Peri Jean Mace- The Complete Series Read online

  “Don’t talk to him that way.” Even as I spoke, the logical part of my brain pleaded with me to shut up. Let Rae and Chase do whatever they want back here. Not my business.

  “You don’t own him just because y’all are best friends.” She put “best friends” in air quotes. “I bet you’re all bent out of shape because you’re jealous. That’s right, ain’t it?” Her grin reminded me of a shit-eating possum.

  “When did you get like this? You were a kind person once upon a time.” Rae opened her mouth to speak, but I talked over her. “He’s someone’s son. He has people who love him. How would you like it if people treated someone you love like shit? Wouldn’t it hurt you?”

  I braced myself for her fury. Instead, she shifted foot to foot, dropping those hard eyes to look at her polished toenails.

  “Life ain’t no cakewalk. You don’t let everybody know you’re the boss, they’ll try to run over you.” She said all this without taking her eyes off her toenails. I’d embarrassed her, and it stung me. I had no business looking down my nose at anybody, not even Rae.

  “I need that favor yesterday, cousin.” Rae took a hard pull on her cigarette. She squinted at me through the cloud of smoke. Calling me cousin meant she wanted something big.

  “All right.” A promise was a promise, and I’d keep my word. But I never doubted I’d regret this favor. Had I known how much, I’d have run right then and there. “I can’t this morning. I have to clean Mrs. Rudie’s house in town. Jolene wants it over and done with.”

  Rae muttered some words under her breath. They sounded an awful lot like, “Stingy old bitch.”

  I didn’t ask. None of Chase’s family was thrilled about his fascination with Rae. His late grandmother, Mrs. Rudie Rushing, had never minced words. No telling what kind of exchanges she and Rae had.

  “So you’ll keep it down if I do you this favor?” The terms had to be clear; otherwise Rae would twist things around to suit herself.

  “All right.” Rae tossed her cigarette butt at the deck’s edge. I told myself she didn’t almost hit me on purpose. “Before you go, tell me what you know about the Mace Treasure.”

  The change in subject caught me by surprise, although the thought of Rae digging around for a non-existent treasure didn’t. “It’s a load of bullshit the Chamber of Commerce uses to drum up tourist dollars.”

  “Awww, come on.” Rae arranged her mouth into a pout. “That money’s got to be somewhere. Our great-great…” she counted on her fingers, “…hell, I don’t know how many greats…grandfather couldn’t have just lost it.”

  “You sound like that stupid documentary those Hollywood people came here to make.” I swept my arms wide and put on a big, phony smile. “In today’s money, the Mace Treasure would have been worth at least one hundred million dollars.” I dropped my arms and my smile. “But they were full of shit. And so are you if you believe in that mess.”

  Rae flipped me the one-fingered salute. I rolled my eyes. The formalities complete, she went inside the trailer and slammed the door behind her. The sound of her yammering at Chase shook the thin walls.

  I hustled back to the house and retrieved my backpack from where I’d dropped it on the porch. A tension headache sang harmony with my worries over what I’d gotten myself into with Rae. At least Memaw’s bedroom light is still off. If this little episode didn’t wake her, it’s worth it.

  Now off to help Jolene clean out old Mrs. Rudie’s house. A sourpuss in life, I had no reason to expect Chase’s grandmother to be any different in death. The upcoming task held less appeal than taking a trip to Disneyland with my ex-husband.

  2

  The speedometer hovered at eighty miles per hour as I drove the short distance to Gaslight City. I thought of nothing but the scene at the trailer. Rae acted like a braying jackass, and I promised her a favor. She had me whipped. Memaw, too. I couldn’t suggest we ask her to move elsewhere. The property belonged to Memaw, not me. Something had to change, but I didn’t know what.

  To add to the fun, now I was obligated to deliver a favor of Rae’s choice. I imagined myself doing her laundry, cleaning that pigsty of a trailer, or loaning her money she’d never repay. She didn’t dare ask me to hunt that stupid treasure with her. No way. I’d eat dog food first. The canned kind.

  “Fifteen minutes late because of my idiot cousin,” I mumbled as I eased into Mrs. Rudie’s driveway. Jolene wouldn’t care. Though I never let Chase con me into marrying him, his mother treated me like family, patronizing my odd-jobs business every chance she got.

  As I climbed out of my car, a shadow moved in an upstairs window. Not every person comes back as a ghost, but it looked like Mrs. Rudie did. That mean old cuss just won’t die. I’m in for a long day. I steeled myself for the morning’s second close encounter with the spirit realm. Pretending not to see a parade of dead folks was hard work. But I knew the consequences if I didn’t.

  Dying had not improved Mrs. Rudie’s disposition. Hell’s fury had nothing on Mrs. Rudie’s as Jolene and I cleaned out her house. The ghost pinched me—often—to express her displeasure. An hour after I started work, welts rose on my arms and back from her abuse. She pulled my short pixie-cut hair until it stood in tousled spikes. Jolene, the poor dear, thought the welts were caused by allergies and offered me an antihistamine.

  “I apologize again for being late.” I sprinkled some packing peanuts into the bottom of a box and gently set a stack of ornamental plates wrapped in newspaper on top of it. “Rae is running us ragged. Last week, during her Sunday barbecue, she started a fire back there. I managed to put it out before we had to call the VFD, but I was worried.”

  “Child, if you apologize to me one more time, I’ll…” Jolene paused while she tried to think of an appropriate punishment and shook her head. “I don’t know what I’ll do. You were almost my daughter-in-law. I love you like family. You say she and Chase were outside hollering at one another? Before dawn?”

  “Naw. They were inside the trailer, but I could hear them up at the house.” I taped the box closed, wrote the contents in black marker, and set it aside. “And it wasn’t even Chase. He never said much.”

  Every once in a while, I saw a flash of the specter in my peripheral vision. Mrs. Rudie’s rage burrowed into my emotions, using my energy to continue her antics. The conversation with Jolene helped me pretend I saw and felt nothing. For that, I was grateful. Jolene and I never discussed my loathsome supernatural talent. Just like everybody else in town, she knew. The details of my craziness were etched permanently in the annals of Gaslight City lore. But, like most folks, Jolene’s politeness quelled her curiosity about my weirdness.

  “Next time my son is in the middle of some drama over there, you send his butt home.” Jolene shook her head as she handed me an ornate wooden box. “Drunk or not.”

  “I can’t make Chase do anything. If I could, things would have been different.” I traced the raised carvings on the box. My mind flitted through the highlights of my long relationship with her errant son.

  “It would have been yours if you had married Chase. Mama loved you.” Jolene reached across me and opened the box. The recently polished silver gleamed.

  “Mrs. Rudie most certainly did not love me. She tolerated me.”

  “Well, honey, that’s all Mama really did with everyone.” Jolene threw her head back and laughed, even though her eyes brimmed with tears. “Mama was one of a kind.”

  Whatever tolerance Mrs. Rudie had for me died with her body. Her ghost gave me another sharp pinch, this time in the sensitive area near my neck. I bit back my gasp and forced myself to admire the old bat’s silver with her sweet-natured daughter.

  “It’s not too late.” Jolene’s brown eyes found mine and held them. “Chase talks about you all the time. He’s hardly mentioned Rae even though he’s dated her all summer. If you want to call it dating.”

  “I didn’t end things.” I packed the silver in a cardboard box labeled “dining room” in Jolene’s careful schoolteacher’s handwriting.

  “I know. I just wish…” Jolene broke off and shrugged. “You always want the best for your kids. You’ll see.”

  Pushing thirty and still unwilling to be a single mother, I wasn’t so sure. After growing up with neither parent on hand, I wanted to give my child the benefit of two parents who loved each other. Maybe I want too much. White picket fences only exist in movies and children’s books. Even so, I couldn’t give up hope one would show up in my life.

  “Mama’s china needs to go, too.” Jolene opened the china cabinet and grabbed a teacup. She wrapped it in a sheet of newspaper and placed it in an empty box. Mrs. Rudie hovered around us, cooling the room better than air conditioning.

  Mrs. Rudie’s upset over the dismantling of her life turned the antique-filled room into a damp, unpleasant place. Jolene, if her darting eyes and shaking hands were any indication, sensed it. If asked, she’d have blamed it on nerves—too much to do on a day filled with grief.

  “I appreciate you coming out so early and on a Sunday.” Jolene shivered and looked around. “With Mama gone, my sisters want to split things up.”

  Why then did Jolene’s sisters head back to Houston and Dallas the day of the funeral? The survival of my business depended on knowing when to keep my mouth shut, and so I did. The whole thing made me angry for Jolene. She had a good heart, and people took advantage of her. She ought to tell her sisters to suck lemons.

  Mrs. Rudie hovered near. As I wrapped her prized china in newspaper, a wave of grief came from her. Confusion and sadness over the loss of her life had her stirred up. She’d move on once Jolene closed up her house for good. I knew those things because the spirits’ feelings existed right alongside my own. I learned early to untangle the two sets of emotions and to keep
them to myself.

  Tears swam in Jolene’s eyes as she arranged the china in cardboard boxes. She swiped at them and gave me a weak smile. This day couldn’t be anything but hard for her. I waited for her to tell me what to do next. I knew from experience she needed to feel in control of this process.

  “Look here.” Jolene indicated a plain wooden box with brass accents. She grinned at me expectantly, as though I should recognize it. On the lid of the box, which sat on a cherry wood pedestal, was a monogrammed brass plaque. RM? Then, it hit me.

  “This wouldn’t be…” I trailed off in case I was wrong. I needed Jolene’s money. I couldn’t afford to offend her if this thing had belonged to somebody famous.

  “Your many-greats grandfather—Reginald Mace. The founder of our little town.” Jolene pulled out a drawer in the pedestal and extracted a skeleton key but stopped short of using it on the box. Staring at the wall above the antique, she wrinkled her nose. “And there’s that damned ugly horseshoe. Mama always displayed both pieces together. Never understood why. Mama’s gone. Let’s get rid of that horseshoe.”

  I said nothing as she dragged a chair from the table and pushed it against the wall underneath the horseshoe. I agreed about the horseshoe’s lack of attractiveness, but I wondered if Mrs. Rudie had a more practical reason for keeping the two pieces together. The bottle tree in front of Memaw’s house, though pretty, was there to ward off ghosts. I had a half-formed memory of folklore having to do with iron and ghosts, but couldn’t quite recall it.

  “Would you climb up and get that ugly thing, shug? I’d do it myself, but I’m too fat.” She patted her behind and gave me a sheepish grin. “Mama can’t scold me now for getting rid of it.”

  Oh, if only she knew. I climbed onto the chair, bracing for Mrs. Rudie’s retaliation. This reeked of bad idea, but damned if I knew a sane reason why. I pulled the horseshoe off the nail easily enough and stepped off the chair. While I hovered off balance, Mrs. Rudie struck, slamming me into the wall. Jolene’s shriek scared me more than the short fall.

  “I’m all right.” I got to my feet and examined a scrape on my arm.

  “Are you sure?” Jolene tossed the horseshoe into a garbage can and approached me, clucking over the scrape. I waved her off and made a big show of emptying the garbage can, still feeling I’d done the wrong thing. By the time I got back, she’d unlocked the box but had not opened it. She wanted to share this with me. I pasted an interested expression on my face and stood beside her.

  Jolene lifted the antique box’s lid.

  A dark shadow rose and floated toward the ceiling. The shadow swirled and coiled in a corner; so dark it obscured the hand-carved molding. Its energy spread through the room, clammy and dreadful. The air grew heavy and close. I fought the urge to leave the room, the house, the city. What the hell?

  Even Mrs. Rudie’s formidable spirit retreated from this old nasty. I decided that iron horseshoe must have kept the ghost at bay and knew Jolene and I had screwed up. Was this dark shadow my long-dead, reputedly crazy ancestor? If so, he had some bad mojo.

  Jolene and I peered inside the box. It was as plain as the outside and featured a flat surface covered with tattered green material and two inkwells with dried ink in them. The box rang with bad vibes. Why did Mrs. Rudie hold onto it all these years? I’d have sold that thing first chance I got. Forget that iron horseshoe. I wouldn’t have this in my home. A tremor worked its way through my body, and I shivered.

  “Isn’t this a beautiful writing slope, shug?” Jolene’s habit of calling all women shug instead of sugar made her sound less like a retired teacher and more like a southern belle. “A gentleman like Reginald Mace would have taken this on his travels.”

  Jolene tactfully didn’t rehash the story of how Reginald Mace went from being the richest man in town to a penniless lunatic. My ancestor lost his mind after his only son, William, joined the Alaska Gold Rush. Some folks believed he squandered his fortune trying to entice the boy to come home. Others theorized Reginald hid his fortune for William to find and went too crazy to remember where he hid it. Through the latter group, the Mace Treasure legend remained alive and well years after Reginald was dead and buried.

  Jolene’s family likely bought the writing slope in the early nineteen hundreds when Burns County auctioned off the entire Mace estate for unpaid taxes. People who considered me mentally ill—a great number of people in Gaslight City—theorized I inherited my “mental instability” from Reginald Mace. Oh, I’d heard all the whispers. A famously crazy ancestor and a family treasure added an extra layer of unpleasantness to my childhood, repressing any interest in the treasure or researching my family tree.

  I swallowed the bad feelings left over from my childhood and smiled. I couldn’t lie to save my life, but sometimes politeness didn’t require a lie. “It has to be close to one hundred fifty years old. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Do you think we could fit it in a box? I’d hate for it to get scratched up in my SUV.” Jolene removed the writing slope from its pedestal and handed it to me.

  A painful current of energy burned through my arms as soon as it made contact with my skin. The dark shadow floated down from the ceiling and swirled around me. My head swam. The air around me grew so cold, my breath puffed out in clouds of vapor. I couldn’t understand how Jolene didn’t see it. Maybe she didn’t want to. Cycling like a whirlwind, the dark shadow floated back into the writing slope. I bet Jolene doesn’t keep this thing a week. I know I wouldn’t.

  I concentrated on keeping my poker face and packaged the antique into a cardboard box and duct taped it closed, hands trembling. My skin crawled and tingled with the need to get it far away from me. A hand closed over my shoulder, and I screamed and spun around.

  Chase stood behind me with a dumb grin on his face. I searched for evidence of his night of debauchery with Rae but found none other than bloodshot eyes. He smelled of soap, deodorant, and shaving cream. His hands were steady as he took the box containing the freaky writing slope from my hands and set it on top of our growing box pile. As soon as I released my hold on the box, the tension drained away so quickly my head swam.

  “I see y’all waited on me.” Chase’s baritone voice didn’t have even the hint of a slur. It sounded just as beautiful as when we were kids, back when Chase swore he’d be a rock star. Even though his partying long ago superseded the music—and everything else—his voice still curled female toes.

  Rather than answering, Jolene rushed to him and wrapped him in a grateful hug. Chase hugged her back, winking at me over her shoulder. I shook my head at him and glanced out the window to see his old truck with a flatbed trailer attached to it.

  “Daddy’ll be along in a few hours.” Chase released Jolene and looked around the living room. “He took some folks fishing.”

  “Oh, it’ll be late afternoon before he gets around to messing with this.” Jolene planted her chubby hands on her ample hips.

  “Don’t matter. Me and Peri Jean can get most of this stuff loaded. I’ll call him, and he can meet me at the storage place.”

  Jolene harrumphed but said nothing. Chase poked me in the ribs.

  “You ready for a workout, Short Stuff?” Without waiting for my answer, he studied the room’s furnishings, probably calculating what I could realistically carry. Chase had helped me with many heavy-lifting jobs over the years.

  “Don’t call me Short Stuff.” I protested for form only. I knew I was a shrimp. “I think the only thing I can’t pick up is the dining room table.”

  “Wimp.” Chase made a pained face as he studied the solid oak monstrosity. “Want to start with the living room?”

  Chase and I did our share of grunting and straining as we loaded the couches, chairs, end tables, and the grandfather clock onto the flatbed trailer. When we took a break, Chase lit up a cigarette and offered me one. I shook my head, and he chuckled.

  “How long this time?”

  “Two weeks.” I made a face at him. This was only my third quit that year.

  Chase laughed harder. “Is that a record?”

  “No. Last year when I quit for two months was a record.” I watched my old friend out of the corner of my eye. Though only a year older than me, working construction in the unforgiving Texas sun had aged his fair skin. Deep lines creased the skin around his eyes and mouth. He still looked good, but in a weathered, rugged way. Since he and Rae became an item, a tired, defeated air hung about him. It scared me. “This morning’s drama. Is it really worth getting a piece of ass from her?”