Sweet Tea and Spirits Read online

  “Not as far as you can see,” he smirked, turning back to the yard.

  “Frankie,” I warned. Only I couldn’t prove anything—couldn’t see anything—without his power, the jerk.

  “Hey, Knuckles, set up the bookie booth by the apple tree,” he hollered. “I’ll be down in a minute.” He winked at me. “Duty calls. Too bad you can’t watch and learn.”

  I leaned against the porch rail, blocking his view. “We’re going to the heritage society first. This is important.”

  He gave me a once-over. “Are we getting paid?”

  “No,” I huffed.

  “Then it’s not important,” he concluded, walking past me and down the porch steps.

  “This is my house,” I said, catching up with him halfway. Perhaps I did have some leverage. “Come with me now and I’ll make your afterlife even better.” He gave me a you’ve got to be kidding look, but I pressed on. “I’ll build you a gang headquarters out back, a place where you and your friends can have some privacy.”

  He halted at the bottom of the stairs. “You serious?”

  “Sure.” It would give them some place to go besides the porch.

  Truth be told, I’d already planned on surprising him with a nice shed near the pond. I’d received a small check after our last adventure and figured he’d earned a part of it. But if Frankie wanted to bargain, we’d do it his way.

  “What’s your angle?” he asked, sizing me up.

  I smiled sweetly at him. “Not all of us are looking to take advantage of every blessed little thing.” Besides, Ellis had already bought the premade shed. It was waiting to be delivered from the hardware store.

  “All right.” Frankie’s upper lip curled. “Deal. I’ll give you a half hour. No more. Suds can run the preshow for a while, but he ain’t a people person like me.”

  Frankie was smooth as a barbed wire bathtub.

  “Fine,” I said, “a half hour.”

  “And don’t push it. I gotta keep my feet this time,” he warned. “I need ’em for our…event.”

  “Let’s go, then,” I said. We wouldn’t have time to dawdle, but it would allow me to locate any ghosts on the heritage society property and hopefully learn what happened last night. “I’ll grab your urn.”

  “I’ll meet you in the car,” he said, sweeping through the porch rail and into the yard.

  I grinned at his back, and at any ghosts who cared to notice. Then I hurried the heck up.

  I took my bag from the counter and the urn from the barrel full of “Frankie” dirt that I’d shoveled from my garden. We’d relocated it, along with my favorite rosebush, to the parlor for safekeeping. Eventually, we might figure out what to do with it.

  Lucy had curled up on a blanket on the floor by the fireplace. “Be good,” I said, kissing her on the head. She could hold down the fort.

  My 1978 Cadillac was parked in the back of the house, near my decimated rose garden. I’d inherited the avocado green land yacht from my grandmother, along with our family’s antebellum home.

  And like the house, it needed a bit of love. The driver’s side door didn’t budge on the first try, but I gave it a good yank and it worked just fine. I slid my bag with Frankie’s urn onto the floor of the passenger side and said a prayer of thanks that the gangster hadn’t wandered away in the minute it had taken me to get ready.

  “I’d like your power now,” I said, turning my key in the ignition. The engine gave a hard chug and a wheeze, but it started right up.

  The gangster shot me a dubious glance. “You want to start burning your half hour already?”

  Sue me if I wanted to get a better idea of what was happening in my own backyard. Besides, the heritage society wasn’t far. We’d have plenty of time to look around.

  Frankie crossed his arms over his chest. “We can start right now if you drive away and don’t look back.”

  As if I’d be able to resist.

  Luckily, Frankie was in as much of a hurry as I was. And sometimes I think he mistook my sweet nature for passiveness, weakness even. I wasn’t above using that to my advantage.

  His energy settled over me and I tried not to shiver at the heavy, pricking weight. It felt like a blanket of tiny pins and needles. Within a moment or two, the worst of the transfer was over. I took a deep breath as I opened my senses to his world.

  A trumpet blasted across my yard. “What was that?”

  “Fats McGee is just practicing,” Frankie said, glancing behind us. “Now drive.”

  A horse whinnied. I heard the low, throaty sound of Frankie’s buddy Suds calling for bets, and I could swear I smelled popcorn.

  I turned around. “Frankie!” I choked. “Did you open a horse racing track in my backyard?”

  Chapter 3

  He had!

  He’d turned my lovely four-acre yard into a broken-down, skid-row, jacked-up version of the Kentucky Derby, complete with a squad of Confederate Army engineers erecting a grandstand.

  And this after I’d offered to build him a shed.

  A pair of ditzy flappers giggled and waved American flags while a cowboy watered his ghost horse in my grandpa’s fishing pond. He chatted with a Pony Express rider and a World War One cavalry officer, both on horseback, both ready to race around the dirt track being shoveled out of a wagon by two pioneers.

  “No,” I vowed. “This is…no.”

  Frankie shot me a snarly look, but he could stuff it.

  He might have thought he’d pulled a fast one, but I was putting an end to this scraped-up, taped-up monstrosity on my back lawn. “You have taken advantage of my trust for the last time. You—”

  A Native American painted pony shoved his snout through the roof of my car and I about had a heart attack. I looked out my driver’s side window and saw a gray-and-white speckled horse chest and dangling feathers.

  “Check in with Sticky Pete,” Frankie instructed the ghost rider.

  The horse snorted and retreated, and my housemate could go with him as far as I was concerned. I stared Frankie down. “You have gone beyond the bounds of common trust and decency.”

  “What did you expect? I’m a gangster,” he shot back, as if that explained everything.

  “I don’t care who you are. This ends now.” I reached for my car door before another mustang blocked my way or, God forbid, a whole herd of them.

  “Hold up,” Frankie said quickly. “Let me ask,” he said, leaning back in his seat, all clever-like, sticking a hand through the closed window. “If you’re busy stopping my race, how are you gonna track down your midnight caller?”

  “So in the meantime, you can just tear up my backyard?” Granted, the digging didn’t actually appear in the real world, but it was the principle.

  On the other hand, we were talking about a murder.

  He had me. He had me over a barrel.

  “Fine,” I shot back, ker-chunking the car into gear. He was right. I couldn’t waste my half hour on cowboys, Cherokees, and bushwhackers. “But you are not getting away with this.”

  “Oh ye of little faith,” he said, his fingers catching the breeze.

  I gripped the wheel hard and steered up the side drive. “You purposely deceived me. This isn’t just your friends coming over for poker night. This isn’t a party in the yard.” It was a full-on ghostly gambling operation.

  It was something only a dirty, rotten criminal would do. Of course if I called him that, he’d only be flattered.

  He was making quite the afterlife for himself. In fact, he was making far greater strides while dead than I was in the real world.

  How depressing was that?

  “You don’t get it.” The gangster sat up straighter. “I’m not doing this to torture you. I need this. It’s high time I do something with my afterlife.”

  “Then find a hobby.” He could take up knitting for all I cared. Yoga. Zumba dancing. I readjusted my grip on the wheel as my car bounced over a rut in the road. “Anything that doesn’t mess up my property, in real life
or on the other side.”

  “Well, that leaves out all the fun stuff,” he said, adjusting his tie.

  “You don’t know until you’ve tried it,” I said, quoting one of my grandma’s favorite sayings, ignoring his dubious expression.

  I cranked down my window and stuck my hand out, waving at a few of my neighbors camped out on their porches as the land yacht rumbled down the long straight drive toward town.

  Once upon a time, my family had owned the thirty acres surrounding our house. But over the years, we’d sold it piece by piece. Now, modest houses sprouted up past my bare front lawn, where the peach orchard once stood.

  I ground to a halt when I saw a ghostly company of Union cavalry picking their way straight through Erma Brower’s summer tomatoes. I stared as they crossed the road in front of us.

  “They’re headed for my backyard, aren’t they?” I asked as one of the soldiers tipped his hat to us.

  “Relax,” Frankie drawled. “It’s not like it’s an invasion.”

  “It’s no wonder someone shot you in the forehead,” I grumbled, chugging the car back into gear.

  “Now who’s not being nice?” Frankie mused.

  The ancient Cadillac groaned as I took a left turn onto Rural Route 7. What I wouldn’t give for power steering. And a ghostly Keep Out sign for my backyard.

  I had to find some way to get a handle on Frankie’s extracurricular activities. When I’d made the deal to let him use my home as a base for his gang, I never imagined he’d take it so far. I’d seen glimpses of a good man behind his outlaw attitude. I’d trusted him to do the right thing.

  Now he was making a spectacle of me and my hospitality and it would only get worse. First it was inviting gangsters to hang out on my back porch, but soon that turned into a fully functioning casino and flapper parties. That had devolved into skinny-dipping in the back pond. And then today…

  I took a deep breath and tried not to think about the indecorous activities taking place near and hopefully not in my grandfather’s favorite fishing spot. I couldn’t worry about that right now. I had to focus on the job at hand and I couldn’t do that job without him.

  I glanced over at Frankie, who sat, happy as a clam at high tide, counting a wad of ghostly twenties.

  Something had to change. I just wasn’t sure how to get Frankie to work with me without resorting to extortion, or worse. He was better than that. I knew it. There had to be a moral fiber in him somewhere, even if it was only one and it was polyester.

  We sped through the wooded area west of town. Large old oak trees and leafy sassafras and sugar maples lined the road, their thick branches stretching overhead to form a canopy of green.

  I had to focus on the ghost at the Sugarland Heritage Society. For the next half hour at least. The preservationist headquarters occupied a historic property only a mile or so past the old Southern Spirits distillery, where I’d tackled my first ghost-hunting case. Perhaps that was good luck.

  My engine let out a pop and a wheeze as we crested a small hill.

  Frankie shot me a dubious look. “It sounds like something died in there.”

  “It’s an old engine. It has its quirks.” I tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. “Just like you.”

  Frankie smirked. “If you got paid for this job, maybe you could get a tune-up.” He drew a silver watch out of his suit pocket and flipped it open.

  “It’s not always about money,” I told him. What would the world be like if friends and neighbors, even strangers, demanded payment for every good deed? “It’s my moral duty to get to the bottom of this.”

  The gangster shook his head. “Moral duty don’t pay the rent,” he said, polishing the watch with his jacket.

  “Maybe not, but luckily, I already have a home. And a car. Even free garden-grown fruits and vegetables, thanks to our last ghost-hunting client.”

  “Don’t remind me.” The ghost snapped the watch closed, giving a small shudder at the memory of our last job.

  Yes, it had been scary to solve the old mystery of Rock Fall Mansion, even for the ghosts. But I was immensely grateful for the opportunity and for what I had now.

  So many people made do with less.

  I’d recently been one of them.

  Last summer, I’d ended things with Beau Wydell, the most eligible bachelor in three counties. He’d admitted to cheating on me shortly after he’d put some unwelcome moves on my sister. I’d ended our betrothal on the eve of our wedding, which was awful enough, but that hadn’t ended my problems.

  His mother, Virginia Wydell, took the rejection as a personal offense and made me pay dearly for it. She’d sued me for the cost of the lavish wedding she’d planned and, up until then, paid for. I’d had to sell most everything I owned. I’d nearly lost my home, and I still hadn’t quite regained my dignity.

  “I just hope we don’t run into Virginia,” I said. “She’s president of the society.”

  “How do you know that?” Frankie asked, as if I’d been meeting her secretly for lunch and bouts of hair braiding.

  It was unavoidable in a small town like this. “Some things you know just by breathing the air.”

  Besides, she’d been president for at least two decades. At this point, it seemed elections were a mere formality.

  Luckily this was Saturday, so we’d probably encounter more tour groups than anything. Perhaps I’d join one and make a quiet search of the property. I could break off if I saw a ghost in distress, or any ghost, really.

  My blinker click-clacked as we made a left at the regal stone entryway with its elegant white wood and gold-lettered sign.

  At the end of the drive stood a two-story clapboard historic home with a small parking lot out front. The building was originally a home for widows and orphans and had been handed over to the society back in the 1920s.

  A second after we turned onto the property, my car accelerated all on its own. “Frankie!” I hit the brakes, jerking us back. The car shuddered and kept rolling, slower this time, but still alarming. I turned to the ghost, wide-eyed. “What’s happening?”

  “Your car is a piece of junk,” he said, holding onto the door frame with one hand. At least he had the courtesy to appear as flustered as I was.

  I twisted around in my seat. I didn’t see any ghosts behind us, pushing. “Can a spirit take over my engine?” I demanded as we cruised slowly toward the haunted house.

  “No,” Frankie said. “Well, maybe,” he corrected. “You don’t get to blame everything on us.” He craned his neck forward when we caught our first good look at the house. It sat back from the road, behind beds of carefully cultivated native flowers.

  “Holy smokes. This job just got better,” he said, breaking into a grin. “Dream girl at two o’clock.”

  It wasn’t like I could stop the car. “Where?” I asked, struggling to follow Frankie’s ogling stare while steering straight. It was all I could do. We were still rumbling forward. I hadn’t touched the gas since I’d turned into the place.

  The ghost of a young woman watched us from an upstairs window. Her dark hair curled past her shoulders and, yes, I’d think she was rather pretty if I didn’t have other concerns. She brought a hand to her mouth when she caught us watching; then she fluttered her fingers in a shy wave.

  “Do you think she’s doing this?” I demanded.

  “I wish,” Frankie said, waving back. “It’s not all about you, you know.”

  “Focus,” I told him.

  Ghostly magnolia trees rose on both sides, limiting my view of anything beyond the driveway. I had to stay calm. I could handle this.

  “Oh, yeah. Did you see how she made sure her collar was covering her neck? She’s into me.” Frankie grinned ear to ear. “If you’d told me I was gonna meet her, I’d a done this job for free.”

  “You’re not here for a date.” If I only had a half hour with him, we were going to do this right. “We need to ask her about last night’s call,” I said, my voice rising as the car gave a shudderi
ng lurch. “And the break-in. We’re here to help.”

  As soon as I said it, the car slowed and seemed to calm.

  “I’d sure like to help her with a few things,” Frankie mused.

  “Frankie,” I admonished. Beyond the last of the trees, the lot stood empty save for a weathered van parked at the back of the lot. It must belong to a maintenance person. I’d assumed there’d be more people around on a Saturday. “You realize this was a home for widows and orphans.”

  “So?” he said, leaning an elbow out the closed glass window.

  Meanwhile I kept an eye out for more ghosts and tried not to read too much into the click-clicking that was now coming from my engine. Maybe it was the car. Hopefully the quick stop hadn’t broken anything.

  I adjusted my grip on the wheel. “Gangsters and innocent widows don’t mix.”

  “I’d like to test that theory,” he remarked.

  I turned into a parking spot at the front and tentatively stepped on the gas. The car lurched forward.

  “Watch it!” Frankie hollered as we careened straight over the parking barrier and onto the front lawn. I hit the brakes, turning the wheel. The land yacht narrowly missed the front porch rail as it reared up and onto the pristine front lawn. It crunched over a lovely garden border and into a patch of perfectly spaced begonias.

  “Stop, stop, stop!” I ordered my car, wrestling it to a halt an instant before it collided with the house itself. It gave a shuddering clank and I shoved the car into park before it got any more ideas.

  I killed the engine, hands shaking.

  “And you think horse racing is irresponsible,” Frankie said. “This car is the real menace.”

  “Is it bad?” I asked, struggling to open my door and see what damage we’d done.

  At least we hadn’t hit the house.

  Pink flower petals littered the ground. On shaky legs, I knelt to look at a piece of the stone garden border wedged under one of my front tires. The obnoxiously long hood of my car had taken out at least three begonias. “It could have been worse,” I said, clinging to the thought.

  I rested a shaking hand on my upper chest. I could fix this. I could replant the bushes. I could back my car out of the flower garden, if only I could stop freaking out. At least no one had come outside to yell at me.