Authors: Maggie Toussaint
It was my turn to look away. I studied my hands for a moment. “Thanks for coming to my rescue. I don’t know how long I would have been trapped in the void otherwise. Thank you for knowing what to do.”
“I didn’t do much. You listened. That’s a skill in itself.”
“It could have been much worse. All those people could have touched me with my senses wide open. I could have been transported to the hospital and trapped with all those heightened emotions. You saved me, and I’m grateful.”
“Hush up. You’re making me turn all red. I did what any mother would do.”
She’d done more than that, but she would never admit it. If they’d started pouring drugs into me, I could’ve ended up as crazy as Uncle Emerald.
Best if I changed the subject. I fumbled in my pocket for my pendant. “The catch failed on my necklace.”
Mama extended her hand, palm up. “I’ll repair the catch, if you like. Leave it here.”
I pocketed the moldavite stone. “I can’t leave it behind. It means too much to me.”
“We really need to talk about so many things,” she said.
My breath hitched. I was at her mercy, but I needed a respite from the dreamwalker campaign. “I told you everything that happened. I need to get some rest so that I feel whole again. Then we can talk about the big picture.”
A car door closed outside. I turned to the welcome sound. My daughter breezed through the open doorway, her honey-brown braid flying like a kite tail behind her. “Mom, Mom, you all right?”
Larissa dove into my arms. I hugged her close, needing the physical contact as much as she did. “Now I am.”
“I felt it when something happened to you,” my daughter said in a rush. “I was sitting in math class, and suddenly you weren’t there.”
My mouth dropped open. I stammered out an apology. “I’m . . . I’m . . . I’m sorry, love. I never meant for anything to happen to either of us.”
Larissa’s arms tightened around me. “I’m so glad to see you.”
My father walked in behind Larissa. He ruffled my hair. “You all right?”
After Mama’s warning about Daddy’s health, I studied him. His color was off, and his gait was uneven. Had my trouble today done that to him? My skin prickled with guilt. “Fine, Dad.”
His gentle eyes filled with emotion. “You gave us a scare today.”
Guilt-laden thoughts clogged my head. My actions had put the whole family at risk and nearly cost me my life. My voice came out at half-volume. “I scared myself.”
“Wait for me!” My plus-sized friend, reporter Charlotte Ambrose, careened through the door. Her lime-green slacks and green and white polka-dotted blouse added a whimsical zest to the kitchen. Light glinted off her narrow glasses. She’d overdone her makeup again, with her drawn-on eyebrow arches giving her a surprised expression.
Charlotte’s reporter bag dangled in one hand; keys and a smart-looking purse occupied her other hand. “Don’t start without me!”
“Char, how’d you find me?” I asked as she hurried to the nearest chair.
She huffed a few minutes, catching her breath. “You’re kidding, right? The only place you’d go when you’re in trouble is this kitchen. Hell, half the county comes here to heal up when bad things happen. I could fill the newspaper pages with a log of the people who visit this house.”
My heart sank. White spots danced before my eyes. This was
my
family,
my
sanctuary. We weren’t newspaper fodder.
What would govern Charlotte’s actions?
Our years of friendship?
Or her new ambition to be a big-time reporter?
“But you wouldn’t.” I caught her gaze and held it. The bolt of unease accompanying her words had shaken me. Of all the people in the world I trusted most, Charlotte ranked right up there with my parents. But her loyalty had never been tested like this. I couldn’t predict what she would do, and that uncertainty tied knots in my stomach. “You wouldn’t abuse your welcome here and betray those people, would you?”
Charlotte waved dismissively. The big frog face on her chunky watch flashed before my eyes. “Oh, you never know what I might do. I’m a woman of mystery and adventure, and I’m dying to hear about your bit of fun this afternoon.” She frowned at me. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“Hey, Charlotte,” Mama said. “Want some tea?”
“Love some.” My friend shot Mama a bright smile. “There’s nothing like a cup of your tea. You put some secret ingredient in it, right? I’ve never had anything like it anywhere else.”
“I blend it myself.” Mama’s mouth tightened.
Did it finally occur to Mama that Charlotte might bring the wrong sort of attention to her cottage in the woods? For years I’d wondered about my parents’ source of income. They’d evaded any questions I asked point-blank, fueling my concerns that something not-quite-legal was going on here.
“You could make a fortune if you marketed this brew.” Charlotte eased into a wooden chair. It creaked under her bulk but held. She turned to me. “Now, you got some ’splaining to do, Miz Baxley. Why are you holding out on your best friend? Bernard would have scooped me if I hadn’t been glued to my new police scanner. He and the sheriff are like this.” She crossed her fingers to demonstrate the intimate connection.
The mental image of virile Wayne spooning with crusty Bernard tickled me. I laughed from deep within my belly, shooting a spurt of tea out my nose, barely missing Larissa, who still occupied my lap. I clamped my hand over my face and caught Charlotte’s eye. She threw her head back and let out a peal of laughter, which infected all of us.
When we pulled ourselves together again, Mama nodded encouragingly. “It’s like old times to hear you girls laughing like that. We need more laughter in this house.”
I hugged my daughter and realized Mama was right. Laughing took the knots right out of my stomach. The weight on my chest lifted as well, and I felt human again.
“So? You gonna tell me what happened or am I supposed to connect the invisible dots?” Charlotte asked.
I made an empty-handed gesture. “Nothing to tell. I was finishing up a landscaping job at the north end and dug up a human skull.”
“Sounds like something to me.” My friend slapped a narrow notepad on the table. “Tell me more.”
My newfound lightness of heart subsided. “I want you to be successful, Charlotte, but I have to look out for myself. My client, Carolina Byrd, is very low profile. She doesn’t like to be in the news. She will be upset enough as it is.”
“Have you told her yet?”
“No. And I’m not saying another word until you put that pad of paper away. Get the official incident report from the sheriff.”
Charlotte’s lower lip jutted out. I could imagine the wheels of pros and cons whirling in her brain. She wanted the story, but I was her best friend. Friendship won out, and she stuffed the notepad back in her purse. Only the mugs of tea remained on the worn table.
Charlotte leaned forward, expectation pulsing from her in waves. “Reporter mode is turned off. Dish.”
“Promise this won’t go in the paper.”
“Do you see me writing anything down?”
“What’s the capital of Montana?”
“Helena. What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Everything. You remember stuff. Unless you promise, my lips are sealed.”
“Come on, Aunt Charlotte, promise,” Larissa urged. “I want to hear what happened.”
“All right already. I surrender.” Charlotte’s hands stabbed the air. “Y’all are relentless. Come visit me in the poorhouse because Bernard will crush me under his scrawny heel.”
“You can handle Bernard,” I said with confidence. “But never turn your back on Virg Burkhead. He tased me today.”
I heard my father’s sharp intake of breath from across the room, felt Larissa stiffen in my lap. Since both of them had enhanced perceptions, they knew that short-circuiting someone with heightened senses would be awful. Every nerve ending, normal and paranormal, would short out, leaving the recipient blind, deaf, dumb, and mute. Mama had mentioned Daddy knew something had happened, so maybe he had an inkling of the distress I felt.
My fingers sought the smooth stone in my pocket.
“Get out!” Charlotte exclaimed. “We’ve got a trigger-happy deputy and I can’t write about it? No fair.”
“I’m fine, thanks.” I shot my friend a sharp look. It crossed my mind that she might not be strong enough to refrain from betraying my confidence. I could have stopped right there. But I told them about my deal with the sheriff to become a consultant. “If you write about this, it could mess things up for me. I need this extra income. Larissa needs braces, and my house needs a new well pump.”
“Dang.” Charlotte guzzled her tea. “How soon will you know if you got the job? I can write about it then, right?”
“My arrangement with the sheriff is private. I don’t want to call attention to myself. I need to earn my own way.”
“We can help.” Mama and Daddy linked arms over by the sink, faded tie-dyed curtains framing their gray heads.
Temptation reared its head. I could become my parents’ daughter again. I could move in here with them, as they wanted, and let them help me raise Larissa. It would be much easier with someone sharing the load. But they’d be calling the shots. This was their home, not mine. My resolve to obtain financial independence solidified. “I appreciate your help, I do, but I need to stand on my own two feet.”
“Wayne will try to weasel out of the deal,” Charlotte said. “How do we know he won’t suppress the findings?”
“I’m not going to snoop around Dr. Sugar’s morgue, and you shouldn’t either. There’s something about that man that makes my skin slide.”
My friend shuddered. “He makes everyone’s skin slide. What about the other angle? The historical angle.”
“What about it?” I shrugged. “Wayne’s gonna contact the hysterical committee.”
“And the hystericals will check their archive.” My friend’s face lit with amusement. “But we can beat them at their research game.”
“We can?” My stomach tightened again, and my fingers closed around the moldavite stone in my pocket. I felt a flash of the old Charlotte coming on.
“Yep. Your grandmother had a more extensive archival collection than the historical society. All we need to do is comb through your living room bookshelf.”
“Huh.” There was merit in her idea. I’d inherited Grandmother’s house. Ever since I’d moved in, I’d been meaning to offer her collection of reference books to the historical society, but I hadn’t gotten around to it. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Because I’m the brains of this operation.” Charlotte stood. “Come on, let’s go. We can find this information before they start looking.”
Never get between a determined Charlotte and her goal
had been my motto for most of my youth. People wrongly assumed Charlotte was mentally slow because her girth restricted her momentum. All the hair raising and trouble we’d ever gotten into as kids had been her idea. I’d been her trusty sidekick in our capers. In the last ten years, though, she’d taken the criticism to heart, withdrawn socially, and gradually acceded to people’s perceptions of her.
Recently, the tables had turned. I’d helped her move up in stature at the paper by giving her first access to the Maisie Ryals story. The change in status had invigorated my friend. Now she had an idea that would secure the consulting job I wanted. I didn’t have to think long about jumping on the Charlotte train. “Great idea to do our own research.”
Larissa scrambled from my lap and tugged me to my feet. I glanced over at my parents. “Y’all wanna come?”
“We belong here, Baxley,” Daddy said. “But you and I need to talk.”
“I know, I know. We will. Just not today.”
“Don’t leave it too long.”
Winging at the wistful note in his voice, I drew in a guilty breath. “Soon.”
“Don’t rush off,” Mama said. “I’ve got a pot of soup in the fridge. Stay for dinner?”
I hugged her. “Next time. I promise.”
A pulse of something dark flashed through me at the touch. I glanced up and saw wariness in my mother’s sad eyes. Something else was bothering her. Something they’d been hiding from me.
“We’ll come for dinner tomorrow,” I conceded.
Larissa chattered about a new boy at school all the way home, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the dark flash. What could be so terrible that my parents weren’t telling me? I knew my father wanted me to take over the dreamwalking business, but it seemed something else was afoot. Something dark and twisted. Something they were fighting on their own.
Something they couldn’t mention in front of Charlotte and Larissa.
A sneeze ripped through my body, followed by two more in rapid succession. I set aside the dog-eared journal of a rice plantation owner and grabbed a tissue. Dusk was falling outside my windows, and my empty stomach expected dinner. Mama’s soup sounded awfully good right about now. I shouldn’t have let my pride stop me from bringing some home. “Searching through these records could take a very long time. We don’t even know what we’re looking for.”
Charlotte wrinkled her freckled nose. “It would help if we knew more about that parcel of land. Did Mrs. Byrd tell you anything about the property’s history?”
“No. It didn’t come up during our conversations. She only spoke to me to indicate which plants she wanted where. She even specified the height of her foundation plantings. It cost her more to start out with larger plants, but she wanted the plantings to look finished when she moved in.”
My friend tsked. “Sounds like a hard person to work with.”
“Truthfully, it was a relief to work with someone who didn’t keep changing her mind. I admire Carolina for her accomplishments. She runs that factory in Macon, takes care of her special-needs kid, and manages to stay trim and attractive.”
Charlotte tapped her pencil against the tome she was perusing. “Is she old money or new?”
Inwardly, I groaned. Nothing good could come of this avenue of conversation. I busied myself returning the journal to the shelf and making another selection. “I don’t gossip about my clients. Particularly ones that owe me money. The world is too small.”