Rocks & Gravel (Peri Jean Mace Ghost Thrillers Book 3) (13 page)

Memaw was sick and dying. Barbie had shown up in town. The theft of the Bruce’s family heirlooms escalated to Eddie’s death. Priscilla Herrera putting the fate of Gaslight City in my hands. Learning some pathetic loser had turned my daddy into some sort of spiritual mercenary put a nice, creamy feces icing on the cake. No wonder Eddie mouthed “Paul” at me when I found his spirit in the mirror in his trailer.

“Peri Jean? You all right?” Mysti touched my arm.

“Fine,” I said. “Just worrying.”

Tree frogs squealed their nightly opera. Usually, I found the sound soothing, something I could hide behind and think. After the events of the night, though, their singing scratched on my nerves, finding sore edges and worrying them. A fingernail sliver of moon hung in the inky sky, hovering over Memaw’s house. Was it an omen? If so, it seemed one of hopelessness.

“Worry about tomorrow robs you of your energy to deal with today.” Mysti raised her head to stare me in the face. For the first time I took note of the dark half-moons under her eyes and the way she clutched herself. This woman had run a marathon through hell. She needed rest more than she needed to play nursemaid to me.

“I’ll clean this up. Let your brother take you home.” I turned back to tell Brad to leave it, but Mysti caught my arm, her icy fingers digging in to the soft flesh around my wrist. I barely resisted the urge to pull away.

“No. I want us girls to talk for a minute here. Get yourself a chair and sit down.”

I didn’t want to have a heart-to-heart with her but couldn’t refuse someone so pathetic and broken. Taking the smallest steps I could, putting off the inevitable, I did as she asked.

“Brad says you’re a medium in denial.” She had a sweet smile, the kind used to getting people to open up, to spill their secrets. I was too tired to fight the invitation I saw there.

“My early experiences with what I am weren’t so great. I was put in a mental hospital and diagnosed with schizophrenia.”

“I grew up a ward of the state, so I know where you’re coming from.” Mysti’s confession shocked me, and I turned to stare at her. She carried herself like someone who’d always been loved, always felt confident in who she was. How did she get there? “There’s nothing I can say to take away the trauma of your early years, but I want you to think about something. Letting those old experiences keep you from finding your true self will never make you happy.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. She was sick, and I didn’t want to argue with her. I changed the subject.

“Were you hired to find the Mace Treasure?”

“No.” She sat back in her chair, frowning. “I want to help you, but I feel uncomfortable giving you too much information. One of the services I provide is confidentiality.”

I sat in silence, stumped on how to proceed.

“But you saved my life and, in doing so, put yourself in danger. Whoever’s behind all this will be coming for you.” She folded her battered hands in her lap. “Convince me to break my rules.”

“There’s more to it than the bad guy coming to take me out.” I slumped in my chair, the weight of it crushing me. “If the bad guy gets the curse off the treasure, the whole world goes boom.”

“Wait a minute. Back up.” Mysti’s voice smoothed out some of my raw edges. She was good at this.

I started by telling Mysti about my father’s ghost stealing the Bruce family journals and the spell book and went from there. Mysti listened without interrupting, squinting her eyes at times, nodding at others. I first noticed the lack of judgment on her face when I explained about the way Priscilla cursed the treasure and how the spirit she tied the curse to would level Gaslight City if released. Mysti’s open expression kept me talking until I reached the part where I went to see Julie and got Mysti’s name from her. I finished my recitation, and the frogs’ screaming filled the silence.

Mysti took a deep breath and let it out. I figured she was gearing up to tell me I’d failed to convince her to do anything but leave and prepared to take the rebuke politely. Much as I wanted to kick little brother Brad’s ass the first time I met him, Mysti hit me a different way altogether. I almost wanted her to like me. Almost.

“My employer hired me to contact the ghosts of both Paul Mace and Priscilla Herrera. The purpose was to find the spelling stones and the box you saw in your vision.”

Brad already told me that much, but it was a start. “Why?”

“Asking those kinds of questions would put me out of business fast. If I want to make money, I have to keep my lips zipped and do the job.” She licked her lips and stopped to think, probably choosing her words carefully. “I contacted Priscilla Herrera at the gallows where she was murdered. I saw her speak the curse you mentioned. I saw her hang.” Mysti shook her head.

“The box and the stones?”

“She swallowed the stones while the man was tying her ankles together before they hanged her.” She turned to stare at me in the dark, her gaze burning at me. “Her spirit told me the man who buried her stole the box.”

“And you thought it might be on the antique circuit so you went to Julie at Silver Dreams.” Things were starting to come together, but not in a helpful way. This was all one big, revolving circle.

“That falls under confidentiality to my client.” She put her hands up.

Another dead end.
I bit my lip in frustration.

“Before we move on, I want to say something that’s simply one weird chick talking to another.” Mysti’s soft voice lulled me into listening. “I can see you feel overwhelmed, even frustrated, by all this, but Priscilla Herrera has some reason she chose you, some reason she thinks only you can do it. She was a powerful witch, and she’s still got power as a spirit. When I contacted her, I could feel her controlling what I saw of her last moments alive.”

My stomach did a clumsy cartwheel. I remembered trying to contact the ghost who stole the journals—my daddy’s ghost. Priscilla kept me from it. Mysti herself got into a nasty mess contacting my father’s ghost. Had Priscilla Herrera been trying to protect me? Why?

Help me stop this evil and find peace.
The voice came from inside my head, but Mysti jumped and glanced around. Did she hear it, too? She put her fingers to her temples and closed her eyes, her whole body rising and falling with her breaths. My body went into overdrive, preparing for unpleasantness. I crouched on the edge of my flimsy chair.

“She’s gone.” Mysti dropped her hands and raised her head.

Relief surged through me. “That was her?”

“You know it was.” Mysti smiled and touched a finger to her split lip. “And you heard what she said just as well as I did.”

Help me stop this evil and find peace.

“The law of doing magic is ‘whatever you put out comes back times three.’ But a lot of belief systems use the same concept. Christianity, for one. ‘Do unto others as you would have them do to you.’” Mysti waited a beat for me absorb it. “Priscilla Herrera created some rotten karma when she put the curse on the treasure.”

“It was justified.” My voice raised, and I cut it off immediately. When I spoke again, it was in a near whisper. “Those sorry bastards murdered her.”

“I’ll go for the cliché bonus round.” Mysti gave me her gentle smile. “Two wrongs don’t make a right. Priscilla went to her death with a wrong riding on her, and it compounded as time passed. She is at odds with the universe until it’s fixed.”

“But why me? You’re better at this stuff.”

Mysti stared out into the darkness as she thought about it. “The blood,” she murmured. “You’re a Mace. The treasure was intended for one of your ancestors. Maybe when she said ‘None of you, save one who has the blood, will have the treasure,” she meant only someone from the Mace family could get at it.”

Something about Mysti’s concept didn’t ring quite true to me, but my exhaustion wouldn’t let me get at it.

“This connection Priscilla’s ghost feels with you might work to your advantage in figuring out who is behind all this.” She gave me her soft smile again. “But you don’t like contacting ghosts.”

No, I didn’t.

“Moving on,” Mysti said to my silence.

“Will you tell me why your employer had you contact my daddy’s ghost?”

She hesitated. “My employer thought your father might have a line on where the stones and the box ended up.” I started to speak, but she shook her head. “Now, don’t ask me why. We’ve reached the end of what I can tell you about the job I was hired to do.” She glanced at her brother, who’d finished packing up and sat on a sawhorse watching us. “Do you have my cellphone?”

Without answering, he took it from his pocket and brought it to her. Mysti took the phone and tapped out a message. The tension seemed to go out of her body.

“Okay. When I was hired for this job, my client told me specifically
not
to reach out to you for one of your father’s personal items to use in contacting his ghost.”

My jaw dropped. I wanted to know how Mysti’s employer got my father’s keychain before this conversation. I was determined to have a sit down with whoever hired Mysti. Find out who they thought they were skulking around behind the scenes like this.

Her cellphone dinged, and she tapped out a quick response and turned to Brad. “Pack up the car quickly. We have a stop to make before we leave town.”

“Car’s ready.” Brad came back into the barn and stood next to Mysti’s chair. She stood, using her brother’s hand to help her gain her feet.

“Do you have it?” she spoke to Brad. He handed her what looked like a business card and a pen. She turned it over, scribbled on the back, and handed it to me. “This is my personal number. I want to repay you for your help today by teaching you how to be what you’re meant to be.”

I took the card and tried to give her a polite smile. She actually laughed at me.

“I understand your reluctance. Really, I do. Had I not met Tunia, it would have taken me a lot longer to accept what I was, let alone learn how to make it work for me.”

“Tunia?” I didn’t want to address anything else she’d said because it might mean committing to something permanent.

“It was short for Petunia. She said her mother liked cartoons.” Mysti’s words broke the tension, and we both laughed.

“How about you tell me who hired you?”

“He said you wouldn’t quit until you found out, and he was right. Tubby Tubman. I’m on my way to see him, and he wants you to come, too. He said you’d know where to find him.”

I wanted to scream and puke at the same time. Tubby Tubman was the last name I expected to come out of her mouth. I wanted to go see him the same way I wanted food poisoning, but I knew better than to refuse. Tubby Tubman gave the Six Gun Revolutionaries a run for their money in terms of ruthlessness and willingness to break the law. Great end to a rotten day.

“I’ll take my own car,” I said. “You can follow me.”

I
drove
with the window down and the air conditioner turned off. After ten in the evening, the day’s heat had broken, replaced with a velvety coolness I wanted to enjoy while it lasted. Driving below the speed limit and checking often for Brad and Mysti’s headlights in my rearview mirror, the trip to downtown Gaslight City took longer than my usual ten minutes. It took even longer to find a parking place where I could convince myself nobody would notice my car.

“We’re going to Bullfrog’s Billiards,” I told Brad and Mysti as they got out of their Toyota sedan. “It’s right through these alleys. Dark in there, so stay close.”

“How you do know where to find him?” Mysti hovered near me while Brad trailed a few feet behind.

“Let’s say I know some things about Tubby the average citizen of Gaslight City might not know.” I hurried down the alley, taking small steps to avoid tripping on debris. We ended up in a courtyard piled with beer boxes and wooden pallets. I walked straight to the iron bar covered back door.

“This doesn’t look like a business,” Brad said. “What is it? Some kind of secret club?”

“There’s a street entrance,” I said. “I’m hoping not to be seen by any of Bullfrog’s patrons.” Whether my plan worked depended on how much of an ass Tubby felt like acting.

Bunched muscles aching, I raised one trembling hand, knotted it into a fist, and tapped out the code Tubby taught me all those years ago. The door swung open, spilling out a circle of yellowed light. Bullfrog himself leaned out.

“You here to see the man, Peri Jean?” Bullfrog’s doughy, pockmarked skin, his massive beer gut, and the distant blur in his eyes made him seem safer than he was, but I’d seen him knife a guy several years ago. Bullfrog jabbed the knife into the guy over and over again, his arm moving like the needle on a sewing machine. The guy crumpled on the floor and a puddle of blood spread around him. Bullfrog wiped the knife on his shirt and went back to his beer. Maybe feeling my eyes on him, he turned, smiled, and blew me a kiss. A couple of his flunkies dragged the stabbed guy away. I never knew if he lived or died.

“He’s expecting me.”

“You a little long in the tooth for him these days.” His lips quirked into an almost-smile. Bullfrog was right. Tubby got older while his companions got younger. I never saw the same one with him twice. The smart ones probably figured out they were sleeping with Beelzebub himself and cut ties. Who knew what happened to the stupid ones? Nothing good, probably.

“That may be so, but he’s expecting us.”

Bullfrog stared at me. “What’s the magic word?”

Oh, come the hell on.

“Lick my armpits?” I forced what I hoped was a nasty smirk onto my face to let Bullfrog know I wasn’t scared of him.

He grunted and shut the door in my face. I heard his footsteps receding. The door swung open again, and Tubby Tubman himself looked out at me. I’d come to see him, but having him right in front of me sent my heart into overdrive.

Burns County was too small for us not to have seen each other a few times over the years since that awful night. I’d made a point not to get close enough to take a real look at him. This situation left me no choice.

He stood bare chested, jeans hanging low on his skinny hips. His perpetually bare feet were still bony. One of them sported a tattoo of a cartoon character. A fine layer of muscle covered his bony chest. His crafty eyes had deeper lines etched around them, and a few gray hairs had invaded his curly dishwater-blond hair. Tub took me in as I studied him, drifting over my body and finally landing on my face. He raised one ropy arm to lean against the doorframe, and rubbed a hand over his bicep.

“Well, well, well. We meet again.” His nasal baritone sent the wrong kind of chills running down my back. “Peri Jean Mace
and
Mysti Whitebyrd…” He squinted at Brad. “And her lackey.”

I heard Brad’s gulp and wanted to tell him not to react, but it was too late.

“Come on in.” He stepped aside. We stepped onto wood plank floors, stained black from a hundred years of dirty shoes. “My visit with Ms. Peri Jean is gonna take longer, so why don’t Mysti and her errand boy come on up, get paid, and we can be done with each other? You can go in the bar, Ms. Peri Jean.”

“I don’t want to go in the bar,” I said.

“Is it because of your association with Burns County Sheriff’s Office?” Tubby widened his eyes in mock surprise. I shook my head at him.

“I’m not playing this game with you, Tub.”

He laughed and motioned Brad and Mysti to go up the steps to the loft where he conducted business, turning back to me at the last moment. “Sit on the steps and wait then. I don’t care.” He went up the stairs, giving me a peek at the filthy bottoms of his bare feet.
Nasty.

I brushed off the bottom step a few times, decided it was no use and parked my butt on it. Shouts came from the loft. I shot to my feet again and waited for the shit shower to start.

“I don’t have to do what you say. I don’t want to go down there.” The voice was female but not Mysti’s. The door at the top of the stairs swung open hard enough to bounce off the wall, and a slim, dark-haired girl was pushed out. She might have been eighteen, but she sure didn’t look it. She sneered at me as she thumped down the stairs. I stepped aside and watched her go through the door connecting to the bar. I sat back down.

True to his word, Tubby’s business with Mysti didn’t take long at all. She came out of his office, eyes wide with shock but tucking a thick envelope into her purse. I waited until she got to the bottom of the stairs to speak to her.

“You okay?”

“We’re square.” She pulled me into her arms for a quick, soft hug. “Thanks again for saving me, and please call me. I’d love to teach you.”

I nodded even though I still wasn’t sure. Tubby beckoned to me from the top of the stairs. As soon as I stepped into his loft, the smell of dope and sex assailed me.

“Can we open a window?”

Without speaking, Tubby opened one of the windows and turned on a fan. “Better?”

I nodded.

“Why don’t you sit down?”

“Which of these chairs has the least bodily fluids on it?”

He laughed at that and went into the kitchenette and brought out a wooden chair. Then he returned to the tiny bar and fetched one of those sanitary wipes and cleaned the chair. The thing came away black with dirt. He motioned to the chair with a grand wave. “Your throne, darlin’.”

I sat. Tubby watched me get settled, one side of his mouth tilted in what might have been a smile. Having it directed at me produced the creepiest feeling in the world. I pretended not to notice him, and he shrugged and went into the kitchen and got another, identical chair and sat on it without cleaning it.

“I’d like us to reach an agreement,” Tubby said.

“I wouldn’t, but I would like to know how you came to have my daddy’s keychain.”

“We could bargain for the information.”

“I don’t dance with Satan’s stepson any more, Tub.”

“My step-dad’s name is Roger.” The expression on his face never changed. It was like being watched by a crocodile.

Impatience built in me, but I fought against it. Had to. No matter how long I stayed away, some things never changed. If he gave me anything, I’d have to give him something back, and he’d want something big. This could get bad fast.

Worst part was I had no idea what Tubby wanted from me. At the same time, I knew he knew exactly what he planned to ask of me. I flashed on things Tubby could want and came up with one thing. The Mace Treasure. He obviously had an interest in it. If he thought I could help him find it, he needed to go find another monkey and another circus.

“There’s nothing I can do for you, Tub. Can’t you help me for old time’s sake? I never tried to stick you when Chase was in a mess. I always paid up.”

“If Chase is your old time’s sake, you can lick my sugared ass.” He snorted. “You forgetting what came before Chase’s problems?”

I’d hoped it wasn’t memorable enough for him to bring up. The thought of those dark months chilled me, and I twisted my legs around each other, crossing my arms over my chest in the same motion. Tubby raised his eyebrows, this time smiling a real smile, the kind sane people ran from.

“You think I’m gonna give you a free pass and act like nothing happened? You ignored me for seven years. I don’t owe you shit.”

“We don’t need to rehash our friendship, Tub.”

“Friendship? Give me a fucking break. I kept you from falling off into the abyss after your husband dumped you—”

“Don’t say it,” I said. “If this had nothing to do with my father—my murdered father—I’d get up and walk out of here. You can talk shit to me all you want, but don’t you dare bring up Tim and what he did to me—”

“Fine. The end result was that you came back to town all broken and fucked up, and
I
helped
you.
Then, when you were done, you just walked off.”

“Y’all stabbed somebody down there in the bar.” Voice raising, I swung my arm at the door leading downstairs. “Plus, you were bored with me. You’d had enough and were moving on. I wasn’t so stupid and naive I couldn’t see it. It was time to end things before we hated each other.”

“
I’m
the one who ends things, and I never told you I was finished.”

I rolled my eyes, ignoring the way his eyes flashed anger and his fist curled. This had to be the stupidest argument of my life. All these years he’d been angry because I walked away and didn’t give him the chance to dump me? I wanted to tell him to pound sand and walk out, maybe breaking something on the way. Had it not been for my daddy’s keychain, I would have.

“Tub, if you let me up here so we can rehash a fling we had when I was at the lowest point of my life, I’ll leave. We’re wasting each other’s time.”

“Naw. It ain’t why I let you up here, but I wanted you to know I ain’t forgot.”

For the first time in a long time, I let myself really think back to the spring and summer I spent with Tubby. This was the stuff I’d never tell Hannah if I could help it. I never spoke of those months to anybody—not even Memaw—and tried not to think of them. I saw a lot of things I shouldn’t have seen and did a lot I shouldn’t have done. Tubby did one thing right, though. He really saved me from falling off a bottomless cliff, just like he said. He paid for my divorce, too.

“I’m sorry I did you like I did, Tub.” I watched his face to see if the apology made any difference. He still looked the same to me. “We had fun, and you helped me.”

Some of the darkness left his face. He’d been making one of his awful hand-rolled cigarettes while we talked. He licked it and fired it up. He scooted his chair closer to me and took my hand.

“What I want from you, darlin’, in exchange for the conversation we about to have, is for you to keep me abreast of Deputy Dean’s investigations, let me know if he’s ever getting close to putting old Tub in jail. Ought to be no problem since you his girlfriend.”

I clenched my jaw, not out of fear, but to keep from honking laughter at him referring to himself in the third person. Had I not had the feeling I’d screwed up irrevocably, this whole thing would have been hysterical. My muscles twitched, begging me to get my hand away from him before he ate it, but I knew better. If he was angry about me killing our ending romance softly all those years ago, he’d pitch a wall-eyed fit if I didn’t let him manhandle me.

“Knowing where you got my daddy’s keychain isn’t worth it.” No point in saying I wouldn’t betray Dean. Tubby didn’t care about loyalty or doing the right thing. I tried to stand, and he tugged me back down.

“I got more’n info about the keychain. I know you’re looking for what got stolen from the museum and Eddie’s missing treasure notes. I got something might can help you.” He held onto my hand and smoked his cigarette, watching my face.

I wanted to tell him to forget it, really I did, but it was no longer just about finding the stolen Bruce heirlooms. It was about Eddie’s murder. It was about my father and saving him from an afterlife I couldn’t imagine. It was about revenge for whoever robbed me of my daddy and a normal childhood. Lastly, it was about what Priscilla Herrera could bully me into doing. Besides, I was still naive enough to think I could wiggle out of a bargain with Tubby Tubman. I nodded.

* * *

T
ubby brought
my hand to his lips and kissed it. I shuddered, stomach roiling, and pulled my hand away from him. He laughed and got up to get a backpack leaning against the wall. He sat back down, took out a generic laptop, and clicked a few keys.

A familiar face filled the screen. It took me a few seconds to place it, but when I did, my body went loose as jello, and I nearly flopped out of the chair. The face on the screen was my father. Next to him was an ancient African-American man who I’d bet every nickel I had was related to Hooty Bruce. The two sat side-by-side on a rickety, slightly familiar porch. Tubby started the video and everything changed again for me.

“It’s ready,” said a voice off camera. “Y’all start talking.”

The video was the blurry quality I associated with people’s old homemade VHS tapes, but there was my father, the man who’d been a mystery all my life.