The Haunted Heist Read online

  “Sweet mother,” I ground out. His fingers clasped the chain of a pocket watch. “Is it the same one?” I asked, passing the photo to Ellis.

  He cursed under his breath. “I don’t think he’d have two.”

  “Here’s another one of them.” She showed us a photo of the couple posing outside a dinner club. Again, he wore the watch. This time, it was perfectly clear.

  “You’d think he would have been buried with it,” I mused.

  Melody shot me a quizzical look. “Are you saying someone has his watch?”

  “It’s a long story,” I said, not wanting to get into it. But if he had it with him all the time, if he wore it constantly, then perhaps someone had taken it after he died.

  Melody drew a photo from the file she held. “This is the last thing I could find. It’s a ‘death’ photo, taken after he was gunned down in 1933. A photographer from the Sugarland Gazette took it to run in the paper.”

  She held out a photo that showed Henry shot to death in bed, covered in blood. It reminded me of the graphic pictures I’d seen of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.

  Okay, he obviously hadn’t died with his watch. “Did he have relatives that would have collected his things?”

  “Not a single one,” Melody said. “His mother was ostracized from her family for having him out of wedlock. She supported him alone. He grew up hard, and when she died, he dropped out of school and joined the gang. It’s all in the article.” With no one in town to inherit or hold onto it, I didn’t see why the real watch would suddenly surface now, after all these years. And on another murder victim.

  Perhaps Henry Hagar himself would know that, among other things. I’d have to persuade Frankie to show me the other side and hope he knew where to find the infamous hit man.

  Ellis handed the picture back to Melody. “We’d like you to keep this under wraps for the time being.”

  “Too late,” she said. “Ovis Dupre came in first thing this morning.”

  Of all the… “You showed him the picture?”

  “He saw everything, same as you. It’s part of the public library record,” Melody said, matching my snit. “I’ll research for you, but I’m not going to withhold information from anyone else who needs it.” She glanced at Ellis. “Ovis is publishing the pictures tomorrow as a special guest feature in the Sugarland Gazette.”

  “Why can’t that man retire?” I wondered aloud. Lauralee had enough to upset her without the whole town knowing the lurid details of her uncle’s death, not to mention the gangster connection.

  Ellis braced a hand on his gun belt. “I want to know how Ovis found out about the watch.”

  I had to admit the old reporter was good at his job. And in publicizing it, he’d stir up just the kind of sensationalist gossip that would have the town buzzing.

  “Are you finished with these items?” Melody asked. “I really do need to get back to the desk.”

  “Yes, but can you keep them handy?” I asked as she gathered them into a large brown folder.

  “You have other requests, don’t you?” Ellis asked.

  She glanced up at him as she gathered the last of the photographs from the table. “I’ll bet we will tomorrow.”

  Dang it.

  I left the library more frustrated and confused than when I’d gone in. I understood it was Melody’s job to make information available, but she could have been choosier with who she shared it with. I hurried down the steps, bracing against the chill.

  “Slow down or you’re going to fall down,” he said, keeping pace with me.

  “What? So we can run into another one of your mom’s friends?” I asked.

  “So what if we do?” he challenged. “I’m not going to tiptoe around you, and I’m not going to pretend nothing happened between us. Is happening,” he corrected as we reached the bottom of the steps.

  Wasn’t he even a little bit afraid? “You heard your mother’s threats.”

  “And I shut her down,” he insisted.

  Maybe for now.

  It all came down to one simple truth. “I have no idea what you want from me,” I confessed, “or what I can even give.” I glanced down the street toward the church.

  “Dinner,” he answered.

  I stared at him. “What?”

  The corner of his mouth tipped up. “I want dinner. You know. A meal. Like normal people.” He warmed to the idea as he spoke. “Give me the pleasure of an evening with you, just you, and no ghosts or felons or nosy relatives. I’ll pick you up, take you to my place. Let’s do it tonight, and if it doesn’t feel like the right thing to do while we’re doing it, then we’ll know and it’ll be over.”

  He had me at a loss. Tonight? It felt too soon.

  My entire body flooded with warmth and my legs moved on their own as I began retreating to my car. He walked with me, refusing to let me slip away this time. “You want me to just hang out at your place,” I stated, digging in my purse for my keys, trying to think of a reason why I shouldn’t.

  “Actually, no,” he said.

  I turned to him, surprised to find myself more disappointed than relieved.

  He gave a small, uncomfortable laugh. “My place is a disaster. Before I changed the front door lock, my mom’s decorator added orchids,” he said, as if the plants were out to eat him. “I’m afraid to sit on the new antique furniture in my family room, and the dining room is a construction zone.” He scratched his chin. “There’s a fainting couch in my bedroom. I should hand in my guy card right now.”

  “At least you don’t have a yard-waste can in your kitchen like I do,” I said, trying to make him feel better.

  He thought for a moment. “Tell you what, I’ll pick you up and take you out to Southern Spirits. You can see what I’ve done to the place lately. It’s really coming along.”

  “I’ll bet it is,” I said, glad to be on more solid ground. Ellis had bought the old property with his uncle, and was working to remodel the historic distillery into a one-of-a-kind restaurant. He worked hard on the old property. That had been one of the first things I’d noticed about him—his work ethic and how he cared for old buildings and traditions, rather than just tearing them down in favor of the new.

  It would be fun to see Southern Spirits again. And I wanted to get on solid footing with Ellis, even if it meant we decided to end our budding—and faltering—relationship.

  He grinned. “Stop thinking so much. I’ll serve you dinner and we’ll see if we can make this work.”

  I shrugged out of his jacket and handed it back to him. “Let’s do this,” I said before I could change my mind.

  Chapter 13

  I tried to keep my cool as I drove home that afternoon. I’d agreed to one night that would decide everything. It seemed crazy to put that kind of pressure on a single dinner date, but at least I’d know where I stood by the end of it.

  I’d come to know Ellis well enough by now to see that he looked at life in terms of black and white. To his thinking, I either liked him or I didn’t. Either it would work or it wouldn’t. No gray area, no games.

  What I didn’t understand was his pure boldness, as if he could somehow control Virginia Wydell.

  I pulled my car along the side of my house and parked in the back.

  Dark clouds hung low in the sky. Two brave birds clung to the bare branches of my apple tree, fluffing their feathers against the cold.

  I wrapped myself in my coat and hurried up the back porch stairs and into the semi-warmth of my kitchen.

  The interior of the house lay in shadows.

  I slipped off my coat and left it on the kitchen island. Hopefully, Frankie was resting in the ether where he wouldn’t notice my return. I wasn’t eager to run into him after sneaking out this morning.

  Of course, I also had a more pressing, very real obligation. I went to the olive-green wall phone and dialed up Lauralee. She needed to be warned about Ovis’s story in the paper tomorrow.

  My friend answered on the second ring and sou
nded better than she had earlier. It made it a little easier to break the news about the dead gangster’s watch and the sensationalism that would follow.

  Lauralee groaned under her breath. “I know all about it. Ovis showed up at EmmaJane’s house this afternoon. She was so upset she called me. Glad she did, though. He showed her pictures of some hit man and tried to interview her about what she thought, as if he really believes a dead gangster killed her father.”

  “I’m sorry.” I wished I could have spared her.

  “It’s insulting,” Lauralee stated. “Even worse, you know some people in this town are going to actually believe there could be a homicidal ghost running around.”

  “Only the crazy ones,” I told her. And me.

  I heard kids scuffling at my friend’s house and then quiet as Lauralee found a place to hole up, most likely in her laundry room. “I tried talking to EmmaJane after Ovis left,” she said. “She kept dropping the phone, and when I went down the street, she barely opened the door. It was like we were back to square one.”

  “Was Carla smothering her with helpfulness?”

  “She was alone. From what I could see of her, EmmaJane looked almost panicked. I’ve never seen her like that. Now she’s refusing all calls and contact. She won’t even talk to the funeral home.” She sighed. “At least I got her to agree to let us take her to dinner tomorrow, after she made me promise not to drop by unannounced or bring her any more casseroles or homemade cookies. But, Verity, she needs to vent or she’s going to explode.”

  “Let’s just take it one day at a time.”

  “I told her we’d stop by near seven, once Big Tom gets home to watch the kids.”

  “I’ll meet you at your place.” This was such a mess. I admired Lauralee to no end for the way she was able to be there for both her cousin and her own family, but I worried she’d worn herself a bit too thin. “It’ll get better,” I promised. It had to. “In fact, I saw Ellis this afternoon. The police are working real hard on this.”

  She paused for a beat. “Why are you seeing Ellis again?”

  Because I couldn’t help myself. “It’s not important,” I said. We could dissect my love life another time.

  “I’ll give you a pass this time,” she said, “but only because I’m sitting on top of my washing machine with a light-saber battle going on outside the door and my cousin in tears down the street.”

  I wished there was something I could do for my friend. Perhaps I should try to at least talk to Handsome Henry. Matthew had said it was dangerous, but so was having a killer on the loose. “I’m going to try to find a way to help,” I promised.

  “You did this morning,” she said. “Seriously, it felt good just to talk. Thank you.”

  It only made me want to do more.

  I braced a hand against the wall and stared real hard at the gnarled, twisted loops of the kitchen phone cord. Maybe I should tell her my secret and exactly how I could help. “This is going to sound crazy,” I began. Lauralee of all people would love me anyway. I wound a hand in the hopelessly tangled cord. “You remember that ugly urn that I found in my attic, the one nobody wanted…” I hesitated. Now wasn’t the time. She didn’t need her world rocked any more. “Never mind. Just know I love you.”

  The smile in her voice came through over the phone lines. “I’m counting on it.”

  I hung up more determined than ever to make a difference. I just had to figure out how.

  I turned and nearly jumped out of my skin to see Frankie standing mere inches away from me, so near I could make out a faint stubble on his neck that I’d never noticed before.

  He lowered his chin and gave me a pointed glare. “Way to sneak out on me,” he said, as if I had some obligation to cart him around town.

  I blew out a breath. “Excuse me for going to the library. Now kindly remove yourself from my personal space,” I said, inching around him. He made me feel like a bug pinned to the wall.

  He followed me so close I could feel the chill. “The library’s where I like to play poker.”

  Sheesh. The gangster needed to learn a lesson in boundaries. I slipped past him and headed to the cabinet to grab a granola bar for a late, late lunch. “You realize I can’t take you everywhere with me.”

  “Why not?” he asked, too close for comfort.

  I turned and closed the cabinet door. “Because not every girl wants a long-dead gangster trailing her around town.” I took a bite of my Chewy Oats & Honey bar. “And you’re not exactly good at keeping your opinions to yourself.”

  “Excuse me if I call it like I see it.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “What bug bit you?”

  “I have no idea what you mean. I’m having a perfectly lovely afternoon,” I said, like every steel-spined Southern girl before me.

  Frankie rolled his eyes. “Fine. You want to play some chess?”

  “I have a date in an hour,” I said, finishing off my granola bar and hoping he didn’t see the color that rushed hot to my cheeks.

  He smirked. “You can thank me later.”

  “Depending on how it goes, I may make you sleep on the porch,” I said, tossing my wrapper and going to rinse my sticky fingers in the sink.

  The gangster leaned up against my kitchen island, with the back half of him sinking straight in. “So where is he taking us?”

  “There is no us,” I warned him. “I am going to the Southern Spirits property with Ellis.”

  He lit up at that. “Hotsy-totsy!” he said, standing. “The South Town Gang haunts that place.” He raised his hands and his eyes to the ceiling. “This is my reward.”

  “For what?”

  “For how I make your life easier,” he said.

  “That’s debatable,” I told him.

  “You owe me a night out with the fellas,” he said, as if it were fact. “Now that the poltergeist isn’t holding them down, they might even be able to point me to my lucky gun.”

  I still didn’t see how a firearm was going to free him. “I can’t take you on my date.” It had gone badly enough when I’d brought him along on my job interview. “Ellis and I want time alone.”

  The gangster glided away from me, towards the trapped rosebush. “Believe me, I won’t be paying attention to you.”

  “That’s good to hear. But be practical. Why would a bunch of ghosts have your gun?”

  He ran his fingers among and through the thorny branches. “That’s easy. Self-defense.” He dropped his hand. “Too bad it didn’t help. They were all shot down in the speakeasy underneath Southern Spirits.”

  I stared at him. “What?”

  He fidgeted with his sleeve. “It happened the night I died.”

  I’d wondered what Frankie had been up to while I had my hands full ridding the property of the angry ghost. “Are you investigating your death?”

  He gave me a steely glare. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “All right,” I said, holding my hands up in surrender. I wouldn’t push him. “But tell me this. When we did the job at Southern Spirits and you disappeared, you were at that speakeasy, weren’t you?”

  “I do have an afterlife,” he groused. With a shrug of the shoulder, he added, “Our old watering hole is underneath what’s now the kitchen at Southern Spirits.”

  Oh my word. “Does Ellis know about this?”

  Frankie’s lip curled with distaste. “He’d better not. South Town guys only.”

  “Darn it, Frankie. You’re putting me in a terrible spot.” Ellis and I needed to work things out. Alone.

  Yet he had a multiple murder scene underneath the place where he was treating me to dinner tonight. Surely, this was reason enough to alter the agenda. Ellis deserved to know what lay beneath his property, and this could be a great opportunity to track down the hit-man ghost. I wasn’t sure how my life had gotten so strange, but it had definitely started with the gangster in front of me.

  I eyed Frankie. “If I take you on my night out…” and truly, this was the only instan
ce where I’d consider it, “you have to show me and Ellis the speakeasy.”

  Then Ellis could decide I was too crazy and that he never wanted to see me again.

  Frankie scoffed. “I ain’t showing Ellis the other side. I don’t have that kind of power.”

  “I wasn’t asking that.” I knew his resources were limited. “I need to see. Ellis can look at whatever is still there.”

  He ran a hand over his chin, thinking. “I don’t want to lose my feet in front of the guys.”

  “You can hang out while I have my date; then we’ll go down after. We’ll get your gun if it’s there, and I’ll ask a few questions. We’ll be gone before anyone knows parts of you are missing.”

  “That might actually work.” The gangster fiddled with his collar, edgy. “I gotta tell you, you may not like some of the wiseguys you meet.”

  I had no illusions otherwise. “But Handsome Henry knew some of them, right?” I asked.

  The gangster stiffened. “Yeah. What about it?”

  “Did Henry die down there?”

  Frankie’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know. I was too busy getting plugged.” His hand shifted to the gun in his coat as if it were second nature. “But, yeah, Henry might be hanging out. He used to tip a few with the gang from time to time.”

  All right. “Then it’s a date.”

  Ellis picked me up promptly at six o’clock. And he arrived at the front door, instead of sneaking in the back as he had on numerous occasions before. The man had taken a stand. I just hoped I was ready for it.

  He looked gorgeous in a button-down shirt that showed off his broad shoulders and made me realize just what I might be passing up. He stood with the setting sun to his back. It had already begun to sink under the horizon, throwing off shots of red and gold over the place. “You look beautiful, Verity.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I’d tried to dress nice.

  After agreeing to my ghost friend’s demands, I’d gone upstairs and changed into jeans and a soft white sweater. White wouldn’t be the best for going underground, but I only had three nice sweaters. One had skunk water on it and the other I’d already worn to the library today. That was the thing about a limited wardrobe—it made dressing for a date much easier.