Dead Spell (5 page)

“Good.” Harmony peeled the wrap off her tattoo. “We need to talk.”

* * * * *

There was a thickness, a heavy presence around them as they climbed through the bend in Orchard View Cemetery’s locked gate.
The waxing moon gleamed across the rain-soaked ground.  The only other light was the eternal flame flickering in the distance.

“So what’s with the tattoo?” Brea asked. “Your mother’s going to have your head.”

Harmony ducked through the gate, twisting her bag through behind her. “No, that’d be
your
mother and she’d march you right to confession.
My
mother won’t even notice.”

“Well, how’d you get it? I mean, you’re not eighteen and I’m sure Charity didn’t give you written permission.”

“You know Lance, right?”

“Lance, from Needles Ink? The drug dealing, walking felony?” Harmony’s smile widened. “Oh, you didn’t.” Harmony laughed. “And that’s his car? Tell me you got permission to take it.”

“Fine. I got permission.”

The mud rose over the top of Brea’s flip-flops and rubbed her ice cold feet raw. She wished she had put on socks and sneakers and had a bad feeling that Harmony was lying for her benefit. “Oh this is bad,” she said louder than she intended.

“Actually, he was not bad at all,” Harmony said, pleased. “That boy has a hell of a grip.” She clenched her throat for effect.

“TMI, Harmony. TMI. What about Adam?”

“What about him? He has no idea.” Harmony’s heavy boots sank in the marshy grass past the yellow stitching. “Besides,” she said, scraping the clumps of mud off with a stick, “they don’t run in the same circles. How would he find out?”

Brea stepped out of her shoes and continued barefoot as they reached the far corner of the cemetery. “You know, this is the
worst
possible night to be doing this.”

“Says the girl in the bare feet. You’re supposed to be the smart one?”

Brea rinsed her flip flops in a shallow puddle and put them in the outside pocket of her bag. She held a black pen light between her teeth casting its glow on one of the older headstones. “Here hold this,” she said the best she could with her mouth full. She gave Harmony her bag and waited for her to find the old tee shirt she used to dry and dust the stone.

 “You sure you don’t have this one?” Harmony handed her the wad of stained white cotton.

“I’m sure.”

Brea gently patted the face of the old headstone, careful not to crumble the already fragile granite. She taped a length of white butcher’s paper to the face and made sure it was even.
The really old stones were her favorite, but careless vandals had gotten rubbings banned at Oakwood, so she could only do them at night.
She took a squared-off piece of artist’s charcoal and gently rubbed along the face of the stone. Her fingertips were so cold that the vibrations hurt.

“I don’t want to sound ungrateful for the kidnapping, but if you wanted to gloat about screwing Lance or your new tattoo, couldn’t it wait until the morning? And then maybe someplace where I won’t get frostbite or hypothermia?”

Harmony stripped off Lance’s oversized coat and laid it liner side up on the driest patch of grass she could find.

Brea darkened the details of her rub and, satisfied with the work, slid the tracing inside her portfolio next to the others.

“When you’re done,” Harmony said, “come here a minute.”

She wrestled the Ouija board and planchette from her bag and set it up on the jacket.

Brea looked up from her portfolio and her breath caught. She dug
her toes into the mud and the surface roots of weeds that she briefly imagined were the tendons and sinew of some half-rotten soul.  “I don’t want anything to do with that thing, Harmony.”

“Stop it. It’s nothing.” Harmony lit three black candles on a nearby headstone and set her fingers on the planchette’s edge

“It’s
not
nothing.” Brea stuffed her shaking hands into her sweatshirt pocket. “You tell me about the things Tom does to you and you expect me to use that thing willingly? No, thank you.”

Harmony lit her cigarette off one of the candles. “You know what? Your mother’s turned you into a real chicken shit.”

Brea felt like she was about to be sick.  “If anyone scared me off that thing it was you.”

 “Come on, Brea. Do this with me, please? It’ll be fine. I promise.” She drew an “x” over her heart with her finger and smiled innocently.

“I’d really rather not.”

“Buck-buck-bgawk.”

“Fine.” Brea set her portfolio on top of a large, flat monument and sat Indian-style on the coat.

Harmony snuffed out the remaining half of her cigarette and put her hands on the planchette.

Brea’s hands were shaking so bad that she knocked Harmony’s off the planchette.

“Easy, Goliath.” Harmony laughed. A sudden gust of wind extinguished the candles. “Ah, shit.” She fumbled through her bag for her lighter and a thick tree branch snapped in the distance.

Brea screamed and covered her mouth.

“Freeze, right there.” A white light blinded them.

“Harmony, what’s going on?” Brea whispered.

“Is that Brea Miller?” asked a second, familiar male voice “Jim’s going to love this.”

The flashlight lowered and she saw Mike and Pat’s faces. They were officers in her uncle’s precinct that she’d known her whole life. It took them only about a second to figure out what was happening.

Brea thought about her mother, how she didn’t know she’d been sneaking out, and how insane she was going to be when she found out. Panic set in and the world started spinning.

“Harmony Wolcott, you are under arrest for auto theft.” Mike lifted Harmony up by the crook of her elbow and cuffed her hands behind her back. “Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law.”

Brea teetered, half-dazed and disbelieving, listening to Harmony being read her Miranda rights.

 “Do you understand each of these rights as I’ve read them to you?”

Harmony puffed out her chest and lifted her chin. “Yeah. I get it.”

It wasn’t her first time being arrested.

Brea was in awe of her cool. She took a series of long, deep breaths and leaned on the Riley monument until the worst of the lightheadedness passed.

Pat and Mike watched and waited.

“Brea, I have to ask you to come with us.” Pat ran his hand through his thinning gray hair and grimaced.

She knew he’d let her go if it was up to him, but Mike wouldn’t let him take “no” for an answer so she had little choice but to agree to go with them. Besides, she didn’t want to walk home, and even if she did, her uncle would have called her mother before she even hit the front door. It was better to face her mother in a public place and under police protection.

“Grab my stuff,” Harmony said to Brea as Mike led her away.

Brea put the board in the bag, picked up her portfolio, folded the muddy coat inside out over her arm, and followed Pat to the small parking lot where Lance’s Grand Prix was already on a flat bed headed for the impound.

Mike loaded Harmony into the back of his own car, ducking her head so she didn’t hit it. She pulled away from him and got in by herself.

Brea watched Mike close the door and looked at Pat. “I don’t have to ride in the back, do I?”

Pat shook his head and opened the passenger’s side door; a courtesy, she knew.

The silence in the car was more unnerving than the arrest. The anticipation was killing her. “Did she really steal the car?” She nestled the bags and coat between her feet.

“Probably better we don’t talk about that.” He picked up the radio to call the station.

10
.

The security cameras followed the cruisers through the razor wire gate into the well-lit lot of the county lock-up and police station.

Pat waited for Mike to get Harmony past the metal detector, the preliminary searches, and into the holding room before bringing Brea in. Harmony was silent, unshaken, cuffed and defiant. Brea wondered how she could be so strong when she, the innocent one, was scared shitless.

The police station was one big room with several plainly furnished offices on the outskirts; one of which belonged to her Uncle Jim. The main room was full of enough late-night drunks, addicts, and domestic abuse victims to keep the several armed officers transporting combatant collars busy.

Brea covered her nose when she got a whiff of the homeless man being brought in behind her.

Pat did, too.

“God, you’re ripe,” said the arresting officer, a newbie whose name she didn’t know.

The homeless man spat at the officer and the young man, lacking experience and patience, yoked him up.

The smelly man broke free, swinging. “Keep your hands off of me you goddamned pig.”

Uncle Jim came from out of nowhere and wrestled the man to the ground.

“Uncle Jim…”

He looked up at Brea, bright red with exertion as he bore down on the struggling vagrant. “Get her out of here, Pat.”

Pat’s look of,
Where would you like me to take her?
only made him angrier.

“My office, Pat. Can you handle that?”

“Let’s go, Brea. You heard the man.”

Pat took Harmony’s things and handed them to Gina, the clerk, through the door in the bulletproof window. “You know which one is his, right?” Brea nodded. “Your mom’s on her way.”

“I figured. Uncle Jim call her?”

“Yep.”

“She seem mad?”

“He didn’t say, but…”

“Brea Miller,” her mother shouted over the melee.

Joan Miller wasn’t the type to be caught ugly. She was one of those “you never know who you’ll run into” types and tonight—this morning—was no exception. She looked like a centerfold from Better Homes and Gardens, if there was such a thing, in her pressed Banana Republic blouse and nicest dark blue jeans. Her red hair was styled in a loose French twist with curly tendrils framing her delicate and freshly made-up face. A gold cross dangled from the chain around her neck.