Black Opal (5 page)

“Oh, just about six million since you learned to talk.”

Dean pressed his lips together and rolled his eyes. “And I still don’t like it. But that’s okay. I guess I can act like an adult about it.” He sidled closer to me and put his arm around my waist, surprising me. “
Little
Ricky
, this is Peri Jean Mace…my girlfriend. Peri, this is my older brother,
Little Ricky
.”

“Nice to meet you, ma’am.” He held out a veined hand and flashed white, straight teeth. His good humor made me smile, and we exchanged a hard squeeze. “I gotta ask, Peri Jean, how’d a beautiful woman like you get involved with such a serious fuddy-duddy like Dean-o?”

“I’m a serious fuddy-duddy, too.” I said it deadpan, and Ricky howled. Dean grunted and went back to his work. Ricky slapped Dean on the back and got a scowl in return. He turned back to me. “Hey, Peri, you gotta meet Colton Starr. He’s an honorary Turgeau.”

He grabbed my arm and led me away from Dean. “Colton! Hey, man, you gotta meet Dean’s lady. She seems okay even though she’s cozy with the king of the sticks in the mud.”

We walked up behind a man covered head to toe in black mud. The mess was worst near his feet where the gunk had caked and dried and then had more added to it. The fertile scent of the rich black soil hung in the air. The smell burrowed deep into my subconscious, awakening something I couldn’t have described. This land had a pulse of its own, a magic that spoke to me. I struggled to stay focused on Ricky.

Colton turned to face us, swiping at his face with his shirt sleeve, which only smeared the mud into his blonde hair. We both widened our eyes in recognition.

“Well, hello again, pretty lady.” Colton’s dimples deepened into the kind of smile that could stop traffic.

“You two…” Ricky glanced between us, trying to figure out how we knew each other.

“We met when I first got here.”

“Trey, drunk as a lord, accosted her in the parking area.” Colton rolled his eyes.

“That loser.” Ricky shook his head. “I know Mom and Dad feel guilty about what happened with Shayne, but I think they should fire him.”

I perked up, hoping he’d say more about Shayne, but he was obviously finished.

“He needs work,” Colton said. “No telling how badly he’d deteriorate if he was unemployed.”

Ricky grunted, and Colton dropped the subject and turned to me.

“I taught Dean his senior year in high school,” he said. “I hope he’s learned to behave since then.”

I took a closer look at Colton. He was perhaps a few years older than Ricky but not many.

“You think I’m not old enough, don’t you?” Colton’s face creased into an even bigger smile, and I saw a little more age around his eyes and mouth. “It was my first teaching job.”

“I still think you’re lying,” I said. Colton’s answering giggle told me I’d said the right thing. Conceited. I didn’t blame him. “Do you still teach at the same school?”

“No,” he said. “Luckily, I got my Ph.D. and moved to the college level. I teach at Tulane in New Orleans. When I heard Big Rick was hurt, I couldn’t stay away. The Turgeaus are like the family I never had. You just wait. They’ll take you under their wing, and you’ll be the same way.”

Thinking of my rapidly dwindling family, which consisted only of my sick grandmother, I glanced at Dean. He made a show of ignoring us. Whether I fell in love with this family, or they with me, remained to be seen. Dean’s and my future played a big part in what happened. An uncomfortable silence fell over us until Ricky shrugged and began picking up debris a few feet away. Colton, his eyes flicking between Dean and me, followed after a few seconds. I walked back to Dean and got back to work.

“I’m sorry, baby.” Dean spoke in such a quiet voice, I had to lean close to hear him. “I handled this wrong all the way around. You didn’t deserve to be kept in the dark about my family.” He reached for my hand, and I let him thread his fingers through mine, reveling in the little thrill of lust I still felt every time he touched me. His eyes held mine, waiting for me to take ownership of the hurts I’d caused him.

“I’m sorry, too.” Admitting my wrongdoing both stung and relieved tension. “I don’t know why I can’t spend the night at your house. I get restless, and I just go home. I do want to be with you, though.”

Dean shrugged and leaned over and kissed my cheek. He whispered in my ear, “Want to go dancing tonight? I’ll show you the bar I used to sneak into when I was underage.”

I giggled at his breath tickling my ear and nudged him away. It was time to tell him about Shayne. Dread gnawed at my guts. If I had the power to change one thing about myself, I’d make myself normal.

We’d patched up our little spat, but he sure wasn’t going to like what I needed to tell him next.

5

My ability to see ghosts shitted up my life magnificently. It made most people uncomfortable around me. It made me uncomfortable as hell, too. Most of my life, I hid it. Then, six months ago, an encounter with a dark entity heightened my sensitivity to the spirit world. The spirits had even more power to infiltrate my life, and I had even less power to stop them.

I hated dragging Dean into it. He tried to understand, but he didn’t quite get it. He always got this sick look on his face, and it made
me
feel sick. But he needed to know his dead sister wanted something from me. I took a deep breath and braced myself.

“Dean, I have something to tell you. Running my car into that mud bath wasn’t just bad judgment. My brakes went out—”

“Yeah, they just locked up. The mechanic said he’d—”

Is he deliberately acting obtuse?
Frustrated, I talked over him, even though he hated it. “Forget the brakes. I saw…something in the driveway. I swerved to miss it.”

“What? An animal?” The fear in Dean’s eyes gave away his lame attempt to play dumb. “I watched you drive away. I didn’t see anything. Maybe the sun blinded you?”

“It wasn’t the sun.” I massaged my temples, trying to chase away the headache forming behind my eyes. “I think I saw Shayne.”

Dean jumped as though shocked. “What do you know about Shayne?”

His gaze darted to where his brother and Colton Starr horsed around a few feet away, giggling and trying to push each other into the mud. He didn’t have to say anything for me to understand. I hoped they didn’t find out about me, too. I’d rather streak naked across the lawn for everyone’s entertainment. Less humiliation involved.

“I’m staying in her room.” Anxiety distilled the world around me, isolating every sound, making the colors seem too bright and the smells unbearable. I sucked in a deep breath and tried to calm down. When I spoke again, relating all the times I’d seen Shayne, my voice held only a slight tremor.

Dean put his hand over his mouth and muttered something that sounded sort of like a prayer. He squinted at me, making me very aware of this talent I had, this thing I never wanted to do. “Can you find out what happened to her? Who hurt her?”

“I figure that’s what she wants. You want me to try?” I stared into Dean’s eyes. He never asked me to use my ability.

“No.” He grabbed his shovel and jammed it into the soft earth, burying the metal part completely. “Yes.” He shook his head and shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“I hate being the one to tell you she’s passed on.”

“Don’t be. In my heart, I knew.” He jerked the shovel out of the dirt, lifted a pile of debris, and hefted it into the wheelbarrow. This side of him was so like me, desperate for something to do when things got uncomfortable. When he spoke, his voice trembled. “You ever heard of Marcus Lewis?”

I shook my head.

“Marcus Lewis was a serial killer who got caught in California. The press called him The Tennis Coach.”

“Ahh, yeah,” I said. “I think I’ve seen a TV documentary about him.” A tennis teacher, Lewis drifted from health clubs to country clubs to teaching private lessons. He picked his victims from his students. He was convicted of only two murders, but the documentary hinted law enforcement believed there were more. Many more.

“Soon as the news broke about his arrest, and his picture flashed on the TV screen, I recognized him. He used to teach tennis at the country club where our family had a membership.”

“Oh God, Dean.” My lame words did little to express how terrible I felt for him.

“I pulled every string I had, both in law enforcement and with my family’s influence, and got one of the investigating officers to speak to him about Shayne.” Dean worked with his back to me, lost in his horrifying memories. “The investigator told me Lewis wouldn’t admit to anything, but he was able to describe a scar on Shayne’s hip. It was a scar he couldn’t have seen unless he saw her naked.”

Dean’s story crawled over my skin, making me shiver. I approached him and put my hand on his sweat-dampened back because I didn’t know what else to do. Other than a slight jerk when I touched him, he didn’t respond but kept talking.

“Lewis wouldn’t give them any real information. He wanted a deal, immunity for any cases he helped close and the possibility of parole, and nobody was willing to make that deal with him.” His voice hitched, and he stopped digging and leaned on the shovel. “Everybody looked for Shayne’s body again, thinking she might have been Lewis’s first victim, but they never found her.”

He turned to me, his eyes brimming with tears. “I try to find solace in Lewis rotting in prison. But I don’t.”

I moved closer and put my arm around him. He leaned into me and laid his head on my shoulder. I trailed my fingers along the back of his neck.

“Earlier, you wanted to know why I never talk about these people.” He cut his eyes in the direction the big house. “About this place. It’s because of Shayne. I was a senior in high school and she was a junior when she disappeared. I was the last person who talked to her. Maybe I could have saved her. But I didn’t.” Standing slouched with his hands shoved in his pockets, Dean looked desolate and alone. “Ricky was away at college, already a junior. It upset him, sure, but he didn’t have to be here for the fallout.”

“I can’t begin to imagine. I guess Madeleine came along when Shayne never came back.”

Dean huffed an angry laugh and wiped his face. “Mom got pregnant the summer after I graduated high school. Madeleine was her replacement daughter. I always figured she just wanted to forget.”

I shrugged, not wanting to agree or disagree. Dean had a right to his feelings on the matter. I suspected he felt like an outsider as his parents tried to rebuild their lives. In the absence of my parents, my grandmother was always there for me. I wondered who had been there for Dean. Lisette?
Zoiks.

“If you want me to figure out who killed Shayne, I’ll do my best.” I left out the part where it would take communicating with the dead to do it.

Dean put his arm around me and sighed. He was quiet for a long time. “I never thought I’d say this. Please. Put it to rest for me.”

“Then I’ll have to know some things about her.” When I solved my cousin’s murder six months ago, I learned things about her I never wanted to know. I wondered if it would be the same with Shayne.

Dean shivered and stared into the distance. My heart ached. He might love me, but this part of me made him uncomfortable. I knew just how he felt. About the time he got ready to say something, we both spotted Ricky walking toward us holding shingles in both hands. I looked back at the big house, searching for the source of the damage.

He understood and said, “There’s some old shacks behind those trees. Storm demolished one of ‘em. Needed to be torn down anyway. That’s a mess I don’t look forward to facing.”

“Where’s Colton?” Dean asked.

“Driving Mom and Maddy to the hospital to visit Daddy. You know Daddy likes Colton more than he ever liked us.”

Dean grunted. Ricky turned his attention to me. “You doing all right out here? My wife sure wouldn’t want to do this kind of work. My sons either, for that matter.”

“My nephews are eight and thirteen and allergic to work.” Dean shoved another pile of debris into his wheelbarrow. Ricky snorted and started the first of many stories about his two sons, who sounded like a handful.

I listened with only half an ear. My nicotine monkey danced around my mind screaming for me to feed it. As soon as it seemed polite, I wandered away from the two men, intent on taking a smoke break. Some force pulled me toward the old shacks, and I went, halfway scared of what waited for me back there. But I promised to help, and I would. I took a wheelbarrow to make it look legit.

###

Walking toward the screen of trees, I kept my steps light, knowing the thick mud could have a quicksand effect. I dug my cigarettes out of my pocket and jammed one into my mouth and lit it. Cigarette dangling from my lips, I picked up a few more branches and tossed them into the wheelbarrow.

As I walked deeper into the trees, the soupy air settled over me, heavy and dense. I felt sweat dampen my skin to the point of slickness. Mosquitoes hummed around my head, competing for attention with my racing thoughts about Dean and his dead sister. His desire for me to use my ability to solve her murder surprised me and made me skeptical. Was he trying to decide if he could live with this part of me? Or was this an act of desperation?

If I were one of those girls who’d had three or four really serious boyfriends instead of enough flings to fill a—well, let’s not go there—I’d know what it meant in terms of our relationship. But I was dumbfounded, worried this would open a can of something I didn’t even want to think about. I halfway wanted to talk it out with another female, but who?

My only female friend, Hannah Kessler, was vacationing in the Cook Islands in Rarotonga at a beach house she won in her divorce. If I called, she’d want me to drop everything and fly out there.
Pass.

My grandmother might have advice, but the involvement of Shayne’s ghost would disturb her. Though Memaw didn’t have it, my weird talent ran in our family. She would worry until I came home. A woman dying of cancer had better things to do than fret over me.

I was on my own for this rodeo. Scared didn’t begin to describe my feelings. Since my abilities had intensified, I really didn’t know what Shayne could do to me. And this was murder. Murderers tended to get pissed when someone blew the whistle on them. If someone other than the serial killer Dean mentioned had killed Shayne, which I thought likely, they’d gotten away with murder for a mighty long time. Getting caught now could end ugly.