Not Quite Clear (A Lowcountry Mystery) (11 page)

“They make booze for that, too,” she grumbles before peering closer into my face. She downs half her drink, then shrugs. “I wasn’t going to mention the damage in case
you didn’t want to discuss it, but yeah. You’ve looked prettier.”

“Thanks,” I manage, half-appalled, half-unsurprised that even Daria employs a very Southern look-the-other-way policy. “It was Mama Lottie. She’s tired of waiting for her answer.”

“I’m surprised she waited this long. Did she do what she said? Prove her good faith?”

I wince. “You might say that. The woman who has been the carrier
of the curse, the one harassing my cousin for the past several months, turned up dead in the river behind our house.”

“Foul play?”

“They don’t know. Nothing obvious, but the autopsy results aren’t back yet.” I make a mental note to check in with Travis and Will on that. The autopsy was a couple of days ago now; they should have heard something.

Daria nods slowly. “It had to be her. That woman
is powerful, Graciela. I don’t know how to impress upon you how much she can control. I’ve never encountered a spirit like her.”

“I’ll have to take your word on that.”

“So you’re going to tell her no thanks, right?”

I shake my head, and all the blood drains from Daria’s face. “No. I have to take the deal. It’s the only way to save my cousin and her baby.”
 

We still have the court case to worry
about, but with the curse hanging over our heads, none of the rest of it matters.

“I doubt that, and think it’s a mistake, besides,” Daria says. She looks defeated, as though she expected my choice and doesn’t believe she has any chance of changing my mind but has to try. “She’s not…she’s not on your side, not really. I think she set this whole thing up to suck you in, to bind you up, make you
need her. Or believe you do.”

“I
do
, though. Unless you can help me break a two-hundred-year-old voodoo curse?”

By the time she answers, her glass is drained and her hands are shaking. “No, I can’t. I know some things about witchcraft, but this is out of my league.”

Her reaction combines with my own discomfort over this decision, fear breaking out nausea in my stomach and sweat on my palms.
 

“I’m not happy about this, either. You don’t have to tell me Mama Lottie is dangerous. I can smell it on her. She scares the donkey snot out of me, but I don’t know what else to do. And nothing isn’t an option. Not anymore.”

“Okay. Okay, Graciela. I’ll go out there with you to tell her what you decided, just in case you have trouble communicating, but then I’m out of this. No more help.”

Her
decision isn’t unexpected, but it does nothing to make me feel better about this whole thing. Daria is a link to knowledge. She’s a lifeline, of sorts, and to remove her as a resource sets me further adrift in these foreign waters than ever.
 

But I can’t force her. I would be taking off like a pelican, too, if I had the option.

“I don’t like it, but it’s your choice. I can’t thank you enough
for everything you’ve done for me and taught me until now.”

“Don’t think this means you and I are done, Miss Priss. You owe me more than a couple of favors at this point, and I’ll call them in when it suits me.” She holds up her glass in a toast, a maniacal smile stretching her lips.
 

“Are you deranged?” I can’t help but ask, an answering smile twitching my mouth.

“You know, you won’t believe
it but this is not the first time someone has asked me that question.”
 

We laugh, but underneath it runs a current of understanding. This is a woman who has been through what I’m going through now, who has felt crazy, been given the side-eye on the street, but she came out the other side confident and happy with who she is. Maybe Daria has more to teach me than how to better communicate with
the spirits who show up at my door.

“So when do you want to go face your doom, Graciela Harper?”

“A few days, maybe. I need to call Jenna out at the property and find out if she’s willing to help us do this without getting arrested. Again.”

“You know, I wouldn’t mind if we could request that good-looking black cop from Charleston. He and I could maybe figure out a better use for those handcuffs.”

“If I didn’t have a boyfriend, I’d totally fight you for him.”

Daria kicks me out a minute later, and we agree that I’ll text her when I’m ready to go. She does warn me that after what happened in the library, waiting too long isn’t going to be in anyone’s best interest.

Her parting words ring in my ears all the way back to Heron Creek, refusing to be drowned out by the awful top-forty radio
station blasting from the speakers.
 

You don’t keep women like that waiting, Graciela. Not dead, not alive, not anywhere in between. Which is where you are, in case you were wondering.

Chapter Nine

“Hey, sugar pie! I’m so glad you called me!”

It’s impossible to be in Jenna Lee’s presence and not feel my spirits lift. She looks different in jeans instead of shorts, and without a tool belt hanging off her slender hips, but other than that, she’s the same Jenna. Her sleek black hair is tied up in a messy bun, and she’s wearing a T-shirt with a bust of Andrew Jackson
on it—very anti-Charleston of her, since Jackson and the city’s “savior,” John C. Calhoun, weren’t the best of friends. Despite sharing the White House.

“Hi, Jenna. Thanks for meeting me.”

“Of course! Not only is it great timing—I just turned in a huge project and need to celebrate—but things have been sort of boring at the Hall since you took off.”

“I didn’t take off. I completed my assignment.”

“Right. Nice try, sweet cheeks, but everyone knows by now how you told off Mrs. Drayton on your way out the door. Pretty fucking boss, if you ask me.”

“Thanks.” A waiter drops by our patio table—we’re back at Pearlz—and asks for our order. I go for an Oktoberfest local brew.

“Martini, straight-up, extra dirty,” Jenna orders, making eye contact with the young waitress as though trying to impress
upon her the importance of getting the order correct.
 

Once she’s gone, we study each other for a few seconds, clearly deciding who will show her hand first at the end of a poker game. Which doesn’t make a ton of sense since I’m the one who called
her
. Jenna has no idea what she’s doing here. She’s just a good sport.

It crosses my mind to make small talk, to ask how grad school is going or whether
she’s come up with any ingenious restoration techniques lately, but Jenna won’t be satisfied with that. She’ll want to know why we’re here, and has surely guessed that I need a favor. Maybe we can catch up after that.

“I want to know if you can work it out so I can come out to the property undetected again,” I say bluntly.

Her facial expression doesn’t change, though she does tip her head to
one side. This is not unexpected. “I figured as much. Same spot by the river?”

I nod, sitting on my hands to stop myself from gnawing on my fingernails. It’s a habit I broke a long time ago, but it’s resurfaced in this new, extra stressful version of my life.

“Shouldn’t be a problem. In fact, we’ve got a wedding out there Saturday night, so we wouldn’t even have to worry about security cams
if you want to pretend to be a guest. The Draytons turn the interior ones off during events and only watch the perimeter.”

“Will that work?”

She shrugs, pausing while the waitress returns long enough to set down our drinks. The girl loiters, earning an exasperated sigh from Jenna. “What?”

“Those guys at the bar say your drinks are on them.” The waitress points to a crop of overgrown frat boys
grinning and saluting like morons at the end of the bar.

Jenna raises her glass, gives them a perfunctory smile, and nudges me to do the same. The waitress takes off, the guys look disappointed when we ignore them, and I’m grateful they take the hint and don’t come over.
 

“I’ve perfected that little move,” Jenna confides. “You don’t want to turn down free drinks, but you also don’t want to get
stuck talking to a douche bag who sends
over
a drink.”

“I like your technique.”

“Anyway, it should be fine, provided you know how to act normal. It’s a big wedding, almost four hundred guests, so nobody will know everyone there. The reception is on the back lawn, near where you want to sneak around. It’s perfect.”

“That sounds great. Thanks.” I ignore her barb about acting normal, which only
makes her grin.

“Don’t thank me yet.” She eats the olives off the little plastic sword in her martini. “I helped you before and I’m going to help you again, but this time you
have
to tell me why. I’ll
die
otherwise”

The hyperbole makes me grin back. If I were Jenna, the curiosity would be enough to kill me, and I’m starting to think that she and I aren’t all that different. The fact that I like
her so much is my reason for holding back, but the bottom line is that I might need her help again.

“Would you reconsider if I told you it’s dangerous to know what I’m doing out there and I don’t want you to get hurt?”

“No,” she says, after the briefest pause ever. “The way I see it, if something that awful is lurking out by the river at the place where I spend about eighty hours a week, maybe
it’s better to know about it.”

Smart girl. We engage in another short standoff, which she wins. Again.

“Fine. Do you remember when I asked you about the ghosts people see on the property?”

“Yes.”

“Well, there’s one of them that’s helping me with…something.” I hold up a hand. “I’m not telling you what. That’s personal.”

“Who?” Her dark almond eyes light up, dazzling in their curiosity.
 

“Mama Lottie.”

Nothing else so far has surprised her, but this does. Her head jerks, fingers tightening on the thin stem of her glass. The last olive slips out of her grasp and hits the table with a squishy thud. “
Mama Lottie
? You’ve seen her?”

“Yes. Talked to her, too, and we’re about due for another discussion.”

“That is crazy, Graciela. And so freaking cool! I’ve worked there for ages and
hardly ever see anything weird. You’re there for a couple of weeks, tops, and start a friendship with a ghost!” She’s fidgeting in her seat, as though the excitement is too much to contain. “And Mama Lottie! She’s the Draytons’ most famous ghost.”

“Yeah, she’s a real peach.” The sarcasm feels wrong, maybe because it’s like I’m waiting for Mama Lottie’s ghost to shove my face into another invisible
barrier. “What do you know about her?”

“Just what I’ve read in the various Drayton journals. She was a powerful herbal healer. Not Gullah, though. Her practices were different, from what I understand. The family loved her, depended on her, treated her better than the others, not that they were particularly harsh slave owners at all.”

My own curiosity snags on her words. It pushes the fear to
the sides, where it belongs, and I sit up straighter. “Is there anything in those diaries about where they got her? Or anything about her not being like the other slaves?”

“Nothing about where she came from. The Draytons didn’t keep purchase records, or at least, not after they stopped farming.” The question puts a thoughtful look on her face. She retrieves the lost olive and eats it, chewing
slowly. It’s as though her brain is a computer and she’s input a search term. We’re giving it time to return all the results and when it does, her face lights up. “They did often make note of all the skills she had, how differently she spoke. Mrs. Sarah Drayton remarked once that she suspected Mama Lottie, just a girl at the time, knew how to read and write after she caught her making notes in the
margins of a book.”

“Interesting.” And in line with Mama Lottie’s claims that she’d been sold illegally. “What do you think of that generation of Draytons? The ones who owned her.”

“There were two, actually. The first ones, Charles the Second and Mary Middleton Schoolbred, weren’t around all that long after Carlotta—Mama Lottie—came to the plantation. He was a doctor, like his father, and served
in the War of 1812. There are fewer details since Mary wasn’t really into that sort of personal accounting, plus they had six kids, so that kept her busy.”

“When did Mama Lottie come to the plantation?”

“Around 1842, just two years before Charles the Second died and his son, Charles the Third, took over the plantation. Business was declining and the father had urged the son to look into some
other, more stable line of work, but family is family.”

“Indeed it is,” I murmur, my heart and mind on a more recent crop of Draytons. I’d read most of this family history during my time going through documents on the property, but it’s more interesting to hear it from Jenna’s perspective. “And people didn’t give up a legacy or land like that without a fight.”

“Right.” Jenna looks at me as though
she suspects I’ve been referring to something else with my agreement about family, but moves on with her historical recounting. “Charles the Third married Sarah Parker, the woman who really raised and befriended Mama Lottie during her teen years into adulthood.”

“They were the ones who allowed Mama Lottie’s healing or witchcraft or whatever to flourish on the plantation,” I verify, picking at
the label on my bottle of beer.

“Yes. And when Charles the Third died young—pneumonia—Sarah blamed Mama Lottie.”

“She thought her maid had something to do with it?” I haven’t heard this rumor before and make another mental note, this one to find a way to get my hands on Sarah’s diary.
 

“Not in so many words. It’s more like Sarah didn’t understand why Mama Lottie would let her master die after
saving so many others. The two of them got into a nasty row, and Mama Lottie was banished from the house to work in the fields for the rest of her tenure.”

“Sarah ran the plantation after that? Until the Civil War broke out?”

“Unofficially. Her son, Charles Henry, inherited but he was only five years old. His uncle John, Charles the Third’s brother, was the legal steward.”