a bit underdressed for the clientele Tommy wanted to attract but about right for the clientele he actually had, so I didn’t mind sitting down in the closest thing that part of Union County had to a fancy steakhouse. Sheriff Dunleavy even pulled my chair out for me like a real gentleman and everything.