The Ghost is Clear, page 1
The Ghost is Clear
A Viola Valentine Mystery
Cherie Claire
Copyright © 2020 by Cheré Dastugue Coen
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
For more information, visit http://www.cherieclaire.net.
Created with Vellum
Also by Cherie Claire
Viola Valentine Mystery Series
A Ghost of a Chance
Ghost Town
Trace of a Ghost
Ghost Trippin’
Give Up The Ghost
The Ghost is Clear (novella)
* * *
The Cajun Embassy
Ticket to Paradise
Damn Yankees
Gone Pecan
* * *
The Cajun Series
Emilie
Rose
Gabrielle
Delphine
A Cajun Dream
The Letter (novella)
* * *
Carnival Confessions: A Mardi Gras Novella
* * *
Non-fiction titles by Cheré Coen:
Magic’s in the Bag: Creating Spellbinding Gris Gris Bags and Sachets with Jude Bradley
Exploring Cajun Country: A Tour of Historic Acadiana
Haunted Lafayette, Louisiana
Forest Hill, Louisiana: A Bloom Town History
To Pamela Keene who was my guide on a fabulous trip to St. Simons and Jekyll Island on the Georgia coast. Thank you for also cleaning my copy and pointing out my many comma mistakes.
You’re a rock star!
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Author’s Note
About the Author
Also by Cherie Claire
Chapter 1
Bliss is steaming hot coffee in a bathrobe with the sea breeze in your hair.
And no kids.
I wince because no matter how I spin this glorious morning looking out on to the emerald green waters of the Atlantic Ocean from my resort balcony, cradling the coffee and chicory concoction I’ve been addicted to since my New Orleans youth, guilt assaults me. I remind myself this luxury hotel room on the Georgia coast is part of my job and Michael and Gaia are having fun on a school field trip we paid handsomely for, thanks to my placing a story with Traveling High magazine — no judgments! — and making my first big-bucks check.
But, still….
I try to shake off those maternal feelings of separation and enjoy my coffee, savor the relatively warm coastal temperatures considering its February, and think about how far I’ve come since Hurricane Katrina took everything away fifteen years ago.
After the storm broke the city’s levees in 2005 and flooded our home, I retreated to a mother-in-law unit in Lafayette, two hours west of New Orleans, and decided that losing my newspaper job to that bitch of a storm was ironically the best thing to happen to me. That’s when I dedicated myself to travel writing, my dream job, which has carried me forth to this day. The storm also helped me reconnect with my eccentric husband, and our circuitous path to reconciliation gave us two adorable children, twins that are now almost ten years old.
They say there are blessings from Katrina. As I gaze out over the Atlantic, watching brown pelicans glide by in a formation, I thank the waters for uprooting my life and sending me on this new path.
Speak of the devil — or angel, if you will. I feel two hands rest upon my shoulders before lips appear at my neck. I lean to allow TB ample space and he applies kisses from my shoulder blade to my ear lobes. I shiver with pleasure.
“Breakfast?” he asks in a sultry voice.
I’m starving. I have a right to be, after what we just did.
“Quick shower and I’ll be ready.”
My husband straightens and his tall, lean form casts a shadow in the morning light. “I’m going for a quick walk on the beach. I promised Gaia I would find some shells. Be back in ten, fifteen.”
I smile at my adorable husband with the weird name, glad I didn’t let my grief and anger from those days long ago cloud my thinking about staying with this man. But then, leaving TB after the storm forced him to grow and follow his dream, so Katrina offered lots of blessings, if you look at it that way.
TB squeezes my shoulder and turns to leave. “Your phone buzzed. Think you have a missed call.”
I shrug because it happens all the time. Between my endless traveling, article writing, and working on call at the Chronicle newspaper where we live in Tennessee, someone’s always looking for me. I relentlessly finished deadlines and photo edits and turned them in to my editors before leaving on this trip, with notes that insisted those with questions contact me before or after my traipse along the Georgia coast. Editors are notorious for demanding early deadlines of writers, only to wait until the last minute for changes, usually when I’m chin deep in another story, or like today, on another trip.
But I’m determined that won’t happen this week. Since my children’s school back in Tennessee offered the field trip during their winter break, I pitched the idea to a couple of magazines and got a bite. Writing for a high audience leans outside my expertise, but as I tell most people who ask what publications I write for, it’s “Anyone with a checkbook.” It’s an easy piece to tackle, interviewing a local man working to change marijuana laws in Georgia along with a bong shop owner. The rest of the trip on St. Simons Island is relaxation and collecting fodder for the regular travel magazines I write for. And with Valentine’s Day at trip’s end, I’m going to enjoy endless sex with my husband if it kills me. Editing questions will have to wait.
TB leaves whistling a seventies tune and I head to the shower, relishing in the resort’s endless hot water that won’t be interrupted by little voices asking for everything under the sun. I hope my twins are enjoying their field trip on neighboring Jekyll Island, but can’t help thinking and worrying about my tykes. But oh, this shower feels so delicious.
After a good ten minutes, I exit the shower a new woman, ready for a day exploring St. Simons at the southeastern point of the Georgia coast. I pull out my professional clothes but think twice, reliving in my mind the pot heads I knew at LSU who were never well dressed. My interviewee insisted on meeting us at the World War II Museum so I wonder if he’s a veteran. I keep the jeans but throw on a nice shirt.
I hear the hotel door open and discover two arms at my waist as I’m buttoning up the blouse. They snake around me, pulling me back against a sweaty but sweet-smelling chest. Those familiar lips find their way to my neck again.
“Are you sure you want breakfast?” I ask with a grin.
“You’re the one with the schedule,” TB mutters into my neck.
I pull away and look at my phone, the light blinking announcing several missed calls, no doubt the man or museum calling to confirm. “We need to be at the museum in twenty minutes.”
TB grabs my purse and camera, hands both to me. I forgo nice shoes and slip on my favorite Converse sneakers and we take off for the lobby, asking the kind maître’d outside Echo restaurant if we could have two muffins to go. TB’s driving so I pull the paper off both muffins, hand him one, and devour the other. They both disappear just as we pull into the parking lot of the World War II Home Front Museum and TB and I shake the crumbs from our chest.
“Two minutes to spare,” I tell TB.
We’re close to the beach so I look longingly at the ocean, wishing I could pull off my shoes and sink my toes into that inviting sand. I love my job and travel to places I never could afford normally, but boy, sometimes I wish I could spend more time relaxing and less time working at these fabulous destinations. I shake my head and go into travel writer mode, head inside the museum located in the historic 1936 Coast Guard Station that’s been lovingly restored. Calibre Fogarty hasn’t arrived yet but a museum docent named Wendy tells us a brief history of the station, how in 1942 Coast Guard crew members rescued survivors of an American ship torpedoed off the coast by a German U-boat.
“There were German submarines off our coast?” TB asks with amazement, gazing around at the exhibits.
“Most people don’t realize that,” Wendy says. “Hundreds of ships were sunk by the Germans, with numerous casualties off the Atlantic Coast. Gulf of Mexico as well.”
Wendy’s a talking machine, most docents and historians are. She discusses the German’s close presence and the men and women who helped patrol and spot the submarines. The museum includes oral histories and interactive displays that explain what life was like on the home front, including the massive shipyards in nearby Brunswick and the “Rosies,” the local women who helped build the ships that saved us all, ones made famous by the “Rosie the Riveter” posters back in the day. I nod and try to absorb the historic information, but my eyes keep finding that beach.
I spot a man in a tweed coat and jeans rushing up the path, and can’t h elp noticing how meticulously he’s dressed. It’s been a long time since I’ve spotted men wearing deep blue jeans with a crease. His buttoned-down plaid shirt has been ironed too I notice as he enters the building and removes his coat.
“Hey there, Wendy,” he says to the docent, who immediately blushes.
It’s then I spot incredibly blue eyes behind a pair of stylish tortoiseshell glasses. Did GQ just walk in the door?
“Cal,” Wendy announces, “this is Viola Valentine, the reporter.”
Wendy pronounces my name Vee-o-la like the instrument and not Vie-o-la, like the character from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Usually I let it pass but not with this fine specimen of a man. Did I mention his eyes are gorgeous?
“Viola,” I tell him correctly, holding out my hand, which he accepts with a strong handshake. Wendy apologizes to my back and I usually put people at ease but right now nothing’s taking my gaze off those azure eyes.
TB clears his throat.
“Uh, sorry,” I say, finally releasing his hand. “This is my husband, Thibault Boudreaux.”
I don’t know why I use his full name. TB never does, prefers his silly abbreviation.
“Tee-bo?” Cal says with a frown.
“It’s Cajun.”
TB launches into how it’s a family name but he prefers TB. He waits for Cal to ask of the nickname’s origins but Cal only politely nods and smiles. I don’t know if it’s because I’m impatient and want to get the interview done or that I’m weary of hearing my husband’s story, but I interrupt.
“We call juniors in Louisiana T this and T that,” I tell Cal. “My husband is Thibault the third and his dad is a junior, but everyone called his dad Bubba.” This is usually where I lose people. “So his family called my husband T-Bubby to differentiate him from his father. He shortened it to TB.”
Why, I’ll never know, but I love my goofy husband.
Cal’s smile brightens with the knowledge. “I get it. Comes from the French petite, shortened to ’tit, then T.”
“Exactly.” TB’s smile mirrors Mr. GQ and the two begin chatting in French. As in whole conversations. I’m shocked, speechless. I’ve never seen my husband say more than a Cajun expression or two.
I gaze at Wendy who appears equally puzzled. Finally, the two men laugh at something and Cal turns my way. “We should get started.”
Wendy leads us to a meeting room down a long hall.
“What was that about?” I whisper to TB, but he just shrugs.
We make ourselves comfortable in the room lined with World War II photos, including one of a Rosie the Riveter wearing a head scarf and holding her elbow up in strength with the words, “We Can Do It!” I pull out my recorder and start asking Mr. GQ questions. Cal discusses how lawmakers allowed medical marijuana to be legal in Georgia but insisted it remain illegal to grow the plant, sell it, or move it across state lines, which means those wanting to access medical marijuana or doctors hoping to prescribe it to their patients had no product.
“What’s the use of a law like that?” he asks.
Cal’s biggest push is for CBD oil, which he claims has medicinal properties.
“CBD is made from hemp and contains only minute traces of THC so it doesn’t make you high,” Cal adds. “It’s non-intoxicating but has incredible benefits. If anything needs to get to market, it’s CBD, but marijuana has its medical uses too.”
After about thirty minutes of questioning, I thank my subject and he shakes my hand, insisting I call him anytime day or night if I need more information. I blush at the contact and feel TB’s stare. Hey, I can’t help but admire a beautiful man.
We all stand to leave but as I do the world begins to tilt, as if I’ve been inhaling something illegal. I grab the back of my chair to steady myself, think it’s the sudden rise that’s making me dizzy, but the room continues to spin.
“Are you all right?” I hear Cal ask and feel his hand on my elbow.
“Yeah,” I mutter, but my knees give way and I fall backwards. I sense TB catching my descent but I know I’m on the floor when my last thought before all turns to black is that Berber carpet is rough on the face.
When I come to, I rise on my elbows and gaze around, but the meeting room has disappeared. The world feels ethereal, as if I’ve been dropped into an alternate universe like Eleven in Stranger Things. Within seconds, however, the darkness fades and I feel a lovely breeze. I’m sitting in grass, eavesdropping on a couple flirting on a park bench overlooking a marsh. The sun burns warm on my face and I imagine it’s summer.
“What do you do at the shipyard,” I hear the man ask.
The woman, who appears about eighteen, her hair tied up in a handkerchief and dressed in shirt and pants that resembles those of factory employees, shrugs. A lunch box lies in her lap, her sandwich untouched on waxed paper. “You know, the usual.”
The man leans in closer. “No, what?”
His closeness makes her giggle. I suspect she’s not had male attention like this before.
“I work on the ships, like everyone else.”
The man very gently begins toying with her fine brown hair that could use a better haircut. It’s too short and jagged, as if her mom did the cutting or it’s been too long between haircuts.
“Well, so do I, Gabriella, but we all have special jobs,” the man says.
“Gabby,” she corrects him, shivering at his touch, but it’s clear she’s enjoying the flirtation. “No one calls me Gabriella.”
He smiles seductively. “But I’d like to, Gabriella. Such a beautiful name.”
Gabby’s blush floods her cheeks.
“I’m not on the warehouse floor,” the man says. “I’m in parts but I’ll be working on the new project soon.”
“Me too,” she responds enthusiastically, turning on the bench to face him. “My boss said I have potential so they’re putting me on the James Wayne next week.”
The man straightens somewhat. “Oh, so they’re starting the Liberty Ships that soon?”
“Don’t you know?”
His smile never falters. “Yes, but I’m still in the back warehouse so I don’t get the scuttlebutt.”
Gabby looks around to see if anyone’s listening. “I’m not supposed to discuss any of this outside of work but since you’re going to be working on them too, they’re talking about starting next Tuesday.”
“ ‘Loose lips sink ships,’ ” the man says, nodding. “Doesn’t count if it’s just another shipyard worker.”
I hear someone call out and turn to find a lanky man who couldn’t be more than twenty approach the couple.
“Hey Peter,” Gabby says, finally taking a bite of her sandwich.
Close up, I spot Peter’s acne-poked face and hair that could also use a good cut, its curls kissing the top of his collar. With his worn pants and a flannel shirt with a hole at the elbow, he’s no match for the well-dressed man on the bench who so far has appeared suave and sophisticated. Peter’s saving grace is his concerned gaze emitting love for the woman on the bench. I feel empathy for this Peter, because I sense he’s carrying a torch for Gabby and he’s not liking what he’s seeing here, a stranger encroaching on his territory.
I’m right because he asks tersely, “Who’s this?”
Gabby appears uncomfortable as well. “Peter, this is my new friend, Mason.”
Mason extends his hand but Peter hesitates. Finally, he shakes Mason’s hand but it’s clear he’s wary of the man.
“Peter,” Gabby admonishes him.
Mason laughs it off. “Are all the folks in Brunswick this friendly?”
“We have reason to be suspicious,” Peter says. “After what happened last week.”
“Seriously?” Mason asks. “You think I’m a German?”
“Really, Peter, that’s ridiculous,” Gabby says. “He’s American as apple pie.”
Peter deflates, no doubt wondering if his jealousy has taken hold of his rational thinking.
“Everyone says we have to be cautious,” he answers defensively. “I don’t know anything about you.”
