The Haunted Heist Read online

  Frankie huffed. “I gotta admit I wasn’t sure about that guy. But now?” He gave a low whistle. “What a break! I haven’t been to the First Sugarland since I tried to rob it back in ’33.”

  I separated the print ads from the website mock-ups. “I’m not taking you.”

  “Don’t even start,” he said, leveling a finger in my direction. “This is the first interesting place you’ve been in a month.”

  A sliver of guilt cut through me. Before I’d trapped him, he’d had the run of the world. Now he couldn’t go anywhere unless I brought his urn along.

  “I took you to the flower market last week,” I offered, straightening a stack.

  He opened his arms. “Why?” he pleaded, a bit impatient for my taste.

  I stood with my work. “You said you wanted to see some girls with long stems.”

  The gangster rubbed his eyes. “That’s not what I meant and you know it,” he ground out as the temperature in the room dropped.

  “Please don’t give me a cold spot.” Not while I still wore my damp sweater. I placed my presentation in the worn leather satchel I’d saved from college. “I’m trying to look normal, businesslike. I can’t walk in there with your urn clanking in my purse.”

  If I’d been going anywhere else, I would have been glad to take him along.

  Frankie had the power to show me the supernatural world. With his help, I’d been able to see and interact with some of the ghosts here in town. We’d saved my house; we’d solved a murder. Two of them, actually. We’d made some positive changes in Sugarland, not that he cared about helping anyone but himself. And I had been trying to free him. It was just that nothing had worked yet.

  “You don’t know what it’s like.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “This is like cabin fever on top of house arrest.”

  “We’ll fix it,” I promised him, slinging the bag over my shoulder. After our last adventure, everything had changed. A wise ghost had told us the secret: We needed to find the one thing Frankie loved above all else. If we buried that object with his urn and ashes, he would be free.

  The gangster smirked and brushed some imaginary lint off the sleeves of his suit jacket. “Well, it just so happens that I need to go to the bank to find what I love most.”

  “Amazing coincidence,” I said, heading down the stairs.

  “It’s true,” he said, completely unaffected by my attempt at sarcasm. “Me and the South Town Gang was tunneling into the vault in the basement of the First Sugarland Bank the day before I died,” he said, as if he were telling me a bedtime story. “For all I know, Suds is still down there. If I could find him, he might know what happened to my favorite gun after I got shot.”

  “You already have a gun,” I said, reaching the bottom of the stairs.

  “Aha.” He held up a finger. “That’s not my favorite gun.”

  Sakes alive. I turned all the way around to face him. “Frankie, I can’t take a gangster into a bank.” It was a recipe for trouble.

  Frankie sniffed and straightened his shoulders. “It’s been three months. Three. And my dirt is still living in your kitchen. I know you got banged up on our last little adventure, but you’re recovered now. What’s it gonna take to get you to find my gun?” He stared at me as I thought. “I could have a real chance here,” he added.

  He said it like he believed it. “You truly think your favorite gun can set you free?”

  “It’s my lucky gun. I didn’t go anywhere without it,” he insisted. “It saved my life more than a few times, and I was holding onto it for dear life right before I died. That’s love. I need to know what happened to it.”

  It wasn’t love, it was crazy talk. I couldn’t believe I was actually going for this. But he seemed sincere, and I did want to help. “Okay,” I said quickly before I could change my mind. “I’ll take you to the bank.” I ignored his shout of victory. And the fist pump. “You can talk to Suds.” If he was even there. “You can even try to rob the place.” Frankie couldn’t actually touch the money anyhow. “But you cannot disturb me during my meeting.”

  Frankie shot me a broad grin. “Believe me, I’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

  Fine by me. Just as long as Reggie’s bank wasn’t on the menu.

  I placed Frankie’s urn in my brown hemp bag. Then, we headed out on Route 9 and stopped by my sister’s place.

  She wasn’t home, but I raided her closet anyway. Melody usually wore a size smaller than me in clothes and shoes, but I managed to squeeze into a sleek, professional navy blue pencil dress and found a pair of black pumps that worked. I used her hair dryer and her curling iron, and when I slipped on the matching blazer, you couldn’t even tell the dress didn’t zip all the way up the back. It appeared stylish and entirely appropriate, so I considered it a victory.

  Even if I couldn’t quite feel my toes.

  Lauralee’s uncle might have overlooked my odd house and wet self, but I’d show him how well I cleaned up.

  After all, in the South, lots of folks don’t mind crazy, but I didn’t think Bank President Reggie Thompson would want to hire it.

  Frankie leaned back in the passenger seat of my 1978 avocado-green Cadillac as we cut down Main Street and headed toward the town square.

  He eyed me, his arm braced on the bench seat between us. “You sure are stoked about working for the Man.”

  “My bank account has only eighty-seven dollars and twelve cents in it.” And I didn’t have anything else to sell.

  Frankie dug around in his pocket and pulled out a silver cigarette case. “Too bad gin’s legal these days. You’d make good money brewing that.”

  “Be serious. I’m an artist.” I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. “It’s the only thing I know how to do really well.” Which meant I needed this opportunity even more. Reggie’s plan to redesign all of the bank’s printed materials could provide a steady stream of work, a respectable income.

  He snapped the case closed. “You could stand to learn some new skills,” Frankie said, as if it were as easy as that. He held a cigarette to his mouth and struck a ghostly match. “There’s decent cash to be made in extortion, protection,” he said, lighting up.

  “Don’t you dare smoke in my car,” I said. He took a puff. I couldn’t smell the smoke at all, but it bugged me on principle. “Roll down the window.” Frankie shot me a pained look, and I remembered he couldn’t touch anything on the physical plane. At least he had the decency to stick his hand through the glass and let the ghostly smoke trail outside the car.

  “I’m not a criminal,” I reminded him, slowing for a group of women crossing the street to the café.

  “Yet,” he corrected, as if it were something to be achieved. He took a long drag off his smoke. “I’ll dig up some whopper secrets on these shop owners. I’ll teach you how to do some nice blackmail. You can get as creative as you like.”

  “Absolutely not.” I turned into the main square, glad to see a few parking spots left near the front of the bank. In case he missed the memo, “I don’t need your help.”

  He huffed, settling back in his seat. “That’s not what you said the last time you got in trouble.” He took another drag. “Frankie, show me this. Frankie, show me that.”

  “And I thank you sincerely,” I told him, meaning every word. He truly had helped me in my time of need. “But I’m ready to move on and be respectable.” I enjoyed making a difference when given the chance, but I also had a real life to live and I didn’t intend to spend most of it on the ghostly plane.

  “Fine. I don’t need to be leading you around all the time,” Frankie muttered, and for the first time I wondered if my sputtering career revival bothered him. It would mean spending less time with him, not relying on him. I hadn’t asked the ghost for so much as a peek at the other side since our last adventure.

  “Did you actually enjoy ghost hunting with me?” I teased, wondering if he’d ever admit it.

  “The shoot-outs weren’t bad,” he muttered, his brow furrowed a
nd his jaw ground tight. He might actually be pouting, I realized, as I homed in on a parking spot.

  The First Bank of Sugarland stood near the center of the town square, as it had for the past one hundred and fourteen years.

  It had been constructed at a time when society valued its craftspeople. Every door and window had been treated like a work of art, with impressive red brick facades and white limestone accents. A white cupola with an aged bronze roof crowned the historical building. After a lifetime of seeing it on an almost daily basis, it still impressed me.

  “I miss some of the ghosts I met,” I admitted. “I’d love to see Josephine and Matthew, but I have my life and they have their own…afterlives. It’s better for all of us if I focus on the land of the living.”

  The gangster glanced over his shoulder to the neatly kept grassy square behind us as I eased into a parking spot in front of the bank. “So I’m supposing you don’t want to know about the ghost in your backseat.”

  I almost rammed the curb. “That’s not funny.”

  “Who said I’m joking?” Frankie asked, his attention drawn to the empty area behind us. “Lookie here, it’s Lieutenant Brown, a son of Sugarland who defended our town from the Yankee invasion. Oh wait. Forget it. You don’t care about that stuff no more.”

  It was difficult to say if he was teasing or not. The only thing I observed was a velvet backseat that had seen better days. And while it was tempting to meet someone new and fascinating…

  The clock tower on City Hall next door began to chime eleven o’clock. That was my cue.

  I shoved the car into park and cut the engine. “Let’s turn over a new leaf,” I said, getting out of my car.

  He stayed where he was, having an animated conversation with…thin air.

  Only I knew better.

  And I’d almost forgotten my work samples.

  “Hey,” Frankie said as I gathered my portfolio from the center of the front seat. He hitched a thumb toward the empty seat behind him. “Did you know he fought at Mossy Creek? I always wanted to shoot a—” I slammed the car door.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I told myself. I had a normal, respectable life ahead of me. With any luck, it would start at the First Sugarland Bank.

  I took a deep, bracing breath, confident that I was fifteen minutes early and dressed well.

  The sun shone bright, but the temperature hadn’t broken forty degrees. I’d left my coat at home because let’s just say the one I found at the thrift shop wasn’t the kind of thing you’d wear to a business meeting or a bank or anywhere you wanted to be seen. In fact, I planned to sell it back as soon as possible.

  No matter. This morning, I’d walk with confidence. I let the chilly wind hit me and focused on the good.

  I had some amazing work to show the president of the bank. If this job panned out, I’d dust off my credit card, pay to fix my Mac, and get back to my old way of life.

  In the meantime…I placed one foot in front of the other.

  “You just walked right through the lieutenant’s horse,” Frankie said from behind me as I approached the three stone steps that led up to the polished mahogany doors of the bank.

  “I can’t feel a thing,” I said, which was wonderful. When I tuned in to the ghostly plane, touching them gave me an icky feeling.

  “Good, because you don’t want to see what you just stepped in.”

  “I don’t even want to see you right now,” I told the ghost gliding next to me.

  He cocked his head toward a stairway that led down to the basement of the bank. “Fine. I can take a hint.” He eyed the thick foundation that separated us from the rooms underneath First Sugarland. “I always wondered how close the boys got to that vault in 1933.”

  “Why don’t you go check on that?” I asked. Anything to get him out of my hair and keep my head clear.

  “No sweat,” he said, heading down that way. “Now I wish I had some explosives,” he added, disappearing through the limestone foundation.

  It wasn’t my problem anymore. Nothing on the ghostly plane could touch me, I assured myself as I entered the busy bank lobby.

  Chapter 3

  Teller windows lined the back of the high-ceilinged room, and a carved mahogany table stood at the center, ready with deposit slips, pens, and anything else customers might need.

  The place smelled like old wood and fresh popcorn, just like it had when I came here with my mom as a child. Of course, my eyes were drawn to the reception desk at the front, and the red and white striped popcorn cart parked beside it. Today it was manned by Reggie’s daughter, Em. She sighed as she piled the fluffy kernels into bags, her blond hair slicked back into a fancy twist, her diamond earrings sparkling in the light of the original brass lamp fixtures.

  She turned and placed a bag of yummy-looking popcorn into a basket on her desk as I approached.

  “Hi, Em. Smells great,” I told her, resisting the urge to snag a treat. Maybe I’d slip one into my bag after the meeting, as a reward.

  She snorted. “Three hundred calories’ worth of delicious butter substitute,” she said airily. She began shoveling popcorn into another bag. “Might as well tape it to your butt and skip a step.”

  I didn’t quite know what to say to that.

  On the upside, this was the most Reggie’s daughter had spoken to me in years. Whenever I ran into her at Lauralee’s holiday events, she usually just played on her phone. “Well, it’s nice to see you back in town,” I said, trying to steer the conversation in a more positive direction. “I’m sure you’ll get to meet a lot of people, working here at the bank.”

  She gazed at me from beneath heavy lids. “Yes. I’m the greeting peon. Mother would be so proud.”

  I couldn’t decide if she was desperately unhappy or just a jerk. Maybe both. Either way I wouldn’t hold it against her; the poor girl had been through a lot. “I was so sorry to hear about your mother’s passing.”

  Her expression softened. “Thanks.” Then her defenses snapped back into place. “She’d die all over again if she knew I was working in this backwater dump.”

  I felt my smile go wooden. It was one thing to have a bad couple of days or even years, but to disrespect my town? “Bless your heart,” I said, stepping past her desk, determined to end this conversation on a civil note.

  She gave me a quizzical look, as if she didn’t quite understand this facet of Southern social manners, but I was saved from an uncomfortable exit when Reggie’s voice boomed across the lobby. “Verity!” he called, as if I were a close friend. As folks said, Reggie Thompson had never met a stranger.

  He shook my hand warmly. “I neglected to ask you this morning. How’s your mother?”

  This seemed to be the standard Sugarland greeting for anyone old enough to have been a customer at my childhood lemonade stand. “Mom’s great,” I told him. “She and my stepdad have their RV parked in Winter Haven, Florida.”

  “Tell her I said hello and that I miss her strawberry peach pie.” He grinned. “That was some extraordinary baking your mom did. Every church bake sale, I’d snap one up.” He led me toward the back of the bank. “My office is this way. Come on back.” He opened up a nine-foot-tall door near the teller windows. “After you.”

  I slowed as I admired the portraits of past bank presidents lining the hall. I’d never been back this way. “It must be wonderful to be able to come back to town and take charge of a piece of Sugarland history,” I told him, my heels clicking against the original pink marble floor. “There’s a steadiness to this place, a sense of tradition.”

  Reggie nodded. “It’s good to be home.”

  Stan, the bank manager, eased down the narrow hallway behind us. “Excuse me,” he said, stroking his mustache.

  “You shaved off your beard,” I said. Stan, who had graduated high school a few years ahead of me, had always been clean-shaven until last year when he’d grown a hipster beard and mustache.

  Stan gave a small shrug and a conspiratorial wink. “Reggie di
dn’t like the Fu Manchu style.”

  “When the Secretary of the Treasury starts wearing one, you can too,” Reggie joked.

  Stan glanced to the portrait of Cotton P. Cutshaw, first president of the First Bank, who sported a handlebar mustache. “Maybe I should grow one of those,” Stan commented as Reggie frowned. The young manager gave a quick grin. “Maybe not. If you’ll excuse me, I have to go see what security needs downstairs.”

  Reggie took a deep breath. “It’s for his own good,” he said, loud enough for Stan to hear. He glanced toward the lobby. “He’s just stubborn, like EmmaJane.”

  “EmmaJane?” I asked, not quite sure whom he meant.

  “My daughter,” he said, leading me to the office closest to the stairway and holding the door open for me. “Her mother and I named her EmmaJane. So that’s what I’m calling her now that we’re home. Believe me, she’s not happy about it.”

  “I don’t imagine so.” You couldn’t just force a girl to change her name.

  Or perhaps you could if you were Reggie.

  “She’ll be fine,” he said, not worried in the least. His office was large, with wood-paneled walls and ornate plasterwork on the high ceiling. “EmmaJane’s a good girl, but she’s had it too easy.” Reggie stepped around his imposing wood desk to take a seat in the tall red leather chair behind it while I tucked myself into the guest chair. Behind him loomed the tall, wood-trimmed side windows of the bank. He rested his elbows on his desk. “Her mother and I spoiled her, but that’s all over now. I told her we’re going back to her roots. She’s going to earn her salary at this bank. No more credit cards or freeloading. She’s going to work hard and live simple.”

  “So she wants to be a banker,” I said, pulling out my work samples. “That’s nice.”

  Reggie leaned back in his chair, the leather crackling under him. “She doesn’t want to be anything.”