Ghost Town

by Cherie Claire

  Ghost Town: A Viola Valentine Mystery

  by Cherie Claire

  Ghost Town (Viola Valentine Mystery, Book Two) by Cherie Claire

  © Cheré Dastugue Coen 2017

  1st Edition, June 2017

  Produced with Typesetter

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used or reproduced or transmitted in any manner whatsoever, electronically, in print, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Cherie Claire, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  PUBLISHER'S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, visit http://www.cherieclaire.net

  To Jim Grant and Emilia J. Bellone, two fellow warriors in hurricane recovery who taught me about Masaru Emoto and the power of thought and positivity, especially when hurricane season arrives. I relish the memory of our drives from Lafayette to the front lines, and even more so our friendship.

  Also by Cherie Claire

  Viola Valentine Mystery Series

  A Ghost of a Chance

  Ghost Town

  Trace of a Ghost

  The Cajun Embassy

  Ticket to Paradise

  Damn Yankees

  Gone Pecan

  The Cajun Series

  Emilie

  Rose

  Gabrielle

  Delphine

  A Cajun Dream

  The Letter

  Carnival Confessions: A Mardi Gras Novella

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Ghost Town 1

  Ghost Town 2

  Ghost Town 3

  Ghost Town 4

  Ghost Town 5

  Ghost Town 6

  Ghost Town 7

  Ghost Town 8

  Ghost Town 9

  Ghost Town 10

  Ghost Town 11

  Ghost Town 12

  Ghost Town 13

  Ghost Town 14

  Ghost Town 15

  Ghost Town 16

  Author's Notes

  Acknowledgements 2

  Chapter One

  “If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.”

  — Loren Eiseley, The Immense Journey

  Only hell could be hotter than Louisiana in summer, brutal heat indexes topping one hundred and a stifling stillness to the air that suffocates even the hardiest among us. Thunderstorms roll in violently from the Gulf of Mexico and offer a temporary respite, but temperatures quickly resume like the steam seeping up from the banquet, or what we call in New Orleans a sidewalk.

  I look out on to my patio that only one month ago was ablaze in color and full of hope. Now, my poor plants are wilting, gazing back in agony.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper, as much to apologize for the intense heat as to the fact that I’m not braving that swelter to water them.

  As if on cue, my neighbor’s cat scratches at the back door, demanding entrance. He’s really the neighborhood cat, belonging to no one, but we all feed him whenever he shows up. I managed to have him neutered and you would think he would consider me an enemy for life but he returns daily for my cans of cheap cat food. Honestly, I don’t get it — if I were a cat, I wouldn’t eat the stuff — but these days, I welcome the company.

  When his scratches become insistent, I know it’s ungodly hot outside. I open the door and he jets off towards the bathroom where I keep the food and there’s a nice stretch of cold tile to sleep upon.

  “Nice to see you, too,” I say to the orange, yellow, and white streak darting through my tiny living room.

  I live in what my mom lovingly calls a “potting shed,” the mother-in-law unit of the big house in front. My landlord, Reece Cormier, took pity on my soul when I showed up one month after Katrina destroyed my hometown of New Orleans, asking him if he would rent out the back unit. Reece was renovating the front house at the time, ignoring the rear apartment, so I hoped for a vacancy considering that there were no rentals to be had in Lafayette due to the influx of Katrina evacuees.

  After I had inquired, and mentioned that I had arrived in the town two hours west of New Orleans when the National Guard dropped us off here, the man started crying. He stood in his front yard, power drill in his enormous hands, and cried, big manly tears falling down his sunburned cheeks. He grabbed the top of my arms and silently nodded, then walked me back toward the unit and introduced me to what would become my little haven.

  And the key to opening my prison door.

  The storm blew away my excruciating newspaper job, covering the cops and school board beat in St. Bernard Parish on the edge of the civilized world — well, at least to a New Orleans city girl like me. So, even though I call Katrina a bitch, she gave me a chance to follow my dream job, that of being a freelance travel writer. And this tiny rent-free apartment is helping me do just that.

  The unit needed work when I moved in, but it was livable, the toilet flushed, and the shower released enough of a water stream that I would never go dirty, even if I had to hold the bathtub release with my toe to keep the water flowing down the drain. After I paid my electricity deposit, the lights worked too. I connected to Wifi and the outside world and happily started my new career.

  Two years later, I’m still alive and traveling, although the current recession is keeping me up at night.

  Stinky — my name for the orange tabby — turns to me when he finds what I have left him and lets out a pitiful cry.

  “Sorry dude,” I tell him. “I’m broke.”

  The sound only gets worse, as if he’s being de-balled all over again.

  “That’s what you get for visiting a writer, you idiot. Try the Broussards down the block. It’s a double lawyer household.”

  He doesn’t relent, so I open the front door. “Take it or leave it.”

  The cat gets the message. Either that or eating crappy cat food from the Dollar Tree is preferable to being outside in Louisiana. He heads back to the bathroom.

  Before I shut out the humidity invading my air-conditioned oasis, I notice Reece on the back porch of his house. He’s standing catty-cornered from me with the patio and swimming pool in between. I instinctively raise my hand to wave, then catch myself and pull the door close. I’m mad at him right now.

  I check my watch. Fifteen after twelve. Late as usual.

  I glance around, evaluating for the umpteenth time to see if everything in my meager apartment looks right. I moved here without furniture — hell, without anything — so there’s no consistency, no color scheme, no master design. The table came from the Johnston Street Goodwill that offered free items to those with the right New Orleans area codes. The two accompanying chairs that don’t match I found outside my door one night. The mattress I bought from Sears with my credit card, although the sheets hail from Salvation Army and are topped with blankets culled from various travel press trips. Because we’re in the dog days of summer, I’m using my Gulf Shores beach towel and a throw that sports “Shreveport – Louisiana’s Other Side” as bedspreads.

  In my work as a travel writer I get invited to join press trips with other journalists. We’re flown to various locations, put up in hotels, and wined and dined in the hopes of us generating great press for their destinations. It’s a dream job, yes, but it’s also hard work. And it doesn’t always pay well, hence the squeaking feline in the other room.

  I love my little abode, even with the tacky swag I bring back from the Southern cities I visit, including the rug with the cheesy photo of Gatlinburg and the picnic basket from Georgia with plastic plates
and utensils that I dine on every night. They not only remind me of the places I have visited since Katrina washed away my job with the New Orleans Post but of escaping my overbearing family and ex-husband back in the city.

  As soon as that thought flits through my mind, I hear my mother and sister approaching.

  “Vi lives here?” my sister Portia says incredulously. “Are you sure we’re at the right place?”

  “This is her dream house,” my mother answers, and you can cut that sarcasm with a butter knife.

  I try to swallow that ball of hurt that lodges in my throat every time my attempt to garner family approval fails. It sits there, blocking my air, when I open the door and smile as if nothing is wrong.

  “You made it,” I say pleasantly but the words come out hoarse and weak due to that lump that refuses to move.

  “No thanks to the Baton Rouge traffic,” my mother says entering the apartment. “I don’t know how you can stand that Basin Bridge.”

  Portia follows, gazing around my living room — which is really one big room serving as dining area, sleeping quarters and work space — as if she’s afraid to touch anything for fear of catching some awful disease. My mom runs a hand across the one nice piece of furniture I own, an antique desk some other generous Lafayette resident placed at my door.

  For months the items kept coming, no doubt because Reece had spread the word about the Katrina refugee — god, I hated that word — who landed on his doorstep after spending two days on her roof before being rescued to the Cajundome, Lafayette’s version of a domed stadium. Despite what my mother calls my apartment, there’s an actual shed behind my place that now holds all the donated items I received since Katrina blew away my hometown.

  “Isn’t that pretty?” I ask my mom, because I can’t stop appealing for their approval. “Some anonymous neighbor gave that desk to me.”

  “How do you know it was a neighbor if they were anonymous?”

  Give it to Portia to be literal. My older sister graduated high school at fifteen and passed the bar at twenty-one. She’s a card-carrying Mensa member and constantly reminds me of that fact.

  I decide to change the subject.

  “Y’all want something to drink?” I head to my dorm refrigerator in the makeshift kitchen and pull out the fresh lemonade I made for their visit. Neither one seems interested.

  “I thought we were going to that weird festival you mentioned,” Portia replies.

  My mom glances at me, and even though she’s probably ready to bolt as well, she asks for a glass. This gives me hope although neither woman moves to sit down.

  “Y’all relax and take a seat,” I say, but the two stand awkwardly in the center of my potting shed, looking like two Evangelicals at a death metal concert.

  I hand my mom her lemonade in the cup that promotes Blue Bell ice cream. Before she takes a sip, she gazes at the little girl and her cow gracing the outside.

  “I got that in Brenham, Texas,” I explain with a goofy smile. “Got to sample the ice cream right off the factory line.”

  I love Blue Bell ice cream, and tasting that creamy concoction before they froze it was the highlight of my Texas press trip. And, I must admit, I’m bragging about my new job, hoping my family will be as impressed as my friends are.

  “Get this,” I continue, my voice still struggling through that ball that won’t disintegrate. “We asked the owner if he was struggling through the recession and he said they actually make money in hard times. That people eat more ice cream during recessions.”

  I thought that fact was interesting, something fun to write about in a year that was causing me to rethink my new career. The recession wasn’t hitting Lafayette and Louisiana as hard as the rest of the nation, thanks to the booming oil industry and the money rolling in for hurricane recovery. But, magazines and newspapers were on the decline and the recession only gave those companies ammunition for cutbacks and layoffs. So far, I lost two clients, took a pay cut on one of my best publications, and had three people insisting the check was in the mail — three weeks ago.

  The current recession was one reason I had asked my mom and sister to visit. That and the rising over Blue Moon Bayou.

  “Are you eating more ice cream?” my mom asks me and I wonder if she sees through my veiled invitation.

  I sip my own lemonade from a cup that quotes Henry Miller: “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”

  Okay, so I bought that one.

  “My favorite is Millennial Crunch,” I say. “It’s Blue Bell’s latest since they just turned one hundred.”

  I’m so their demographic. Even though my lights might be cut off tomorrow, I have ice cream in the freezer.

  “I can tell,” my mom says, looking me over. “Just because they feed you on those trips doesn’t mean you have to eat everything.”

  It never ceases to amaze me how family members pick the scabs off vulnerable sores. Yes, I’ve gained a few pounds. It’s what I do under stress. And yes, I don’t have to eat all that’s put in front of me on press trips, can bypass the open bars and the dessert trays. But I live on mac and cheese when I’m home, since writing remains such a high-paying profession. Who wouldn’t indulge whenever possible?

  I pull my blouse down over the belly that’s been growing consistently post-Katrina, although I’m not as thick as all that, considering that hurricane took off close to twenty pounds two years ago.

  “You shouldn’t be drinking lemonade,” Portia adds. “That has so much sugar in it.”

  I close my eyes and instruct myself to breathe. How the hell will I be able to ask these middle-class women, who live in perfect houses and afford gym memberships, for money?

  Mom hands me back the cup, while Portia pulls her purse tight over a shoulder, her hand resting on top. Neither says a word or looks at me, so I get the message.

  “Ready to go?” I ask, trying desperately not to feel disappointed that they didn’t like my meager little home, the one I created from scratch along with my new career with nothing in the bank but a FEMA check.

  Both women immediately head for the door, my mother asking Portia where she got that snazzy new purse and Portia replying with a lengthy discourse on the pros and cons of Northshore shopping, post-storm; Portia moved across the lake after Katrina damaged her Old Metairie home. I follow behind, feeling disappointment lingering behind my eyes, demanding release in a good old-fashioned cry.

  As Portia and my mom head down the brick walkway to their car, I turn and lock the door. Just before I do, I spot Stinky in the hallway licking the remnants of that awful cat food off his paws, bless his little heart.

  “Man the house,” I tell him, and he looks up ever so briefly and winks, that weird cat thing that makes you wonder if they know what you’re thinking. Because for a moment, I believe he does.

  I wonder about a lot of things these days, mainly if I’m as intuitive as my aunt claims I am. I had been born with “the gift,” according to her, but over the years repressed my ability to speak with the dead. People tend to do that, considering how conversing with the deceased doesn’t go over well with friends and family members. Over time, I ignored cousin Harry with the hole in his head from the time he went fishing, got drunk, and fell overboard and into the path of the outboard motor. Or poor Mr. Stanislos, the former second grade teacher who walks the halls of my elementary school reciting times tables.

  No one believed I saw them anyway.

  By sixth grade, I was done being polite to the little old lady with hair worked up into a bun who would call to me from the porch of my neighbor’s house like that crazy woman in To Kill a Mockingbird. In college, when the frat boy who committed suicide appeared at my dorm room door, I slammed it in his ethereal face.

  I convinced myself it wasn’t real, that I was imagining things, and over time those spooks disappeared.

  Katrina blew that psychic door wide open, however, but now I only speak to those who have died by water. I’m called a
SCANC, a stupid abbreviation that stands for “Specific Communication with Apparitions, Non-entities, and the Comatose.” In other words, I can only speak with those related to my trauma. In my case, it’s water.

  “Where are we headed again?” Portia asks when we climb into the car, me in the back seat.

  “Blue Moon Bayou.” A shiver rolls across my shoulders, considering the town a half hour away from Lafayette complements a water source. But then, I have never had ghostly experiences in this quaint south Louisiana town known for antiques, boutiques and a world renown zydeco brunch.

  “And what’s this festival you are so anxious for me to see?” my mom asks.

  Deliah Valentine taught Shakespeare at Tulane before the storm and, even though the New Orleans university cut staff after Katrina and my mom makes due with adjunct classes at Baton Rouge Community College, she’s still considered one of the country’s foremost Shakespearean scholars. Ask my mom and she might say the world. It’s why my sister was named Portia from The Merchant of Venus and my twin brother and I Sebastian and Viola from Twelfth Night.

  “It’s called Blue Moon Rising and it’s quite the thing,” I tell her. “There’s a legend that upon the rising of the blue moon, the first person you will see is the one you are destined to fall in love with.”

  I thought my mother would eat this up. Reminded me so much of a Shakespeare comedy, like Midsummer Night’s Dream. We’re closing in on the summer solstice, so the timing is perfect.

  “That’s ridiculous,” my mother answers.

  I lean forward between them. “Imagine it. What if the person you wanted to see is suddenly called away when the moon rises and another person takes his place. You’d fall in love with the wrong person.”

  “If there was such a thing…,” Portia adds.

  “Better yet, what if, as in the case of this year when we have two blue moons within three months, you see the wrong person the first time and the right person the second?”