southern ghost hunters 02 - skeleton in the closet Page 4

  The older detective approached, wearing a stony expression. He carried something in a clear plastic baggie. Melody trailed a short distance behind.

  "Did you find the pink notebook?" I asked.

  Marshall seemed way too pleased at that. "What do you know about it?"

  "Melody told me," I said, shooting my sister a glance. I assumed she'd mentioned it to him.

  The older officer cast an indulgent, self-satisfied smirk my way. "I think you know something you're not letting on."

  Marshall dangled the bag in front of me and jiggled it a little. It held a set of car keys, a library key on a white plastic fob, and a folded-up program from the reenactment yesterday. He didn't have the notebook.

  "Pete," Ellis said, stepping in between us, "let's focus on the task at hand."

  "I always do." He snorted, his attention running coolly over Ellis before turning it back to us. "You can go for now." To me, he added, "Don't leave town."

  I caught Ellis's eye and nodded a quick good-bye. He had his hands full on this one. Not for the first time, I was glad to have him on my side.

  Melody and I walked out the back, glad to avoid the body.

  We made it through the rear corridor and down the stairs. "He's acting like just because you found the body, you killed her in cold blood," Melody whispered under her breath.

  "Well, you know me. Public enemy number one."

  She gripped her purse strap tighter. "I was there, too. I could be a murderer too," she said, as if it were a competition.

  "Don't say that too loud," I cautioned as we reached the back door.

  "I just feel so bad for Darla," Melody said. "She was a good person."

  We walked out and saw Montgomery Silas pulling into the lot. The historical director appeared frazzled as he jerked his car to a stop and exited the vehicle.

  If he was worried about today's brunch, we were about to make things a whole lot worse. "I have something to tell you," Melody began, approaching his car.

  He rushed over to her. "Melody! I'm so glad to see you safe. What a terrible tragedy." He'd missed a button on his shirt and his jacket was askew, as if he'd hurried to put them both on and arrive here as soon as possible.

  "How did you hear about it?" I asked, joining them.

  He straightened his jacket and eyed the building behind us. "My downstairs neighbor knocked on my door after her mother heard it go over the police scanner."

  "Of course." This was Sugarland, after all.

  "They didn't say who they found…inside," he added, cringing.

  In all fairness, there was no good way for him to ask the question.

  Melody touched his arm. "It was Darla Grace."

  He drew a sharp breath, before he nodded, somber. "Did they say when or how?"

  "It must have been sometime after I went home last night. I left her alone," my sister said, her voice laced with guilt. My heart ached for her. She shouldn't blame herself.

  "It's not your fault," he said, shell-shocked. He stared at the back entrance of the library without really seeing it. Absently, he drew a bow tie out of his pocket and began winding it around his neck. "We can rally. We've lost part of the morning, but I'm going to go talk to the police." He tied the bow tie into place and began smoothing his collar over it. "I wonder if we can still go on with the event."

  "You've got to be kidding," I said. "Darla is dead." Right in the middle of his display.

  He looked to Melody for confirmation. "I'm sorry. I'm not thinking." He ran a hand over his face. "I don't know how to act. I'm better with facts than I am with people." He gave a small, scattered laugh. "This is why we have Sheila." Sheila Ward served as our library director. Unfortunately, she was out of town for a family emergency, and that left Montgomery in charge.

  "I'll make some calls to cancel the event," Melody said. "Maybe later, we can think of some special way to honor Darla."

  "Of course," he said, straightening. He re-tucked his shirt into his pants. He'd forgotten his belt. "You don't need to take this on. I'll do it. I'll make those calls. I'll talk to the police and then handle everything from here. You two girls get some rest," he said. "Take care of yourselves."

  Poor Montgomery. I wondered who would take care of him as he strode unsteadily into the library.

  We watched him go. "Is he going to be okay?" I asked.

  Melody nodded. "He's an odd duck, but he's a stand-up guy. He'll handle the police and the History channel. And Virginia Wydell."

  I didn't envy his job in the slightest.

  My sister and I parted with a big hug. "You're welcome to hang out at my place," I told her. She didn't have to be alone right now.

  Melody pulled away. "If it's all the same to you, I'd like to go home and take a nap."

  "Of course." Whatever she needed.

  We parted ways after making promises to talk soon.

  My car started with a wheezing chug, but it did start. I jammed it into gear and steered past the crowd gathering out in front of the library, mainly the older folks in town who manned their police scanners as though they were on the force. They'd called in the weekday morning McDonald's crowd, who were sipping coffee in take-out cups. A reporter for the Shady Oaks Extended Living Center Gazette lingered on the front steps. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if the day tour bus from the senior center pulled up.

  As for me, I was glad to make my escape.

  I'd dealt with murder before, but never up close. And never anyone I knew. Darla had given her all to this event, and then some. She deserved justice, appreciation…a period of mourning, which was tough to have in the middle of a crowd.

  I returned home to find everything the same as I'd left it, only it felt like so much had changed. I opened the door and welcomed the sight of Lucy tottering out to greet me, her little body wriggling with each step. I picked her up and buried my nose in the soft white stripe on her head. "Life is precious, sweetie."

  She grunted in agreement as I stroked her head. The white fur made a little diamond shape right between her eyes and slicked to a darling white stripe down her nose. I swore the cute fairy had blessed her. She snuggled in tight, and I just held her for a minute. Pets always know what you need to make you feel better.

  Yet my mind kept going back to what I'd seen after I lifted that table skirt at the library, the blood and the knife. Darla's lifeless eyes.

  She'd died for…something.

  We just didn't know what.

  I let out a slow breath and carried Lucy down the hall. "The sad thing is, if Darla made an important discovery last night, it's probably gone now." Lucy snorted in what I assumed was agreement. "The killer would have taken it, and her notebook as well, to cover his tracks." I stopped. "I don't know what to do." I supposed there was nothing I could do. Ellis and Marshall were the professionals.

  I sighed and resumed my trip toward the kitchen, thinking an ice-cold glass of water might help me think, when the skunk squirmed and scrambled to escape my embrace. I eased her onto the floor and soon saw the reason for her sudden change of mood.

  Frankie lounged on my kitchen island. Brooding.

  "It's about time you stopped gallivanting," he said, sliding down. "You've got promises to keep."

  "What?" I asked, momentarily startled.

  He approached me with a confident swagger and clear expectations. "You said you'd unground me today."

  Oh, Lordy. Today was not the best day. "I said I'd try."

  "Well, then. Let's get to it. Your neighbors have been dropping off supplies all morning." He turned and walked through my back wall and out onto the porch.

  It would only encourage him if I followed. I did it anyway, curious to see what my neighbors had brought.

  And heavens to Betsy, had the good people of Orchard Street heeded my calls. I stopped short when I saw the glorious mound of highly unscientific supplies stacked on my back porch.

  The gangster passed straight into the pile and stopped knee-deep. He held out his arms. "Ta-da."


  We had two aquariums—someone must have misunderstood. Two aquarium nets. I'd requested those. Enough Tupperware to enter a cooking contest, a shovel, spare measuring cups, and even a plastic baby pool shaped like a turtle.

  For research purposes, of course.

  Never mind that any self-respecting researcher would have taken one look at my equipment and hightailed it the other way.

  Frankie let out a low whistle. "I ain't never been a science guy, but I gotta tell you, this is a beautiful sight."

  "It is something." I tried to be stern, but couldn't help the smile that crept up on me. This would all be quite useful for our experiment. Despite everything that had happened lately, I had great neighbors.

  Naturally, Frankie thought my lopsided grin was all about him. "I knew you'd see it my way," he gloated.

  I rolled my eyes and reluctantly picked up the shovel. We'd see soon enough whether I could truly unearth Mr. Obnoxious.

  According to the report, our first step was to gather the dirt into a plastic container.

  "There's no guarantee this will work," I warned. Although I had to admit I might almost, sort of, maybe miss him a smidge if it did.

  Which didn't make any sense at all.

  I carried the shovel down off the porch and left it near the flower beds. Then I made a second trip for the kiddie pool and the aquarium nets. We'd leave the Tupperware and measuring cups for now. We didn't have any Frankie to measure or store yet.

  The morning had grown warm. We hadn't had a day under eighty degrees yet this fall, which was good because I could still wear my sundresses. I'd held three back from the estate sale and wore them on a regular rotation. The purple one I favored today would hopefully keep me cool as I worked.

  "Be careful," Frankie warned, before I'd even positioned the pool by the rosebushes at the back of the house.

  "Of what?" I slid the toy up against the bricks that bordered the flower beds. "Splashes the turtle is plastic. He's not going to hurt anything."

  "Easy now." Frankie reached for Splashes, as if he could somehow direct his placement by sheer will. "You think this is jake?"

  I had no idea what he was talking about. "Frankie," I said, losing patience as a trickle of sweat already ran down my back, "this is the most un-jake thing you'll ever see."

  His expression grew stony. "You don't even know what 'jake' means."

  "True. But I'm standing here in my backyard, wearing one of my last nice dresses, ready to shovel my flower bed into a kiddie pool for you, so why don't you at least pretend to be grateful?"

  He muttered something I was sure I didn't want to hear as I turned and got to work.

  Of course the gangster's relative silence didn't last for long. As soon as my spade hit the dirt under my largest, most beautiful rosebush, he made a noise like I'd lopped off one of his toes. "Argh! Wait! Back up a few inches."

  I scooped up a healthy portion of dirt. "No. This is where I dumped you."

  He flailed his hands as I hefted my shovelful of dirt into the baby pool. "You're off target."

  "No, I'm not." I went back for another round.

  My shovel hit the ground and Frankie gasped like I'd swung it at the Mona Lisa. "You weren't paying attention like I was."

  Oh my word. He was such a backseat…excavator. "Fine." I moved a few inches back, even though I knew I was right. "Here?"

  "Maybe," he said, skirting around me. "I think so. Can you see a difference in the dirt?"

  It was regular black potting soil. "You mean does some of it look like you?"

  Frankie's hands flew to his throat. "Are you actually making a joke? Is this funny to you?"

  I scooped up another shovelful of dirt in the location where I'd originally wanted to start. "Nothing is funny about this. Believe me."

  "Then dig right here," he said, pointing to a totally different spot two inches over from the one he'd shown me before.

  "Keep this up and I'll show you another place I can put this shovel," I groused.

  Still, I scooped exactly where he said and then transferred the dirt to the growing pile in the kiddie pool behind me.

  "You missed a spot," Frankie said.

  "No, I didn't," I said automatically. I turned around to look. "Where?"

  He pointed. "See that little clump on the brick? There could be parts of me in there."

  I captured it with my bare hands and transferred it to the pile. I really did care.

  Until he opened his mouth again.

  "You need to dig deeper," he instructed. "You hosed me in good."

  I squinted at him through the glare of the sun. He wasn't even sweating. "I'm aware."

  Frankie and I kept at it until I was exhausted from shoveling a large, deep hole, and he was satisfied we'd scooped up every speck of dirt that could have possibly touched one of his ashes.

  Although I was pretty sure he didn't have any more knowledge than I did as to where they could all be.

  "This good?" I asked, wiping the sweat from my brow. It smeared with the dirt from my hand, no doubt creating a lovely brown streak down my face. Two of my rosebushes were exposed down to the roots, I smelled like an ox, and I had serious doubts about my ability to lose the crick in my back and stand straight ever again.

  Frankie touched his fingers together. "You may continue with the experiment."

  "Gee, thanks," I said, going for the hose.

  Our elementary expert called for the dirt to be mixed thoroughly with water, the theory being that once the soil was soaked, the heavy earth would separate and fall to the bottom of the pool while the light ashes would float.

  Then we'd scoop up the ashes with thin mesh aquarium nets and somehow produce a Frankie.

  To be dried in Tupperware and eventually returned to his urn.

  I adjusted my nozzle to a heavy spray and began hosing down the soil in the pool.

  Frankie hovered nearby. "You are good at this part," he mused. "All that hosing ashes into the dirt practice really paid off."

  Maybe I wouldn't miss him when he was gone. "You realize I'm trying to help you."

  I heard the crackle of tires on my rock driveway a few seconds before Ellis's squad car rumbled into view. He parked in back, next to my ancient avocado-green Cadillac, and I could tell he was trying not to stare as he closed his door and approached us. He'd definitely seen me look better.

  He still wore his uniform and had most likely come straight from the library. "Doing some gardening?" he quipped.

  "More like penance," I told him, keeping my hose aimed at the swirling, muddy mass in the pool. "We think this might be the key to releasing Frankie's spirit."

  "Are you sure you're not wearing him?" he joked, rubbing brushing a spot of dirt off my shoulder.

  I smiled at that. "Don't even get him started."

  Ellis cocked his head. "Do you have a second?" he asked, growing serious. "I need your help."

  I cut the hose and Frankie groaned. "You were about to overflow anyway," I told the gangster. I turned to Ellis. "Let's talk in private," I said, motioning him over toward the porch. "This dirt needs time to settle."

  Ellis joined me and we took the back steps together. "We looked for Darla's pink notebook," he said. "It's gone."

  I'd figured that when I saw Marshall's evidence bag. "I don't know what she could have found that would drive a person to murder."

  "That's the million-dollar question," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. He suddenly looked very tired. He was polite enough not to mention the stack of Tupperware on my porch as I brushed the dirt from my dress and led him into the kitchen.

  I closed the door, wishing I could offer him a seat and some sweet tea, but I couldn't afford a kitchen set. "Let's sit on the couch," I said, showing him into my back parlor. I now had two pieces of furniture in the room, thanks to an adventure my sister had sent me on last week. Melody's friend had paid me in used furniture after I solved a ghostly mystery in her resale shop. I didn't mind. I loved my new-to-me purple c
ouch. So did Lucy, although right now she was trying to hide under one of the pillows. Her stealth act didn't quite work with her tail sticking out.

  "Hi, Lucy," he said, giving her a loving stroke on her flank. She flinched and disappeared completely behind the big pillow. "We had some good times," he said. "Am I that easy to forget?"

  "It's not you," I assured him, touched that he cared what my skunk thought of him. "Frankie's getting her stirred up. Lucy doesn't care much for the supernatural, and she's still getting used to his moods."

  He nodded. "About last night, the coroner thinks Darla died between three and five in the morning."

  My heart sank. "Shortly after she called Melody."

  "We'll know more after the autopsy tomorrow morning. Whoever did it also stole the security camera outside. We don't have any witnesses." He paused. "Or at least none that we can talk to."

  A flutter began in my stomach. I knew where this was going.

  Ellis leaned an arm over the back of the couch. "I need your help, Verity."

  Oh my. "This isn't a habit I want to encourage," I said, even if I could talk Frankie into helping me. It took a lot of his strength to show me the other side. "I'm not a professional ghost hunter."

  "You're good at it," he pressed.

  "I almost got us killed last time." He'd hired me to clear out some ghosts in a property he was renovating. It hadn't exactly gone smoothly. "I've never talked to such a new ghost." I didn't even know if Darla could be found. "And aren't you the one who agreed I shouldn't be doing this?"

  He shook his head. "You're right," he conceded. "At some point, this has to stop. But not tonight. We need to know what happened in that library. You don't have to talk to Darla. I'll take any witness you can find. The building has got to be haunted," he said. "I've heard stories since I was a kid."

  "Well, of course." Sugarland Library had served as a field hospital during the Civil War. No doubt a few well-loved, long-deceased patrons chose to hang around as well. But that didn't mean I could go in there and start chatting up the local ghost population. "The library has crime-scene tape all over it. I'm not even allowed in there."

  Ellis fixed his gaze on me. "It also has a twenty-four-hour police presence, and I'm on the force." Right on cue, his radio squawked. The detective's voice took over the line, yelling at somebody. He flipped it off and stood. "Marshall is serious about protecting his crime scene. But I'm on guard duty this evening."