Not Quite Clear (A Lowcountry Mystery) Read Free Page B

It’s Graciela. That’s Beau.”
    “You can actually keep calling me Mayor Drayton,” Beau corrects, his jaw set and a glint in his golden gaze.
    I roll my eyes. “Whatever.”
    Amelia steps to myside and takes my hand. Her green eyes are wide, unsure, an expression that’s somehow better than the depressed melancholy that’s been her norm lately. Her presence reminds me that we’re here for a reason other than to quarrel with the town’s detective, and we both turn stares on him.
    “If you’ll come with me.” Travis glances at Beau. “You can come, too. I assume you’ll want to be briefed.”
    “You assume correctly.” Beau steps closer to me, one hand hovering near enough to transfer some heat.
    We tromp down the hall after the detective, into the only office with a door. Travis normally doesn’t use this room. Every time I’ve been here, he’s been sitting at one of the four desks in the main room—this one is really for whoever is in charge of watching the single jail cell across the hall.So it’s basically always empty unless Strange Sal is sleeping off a bender or someone needs a few hours to cool off after a real bang-up domestic dispute.  
    It’s seen quite a bit less use since I moved away, according to…well, everyone.
    Regardless of whether the desk belongs to Travis, he plops down into the spinning chair behind it and gets comfortable. A pile of manila folders is stacked onthe desk, and the old, boxy desktop computer has a layer of dust that even I find impressive.
    Beau pulls out chairs for my cousin and me, letting us sit while he prowls behind us like a lion protecting his pride.  
    “Well, I’m going to assume that you’ve heard the basics since everyone in town somehow knew before I pressed the power button on the coffeepot this morning.” He looks to us for confirmationbut none of us move.
    It makes him sigh. He looks tired, with dark smudges under his eyes and the skin on his face paler than usual, especially since he’s taken up fishing since coming to town. People say lots of things about fishermen, but you can’t accuse them of being pasty.
    “Around five o’clock this morning, your neighbor, Mrs. Walters, was out for a walk along the river when she was startledby a varmint of some sort and almost stumbled into the water. There, in the reeds, she found the body of Zaierra LaBadie who, as you know, used to be the town’s librarian.”
    “Before she tried to kill us,” Amelia interjects, defensive.  
    I cut her a sidelong look, wondering why she’s feeling like she needs to explain anything. Travis wasn’t the detective here when the crazy shit hit the fan, butthere’s no way he hasn’t sniffed out all the sordid details. More likely they’d been offered up freely at one of any number of spots around town.
    “Right.” Travis brushes her with a concerned look of his own before continuing. “There was an open case file when I took this job, so I’m familiar with the details. We’ve been looking for her, in conjunction with the state and federal authorities, withno luck.”
    My lips twitch in an expression of doubt. The woman had been leaving voodoo bags and hexing us for months, but no one seemed to be able to find her. Bang-up police work.
    “At any rate, it’s not obvious from the state of the body whether there was any foul play involved. We’re doing a full autopsy before deciding how to proceed.”
    “What did you want to see us about, then?” The questioncomes from me, even though my thought process hasn’t quite caught up with my mouth. My brain is stuck on the uncertainty of whether foul play was involved, but as my devils so cleverly pointed out earlier, I’d be lying to myself to believe that Mama Lottie and this whole curse thing is somehow not involved, that Mrs. LaBadie died behind our house by coincidence.
    Right.
    “Well, the body was foundon your property, and as the two of you have a long history with the deceased…” It’s not hard to