Behind the Boater's Cover-Up Page 4

  “Do you know what I did all day?” he finally asked.

  “I have no idea,” I replied to the window, never looking over at him.

  “I filled out paperwork and filed it. I cleaned trashcans and wiped toilets. That’s what I did.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Yes. It did suck.” His voice was cold, distant.

  I didn’t say anything and he didn’t either, but after his third sigh-of-disappointment, I’d had enough. “Look, okay it sucked. But I have been in enough years of therapy to know that what you’re doing right now is inappropriately displacing your anger. You’re mad at Caleb and taking it out on me.”

  He stared at the road.

  I went on. “Now, my anger about your anger, on the other hand, is very understandable. I’m pretty sure even a therapist would say, ‘Good job on this anger, Carly. Totally appropriate use of it there.’”

  Justin clenched his teeth and furrowed his thick eyebrows. “When I asked Caleb what was going on, why I was cleaning and filing stuff. You know what he told me?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “He said, ‘Ask your girlfriend.’ So now I’m asking. What does that mean?”

  I took a deep breath like I was about to say something, but only exhaled. The sound of Justin’s wipers swishing away the fast-falling snow was the only sound.

  My mouth fell open. “He said to ask me?”

  “Yes.”

  I sat listening to the wipers. That comment must’ve been the mayor’s attempt at trying to silence me. I tried to hold in my smile. “I think it means I’m on the right track. I met a new ghost…”

  “Ghost,” he said with an almost laugh in his tone. “I have to clean trashcans and file because of a ghost. Listen to yourself.”

  “I am listening to myself,” I said. “You’re the one not listening. Just take me back to my car. I’m not in the mood to hang out with your illegitimate anger issues.”

  “You always do this,” he said. “You did it twelve years ago, and you’re still doing it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Make me out to be the villain.”

  We didn’t talk the whole way back to the Purple Pony. And I didn’t even give him the chance to kiss me good-bye. I slammed the door shut and stumbled through the piling snow over to my car, never looking back.

  I could tell the man of few words was holding in a lot of them at that moment. Good. That made two of us.

  Chapter 6

  Slippery Slopes

  It was just one simple question. For my investigation. It had nothing to do with the argument I’d just had with my boyfriend. I hit the little phone icon and waited on the side of the road for him to pick up. The snow had really piled up while I was at work and it was still coming down. It was going to be slow-going, getting up Gate Hill tonight, and this was my last chance to use my cell phone.

  “Hey Carly. I’ve been meaning to call you,” Parker said when he answered.

  I lost any semblance of thought. “Whymever for?” I managed. Whymever for? I cursed my ex-husband for making me feel nervous around this man. Maybe Parker hadn’t heard me.

  He went on. “Mrs. Nebitt said you were going to take over story time at the library for her. She wants us to coordinate a day to do it so she can put it on the library’s online calendar. She’s hoping more kids’ll show up next time so Lil Mil and Benjamin can maybe make some friends.”

  “Oh,” I said, cluing in that this was a business call. I tried not to show my disappointment. “Pretty much any morning works for me. I work at the Purple Pony in the afternoons,” I said. “But I’ll be honest. I have no idea how to run a story time.”

  “It’s simple.” He laughed. “You just read stories.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. I had two English degrees. I could read.

  “And maybe do a puppet show or a sing-a-long.”

  I coughed on air. “A puppet show? Where do you even buy puppets? Is there a puppet store somewhere? And do kids really like those creepy things?”

  He laughed even harder, probably thinking I was joking. “You’re creeped out by puppets, huh?” His voice had a teasing quality to it that made me want to get teased more. “They’re Lil Mil’s favorite.”

  “Well, then,” I said. “I don’t want to piss off Lil Mil. She seems like a tough cookie.”

  “Takes after her great grandma.”

  “Speaking of her great grandma,” I said. “I’m calling because I lost her phone number and I need it.”

  There was a long pause. “Whymever for?” he asked, making me kick myself even harder for saying that before. So much for thinking he hadn’t heard.

  “I just want to ask her a few things.”

  “You’re not going to…” he hesitated. “Ask her about the night of the dance, are you? Honestly, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Your grandmother’s a grown woman, Parker. And a tough cookie. You just told me that. She can handle my questions.”

  “Okay, but you saw how Mrs. Nebitt reacted when you asked her about that night? My grandmother is ten times worse.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll tread cautiously,” I said, before he had a chance to say it.

  Parker agreed to text me the number and I agreed on a week from Monday for the story time. Then I slowly maneuvered my way up Gate Hill, along the barely-visible path that had supposedly been snowplowed for me that afternoon.

  My car skidded on what felt like a block of ice and I turned my steering wheel in the direction of the skid, just like my mother taught me to do, taking my foot off the gas. My heart pounded through my sweater as I mechanically went through the steps of coming out of a skid, but ended up sliding out of control for a full 10 seconds. The only light around was coming from my headlights as they bounced crazily over rocks and trees. I finally stopped in a snowbank and took a deep breath.

  Quickly, I put my foot on the gas again to make sure I wasn’t stranded. Commuting to work was not as safe as it used to be. It was definitely not worth the short hours and minimum-wage pay.

  After lurching my car forward enough to know I was okay, I threw it into park and took a second to calm down, let my hands stop shaking before I moved on. And I remembered now how Justin and I had broken up originally more than twelve years ago. It had been a similar night to tonight.

  I had a different car, though, a God-awful orange Volvo that I nicknamed the politician because I couldn’t count on it for much more than money-sucking and broken promises. This was around the time when Jackson started noticing me too, and unfortunately for me, I was a dumb 19-year-old who apparently liked to be noticed, and couldn’t tell the difference between a nice guy and a pile of… cash.

  And I’ll just admit it; it felt good to have somebody rich treat me special, flaunting money, saying all the things I liked to hear like, “Here’s some more money.”

  I didn’t choose Jackson over Justin for the money, but it sure made things confusing. I mistook generosity for kindness and love. It didn’t help that Justin looked the part of the bad boy. He had a motorcycle and tattoos, pretty much everything my mother hated in my boyfriends from high school because they’d all been selfish pricks. And before I knew it, I’d put Jackson in the nice category and Justin in the jerk one. I was a shallow, confused teenager.

  The night we broke up, I knew I had to tell him it was over, but I didn’t know how. We were just about to snuggle on the couch like usual when I blurted out, “I can’t do this anymore. I’m not a kid. This was fun, but I need somebody stable and secure who cares about me for me.”

  The politician wouldn’t start in the snow when I got back out to it. And after about 10 minutes of me sitting in my car outside his home, cursing into my steering wheel, trying to get the damn thing started, I got a text on my flip phone.

  “You okay?”

  I ended up staying over. He even insisted I take the bed.

  I kicked myself a little just now in my Civic for not seeing true kindness bac
k then, especially when it let me stay the night, after I’d been the villain.

  Did justice for the dead really matter that much? Finding out what happened the night of the boating accident wasn’t going to change what happened the night of the boating accident. But it might change a lot of things for the people I cared about right here, right now.

  I turned the heat higher and warmed my fingers on one of the vents, suddenly feeling like something was watching me. I looked around but didn’t see anything. That’s when I heard high-pitched screaming from up above. The sound grew louder and louder like it was plunging straight for my car. I screamed too, ducking, covering my face, certain whatever it was was coming straight through the windshield. I looked up just in time to see it stop. A crow zoomed past my windshield and down the road.

  That was crazy.

  I wasn’t sure if it was one of the thick-beaked bomber birds, or a shapeshifter, or just a regular bird who forgot to fly south and had apparently frozen in midair, plummeting to the ground like a screaming piece of hail. I maneuvered my way back over to the path again, the bird just in front of me now, soaring ahead like it was guiding my way. I got a look at its beak. It wasn’t crusty yellow, but still, that was not as comforting as you would think it’d be.

  It took me more than an hour to inch up Gate Hill and I must’ve looked like hell frozen over when I finally stomped through the veranda door, kicking my boots off on the porch, as was required by my agreement. I leaned against the wall of the kitchen and closed my eyes, trying to feel safe.

  Jackson appeared as soon as I opened my eyes again.

  “Don’t start,” I said, my eyes stinging with rage. “I cannot get stranded on that hill without cell phone coverage. We will be making some upgrades to this place or I am leaving it. We need lights on Gate Hill. And paved roads.”

  He didn’t say anything. He just calmly listened to me ranting about safety issues and improperly plowed roads. And then when I was finished, he looked at me with the kind of sad concern I saw way too much of nowadays, and I wanted to strangle him for it.

  That’s when I noticed Ronald was there too, standing in the kitchen. Jackson’s lawyer, and probably the lawyer in my adoption 31 years ago.

  He was a rail thin man in a perfectly-pressed, buttoned-down white shirt and a waxed mustache that bordered on handlebar, his hair neatly side-parted with a little swoop.

  “The trust pays handsomely for that road to be maintained,” he said. “I made a full inspection on my way in, and I can conclusively say it hasn’t been touched. I’m very sorry. I will immediately stop further payment to the city…”

  “To the city,” I said, suddenly suspicious.

  “We have never had problems contracting with the snowplow service they use.”

  And now, I understood. I hadn’t even had a channeling with Gloria Thomas and the mayor was so scared he was trying to convince me to go no further with this. At least I knew what tread cautiously meant. “Yes, thank you, Ronald. Please do whatever you can to make sure that road is safe.” I thought about the bird I saw on Gate Hill. “And thanks for directing my way in. Bird’s eye view of the road helps, huh?”

  I’d long suspected that man was a ghost. Now, I also suspected a shapeshifter too.

  His face never changed expression. “We’ll go directly with a private contractor from now on,” he said, ignoring my comment. “I’ll call to see if they can come out tomorrow morning. And you’re right. It’s time for some upgrades this spring. I’ll put in an order.”

  I had no idea what “putting in an order” meant, but I knew it was futile to ask. I was the owner of this place, but I had very little control over it. I had to follow a house agreement and, apparently, I also had to wait for approval before doing any upkeep.

  I sat down on the couch and sunk into the cushions, yanking my super-soft throw blanket over myself. This case was already getting dangerous. Rex bounded over to me and I scratched him behind his ear. “I’ll feed you in a minute,” I said, knowing that was about all the time I had before I’d get docked for not feeding him on time.

  My laptop was on the coffee table in front of me and I pulled it over so I could look up as much about this boating accident as I could before my channeling tomorrow. The Donovans. The Linders. The Bowmans and Wittles. The mayor was not going to stop me that easily. This investigation was moving forward. Like it or not.

  “Sorry, Justin,” I said in my head. “Looks like you’ll have trash duty for a while longer because I’m choosing to be the villain again.”

  Chapter 7

  Golden Girls

  My mother didn’t answer when I tried calling her the next day just before the channeling. I expected to get her voicemail. I didn’t expect to get her friend’s voicemail as well.

  “Hi, this is Marlene,” my mother said.

  “And Brenda,” said her friend.

  “We’re not here right now,” they said together, giggling. “But leave a message.”

  I left one. But not the one I wanted to leave, which was, “What the Golden-Girls is going on here? Are you and Brenda roommates now? And why are you so happy?”

  It wasn’t any of my business, but I thought it was odd that I hadn’t heard a thing about anyone moving in.

  “Call me when you get this,” I said, instead.

  My choppy internet had been extra choppy last night, and I hadn’t been able to look anything up, so I was happy to have the printed library articles.

  I spread them out along the dining table and glanced over them one by one. There were so many inconsistencies, it was crazy. From the misspelling of names (Linder vs. Lender) to the “blame the victims” defense, the Landover Gazette had dropped the ball on its reporting all over the place. And it seemed to be on purpose.

  According to police reports, Miss Thomas and Miss Jerome secretly boarded the Donovan’s yacht after the Landover Country Club dance ended, apparently hoping to continue a night of carousing and debauchery.

  “Myles’s dad had no idea the girls were even on there. He and Mr. Linder were asleep downstairs,” Clyde Bowman, 18, said. “Freddie and the girls were drinking. Beer bottles were everywhere, onboard and in the water, all over the place. Freddie didn’t do stuff like that. These girls were party girls from California. I think they were pretty ‘loose.’ They must’ve talked him into it. I bet that’s how he got drunk at the dance too.”

  It went on to lecture about the perils of being “talked into stuff,” with advice backed by “experts,” of course. “It’s one of the dangers our young people face on the lake every summer, and when the university’s in session,” said Mayor Lawrence Peterton. “Outsiders who come here with questionable values and nothing but partying on their minds.”

  The byline said the article was written by Ethel Peterton, same woman who wrote the other articles, and the same last name as the mayor.

  Jackson appeared beside me. “I see you’ve found the work of my great aunt Ethel,” he said. “Henry Bowman had four children. Ethel was one of them. Such a dear, dear woman. Loved by all.”

  “Sounds like she and the mayor pitted the whole town against the outsiders,” I said. I’d been an “outsider” once too. And I’d felt every bit the pitted part. “I take it the mayor’s her husband?”

  He nodded. “They made a great team, like a deadly version of Bonnie and Clyde.”

  I snatched my laptop from the middle of the table, happy to see the internet was working again.

  I looked up the Landover Gazette itself, clicking on the “about us” tab on its website. A rich history of serving Landover County with accurate and timely reporting for more than a century. I also saw that it had been established in 1888 when Landover was just becoming a rancher town, but was sold to the Peterton family in the 1930s and then to the new owners in 1993.

  “If you think my uncle is a crooked mayor,” Jackson said. “Ethel’s husband, Lawrence, made Uncle Clyde look like the Dalai Lama. Lawrence was supposedly an ex-mafia lawyer.”


  “Interesting,” I said, taking mental notes to keep the couple in mind as potential suspects. I couldn’t decide which was more crooked. The mafia or the Bowmans.

  At that moment, Gloria appeared. She was brighter now. I could see the blonde highlights in her brown hair where it had lightened over the summer. A good sign she was strong enough for a channeling.

  Jackson whispered in my ear. “Be careful. This is harder on your body than you think.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said, even though I had no idea if I would be fine or how to be careful, anyway. I hadn’t done a channeling in a couple months. But I was still having weird side effects that included a hallucination or two. I kept hearing birds when there weren’t any. But then, maybe I was fine and there were just ghost birds flying around my house. Anything was possible nowadays.

  I asked Gloria about her sister.

  “I do have a sister,” she said like she was just now remembering that fact. She closed her eyes. “June. June Bug, that’s what I called her. I don’t know what happened to her, or anyone for that matter. I couldn’t get myself to leave the lake. I got so caught up in knowing the truth.” She hovered back and forth. “Bug was thirteen when everything happened.”

  I quickly did the math in my head. “So she’d be in her 70s now. What’s her full name?”

  It took Gloria a good ten seconds before she answered. Ghosts seemed to have a very hard time recalling specifics outside of a channeling. “June Marie Thomas,” she finally replied. “Dark-haired girl with freckles. Please, let me know if you find anything about her.” Her voice trailed off. “I should’ve sought her out. I should’ve been a better sister.”

  “I’ve found it’s never too late for that one,” I said, mostly thinking about the case I had with the suffragette not too long ago.

  Jackson left “to give us our privacy,” and I stacked my articles up into a short pile on the table, the afternoon light shining in on them from the opened curtains. “I’d like to go back to the beginning of the dance, if you’re able to,” I said, pulling the curtains closed so the room would be darker, the mood more appropriate. “We’ll channel until one of us gets tired.”