Rocks & Gravel (Peri Jean Mace Ghost Thrillers Book 3) (21 page)

“We did it. We saved him.” I squeezed his hand. “Thank you. I can never thank you enough.”

Wade said nothing. At first, I thought it was because he was out of breath, too. But, even after his breathing slowed back to normal, he still didn’t speak.

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Probably not. Look, I need to tell you something.”

A few feet away, the EMS workers put Dean into the ambulance and drove away, sirens wailing for the entire block and a half to the hospital. The action died down quickly. I realized I never knew who did the shooting. Rainey Bruce approached us, her face streaked with tears.

“I’m so sorry, Peri Jean.” She hugged me.

Sorry for what? Isn’t Dean alive?

“Who did it?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice had all the inflection of a robot.

I couldn’t speak. I glanced at Wade, looking for an explanation.

“Peri Jean, there’s no easy way to say this.” Wade put one hand over his mouth, wiping at his beard. “Your grandmother was shot, too.”

I jumped to my feet and swayed, nearly falling to the ground. My nerves stretched to the brink, pulling me in a dozen different directions. Rainey grabbed my elbow and held me up. I took in her tear-streaked face, asking for confirmation. She nodded.

“How? Why?” My mind rejected the information. If I asked enough questions, surely I could make Wade’s words untrue. I knew the folly of my thinking, but I couldn’t stop myself.

“The shooter had the gun pointed at you,” Wade said. “Your grandmother grabbed her arm and got in front of her.”

Rainey took a long shuddering breath. “This is so awful,” she sobbed.

Then it hit home. Memaw had been shot just like Dean. Maybe she needed help. Wade and I could help her. I’d use the last of my strength to save her.

“Where is she?”

“King took her to the hospital.” Wade’s voice still had an odd, toneless quality.

“Come on, then. We have to get over there.”

Wade simply stared at me, his shoulders rounded, the expression in his eyes battle weary.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“Shot in the head. Point blank range. Too much damage to—” He choked on his words and put his hands over his face and sobbed.

Anguish kindled and mounted into an inferno in a matter of seconds. Someone wailed in the background. One look at Rainey Bruce’s face told me the howler was me. I took off running, leaving Wade and Rainey on the courthouse square.

* * *

B
y the time
I reached the hospital, my breath came in harsh gasps from battling the suffocating humidity. Sweat beaded and ran down my body, tickling as it went. I slammed into the emergency room, looking for Memaw. Wade shouldn’t be far behind me. He was wrong. There had to be a way to fix Memaw. Together, we could fix her the same way we fixed Dean. King sat in one of the orange chairs, his gray head bowed and his hands clasped between his knees. He raised his head at the sound of my footfalls. Our eyes met, and I saw the answer in their dull depths.

“No.” I howled the word, letting it drag out until I ran out of breath. King stared at me, face expressionless, neither shocked nor impressed at my show.

“Dead on arrival.” His voice was gritty and dry like he’d been crying. One glance at the tear streaks on his cheeks told the story. “I tried to get in front of her. Didn’t realize what was happening in time.”

I sank to my knees in front of him, shaking my head. I wailed my disbelief and beat my fists on the floor as my world sank into the abyss. No more Memaw. The cooking and crochet lessons, the talks about life and God, the private jokes—all gone in a flash. I cried harder than I ever remembered crying, chest straining with the effort of it, head pounding from the force of it.

“Ma’am? You can’t do that in here,” a voice said from behind me. “We have a chapel if you’d like to—”

“You say one more word, you heartless bitch, and I’ll cold cock you myself.” King’s voice remained light and calm, but I didn’t doubt him.

“I’m calling the sheriff,” she said.

King grabbed me by one arm and dragged me out of the room. My tear-blurred eyes roved over a sea of horrified faces. Many held sympathy, but all I saw were the people who’d made fun of me all my life. Once outside, King lit a cigarette and jammed it between my lips.

“Straighten up. Get a-hold of yourself. Quit acting like a fucking baby.” He tried to force me to stand up straight. I curled in on myself, trying to get away from him. He held my wrist in an iron grip and gave me a hard shake.

“You think you were the only person who loved that old lady?” he shouted, his voice nearly lost in the roar of blood rushing in my ears. “Hell, there wasn’t a dry eye in that emergency room, ‘cept maybe that mean bitch who run us off. She’s cold as a dildo’s been in the freezer for a month.”

I glared at him through my tears. He hadn’t loved Memaw like I had and couldn’t possibility understand. “It’s my fault she’s dead. Wade said the shooter pointed the gun at me.”

“There is no way Miss Leticia could have stood watching you be shot and die in front of her. Any parent would have done the same.” He gripped my shoulder, probably getting ready to shake me some more, but I jerked away from him.

“But my grandmother’s dead,” I sank on the ground and choked back the ache in my throat. “I wasn’t…ready.” A black hole of pain opened up in my chest, sucking bits and pieces of me into it. The parts of me it left behind bled and screamed in blind pain. My face burned, and I wanted to puke. I wanted to take back all the awful choices I’d made. But I couldn’t.

“You’re never ready.” He knelt next to me. I couldn’t let myself focus on the sadness in his voice. I wanted to be mad at King, to pound him with my fists and yell in his face. I had the energy to do none of it. I felt devoid of even the gumption to keep breathing.

A flicker of light, too bright for this nasty old parking lot, drew my gaze. A young couple approached the electric doors and passed through them as though they weren’t even there. The girl wore a full skirt which fluffed out like it had a petticoat underneath. The boy wore khaki pants short enough to show his white socks and loafers. The couple might have been going to a costume party featuring the nifty fifties as its theme, but they weren’t. They were my grandparents, so young I barely recognized them.

The last I’d seen of my grandfather’s ghost, he’d been a middle-aged man, broad shouldered, face weathered by sun and circumstance. All those scars of living had dropped away. His unlined skin glowed under his bryl-creamed pompadour, his spade sideburns cutting an angle down his jawbones. They stopped a few feet from me, hands clasped. I stilled the same way I would have if I’d crossed paths with a deer and wanted to watch it a few moments before it ran off. I drank in Memaw, staring at her dark eyes and her Liz Taylor haircut. She’d been so beautiful before life wore her down, and she was so again, her face full of light as she smiled up at my grandfather, barely sparing a glance at me.

“Well, I’ll be,” King whispered beside me. I took in the wonder on his face and guessed he could see them, too.

Memaw turned to me, smiling at me more like we were old friends who’d gone to school together than grandmother and granddaughter. She’d changed and was ready to move on down a new road, one with no cancer or pain or loss to make it rocky. She motioned me to get up and approach her. I did, taking slow, small steps, fearful of popping the bubble of this encounter. Her love covered me, hugging me without touching me. She leaned close and opened her hand. Inside was a butterfly. It moved its wings and rose into the black night. Memaw winked and gave my grandfather’s hand a tug. He nodded and waved to me. Sobs shook my body, and I clasped my arms around my chest and watched them walk out of the parking lot and down the street. Finally, they disappeared with a little pop of light.

“I don’t have anybody left,” I whispered.

“Your grandma was sort of one of us.” King put his hands on his hips, heaved out a sigh, and spoke as though he was giving me his last penny. “In her honor, if you ever need my help, ask.”

Corman came to stand next to me. “I second what Daddy said. You come to us if you need us. No strings attached.”

Wade put one arm around me and yanked me against him. He smelled sour and sick, but I hugged him anyway. Hannah slammed out the door, tears streaking down her face.

“Oh, thank God, you’re all right.” She ran at me and threw her arms around me, holding me so tight it hurt. She pulled back and stared at my face. “Is it true about Memaw?”

I said nothing but felt my lips tremble.

Hannah threw back her head and cried loud whooping sobs like a child who’d fallen off the swing set. It was then I let myself sift through what I knew about the last moments of Memaw’s life. I hadn’t seen anything, but I heard enough.

The shooter screamed
Die, witch.
It was my fault. Whatever time Memaw had left was cut short by me being me.
Die, witch.
I did nothing but get the people I loved hurt and killed.
Die, witch.
I recognized whose voice had hollered “Die, witch” and knew I’d never wash all the guilt off me. My throat closed, and I put my hands over my face and rocked back and forth. Every single bit of tonight was on me.

Dr. Longstreet came out of the hospital, still wearing the suit he had on when Dean got shot. Bloodstains covered it. Seeing me bent over, he rushed to me, taking my arm and learning over me. “What’s happening? What hurts?”

My heart hurts, doctor. Beating me upside the head with a hammer might fix it.

“The shooter was Julie Woodson.” Speaking made me realize my lips had gone numb, and the inside of my mouth felt like old cotton.

“I, ah, was listening to the police scanner on my phone.” Hannah held up the device. “The sheriff’s deputies have her surrounded at the antique store. They’re trying to get her to come out and surrender.”

“I never realized it would come to this. My memaw’s dead because of me.” The sobs returned, clawing my throat raw, burning my eyes, and leaving nothing behind but the worst pain I’d ever felt. I cried myself out faster this time, maybe because I knew it wouldn’t help ever, and turned to Dr. Longstreet.

“Dean?”

“Tough sumbitch is gonna live,” Dr. Longstreet said. “Don’t tell me what the two of you did to him. Might ruin my belief in medical science. All he needed was a blood transfusion and a little patching. Got an intern taking care of it. But that bullet should have killed him.”

“What did you see? What did the other people see?” Wade loomed over Dr. Longstreet.

“Not a damn thing,” Longstreet deadpanned. “We blocked y’all from sight. Nobody saw much.”

I understood. They would ignore what they saw because it saved Dean. They had probably already started lying to themselves about it.

“He awake?” My voice sounded like someone had rubbed sandpaper on my vocal chords.

“I sedated him. He was arguing with me about going back to work tonight. It’ll take hours to give the blood transfusion he needs.”

“Can I see him?”

“You can go sit with him in his room. Come on.”

I started to follow the doctor but stopped and turned back to my friends. One by one, I made eye contact with them, thanking them for being there with me when I needed it.

I
felt
like the walking dead—sort of not there—as Dr. Longstreet led me to Dean’s room and got me situated in a chair next to his bed with a blanket. I heard someone else’s voice asking the doctor if I should call his family or let him decide when he woke up but didn’t even listen to the answer he gave, figuring the other person, the one who sounded so together would take care of it. Instead, I tried to figure out what they’d done with Memaw’s body. The thought, though it should have made me scream, just deepened the numbness in my soul.

Over the last year, I’d imagined Memaw’s death numerous times. She’d die with me holding her hand. I’d cry, run off, and hide like a wounded animal but eventually come to the conclusion she was no longer hurting. In this scenario, Dean acted as my rock, bringing me back to the land of the living with his strength and pragmatism.

In reality, I sat next to a hospital bed, hovering over Dean’s unconscious form like there was something I could do other than wait for him to wake up. I might as well have been alone, considering how isolated I felt. Losing Memaw so abruptly had scooped out a piece of me as neatly as a shovel digging a hole. I felt sure it would return, along with all the screaming, crying, and hysterics. For this moment, the emptiness held me in thrall. My wonderful Memaw was silenced forever by a bullet intended for me. No wonder her spirit left with my grandfather’s so quickly. I think I’d have headed out for greener pastures, too.

The idea should have brought tears to my eyes, lodged a lump in my throat, but it did neither. I couldn’t form a reaction. I sat there silent and still, watching Dean rest. He had an IV hooked to one arm. A bag of blood and a bag of saline hung from a rolling metal stand next to his bed, the IV tube snaking to one arm. I curled my fingers over the unfettered hand, caressing his fingers with my thumb.

I pulled myself together as best as I could and began a mental list of things I needed to do. Memaw left her final wishes with Hooty, so I’d have to get with him. I’d need to clean out her clothes, pick the ones I wanted to keep and give away or sell the rest. I’d need to decide if Dean and I wanted to live there in Memaw’s house together or if he wanted to keep his house of horrors downtown. Somewhere in there, I must have dozed.

Dean jerked and woke me. I removed my hand from his, worried I was hurting him. His eyes were wide, darting around the room.

“You’re okay. They had to give you blood, but it’s over and you’re going to be fine.”

His eyes settled on my face, still wild and too bright. He licked his lips. Realizing he needed something to wet his mouth, I poured water from the mini-pitcher and held it out to him. He shook his head hard, whipping it side-to-side, warding me off with his hands. The empty hole inside me closed, and the cold sting of fear kickstarted my emotions.

“It’s okay.” I reached out to touch him, to assure him I meant no harm.

He flinched away, cowering from me.

“What is it? Do you want me to call the nurse?”

“Get out.” His voice was barely more than a croak, but his words slammed into me as hard as if he’d shouted them. “Don’t touch me. You’re…you’re…unnatural.”

I flinched from his words, hurt welling up in my throat. My mind searched for an excuse. Was he having some sort of episode? A stroke maybe? I snatched the call button, but Dean batted it from my hand. I backed away from him, my hand moving to my chest, trying to dam up the emotion flooding me.

He took the water from where I’d set it after he refused it. He took a drink, slopping it on the bed and himself. He seemed not to notice. His attention stayed on me, wary and scared.

His reaction baffled me. He acted as though this was the first he’d ever experienced my abilities, but it wasn’t.

“I came so close to dying, my spirit left my body. I watched you and Wade trying to save me. There was this…I don’t know…like a nimbus of shadow surrounding the two of you.” He paused, breathing hard. A vein in his neck pounded, the skin shiny with sweat. “I was scared of it. And, now, I feel like part of me’s still out there. What you did was wrong. You tried to trick nature.”

“I saved you.” My words came out ragged and and full of broken edges. “I did it because I love you.”

“Get away from me.” He whipped his head side to side. “I don’t want that part of you touching me ever again.” He turned his body away from me and stared out the window.

I stumbled backward, my knees loose and shaky, and caught myself on the cheap dresser. I looked back over the past months and saw them in a new light. Nothing had changed about the way Dean reacted to me doing out of the ordinary things. He just ignored them. Sensing his discomfort, I’d kept it away from him. The two of us had been headed for disaster for some time. Maybe some deeper, smarter part of me saw the end coming, because it wasn’t the end killing me inside. It was the way Dean had curled his lip when he looked at me, as though I repulsed him. It was the same way Barbie looked at me. Nausea bubbled in my stomach, threatening like distant thunder. I swallowed against it.

“Get out. I can’t deal with you today. Maybe not ever.”

It hit me then. Dean had compartments for everything in his life. It was why he could be so fastidious in his appearance, so dedicated to being good at his job, but live in a rundown house. What I could do—what I was—was okay as long as he kept it at a distance, didn’t let it touch him. But it had saved his life, and he could no longer ignore it. Sadness so deep it almost blacked out my vision filled me. The door to Dean’s room swung open and Deputy Michael Fitzgerald rushed in, hair standing up in oily spikes and uniform wet with sweat.

“It’s over, Sheriff. We heard a gunshot. Investigated, and Miz Woodson had shot herself. Boy feels funny calling you sheriff—” He took in the scene before him, eyes widening at the sight of me and mouth dropping open when he saw Dean curled into the fetal position, his back turned to me. “What’s wrong?”

“He’s pulling a fit because life ain’t fitting into his narrow-assed view of how things ought to go.” I used the last of my inner steel to march out of the room. Soon as I got out of sight, I turned to jelly, barely able to see through the tears burning my eyes. I staggered through the hospital like a drunk, brushing against the walls, holding onto them for support. Curious eyes followed my progress, but nobody tried to help. They just let me go. I thought I heard someone calling my name but ignored it, pitching forward, closer to the exit with each clumsy step.

I tripped going out the door and sprawled face first into the parking lot, scraping my hands on the asphalt. I lay there, hands on fire, a spot on my chin stinging. A car whipped into the parking lot and came straight for me. I managed to get to my knees in time for them to see me and slow.

A guy I recognized but didn’t really know leaned out his window. “You all right, lady?”

I nodded and forced myself to walk back to the courthouse square, trying to remember where I’d left my car. Finally, I remembered it was at the museum, in the tiny parking lot in back.

I don’t know how I made it to the museum or how I got home. I don’t remember stopping at any stop signs or seeing any traffic lights. I rolled under the carport and parked and sat there staring into space. The numbness I worried about earlier had been a blessing. In its place had grown a throb so intense its beat resonated in every inch of my being. I staggered out of the car, left the keys in the ignition and the door hanging open, and walked to the house on unsteady legs.

It was baking hot inside. Memaw wasn’t there to run the window units. I’d get them started and make a pitcher of iced tea to drink while I worked, just like Memaw would have done. I put the kettle on the stove to boil and grabbed the matches to light the gas burner, realizing at the last moment I didn’t know how to get the stove started. I’d lit it by myself since I was ten or so, but in my haze of grief, I couldn’t remember how to work it. Tossing the matches on the kitchen table, I dragged myself to Memaw’s bedroom. Fuck the iced tea. I’d make it later.

Opening her closet, I looked through her things, wondering what I’d bury her in. I took out her favorite Sunday dress, the one she’d worn to church on special occasions the last several years in a row. It looked so small. I sat down on the bed, holding it, rocking. The first tear dripped onto the periwinkle fabric and I tossed the dress over her vanity bench, not wanting to soil it. The angle allowed me to see the light on Memaw’s answering machine blinking. She kept it in her room because I never remembered to check it. Wondering how long the message had been there, I pushed the button.

“Peri Jean?” Julie Woodson sounded out of breath.

Deputy Fitzgerald said she’d shot herself. Unless this was her ghost calling, I guessed she must have called during her standoff with Burns County’s finest.

“I’m sorry for everything I did and said the last couple of days. When I came to myself holding that gun at the courthouse square, Dean laying there shot, poor Miss Leticia dead at my feet, I couldn’t figure out what’d happened. Last thing I remembered was telling your mother not to haggle more than ten percent on merchandise while we were gone to see my cousin Carl. I thought there must be some mistake, so I ran back here, thinking it’d give me time to figure out what to do. More I sit here, though, the more I know I’m sunk. Listen, girl, what I want to tell you is Eddie always believed you and Jesse’d both been spelled to forget what happened the day your daddy was murdered.”

Well, no shit.
Of course, it had taken me all my life to figure it out.

“It was Eddie’s dream to help you remember. The week he died, he called me all excited, saying he thought he had it.” The machine beeped off. I half rose from my seat, heart pounding, thinking whatever she said was lost. The machine went to the next message.

“Shit. Didn’t realize these things cut off after a certain amount of time. I’ll try to be fast. Eddie said for the forgetting spell to have lasted so long, it must have been drawing energy from somewhere. Maybe a person. Maybe an item. Would have to be something—or somebody—you had real strong feelings about. Soon as I remembered that, I went straight to my curio display in the back of the store.”

Julie’d set up parts of her store to resemble rooms in a house. Her favorite was an art deco bedroom in the back of the store. The locked curio cabinet housed Julie’s own collection of perfume bottles and vanity items from the era. She claimed she had so few visitors at her own house, she kept the items there in the store so more people could see them.

“I didn’t quite know what to look for, but I took down my new bottle, the one you said reminded you of a genie bottle, opened it, and there it was. This little rolled up piece of paper was inside, and it had these funny markings on it. I burned the paper, and I—” The message beeped off again but went right to the next one.

“I burned it, Peri Jean. I burned the paper. Then, I remembered every awful thing I’d done over the last couple of days, right up to shooting—” Her voice broke and she wept awful, wracking sobs until the machine cut off the message again. The next message started. By then Julie’d gotten control of herself well enough to speak. “I want to apologize to you for everything I did. I can’t believe I treated you the way I did at Carl Mahoney’s house. I set the appointment to go over there with full intent of helping you get the little box you’d told me about. And afterwards, calling all those people and badmouthing you. I can’t believe it was me saying those awful things. Then, what I did last night…Peri Jean, please believe me, I didn’t know what I was doing.” The machine cut off.

Did I believe Julie?
She’d treated me no better than a hog rooting up her garden.
Wait. Memaw’s the one who got the pesky hog treatment.
If Julie was telling the truth, she’d been under someone else’s control since the day we went to see Carl Mahoney. I didn’t understand how someone could use magic to control another person but then thought about the curse keeping people from finding the Mace Treasure and had to admit magic in the right hands could accomplish some pants-pissing outcomes. One thing was for sure. If someone had controlled Julie’s actions over the last few days, the same person had sent her to kill me last night.
Die, witch.
The next message started up, and I forced myself to focus on it.

“I’m going to make my point, honey, because I’m getting real tired of this damn machine. Whoever did this to me must be the same person who made you lose your memory when you’s a little girl. You got to find where they hid your spell. It’ll be in a place important to you, a place you—how did Eddie say it?—a place you invest with your own emotions.” She took a shuddering breath, and I heard Brittany Watson hollering outside, her voice amplified by some sort of speaker system, saying something about busting down the door in thirty seconds. “Well, I can’t live with what I’ve done, so I guess this is the end of the road for me. I want to say I’m sorry one more time. I hope you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me.” The phone clunked down on a hard surface.

“No, no, no,” I muttered, even though I knew it wouldn’t do any good. The gunshot blasted through the answering machine’s speaker, and I jumped. The machine beeped, signaling the end of Julie’s message, as well as the end of her life. I sat on Memaw’s bed, arms clutched around myself, shivering and rocking, too shocked to cry any more.

Instead, I fantasized ways I could have helped Julie, helped her realize what was happening before it was too late. The person who did this to Julie had way more experience and probably more supernatural power than I ever would. Julie was gone, and I’d spent the last hours of her life hating her with all my heart. I couldn’t believe I’d been so quick to believe the worst of someone who’d been nothing but good to me.

Then my tears came, and I cried for everybody the Mace Treasure had taken from me. My grandfather. My father. My cousin Rae. My childhood sweetheart, Chase Fischer. Eddie and Julie. Dean almost died because of people trying to get to me.

And Memaw.

I’d made so many mistakes. Fighting for Priscilla Herrera’s cursed mini treasure chest had made it worse. It left the person behind all this no choice but to try to kill me. This asshole who’d taken away my life had left me no choice but to try to kill him.