Amazing Grace--A Southern Gothic Paranormal Mystery

by John G. Hartness

  “Not those girls, no,” Miss Faye agreed. “But he sure did have a reason to wish ill on Jenny Miller’s mama.”

  “What about my mother?” Jenny asked, appearing beside me. Most ghosts can’t just pop from place to place, but Jenny was a strong spirit, with some extraordinary ability.

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Miss Faye said, demurring. “I shouldn’t speak ill of the living.”

  “It’s not speaking ill if it helps us catch a murderer,” I said. “If you know some connection between Jeff and Jenny’s mother, you need to tell us.”

  “Now don’t get feisty, young lady,” the fiery ghost shot back. “Just because you’re still up and walking around visible, doesn’t mean you can smart off to your elders.”

  I took a deep breath. She was right in one sense. I couldn’t force them to do anything, so I needed to keep the ghosts happy. “I’m sorry. You’re right, I was rude. Was there something you wanted to tell us about Jeff and Jenny’s mom? Were they connected somehow?”

  “You didn’t know Tara Withrow when she was little, did you? Of course not, the Baptists don’t mingle too much, so you wouldn’t have taught her in Vacation Bible School. Well, she was a gorgeous child, grew up a little bit wild and a little bit too fast, if you know what I mean.” She made a gesture in front of her chest to indicate breasts, just in case I had even the slightest chance of missing her meaning.

  She went on. “Well, Tara was a very pretty girl, and very popular, and she was always with the other popular boys and girls. The cheerleaders, the football players, the student council president, all of those things. Jeff…Jeff ran in a different circle, let’s say. He wasn’t the most popular boy in school, and he wasn’t quite smart enough to be useful to the popular kids, so he got a lot of teasing.”

  “How do you know all this?” Jenny asked.

  “Oh, honey, I was the secretary of the high school for thirty years. There was nothing that happened under that roof that I didn’t know about.” I knew from personal experience that between her and her two cohorts, their knowledge extended far past the schoolhouse walls, too.

  “Senior year, Tara and some of her best girlfriends played a cruel prank on poor Jeff. He followed that child around for years like a puppy, mooning after her, carrying her books, giving her rides places when whatever boyfriend she was dating either got tired of carting her around or had something else to do, all sorts of stuff. I’m sorry, honey, but your mama was not the sweetest person when she was a teenager.”

  “Good lord, Faye, who is? I seem to recall you beating up half the boy’s baseball team in ninth grade because they told you to join the softball team with the other girls,” Miss Helen’s drawl cut across the night.

  Faye grinned at her, a fierce, wolfish thing. “I had a better fastball than that Bolin boy ever dreamed of having, and a strike zone too small for any of them to hit. They should have let me play, and they could have been state champions.”

  I cleared my throat, and Miss Faye’s attention snapped back to the story. “Anyway, Tara and Alan Gilfillan had just broke up for what she swore was the last time, on account of him getting drunk down at the dam and making out with my cousin Winifred on a picnic table. I loved her, but Winnie was a pure-T slut when she was young. So Tara was single around March, and it was prom season. All the senior girls were buying dresses, and making plans, and here was Tara, queen bee of the cheerleading squad, without a date. So she gets a bright idea to soak poor old Jeff for a night on the town with all her friends.”

  “Now, hold on a minute,” Jenny said. “How do you know that’s what she was thinking? Maybe she just felt bad for him and wanted to give him a night where he felt good about himself.”

  Faye looked at her, and I could feel the “oh, honey” in her eyes before she opened her mouth. “Oh, honey,” she said. I knew it was coming. “Oh, honey” is almost as ubiquitous as “bless your heart” as a synonym for “you poor, ignorant bastard” in the South. It’s not quite as insulting. But close. “Didn’t I say there wasn’t nothing going on in that high school I didn’t know about? Two of the other cheerleaders, I don’t remember both their names, but Ellen Nance was one of them, well they were office monitors sixth period that spring, and I would hear them talk about everything under the sun. And that included what Tara was doing to Jeff.”

  “Now, I ain’t saying that the boy didn’t get something out of it, too. Not like that, Lila Grace, don’t look at me like that. Tara wasn’t that kind of girl. But it did Jeff a world of good to be seen going to the movies with the popular kids and to have it known all over school that he was going to the prom with the prettiest girl in the county.”

  Jenny beamed a little at hearing how pretty her mother was in her youth. Maybe in some way that balanced out hearing that she was a royal bitch as a teenager, in some odd kind of mental ledger than only teenage girls understand.

  “So prom night came, and Jeff and Tara went out to dinner in Rock Hill with all of Tara’s friends, and there was a limo, and there were group pictures, and she looked beautiful in her dress, and Jeff cleaned up pretty well in his tuxedo and matching vest. I’d say he was downright dapper.”

  “I sense a ‘but’ coming,” I said.

  “Oh, darling, do you ever,” Miss Faye confirmed. “Things started to go sideways once they actually got to the prom. As long as they were still in the dinner and limo part of the night, Tara kept on being nice to Jeff, and all her friends followed her lead. But when they got to the school, everything changed. I was chaperoning that year, like I did a lot of years, to keep the punch unspiked, not that people even really did that except in movies. But I liked to put on pretty dresses and see all the girls all dressed up, so I usually volunteered.

  “Well, the gym was decorated like an undersea fantasy, in a Little Mermaid theme. There were blue lights everywhere, and ripple effects casting waves on the walls, and blue and green streamers stretched all over the gym making a canopy and hiding the rafters and basketball goals. There was a huge castle that everybody walked through to get into the dance, and tables all around. Tara and her girls walked in and went straight over to a table, which had just enough chairs so that Jeff was left standing behind her, without a place to sit.

  “Then they all went to the bathroom, and Jeff was left with the football players who were dating all of Tara’s friends. They all did just a fine job of making it clear Jeff wasn’t welcome with them, either. Tara and her friends came back, and they all started dancing, except for Jeff, who got pushed to the side as football player after football player stepped in and danced with his date while he stood behind her chair, watching. Every time he moved toward her, she stepped away to another boy, leaving him watching just like he’d done for years.

  “The last straw for Jeff was when Alan showed up and Tara danced with him for about a half hour straight, kissing him on the dance floor and all but making out in front of the whole school. Jeff finally stepped up and tried to cut in, but Alan just laughed at him. Jeff tapped him on the shoulder again, and this time Alan shoved him. Jeff stumbled back and fell, and everything on the dance floor just stopped. Every student turned and looked at Jeff, sitting on his butt in the middle of the gym, looking up at his date hanging on the arm of her ex-boyfriend, looking down at him without even an ounce of remorse in her eyes.”

  “She looked at Jeff sitting there for a minute, then pulled Alan back to her, kissed him right on the mouth, and went back to dancing. Jeff eventually got up and left the gym. I heard later from a friend of his that he walked all the way home, five miles in rented patent leather shoes along the side of the road, with prom-goers and classmates driving by the whole time.”

  Faye gave Jenny a gentle look. “I know she’s your mama, sweetie, but when she was seventeen, she was a bona fide bitch. What she did to that boy was enough to break a grown man, much less a boy. Jeff never came back to school. His grades were good enough that he could lay out the rest of the school year and still pass, so he did. He didn’
t show up for graduation, either. Just got his diploma in the mail. I didn’t see him for several years after that, until he came home about ten years ago and took a job at the sheriff’s department when his mama got sick.”

  “God rest her,” Miss Frances said.

  “What happened to Mrs. Mitchum?” I asked.

  “She got breast cancer about ten years ago, and Jeff came back to be with her. It went into remission for a long time, but it came back on her last year, and by the time they caught it, it had spread to her lymph nodes. She died about a month ago,” Miss Frances replied.

  “Just a couple weeks before Jenny was killed,” I said.

  “And just a few days before Shelly reminded him of the worst night of his life,” Jenny said.

  I spun to look at her. “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Shelly asked him to go to prom with her,” she said. “I didn’t think anything of it at the time, she was always picking at people. But it was at one of the home football games, and Shelly was messing with Jeff after the game, and she asked him to go to prom with her.” Her hands flew to her mouth. “Oh my god.”

  “What is it, honey?” I asked.

  “She said we’d both go with him. Shelly told Jeff that we both wanted to date him. She set him off. Shelly got us both killed.”

  I stared at the girl, who leaned against a headstone, shaking her head. Just then, a patrol car with lights flashing sped by the cemetery and pulled up in front of my house. I watched Willis jump out of the car and run up my steps. As he banged on the door, I pulled out my cell phone and dialed his number. I watched him pull his phone out of his pocket and look at the screen, then put the phone to his ear.

  “I’m not home, Willis. I’m at the cemetery. I’m walking your way. What’s going on?” I put my feet in motion so my actions would match my words.

  “Is Jenny with you?” he asked.

  “Yes, and we’ve got some information about Jeff that you need to hear.”

  “Bring her with you. We’ve got to go.”

  “Go where?” I asked.

  “The Miller house. I just got a call from Jenny’s father. Someone kidnapped Mrs. Miller. Jenny’s mother is missing.”

  Chapter 26

  I explained Tara Miller’s history with Jeff as we sped over to the Miller home. When I added the details of Shelly teasing Jeff, Willis shook his head. “Stupid kids,” he muttered. “Messed with the wrong man, and now they ended up dead because of it.”

  Jenny was frantic in the back seat, flitting in and out of the car and cursing her friend Shelly with every breath. “I knew she was being a bitch, but I didn’t do anything to stop her. Dammit, Shelly, why did you have to mess with his dumb ass?”

  I didn’t bother trying to point out the beam in her eye while she fussed about Shelly, because this wasn’t the time to tell the poor dead child that she was as much to blame for her situation as Shelly. And honestly, neither one of them was much to blame. Sure, they didn’t need to torment poor Jeff, but that still didn’t give him cause to go murdering people, neither.

  We pulled up in front of Jenny’s house less than ten minutes after Willis first banged on my door. It ain’t like it’s that big a town, after all. Reverend Turner was sitting on the front porch, a Bible in one hand and a flashlight in the other. There was a pump shotgun leaning against the wall behind him, and I wouldn’t put it much past the good Reverend to turn that scattergun on anybody he thought to be intruding on the Millers’ hour of grief.

  “Reverend,” Willis said as we approached the bottom step.

  “Sheriff,” Reverend Turner said, standing up and setting his Bible down in the seat of the rocker he’d vacated. “Lila Grace.” He nodded to me. It was the most polite greeting he’d given me in better than ten years. I reckon our little heart-to-heart the other night had some effect.

  “Reverend Turner,” I said. “I’m sure Mr. Miller appreciates you being here for him.”

  The preacher looked a little ashamed but gave me what passed for an appreciative nod. “David isn’t a regular member of our congregation, but Tara is one of the leaders of the church. I felt that if there was anything I could do, I should be here.”

  “Daddy always says he has an important meeting every Sunday morning, at the intersection of Pillow Street and Blanket Avenue,” Jenny said. “But it means a lot that Reverend Turner would come out in the middle of the night like this.”

  I reached out and patted the man’s shoulder. To his credit, he barely flinched at my unclean touch. Maybe he really was thawing toward me a little bit. Or maybe he was just too sleepy to fight. “I’m sure he appreciates it, even if he don’t say it, Reverend,” I said, moving past him into the house.

  The Union County Sheriff’s Department ain’t exactly what you would call bustling, and there ain’t a whole lot of manpower allocated to Lockhart most nights. So it wasn’t a big surprise that there were only two people in the house when we stepped in. I recognized Larry Tolins, the night shift man in the speed trap down on Highway 49, and a reedy little fellow who ducked into the kitchen as soon as the sheriff walked in, but I was pretty sure I recognized the flaming red hair that couldn’t be anybody but Chuck Blackwell. Chuck was a good man, but lazy as the day is long. I knew if he was in that kitchen, it was because it was far from any possible crime scene and close to any casseroles the grieving family might have left out on the counter.

  “Larry, what do we know?” Willis asked.

  “Not much, Sheriff,” the dark-haired man answered. “The call came in about half an hour ago, and I called for backup as soon as I got here and saw David had been hit upside the head. Told Ava to call up everybody she could find, but Chuck was the only one who picked up the radio.”

  “What about Jeff?” I asked. Willis shot me a sharp look, but it was the only real question we were interested in, especially after my talk with the grapevine ghosts earlier.

  “Ava said he had him a long weekend, talked about getting out of town. She didn’t even bother trying to reach him. Said when he went off the grid, he went whole hog about it. No radio, no cell phone—nothing. I reckon we won’t see him until Tuesday morning.”

  I thought there was a good chance I’d see Jeff before that, but I didn’t want to say anything to Larry about it. “What does Mr. Miller say happened?” I asked.

  “Not much, Ms. Carter. I talked to him, but he don’t know a whole lot.” He nodded at the despondent man on the sofa by the big picture window in the den.

  I walked over to where David Miller sat on the couch, his elbows on his knees. He was hunched over, a man curling in on himself to keep the world out. The past week had been enough to break most people, and now his wife going missing on top of his daughter’s death had him wearing the haunted expression of a man who didn’t know if he had anything left to live for.

  I didn’t wait for Willis to give me the okay; I just sat down on the couch next to Mr. Miller. I put one arm around his shoulders and pulled him tight to me. He was a grown man, not used to having somebody able to give him comfort, but I’m an old woman, and in a small town in the South, that means I’m halfway to being everybody’s aunt. I’m not bound by the laws of normal manners. Besides, everybody already thinks I’m crazy, so I get to do anything I want.

  “I’m so sorry you’ve got to go through this, Mr. Miller. We’re here, and we’re going to figure out what happened, and bring your Tara back to you. I promise,” I said. I saw Willis and Larry both stiffen and look at one another when I said that. I know, you ain’t supposed to promise somebody something you don’t know you can deliver, but I’m not a cop. I’m an old woman who hates to see people hurting, so I did what I could to help the man with his pain.

  He shook in my arms for a minute, then I heard him take a long breath. I felt his shoulders tighten, so I relaxed my hold on him, and he sat up.

  “Thank you, Lila Grace,” he said. “I appreciate it. I know you can’t really promise that, but it means a lot anyway.”

&n
bsp; “Well, I promise to try my damnedest, how about that?” I said.

  “I’ll take it,” he replied. “Now what do I need to do to find Tara?”

  Willis stepped forward. “I know you’ve already gone over this with Officer Tolins, but why don’t you fill me in a little bit on what happened tonight, just so I can hear it fresh?” He sat down on the coffee table, positioning himself directly in front of Mr. Miller. I knew full well this didn’t have a damn thing to do with him hearing anything fresh, and everything to do with making sure the man’s story stayed straight. I was sure that Jeff took Jenny’s mom, and I’m pretty sure that Willis was, too.

  But I knew full well that the first suspect in any case was the husband, so it made sense to look at Mr. Miller while we got all our information together to go after Jeff. Besides, there might be something new that came out of his story, something he left out when he talked to Tolins.

  I stood just out of Mr. Miller’s line of sight, but still in the room. I didn’t have any real business being there, but since the sheriff let me in, nobody else was going to have the guts to throw me out. Jenny’s dad had an ice pack wrapped in a dishtowel pressed up against the back of his head, and a bruise blossoming on his cheekbone just under his right eye. Whatever happened, it wasn’t pretty.

  “I heard a noise,” he started. “I was upstairs asleep, and something woke me. I don’t know what it sounded like, just that it woke me up. I laid there in the bed for a minute, listening to see if I could hear what it was, thinking maybe it was Jenny going down for a glass of water. Then I remembered…well, then I remembered, and I got up, moving as quiet as I could manage without turning a light on.”

  “It sounded like somebody was trying to move through the house being real quiet, but they didn’t know where all the furniture was. Hell, with all the people that have been in and out of here the last week, I barely know where the chairs are supposed to go. So I heard another sound, like somebody walking into a chair and it scraping across the floor, and heard somebody cuss real quiet, like they couldn’t help it.”