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“It’s not your decision,” Avery said, her voice tight with anger.

“You shouldn’t have come in the first place,” Hyacinth added icily.

There might be a catfight yet.

Eulalie’s eyebrows wiggled. She was eating this up with a spoon.

Haywood was pacing, his face pinched with what looked like anger as he listened to the sparring.

Avery said, “I know you’re not implying I’m at fault for what . . . happened.”

Hyacinth leaned toward Avery. “You’re not so naive to believe it’s a coincidence.”

“Your anger is misplaced, Hyacinth.” Avery stood up. “If you recall, I am not the one who dragged myself into this.”

Hyacinth rose as well. “So says you.”

“I
do
say,” Avery snapped. “Haywood got a letter, same as you did.”

This was getting very interesting. And a letter? What letter?

Haywood threw his hands in the air and tipped his head backward as though looking to the heavens for some sort of assistance.

“Yes, and his was postmarked from
Auburn
,” Hyacinth accused as she placed the straps of a designer purse on her shoulder. “Make no mistake that if you stick around, you’ll be talking to the sheriff soon enough.”

Hands on hips, Avery said, “Is that a threat?”

“Yes,” Hyacinth replied, sweet as pie. “Have a safe drive back home, y’hear.”

She strode away from the table, and Eulalie and I scattered. I ducked behind the reception desk, and Eulalie slipped into the kitchen.

Hyacinth didn’t look back as she walked out the front door, and I thought for sure she would slam the door, but instead she closed it softly behind her. In her wake was the strong scent of gin.

She’d been drinking. A lot, if the smell was any indication.

Fortunately, she’d left her snazzy red sports car at home and was walking. A good thing, too. The car was fairly new. Just a couple of months old. A gift from Haywood.

Eulalie emerged and I stood up. A moment later, Avery Bryan came into the front room and picked up her luggage. “I’m heading out now. Thank you for the hospitality, Miss Eulalie. It was lovely meeting you.”

Haywood followed her. When he saw me, he floated toward the fireplace.

He didn’t acknowledge Virgil, nor did Virgil acknowledge him. For good reason. Ghosts couldn’t see one another.

I was very curious about Haywood’s connection to Avery Bryan, but I couldn’t very well ask him any questions here and now.

“You sure you won’t stay a few more days?” Eulalie asked Avery.

“I’m sure,” she said, her green eyes shiny. She flicked a glance at me.

Eulalie said, “Avery Bryan, this here is Carly Hartwell, my niece. She owns the potion shop in town and can work wonders with what nature gives us and a little bit of Southern magic. Headaches, heartaches, stomachaches . . . You should stop in. Get a little pick-me-up to take back with you. It’ll perk you right up.”

I stared at my aunt. She made my shop sound akin to a marijuana dispensary.

“They’re herbal remedies,” I clarified. “Homeopathic preparations for the most part. There is a touch of magic in the potions, its roots harkening back to the white magic hoodoo of my great-great-grandmother.” I often left off my great-great grandfather’s history of practicing voodoo. It tended to put people off. But truth be told his magic was just as important in the Hartwell family, as it was what helped create the Leilara drops and is what Delia used to make her hexes.

Leila Bell and Abraham Leroux’s love story had been bittersweet. A good witch falling for a bad one. They overcame a lot to be with each other, and had died in each other’s arms after he’d been bitten by a poisonous water snake. She’d tried to save him by sucking the venom from the wound and succumbed as well. In the spot along the Darling River where they died grew an entwined lily that bloomed only one night a year. After opening its petals, the blossoms wept, and those droplets were the Leilara—the magical ingredient I added to my elixirs that ensured my potions would cure just about anything.

“Bless your heart,” Avery said to me so sweetly that I almost believed it to be sincere and not an insult. “But there isn’t anything in this world to cure what ails me.”

“And just what is that, sugar?” Eulalie asked, her nosiness on full display.

Avery gave a small shake of her head. “Nothing time won’t heal. I best get on the road. Thanks again.”

Nosy myself, I opted to read her energy before she left. A wave of grief and anger swamped me, so strong I nearly burst into tears. Latching on to my locket, I took a few deep breaths, separating my energy from hers once again but a residual sadness remained, thickening my throat.

Eulalie walked her to the door. “I do hope you’ll consider staying here again the next time you’re in town.”

Avery stepped over the threshold and there was a steely undertone to her words as she said, “You’re very kind, Miss Eulalie, but I don’t plan on ever coming back.”

Chapter Nine

M
y next-door neighbor Mr. Dunwoody was sitting in a ruby red rocking chair on his front porch as I left Eulalie’s inn and headed for home.

“Good morning, Miz Carly!” he called out, raising up a mason jar of amber liquid in a toast.

To an average onlooker, it might appear as though it was sweet tea inside that glass this early in the day. Those who knew Mr. Dunwoody were aware it was bourbon on the rocks. He preferred a little tipple in the morning, sweet tea at noon, and straight hot black tea at night.

He was a bit eccentric to say the least.

In his early seventies, he’d been a widower for going on thirty years now and rarely spoke of his late wife. After retiring ten years ago from his job as a tenured professor at the local college he started embracing the bachelor life. He was loving every second of having a full dance card.

Women adored him. With his long narrow face, kind dark eyes, quirky bow ties and general happiness, and big bank account, he was a catch and a half.

If he wanted to be caught.

He didn’t. He claimed to be having too much fun as a single man.

Mr. Dunwoody was also famous around town for his weekly matrimonial forecasts. He had an uncanny knack for predicting impending relationship issues. Marriages, breakups, divorces, reunions. Most wrote off his talent as a lark, but I sensed a kindred spirit in this man nearly forty years my senior. There was something mystical about him, and I often wondered how deep his abilities ran. I suspected we had a lot more in common than living on the same road.

“It is morning.
Good
is debatable.” Pushing open an iron gate, I detoured up his front walkway. Although it had stopped raining, puddles pooled on the flagstone path and shrubby limbs drooped with water weight.

As usual, Mr. Dunwoody was outfitted in his Sunday best. Pressed dress pants, spit-shined wingtips, a baby blue button-down shirt beneath an argyle vest, and a gray flannel bow tie.

Taking a chance, I slipped off my sunglasses as I sat down in a matching rocker next to his. I glanced around to make sure there weren’t any new ghosts nearby. There weren’t. Only Virgil. He lingered at the curb. Haywood had once again wandered off. For a ghost who wanted my help, he wasn’t making my job easy with his disappearing acts.

“No offense, Carly Bell, but you look plumb tuckered.” Mr. Dunwoody
tsk
ed. “You want some of what I’m having?” He held up his glass.

“Only when I want hair to grow on my chest.”

He rocked backward and let out a high-pitched tee-hee-hee, his signature laugh. I adored the sound of it.

I wasn’t offended by his observation. I expected no sugarcoating from Mr. Dunwoody. He’d been in my life since the day I was born and was practically family, the uncle I never had. It would have been strange if he didn’t comment on the obvious.

“Coffee, then?” he offered. “It’s not a hundred proof like my beverage of choice, but it’s the good stuff, freshly ground.”

“Thank you, but I’ll take a rain check,” I said as I held on to my locket, sliding it back and forth along its chain.

Scratching his chin with long dark fingers, he said, “What’s going on? Is this about that Haywood business?”

Mr. Dunwoody had been growing out a beard, which was more salt than pepper, and I was still adjusting to not seeing him freshly shaven. Most of the short dark hair on his head was threaded with silver, but above each ear the silver was taking over in patches and spreading upward toward his temples.

Blue jays screamed in the distance as I held his gaze. “Two ghosts, a hornet’s nest, a near catfight, and Patricia Davis Jackson has been arrested.”

Leaning down, he picked up a silver flask that had been hidden next to one of the rocker’s runners. He topped off his drink, then replaced the flask. “Start at the beginning.”

I did, but I gave him the
CliffsNotes
version of events to keep from sounding like I was whining.

“Gad night a livin’,” he proclaimed. “Haywood is the heir to the Ezekiel mansion?”

“It seems that way. I haven’t had a chance to talk to him about it yet. He keeps disappearing on me.”

“Why?” he asked, bristly eyebrows dropping into a V. “Doesn’t he need your help to cross over?”

“I was asking myself the same thing earlier. It’s not making sense to me.” I should have been thrilled that he was letting me be, but it felt . . . off.

It was as though he was hiding.

From
me
.

When really, it ought to be the other way around.

“It’s a befuddlement to be sure,” Mr. Dunwoody said.

“Did you know Haywood’s mother at all?” I asked. “I don’t know anything about her other than she died during childbirth. Retta Lee Dodd.” I’d seen the name on the Ezekiel family tree.

Mr. Dunwoody rocked slowly as he pondered. “Not really. She was a bit older than I was, and we didn’t quite run in the same circles, segregation being what it was in those days.”

I hated thinking of him feeling like an outcast. It hurt like a deep bone-jarring ache, not so very different from the pain that came when Virgil was near.

“But I heard rumors about her, all the same.”

“What kind?” I asked.

“About how she’d found herself with child. It was all the talk around town when her mama and daddy sent her away to one of those boardinghouses for unwed mamas.”

“How old was she?”

“Not yet twenty as I recall.”

Back in those days—the early fifties—having a baby out of wedlock was viewed as pretty much the worst sin a young woman could commit, especially here in the South. Society had come a long way in publicly accepting unwed mothers, but even so, there were still some here who would look down their nose at a woman in such a situation.

“She passed on while giving birth to that baby, and her mama and daddy took charge of him.”

“Who was Haywood’s father? The name’s rubbed out on the family tree.”

“Not sure. Rupert had a boy about her age, perhaps a bit older, but he was at war when all this was going on.”

“Do you think the father could have been Rupert himself?”

He sipped from his glass and shrugged. “Anything’s possible, I suppose. He was a widower by then, but there was a good twenty-some-year age difference between the two. I never heard any talk about it. And small towns being small towns, word would have gotten around. If she had been seeing Rupert Ezekiel, I would have known. The town would have known. And we all would have known the baby she had was most likely his.”

Water dripped from the eaves as I bit my thumbnail, feeling like I’d hit another dead end. “How about a possible rift between Patricia Davis Jackson and Haywood? Do you know anything about that?”

“A rift?”

“Apparently, she doesn’t care for him.”

He cracked a smile. “I didn’t know, but I suppose that explains why she might have hit him over the head with a candlestick.”

Fidgety, I tugged on the cuff of my raincoat. “Our working theory is that she didn’t commit the crime. That she just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Ice rattled as he took a sip of his drink.
“Our?”

“Well, Dylan’s theory.” I bit another nail. “I’m still on the fence about her guilt. Camped up there on that fence, in fact. I might make some s’mores I’m so comfy up there.”