1
Standing in the kitchen at Hilltop, I listen to the laughter and conversational murmur of my closest friends. Softened by the durable walls of the old plantation house, their voices drift from the parlor through the dining room and find me as I prepare a snack platter for our Halloween celebration.
My friends are all gathered at Hilltop, the ancestral home of my partner in the Delaney Detective Agency, Tinkie Bellcase Richmond. We’re here to decorate for Halloween, but as the soft cooing of the baby reminds me, also to celebrate the arrival of Maylin Richmond, the miracle baby. After years of trying to conceive, Tinkie and Oscar succeeded, and little Maylin is their awesome reward. She is a gift to all of us.
Maylin’s auspicious arrival—in the backyard of a local resident while Tinkie and I were working a case—still makes my heart stutter when I think of all the things that could have gone wrong. This child is a part of me in a way I never anticipated. Though not of my blood, I would lay down my life for her. It’s a peculiar awareness to feel such powerful love for a little bundle who may or may not even see me clearly.
The tidal surge of emotions Maylin evokes makes me pensive, and perhaps a little melancholy. Loving someone or something is dangerous. Love is an open door to pain. Folks say that only death and taxes are inevitable. Some call it the cycle of life—birth in the spring, full glory in the summer, the slow decline in the fall, death in winter. Seasonal and unrelenting. It’s a stupid system, in my opinion. We should be allowed to linger in summer, to live hale and hearty until we decide to step on a rainbow and ascend to our just rewards. This business of loving deeply and suffering greatly seems too punitive. We become the walking wounded, and in time, the pain lessens and joy seeps in around the edges. But I am always aware of the potential for disaster.
I’ve finished arranging the tray with the spicy black-bean dip and an orange cheese dip, my contribution to color-coordinated food. Yes, I used food coloring to get that perfect orange hue, so sue me. There is normal food and there is holiday food. Sometimes, sprinkles and food coloring are just essential.
I put the bowl of chips in the center of the tray and start toward the parlor with it. By the sounds of the merry laughter, my friends are truly celebrating. Tonight I will rejoice in Maylin and push away the blues, doubts, and apprehensions.
Balancing the tray on one hand, I reach for the doorknob to the parlor and freeze. Someone behind me calls my name, but there’s no one else in the room.
“Sarah Booth Delaney.” The haunted voice comes at me again.
I whirl around only to encounter the very thing I dread most. A hooded figure dressed in a black robe and holding a scythe looms over me. The hood prevents me from identifying the intruder, but I catch a glimpse of white skeletal bone, and I know Jitty has left Dahlia House to pay a call on Hilltop. Seeing her here as the grim reaper terrifies me. There is so much potential for loss if Jitty is here as an omen or a warning. Everyone I love is in the parlor behind the closed door. I won’t let Death touch any of them.
“I don’t know what’s up with you, but go home.” I sound fierce and mean, and I am. As much as I love the family ghost who haunts me, I do not like her attire.
“There can be no rebirth without death.” Her voice is hollow and ominous. “Death is never a final ending.”
Jitty, who constantly taunts me with riddles and symbols, is at it again. “We’ve had a birth,” I remind her. “A true miracle of a baby girl. A rebirth is totally unnecessary. Go home. What are you doing here, scaring the life out of me? I swear, Jitty, I think you just killed my right ovary. Think of all the eggs you just broke.”
“There is a season for all things, and a time to every purpose under heaven.”
“I like the Byrds as much as anyone else, but now isn’t the time for quoting pop music, Jitty.” Perhaps I’m grasping at straws, but I’m hoping this grim reaper outfit is Jitty’s costume for the swiftly approaching Halloween holiday. Jitty is, after all, a ghost. She is also a part of my family, and I take her messages to heart. “Why are you dressed like that?”
“Darkness hovers near,” she says. “You know as well as I do that on All Hallows’ Eve, the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest.” Her voice is sounding closer to normal.
“Will I be able to talk with my mother and father?” Jitty is my link to the Great Beyond, where my parents await me. But a little message now and again would not be amiss.
Jitty pushes back the hood of her black cloak and the bone-white skeleton begins to flesh out. It’s a marvel of the spirit world to see the beautiful enigma that is Jitty form before my eyes. Before I can compliment her, she speaks. “You ask the same questions over and over, Sarah Booth.”
“And I will continue to do so until I get the answer I want,” I tell her.
“Aunt Loulane says you are the stubbornest girl she ever wrangled.”
“You tell Aunt Loulane for me that stubborn is a survival skill. If I weren’t so stubborn I’d be a grease spot on the highway.” I can’t help grinning. After my parents were killed, Aunt Loulane gave up her entire life to come to Dahlia House and raise me. I owe her a lot. “Pass it along to Aunt Loulane that she’s the reason I’m so stubborn. She gave me the will to keep living.” I wasn’t exaggerating.
“She says to tell you that mules are stubborn but young ladies should be more tractable and bend with the wind. Otherwise you’ll be a spinster for life.”
“I don’t for a minute believe Aunt Loulane said that!” I’m indignant until I catch the glint of mischief in Jitty’s eyes. Jitty is always making up stuff and pulling my leg.
“She didn’t say that,” Jitty says, cackling, “but for a minute you went for it.” She makes a motion of a fish snapping at a fly. “I coulda caught you if I’d really tried. You’re like a big fat old trout, Sarah Booth.”
She’s dropping back into her country dialect—though Jitty can speak the King’s proper English with British accent and all when she chooses. In fact, she speaks a number of foreign languages when it suits her. Being dead has given her a wealth of talents that are mostly wasted on me.
“What are you doing here dressed as the grim reaper?” I repeat.
“It’s Halloween, duh.”
Jitty is almost two hundred years old, but she can still adopt the speech patterns of the young. Her “duh” drips with disdain. “I know it’s nearly Halloween, but this isn’t a costume party. We’re celebrating Maylin’s birth.”
“Seems to me that baby’s been celebrated every minute of every hour of every day since she was born.”
Did I detect a little jealousy on the part of my haint? Delicious! “Well, she’s heir apparent to the Delaney Detective Agency. Tinkie has done the impossible. She’s reproduced. Something I’m not sure I’m cut out for. Maylin may be the culmination of the Richmond and Delaney lines.” I know that will get her going.
“And what about the baby you’re supposed to have to carry on the Delaney name? That baby won’t have any heritage if you give it all away!”
“Gotcha!” It is rare that I can play Jitty. “Now tell me what you’re doing here dressed like something out of a bad movie.”
“Death don’t play. That’s what I came to tell you.”
Jitty’s words almost made me gasp. I’d expected some flip answer, not the deadly serious tone she’d used.
“Is someone going to die? Someone I love?”
“You know it’s against the rules of the Great Beyond for me to tell you. All I can say is that Death is going to figure prominently in your life for the next few weeks. Hades isn’t the place you want to visit, but you may need to do that, Sarah Booth. It’s all part of the plan.” She pulls her hood back up, casting her face in shadow. “Time to boogie.”
“But—”
Three bats come out of nowhere and fly around my head as Jitty begins to fade and dissipate, like cigarette smoke in the wind.
“Don’t you dare leave now!” I want to grab her and force her to tell me what she means by her getup and her behavior. Even knowing it won’t do any good to reach for her, I try, only for my hand to whisk through empty air.
“Death is never a final ending.” Her words come back to me like a cold blast. And I can’t tell if she’s serious or having some fun with me.
“Jitty?”
There was no answer, so I pushed open the door to the parlor and stepped into a room filled with laughter and light. Maylin’s little hands and feet waved in the air. She was tucked into her plush leopard-print carrier, but she actually turned her head toward me. I totally believed that she knew I was her Auntie Sarah!
“You’re pale,” said Cece, my brilliant journalist friend. “Something wrong?”
“No, I just heard something outside.” As if to validate my lie, the doorbell chimed.
“I wonder who that could be.” Tinkie rose to answer the door, but I stopped her.
“I’ll get it.” I handed the tray to Cece and headed for the front, pinching color into my cheeks. Cece was too observant.
The doorbell chimed again, a long, impatient summons. I swallowed back my annoyance and pulled the door open. The tawny-haired woman standing on the porch slowly lifted a hand to her heart. She stared at me as if I’d grown a second head.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“You’re the spitting image of her. It’s like seeing a ghost.”
I’ve never been a fan of riddles, and I was already agitato from Jitty’s torment. “Who are you and what do you want?”
“You’re Libby Delaney’s girl, Sarah Booth, aren’t you?”
My mother had been dead for more than twenty years, and it was rare to hear her name on the lips of a stranger. Many people had forgotten her. “Yes, I am.” I swallowed against the lump in my throat. “Did you know my mother?”
The woman’s tired features lifted into a smile. “Oh, I knew Libby quite well. I played Ethel to her Lucy when we decided to get into trouble.” She held out her hand. “I’m Frances Moore, but everyone calls me Frankie. I knew you a little bit, too.”
“Frankie.” I murmured the name because I knew it so well. I could hear her laugh ring out from the kitchen where she and Mama sipped coffee or planned some adventure. Frankie’s name was written on lots of photos around our house—of two young women at the beach, or at lunch in a fancy restaurant or dive, or gadding about in the Roadster. Blond Frankie with her huge sunglasses and hats, and my mother with her scarves and red lips. They were a pair. I remembered looking at the photos with my mother, who would laugh and tell me all about Frankie and how much they’d loved to stick their thumbs in the eye of propriety and authority. “Mama loved you so much.” Emotion hit me in a solid wave.
“And I her,” Frankie said. “I moved to Paris when you were in grammar school. I wanted to come back for your parents’ funeral, but my husband was dying. I couldn’t leave him. I should have stayed in touch with you but, to be honest, my heart was broken. I lost my heart-sister and my husband in the same year. Not to mention James Franklin. I adored your daddy, too.”
I didn’t have much to say—I was too caught up in the feeling of loss.
Frankie stepped inside and put a hand on my arm. “I need your help, Sarah Booth.”
From the parlor I heard Tinkie call out, “Sarah Booth, what’s going on? Is someone at the door?”
I cleared my throat. “Yes, someone is here.”
“Well, bring them in,” Tinkie sang out. “We have champagne and some strange orange dip you made. I know cheese doesn’t come in that shade of orange.”
“Frankie, come on—”
She held me with a gentle grip. “I need your help and I need it now, Sarah Booth. I don’t have time to mess around. My daughter is missing and I fear she’s going to be killed.” Frankie’s knees wobbled and she slumped against the doorframe. “I’m sorry. I’m just exhausted and worried sick.”
I grasped her elbow and assisted her through the foyer and to the parlor. All conversation stopped when they saw me and the pale, stumbling woman I brought in.
“Pour that woman a drink,” Harold Erkwell said, and then splashed two fingers of bourbon into a glass and handed it to her.
Frankie took the drink and knocked it back. She pushed out her breath on a sigh. “I’m okay. Just tired and worried.”
I made the introductions of Frankie to Tinkie, Oscar, Coleman, Cece, Jaytee, Millie, Harold, and baby Maylin.
“I apologize for crashing your celebration of the baby,” Frankie said, “but I need the help of Delaney Detective Agency. My daughter has gone missing in New Orleans and I fear she’s fallen into the hands of some evil people.”
Oscar sat up and put his hand on Tinkie’s back. “My wife just gave birth. I’m afraid she’s—”
“I can’t leave Maylin,” Tinkie cut in. “We’re breastfeeding. But I can give Sarah Booth all the support she needs for internet research or making calls or investigating financial areas. We’ll help you find your daughter.”
Frankie turned to me. “Will you help me?”
Beneath the tired, worried woman I saw the younger version of my mother’s best friend. “Of course I’ll help you. Tell me everything you know about where your daughter went and who you think has her.”
2
Harold poured another drink for Frankie, and this time she sipped it slowly. The color had returned to her cheeks, and she was sitting up straighter. To give her a chance to pull herself together, I told my friends about how Frankie and my mother were such good buddies and adventurers. When Frankie threw me a grateful smile, I nodded at my partner to pick up the questioning. Tinkie was sometimes softer, easier than I was in dealing with distressed people.
“Tell us about your daughter,” Tinkie prompted. The rest of the crew circled around Frankie, waiting for the details. She’d certainly captured our interest. Only Coleman remained in the background, leaning against the mantel by a fire that needed stoking.
“My daughter, Christa, is a journalist working out of New Orleans for several online magazines. A few months ago she was contacted by the University of Missouri. They invited her to submit an investigative piece for a chance at a free master’s degree. The degree is nice, but the introduction to a level of professional journalism was the real reward for the program. Christa went all in.”
So far the young woman sounded smart and dedicated. “What story was she working on?”
“Human trafficking.” Frankie blinked back tears. “It sounded dangerous to me. The people who do that kind of thing are ruthless, and Christa was trying to put together cases of missing women. She was digging into some really bad people, and she said she was gathering proof that women were being taken from the streets of New Orleans. She just didn’t know why or who was doing it.”
“She had evidence?” Coleman spoke softly but it was clear to me he was paying close attention.
Frankie nodded. “She said she did. She found some information.” Her voice broke. “It gets even worse.” A single tear glided down her cheek. “A friend of Christa’s disappeared from the French Quarter four days ago. Christa thought she might have been taken by a group of people who believe crazy things. She was devastated by Britta’s disappearance but she was pragmatic, too. She was determined to find her roommate and bring her home safely, but she recognized the potential. If what Christa believed was true, the story could be her ticket to any newspaper she wanted to work for.”
“So Christa suspected more than sex trafficking. Something even worse?”
Copyright © 2022 by Carolyn Haines
