Downright Dead Read online

  Buster stepped from behind Jake like a short noon shadow. He gave a sharp nod and straightened his belt. “That’s under investigation.”

  “Investigate what?” Nelda asked, hands on hips. “I told ya ’xactly what happened. He fell off that roof.” She glanced up at the widow’s walk and then to the ground where he lay. “I saw him land, God rest his soul, right in front of my eyes.” She shook her head and stroked Rhett’s head. “And I can’t unsee that.”

  “I received a call at zero one sixteen hours from Mr. Stalwort to report a theft.”

  “What time is zero one sixteen hours?” Nelda scrunched up her brow. “Nobody knows what time you’re talkin’ ’bout. Just spit out the o’clock.”

  “Sixteen minutes after one this morning,” Jake said, but he seemed to study Buster. “Military time leaves no room for error in official reports. The chief deputy here is a seasoned professional.” Jake gave Buster one of those good-ol’-boy nods men exchange.

  Buster offered a man-nod back and puffed out his chest like a rooster at daybreak.

  Yeah, right, and I’m a five-star chef. Give me a break. Why was Jake sucking up to Buster? Did he remember who he was in high school? Investigation, my foot. “Wait. Tru called you? What theft?”

  “Confidential.” Buster hitched up his belt again. “I—”

  “Not if it happened on my property.” Holly’s mind whirled around the fact that Tru had called the sheriff’s office moments before he fell to his death. Why didn’t he report the theft to her? She gulped, recalling the knock-down, drag-out in the parlor after the séance.Of course, he wouldn’t call me. “What was stolen?”

  “Privileged information at this point.” Buster cleared his throat. “I arrived here at zero one twenty-six hours and he was unresponsive. Dead at zero one thirty-one hours.” He adjusted his belt. “I think we’ve got us a murder here.”

  Murder? “That can’t be.” No sooner than the words left her mouth, she questioned them. Which of her guests hadn’t had an altercation with Tru? But murder?

  “Whoa.” Jake jumped in. “Buster, right?”

  “Chief Deputy Sheriff Fulton.” He jacked his chin up. “Of St. Agnes Parish.”

  Jake rubbed his hand across his mouth. “Soon to be duly elected if you solve this murder quickly, and I’m sure you will.” Jake shoved his hands in his pockets. “How’d you figure it out? There’s a big leap between theft and murder.”

  “Not if the victim said the property was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.” He dipped his chin down and eyed Jake. “And Mr. Stalwort felt his life may be in danger.”

  “The guy only checked in with a duffel bag. What was in there? Gold bars?” Holly asked.

  “What did he report stolen?” Jake asked.

  Buster hitched up his pants. “His glasses.”

  “Oh.” Holly swallowed hard. The video evidence that Tru had debunked her ghost, Angel’s reputation of communicating with the dead, and Inquiring Minds’s credibility. And every altercation any of them had had with him if he’d recorded everything like he’d said he had.

  “Nobody leave until I get statements from everyone.” Buster shone his flashlight on Angel, who was standing on the porch with her suitcase. “That includes you, ma’am.”

  Holly glanced around for Sylvia. Where had she gone? Hmm . . . She must have slipped away just about the time Buster mentioned the investigation.

  Lights flashing, two sheriff’s deputy patrol cars screamed down her driveway. The entire sheriff’s office was now on the case, and probably Jake, too.

  Mercy. What now?

  Holly plopped down on the porch steps as Buster and his officers swarmed Holly Grove. Her stomach rolled as flashlight beams zapped down from the widow’s walk to the grass where Tru’s body lay covered in a sheet. Buster barked orders as he climbed the steps past where she sat.

  She propped her elbows on her knees and rested her head in her hands. Her palms cooled her forehead as she stared at the hypnotic basket weave of the brick sidewalk and let her mind wander.

  Could it really be murder? Sure, Tru had made a few enemies tonight, but why would anyone kill him if they had his glasses with all the recordings? Surely his death was a terrible accident. She blew out a long breath. This publicity wouldn’t be good for her business. And just when business was picking up.

  Big black boots stepped into her view. She looked up. Six feet of delicious man who had just sucked up to Buster while he claimed there had been a murder at Holly Grove.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  Holly sighed. “Just peachy.”

  He pointed to her feet. “You’re missing a slipper, Cinderella.”

  “I know.” Holly rubbed her bare foot over the top of her remaining slipper. “I must have lost it in this disaster.”

  “I can see how that could happen.”

  “On top of the terrible accident, Buster thinks Tru was murdered. And you do, too!” Holly shook her head. “Why were you swallowing everything Buster said? Don’t you remember him from high school?”

  Jake shrugged. “This is probably the biggest excitement he’s ever seen.”

  “You mean your new best friend?” Holly huffed. “The guy who washed your jock and everyone else’s on the football team. The guy who thought he was a coach because he typed the playbook. The guy who took hall monitor to a level that nearly got me suspended for responding to the call of nature.”

  “Yeah, I remember.” Jake rubbed a hand over the handsome stubble of his two-day beard.

  She blinked and shoved that thought to the back of her mind where it belonged. “Could have fooled me.”

  “We called him Bust-a-jock.” Jake gave a so-what shrug. “That was high school. He’s the chief deputy sheriff now. People change. Why not give him the benefit of the doubt?”

  “Because he hasn’t changed.” She flapped her arms at her side. “You know why he’s chief deputy sheriff? Parish charter. That’s why. The charter dictated the longest serving deputy be appointed interim sheriff after Sheriff Walker was forced to step down.”

  “Makes sense to have the most experienced man step up until the election. Do you think he’ll win?”

  “On what? His career record?” Holly sat up straight. “I’ve got a collection of Buster’s police work over his ten-year career—signed and paid for. Parking tickets and speeding tickets. Twenty-seven to be exact, for parking the least bit out of the lines or going as little as five miles per hour over the speed limit. We all have them. He’ll never get elected.”

  The left side of Jake’s mouth kicked up. “Unless he solves a murder or does something newsworthy.”

  “You think that’s why he’s screaming murder? To get elected?” She rolled that thought around a second. “It has to be.”

  Jake shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “Buster always overreacts.”

  “But what if he’s not? Wouldn’t you want one of us to be on his good side?”

  “Is that what you were doing?”

  “Call it insurance. I’ve dealt with guys like him. If I feed his ego, he’ll eat out of my hand before long.” He sat down beside her. “One of us needs to be on his good side, and it’s not going to be you.”

  And just like that, Jake was inching his way back on her good side.

  “Now tell me what happened here.”

  “Oh, Jake, this is awful. Tru came here to debunk my ghost.” She rubbed her arms against the cold. “He was nothing but trouble from the time he walked through the door, but I didn’t wish him dead.” She sighed. “Gone. Definitely. But murdered? By one of my guests?” She pressed her palm to her head. “I just can’t believe it.”

  “So, you think it was an accident?”

  “I hate to tell you this, but Mackie fell through the floor up there just before this crazy train started.”

  A crease pinched between Jake’s chocolate eyes. “Is he okay?”

  Holly nodded
. “He’s a little banged up. Sore back and some scrapes, but nothing serious. Miss Alice checked him out.”

  A shadow of a grin slid across Jake’s face. “If she didn’t call an ambulance, he’s fine.” He glanced down. “How about otherwise?”

  “He’s not drinking, if that’s what you mean. I think he’s staying sober for you. You really should let him know when you’re coming. It gives him something to look forward to.”

  “It’d also give him a chance to sober up before I get here.”

  “He was crushed when I told him you weren’t coming. You should have let him know yourself.”

  “How? He doesn’t even have a phone. It’s hard for me to make calls when I’m undercover, especially just to leave a message for him at Dottie’s Diner.”

  “Unless you’re sleeping with your target, you should be able to get away for a phone call sometime.”

  “It’s not just the time. If the target gets jittery, he may ask to look at my phone, bug my room. They’ve got ways. The less communication with people I care about the better.”

  Like me, maybe. She studied Jake but he gave nothing away.

  “I’ll go see him tomorrow.”

  “No need. He told me he’d be back to finish the job tomorrow, but now it’s the scene of a crime according to Buster.”

  “We’ll see about that.” Jake took off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders. “You need to find your other slipper before you catch a cold. I’m going to see if I can find out more about why Buster is jumping to that conclusion.” He winced. “Pardon the pun.”

  With a quick squeeze of her shoulder, he stood and followed Buster’s trail up the steps.

  Mercy. Jake had only been here a few minutes and was already getting back in her good graces. It was so much easier to stay mad when he was far away. That’s the problem. He won’t stay. Remember that.

  Jake may be able to get some answers out of Buster, but Holly couldn’t count on that. She had to act, and she knew just who to call to nip this in the bud.

  * * *

  One patrol car shined its spotlight over Tru’s body while two deputies removed the sheet that covered it. They laid down some kind of tape around Tru’s contorted body. Holly shivered on the brick steps of her B&B. Holy Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus, how could this have happened?

  Police car radios blared codes from a dispatcher over the muffled voices of Delta Ridge’s finest as they collected evidence. It all seemed like a dream, a bad one. She couldn’t wrap her mind around the thought of one of her guests pushing Tru off the roof. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe he fell. Look what happened to Mackie. He nearly fell off the roof. Why had she wanted to open that widow’s walk up anyway? Just the name sounded depressing.

  Holly propped her elbows on her knees and stared at Tru’s body. As obnoxious as he was, he didn’t deserve this, accident or not.

  The wind kicked up and she glanced at the sky. Clouds raced across the almost black heavens. Another storm was brewing.

  When she looked back at Tru, his mop of red hair whipped around with the breeze and the flaps of his coat fluttered at his side. It reminded her of when the wind blew the door open, and she’d tried to make him think her ghost had done it. She sighed. He’d dismissed it as predicted weather. He’d had an explanation for everything, but he wasn’t here to explain this. He couldn’t have predicted this, but Angel did.

  The sounds of footsteps and voices morphed around her into a faded cacophony as she stared at Tru’s corpse. The deputies must have finished marking out his body position, because Sandy and an EMT loaded him on a gurney and covered him with a sheet again.

  Her tension eased a bit with Tru’s body out of sight, but a little pang of guilt pinched her gut. On TV shows and movies, the gesture seemed heroic—protecting the dignity of the dead and all that.

  Not so much in real life. Covering the body hid the vulgar truth of what death looked like.

  The wind rippled across the sheet that covered Tru, and Holly pulled Jake’s coat a little tighter around her shoulders.

  Holly hadn’t wanted to see Tru’s body and now she couldn’t unsee it, as Nelda had said. Death ain’t pretty before it’s all cleaned up, painted up, and laid out in a coffin, and it’s only tolerable then.

  She fidgeted with her nails to keep from chewing them off. His poor family would find out soon. Would they come here? How could she face them? She glanced back at the gurney where Sandy was securing Tru’s body.

  Tru sat straight up, right through the sheet.

  Holly gasped and slammed her back against the steps.

  Sandy didn’t seem to see Tru rise from his body. The deputies didn’t either. No one saw him but Holly. Her heartbeat hammered through her body and echoed in her ears. Oh, hell no! Not again.

  Tru dusted off his clothes and looked up at the widow’s walk. Then he watched as Sandy strapped his body on the gurney. “Hey,” he said to Sandy.

  She didn’t answer.

  He turned in a full circle, taking in all the commotion, and stopped dead when he saw the body outline on the grass. He grabbed the first deputy he came to. His hand went right through him. Wild eyed, he raced to the body and snatched at the sheet, but his hand went right through that, too.

  Well, stick a fork in me and call me done. Tru the paranormal debunker is a ghost. Holly stood and brushed off her hands, then walked over to Tru and whispered, “Debunk this.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Tru dug at his face with his hands. His expression twisted from confused to bewildered to panicked. “It’s not possible.” His mouth hung open as he shook his head. “Ghosts don’t exist.”

  Holly nodded toward the widow’s walk and then to the body, careful not to speak to him in front of anyone. The whole town would have her certified if she talked to another ghost. It was one thing to think there was a ghost hanging out at Holly Grove, but chatting to thin air didn’t sit well with the good people of Delta Ridge.

  He stared at his former body for a moment, then his mouth gaped open in a silent scream. He stood in a red-hot glowing whirlpool that sucked him straight down. As he clawed at the earth, his image melted. In an instant, the earth filled in the charred hole as though it had never been there.

  Holly stumbled backward, panting. She held her hand over her runaway heart. Holy, moly. That never happened with Burl. What the—

  A hand touched her shoulder.

  Holly jumped and nearly took off running.

  “Sorry,” Angel said. “Has the chief deputy sheriff questioned you yet?”

  “No but I had a,” she drew quotation marks in the air, “visitor.”

  Angel’s dark eyes widened. “Anyone we know?”

  Holly dragged Angel over by the azalea bushes at the corner of the house, away from the action. “Tru. He’s back.”

  “Did he tell you if someone pushed him off the widow’s walk like the chief deputy sheriff seems to think?”

  Holly shook her head. “He was only here for a few minutes, but he doesn’t believe he’s a ghost. He still thinks that’s impossible.” Holly leaned in closer to Angel. “Do ghosts ever kinda spin and melt into a hole of fire in the ground?”

  Angel sucked in a breath. “He may not be coming back.”

  “Burl used to fade out all the time. He always came back.” Holly lifted a shoulder. “Until he didn’t.”

  “Burl didn’t go to . . .” Angel glanced down. “Hell.”

  * * *

  Jake stepped out onto the widow’s walk, and the night sky felt unnaturally close. Tru had jumped, fallen, or been pushed off the roof. If there was evidence to prove what had happened up here, Jake intended to find it or find out about it. At the very least, he wanted to know exactly why Buster was so convinced Tru was murdered or if he was looking for headlines to win an election.

  Buster and his deputies pored over Tru’s last stand like a high school band in Chinese fire drill mode at a halftime show. The beams from standard-issue flashlights darted across the
worn floorboards as the local flatfoots combed the area. Jake’s size-twelve shoes gave him a steady footing as he peeked over the side of the widow’s walk. Man, that’s a long drop.

  He’d puked three times when he left that billboard-size love note to Holly on the St. Agnes Parish water tower before he left town after graduation. It was their secret. Still was. He lifted a heavy foot. Mind over matter, man.

  If he hadn’t climbed that tower, he’d have never made it through basic training or his first jump or snagged his dream job. He wasn’t afraid of heights, but he respected the danger.

  Old Tru had hammered that home tonight, whether he’d fallen or had been pushed to his death. All Jake had to do was get a few answers from Buster and check the scene out for himself.

  Jake sucked in a breath. His dark clothes and lack of a flashlight would let him blend in for a minute or two in the chaos, maybe long enough to assess the scene. He glanced around at the plywood patch on the floor, sawhorses, a wooden crate, and two random buckets filled with sand beside a chimney. Enough trip hazards for a lawyer’s wet dream if Tru fell to his death.

  All that was surrounded by a rusted row of munchkin-size wrought-iron railing with a three-foot section broken off. That section faced the side of the house where old Tru had met his end.

  Two flatfoots stood over one of the sand buckets. The shorter of the two men held a flashlight while the other plucked spent stogies out of the sand and dropped them in a clear evidence bag. Among the stumps of cigars, three lipstick-stained cigarettes lay at the bottom of the bag.

  A beam from a flashlight skittered across the railing and the glint of something shiny about a foot outside of the railing caught Jake’s eye.

  He eased over to the railing, then squatted in front of it. With the ambient light and the occasional swipe of a flashlight beam, he spotted a slender metal cylinder about two inches long resting in a drain trough just out of his reach. Jake took out his phone and snapped a photo without a flash. A grainy image showed up on his phone, but it would have to do. The flatfoots would find it sooner or later. He slid his phone in his pocket and stood. “Hey, Buster.”