Spirits of Spring (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 4) (14 page)

“My car? They trashed my car?
No, Grandma was
right—there’s no freakin’ way I would have smashed up my
own car. Never in a million years!
There aren’t enough drugs
in the world to make me do something like that. I put so much
time and money into restoring that thing. It was my baby!
I
think I solved my own murder, though. I found someone taking
a crowbar to it and went completely bat shit on them. They
probably killed me in self-defense!”

“You really think so? Did you have any enemies who
would have wanted to get back at you like that?” Solving his
murder couldn’t be
that
easy, could it?
But was it really even
necessary to solve it if just knowing that he didn’t commit
suicide was enough to get him to move on? Who was I kidding?
Not even myself, that’s who. I would never be happy if I didn’t
know the whole story behind his mysterious death.
Curiosity,
meet risk taking cat.

“Not that I know of but you have to remember the kind
of business I was in. I could have made enemies that I didn’t
know I made. Plus, the last twenty four hours of my life are still
a complete and utter blank, remember?”

I watched with amusement as Coco walked out of the
bedroom and leapt onto the futon between Clay and me. She
seemed able to see him but aware of the fact that he was
different.
With her furry little face cocked to one side, she
made tiny little yipping noises in his direction. Then she would
turn to me and let out one long meow before repeating the
process. When Clay attempted to pet her, she hissed and ran
off. He sure had a way with the ladies.

“Of course I remember but I think if you can tell me a
little more about your life, we can find the missing piece that
led to your death. Now that you know that there’s a pretty
good chance that you didn’t commit a mortal sin, are you
willing to give this whole moving on thing another shot?”

A flicker of doubt swept through Clay’s eyes but he
nodded his head anyway. “Sure, whatever you think is best,
Ruby. I’m just a ghost—
you
are the ghost expert.
Where do
you want to start?”

“Tell me about your life before things went wrong,
before you made all of those stupid choices.
What was your
family like? Your friends? It’s kind of weird to me that we
spend so much time together and yet ninety percent of what I
know about you has come from Zach or Rachel.”

His face became a palette of various shades of uneasy
and I had a sneaking suspicion that things went wrong well
before he admitted it to himself.
As he ran his hand back
through his hair, I realized it was his nervous tic. Zach’s
bouncing leg always made me aware that he was dreading the
upcoming
conversation.
Now, I also knew I had a better
understanding of Clay’s inner thoughts before he even spoke
them. He was tortured in more ways than I even suspected.

“Here it is—my life story in under sixty seconds.
I
never knew my dad. My mother jumped from guy to guy and
didn’t even know who he
was, either.
Tons
of different
boyfriends wound in and out of our lives, some good and some
not so
much.
I always
came second in
her life.
If her
relationship of the week was going okay, things were good. If it
wasn’t, she drank. A lot. Some of her boyfriends did, too.
She
always had some sort of drama going on. She always needed to
be center stage. There was a point when she was dating Scott
Fox where things were almost normal.
He took me to Boy
Scouts and did fun things with me. Mom seemed more settled
when she was with him, too.
But when they broke up, things
got even crazier than before.
I started spending more time at
Jeremy Carmott’s house than I did at my own. Jeremy was my
best friend who lived a few houses down from us. Do you know
him?”

The name didn’t even
sound
familiar. I made a mental
note to ask Zach or Rachel about him as soon as I had a chance.
“No, I don’t know him. Do you have any other family here in
town?”

“Just my grandma. She did her best to try and keep me
out of trouble but it wasn’t enough. I would give anything to
see her again. That’s what sucks the most about being dead. I
can’t just go see people like I used to. I was really lonely
until….” His voice trailed off awkwardly but I knew exactly
what he was going to say. He was lonely until he met
me
. My
suspicions were correct—Clay had a crush on me.

Awkward pause. What could I say to him? Even if it
weren’t for Zach, things between Clay and I would never work
out. For starters, he was dead.
While I struggled to come up
with more good reasons why a relationship with Clay would be
a bad idea, I realized the one that I had already come up with
was more than sufficient.
He was dead and I was alive and
therefore not suitable girlfriend material for him. He needed
something else to focus on besides me. Correction.
He needed
some
one
else.

“You
can
go see people like before.
Point me in the
right direction and I’ll take you to see anyone you’ve been
missing. Who was your girlfriend?”

“Oh no,” he sputtered, and lowered his head in
embarrassment. “I can’t go see
her
!”

What? If I died, Zach would be numero uno on my “to
haunt” list. “Why not? You won’t actually be able to talk to her
but wouldn’t you at least like to see her face?”

“No!” he replied firmly. “I can’t go see
her
. She dumped
me, remember? She didn’t want anything to do with me and I
can’t say that I blame her. I’m sure she moved on a long time
ago. Hell, she may not even know that I’m dead. Or she might
not give a damn. Either way, seeing her would make me feel
even more alone than I already do.”

I never thought of it that way. Now I was rethinking the
whole thing from my perspective, too.
How awful would it be
to see Zach with someone else even long after I died? Or worse
yet, what if he couldn’t bear being alone and started dating the
first girl he found? I would seriously want to ghost kick her in
the teeth! Definitely, I would have to know for certain what I
would find before I went looking for him. Lucky for Clay, he
had me to help him with that. I just couldn’t let him know what
I was up to in case I found something that I didn’t want to tell
him.

“Sorry, I never thought of it that way. But it would help
if I knew who she was—I may need to get some information
from her to help us figure out who killed you.” Sudden.
Terrible.
Thought.
What if
she
was the one who killed him? I
pictured a girls gone wild, vandalism style scenario in my head.
Boy spends too much time with car.
Girl feels ignored.
Girl
takes out frustrations on car.
Boy catches her.
Girl swings
implement of destruction one more time.
Boy hemorrhaging
from the brain. Girl panics and dumps boy’s body into Silver
Lake. Forget about Mexican drug cartels, angry women were
the most dangerous criminals on the planet.

I could almost see his wheels turning as he thought
about it from every angle, busily trying to decide whether or
not to trust me with the information. After what felt like an
eternity of silent character judgment, Clay gave in. “Fine. I’ll
tell you what you need to know but you have to promise not to
set me up. I don’t want to see her no matter what reason you
think is good enough.
I know how you girls are—you get
together and talk behind boys’ backs. You become instant
friends and bond over what jerks you think we all are.
Do you
promise not to let her talk you into something stupid?”

Is that really how boys see us? As screeching harpies
who enjoy tearing them apart piece by piece?
Ignoring his
antiquated opinions of women, I agreed with a hearty “Scout’s
honor!”

Still obviously wary and acting like he’d just made a
deal with the devil, Clay offered up the information I’d asked
for. “Her name was Sophie Wester. She lived in Graysburg—
not Charlotte’s Grove.
We met at the county fair there the
summer before I died. At first, I thought she was just some rich
girl looking for a bad boy so she could piss her daddy off. But I
was wrong. She really did like me. Until I went and screwed
everything up, that is.”

Regret was written all over his face. I’d seen that same
look in the mirror countless times myself.
Knowing that your
own dumb mistakes caused you to lose the person you loved
was the worst feeling in the world. Part of me would always
believe that my actions caused Lee’s death. And even though
my errors never caused permanent damage to my relationship
with Zach, it certainly felt like it at the time.

“So exactly how did you screw everything up? I know
this isn’t easy for you, but you have to tell me everything you
remember.”

Once again, Clay ran his hand nervously through his
hair. “Like I said, she was a rich girl. She had a car and I didn’t.
She always wanted to pay for everything. I
hated
that. I should
have been picking
her
up and doing nice things for
her
—not the
other way around. I got a job at the grocery store but I got fired
after only a month because I didn’t have reliable
transportation. My mom would say she would give me a ride to
work but then she would bail on me. My grandma hired me to
help out at the shop, but the economy was bad and people just
weren’t buying enough flowers. She could hardly keep herself
afloat so I barely got any hours. That’s when I got the brilliant
idea to start dealing.”

“Roseman’s Floral Emporium!”
I blurted out once I
made the connection. “That’s your grandma’s shop, right? I
remember seeing it my first day in Charlotte’s Grove and
thinking that it was funny that someone with your last name
owned a flower shop! Seems like only yesterday….” While so
many moments in this town seemed like they would never end,
time really
had
flown now that I looked back on it.

“Yeah, that’s her shop. God, how I miss that place, how I
miss
her
! It always smelled so good in there,” Clay replied
sadly. “But when I saw how much money Shane and Dylan
were making, I quit my job. I stopped going in there because I
felt so guilty. Grandma was one of those people who could see
right through you, ya know? I was afraid that if I spent time
with her, she would see that I was hiding something big. The
last time I saw her was
the day
I quit.
She looked so
disappointed.”

Regret. A running theme not just in my life, apparently,
but in damn near everyone I met. With everything we do and
say, we could be setting off a chain reaction that we will never
be able to set right.
If only there was a way to know ahead of
time.
The simple act of me sitting here now talking to Clay
could be the catalyst for some tragic regret later down the line.
Just the thought of it made me slightly panicky.
If I thought
about it too much, I would drive myself crazy and end up curled
into a ball in the corner of my closet. No, I had already faced
more than my fair share of regret—it was time to relax and
enjoy life now. Everything was going to be just fine.

I pulled my mind back to the important part of this
conversation—gaining enough knowledge about Clay’s life so
that I could understand his death.
And help
him
understand it,
too. “So Shane and Dylan were your suppliers then?”

Clay nodded. “They were a few years older than me and
lived on my street.
We all lived in government subsidized
housing and were poor as dirt. I was walking to Jeremy’s house
one day and noticed a flashy new car parked in front of Dylan’s
house. He caught me admiring it and told me that if I wanted
one too, he would show me how to get it.
I pretty much knew
what I was getting myself into but I convinced myself that it
was okay and that I wouldn’t get caught. Of course, I never
dreamed that I would end up dead.”

No one ever really does, do they? No one wakes up in
the morning and says to themselves, “Today seems like an
excellent day to die.” Do they? I certainly didn’t. As a matter of
fact,
no
day is an excellent day to die. You would think that my
firsthand knowledge of the afterlife would take away my fear of
death.
Nope, it only compounded it.
There were so many
intricacies, too many ways that your spirit could get caught
between worlds. Why couldn’t I seem to get my mind off of
such depressing things? Grr! Seventeen year old girls aren’t
supposed to think this deeply. I was supposed to be thinking
about boys, clothes, and shoes not death, ghosts, and regret. It
was time for me to loosen up and have fun.
Well,
almost
time.
The sooner I helped Clay move on, the sooner I could focus on
being normal.
I was determined to be normal someday even if
it killed me.

I pulled out my phone and navigated to the notes app.
“What are their last names? Shane and Dylan what? And
what’s your address?” I asked as I typed out their first names.
My plan was to figure out a way to take all of the information I
got from Clay and hand it over to the police. Not chasing killers
around town was the best first step to being normal that I could
think of.

“Shane Taylor and Dylan Rush. We all lived on Spring
Avenue—over on the west side of town. You aren’t thinking of
going over there to question them, are you?
If they killed me,
they wouldn’t hesitate to kill you, too.”