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  Give Up the Ghost

  A Viola Valentine Mystery

  Cherie Claire

  Give Up the Ghost (Viola Valentine Mystery, Book Five) by Cherie Claire

  © Cheré Dastugue Coen 2019

  1st Edition, October 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used or reproduced or transmitted in any manner whatsoever, electronically, in print, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Cherie Claire, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  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

  For those who doubt they are invincible.

  Also by Cherie Claire

  Viola Valentine Mystery Series

  A Ghost of a Chance

  Ghost Town

  Ghost Trippin’

  Give Up the Ghost

  * * *

  The Cajun Embassy

  Ticket to Paradise

  Damn Yankees

  Gone Pecan

  * * *

  The Cajun Series

  Emilie

  Rose

  Gabrielle

  Delphine

  A Cajun Dream

  The Letter

  * * *

  Carnival Confessions: A Mardi Gras Story

  Chapter 1

  It’s well below freezing and the wind that’s biting my face in anger blows in above the sparkling blue waters of Green Bay.

  “You can see Michigan from here,” our guide announces.

  No one disputes this piece of information while I stand there shivering from my lack of winter protection, trying to imagine how Michigan got on top of Wisconsin. And you can bet that question isn’t coming out of this Southerner’s mouth.

  We’re in Door County, a peninsula that stretches up from the mainland of Wisconsin like the thumb on a left-handed mitten. Lake Michigan flows on the eastern side of the peninsula but today we’re visiting Peninsula State Park on the west side, which faces Green Bay with its namesake city further south where the mitten’s thumb and hand meet.

  I sneak a glance at Winnie Calder, another travel writer who has turned into one of my best buds since our first press trip almost three years ago in Eureka Springs. Winnie’s from my neighboring state of Mississippi and she’s looking as lost as last year’s Easter egg. I lean in and ask the dreaded question, hoping her quizzical look isn’t the result of it being butt-numbing cold.

  “Michigan?” I ask sheepishly.

  Winnie shrugs. “I thought it was on the other side.”

  Thank you, Winnie. Stupidity loves company.

  She leans in close so no one hears. “We’ll check the map when we get in the car.”

  I nod because I’ve already been chastised for bringing a lightweight coat on this trip. I thought my Dillard’s special with its faux fur collar was sufficient since it has kept me warm during the past few winters in South Louisiana — although most winters are mere weeks with above-average temperatures, thanks to Global Warming that has sent us six hurricanes in three years. I did remember to bring my mittens, so I should get some pie, but I expect my toes to crack off any minute now. Who needs Botox with this frigid wind?

  I look around and all the travel writers born above the Mason-Dixon Line appear cozy in their down jackets, scarves wrapped tightly around their cheeks. Some have even braved photographs but my hands are never leaving my pockets until the temperature rises above forty.

  “When’s lunch?” I ask Winnie.

  I don’t eat breakfast, just a milked-down coffee and a cracker these days. It’s all I can manage until the sun’s high in the sky. Right now, it’s nearing its zenith and I’m starving.

  Winnie sends me a look as if she can read my secret. I’m closing in on my second trimester but haven’t told a soul, not even my husband. TB hasn’t suspected, even though my clothes have been shrinking and I’m barely eating. But then, bless his heart, TB isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed.

  “What?” I ask, feeling my blood pressure rise and almost hearing cartoon birds chirping around my head. I don’t wait for Winnie to respond, don’t ask for permission from our PR professionals leading this trip, simply head back to the van before I fall face down into the Bay of Green.

  Unfortunately, Winnie’s hot on my heels.

  “Vi,” I hear her say to my back, but I’m too focused on getting into a warm car and placing my head between my legs. I’ve fainted once before, thankfully without doing myself harm. I rose from the couch too fast while watching Jeopardy — I had nailed the final question and was jumping up to reward myself with a chocolate Yoo-hoo — and whatever blood existed in my face fell immediately to my toes and I was out cold. I woke up with my cat Stinky licking my face, grateful the couch took my fall and not my houseboat’s hard wooden floors.

  Of course, I told no one.

  I pull the van’s side door open and slip inside, grateful to be sitting and out of that horrid wind. I leave the side door open, allowing the fresh air to relieve the nausea rising in me.

  And to abate the stink of rotting fish.

  I turn toward the bane of my press trip existence, a scrappy thirty-something man covered in ruddy hair, his face almost completely hidden by the thickest beard I’ve ever seen, reminding me of the man on the cover of the Gorton’s fish sticks box. He’s dressed in a heavy yellow waterproof coat that my friend from Boston calls a “slicker,” a thick corded sweater underneath, and matching yellow work boots up to his shins, ones we call Cajun Reeboks back home.

  He’s not alive, of course, but that’s not why he stinks.

  “What do you want?” I ask again, even though I know this ghost doesn’t talk. Many of them don’t.

  I see ghosts on a regular basis, but only ones who have died by water. I saw all manner of apparitions when I was young but repressed the ability when people didn’t believe me or deemed me crazy. When Hurricane Katrina came barreling through my hometown of New Orleans in 2005, four years ago, the trauma pushed that psychic door wide open. Only now, I’m limited to ghosts who have perished in a watery death, like this fellow who no doubt fell off a fishing vessel.

  I’m called a SCANC, a ridiculous anachronism I did not invent, one that stands for a person who has Specific Communication with Apparitions, Non-entities and the Comatose. My specialty is water. I’m not alone; apparently, the world is full of SCANCs. I even attended a SCANC convention last fall with my other travel writing bud, Carmine Kelsey, who wears this title as well. Carmine’s also a descendant of angels — apparently way back when angels ignored God and did a little hanky panky with humans — and I’m carrying witchy DNA from a long line of mediums and witches thanks to my crazy Alabama ancestors. But, front and center are the ghosts who never stop reaching out.

  The fish smell is getting the best of me and I know I’m going to retch if this ghost doesn’t move on.

  “Dude, I can’t help you if you don’t talk,” I say. “Plus, I’m pregnant so if you don’t speak or get out of here, I’m going to hurl what little breakfast I managed to eat.”

  The man stares at me, looking confused, and I wonder if the newly dead — those vinyl boots with the L.L. Bean logo make me think this was recent — haven’t learned to communicate with the living yet. I don’t have time to wait for whatever reaction he will offer me because that tiny cracker is making itself know. I’m about to head out of the van, back into the frozen north wind when Winnie app
ears, her hand holding the sliding door open, her face sending me a mom look.

  “Vi, what’s going on?”

  I look back at Mr. Gorton and he’s disappeared. So, is the fish smell. I take a deep breath of the fresh air and my stomach calms down.

  “Not feeling too hot.”

  “No kidding. You’re a puke shade of green.”

  I offer up my best fake smile. I’m not ready to discuss my current disposition, not until I tell TB. My husband started school at Smoky Mountain University in southeastern Tennessee a few weeks ago and I’ve been waiting for the school health insurance to kick in before I visit a doctor and find out what’s what. Only problem, the school doesn’t offer its students full healthcare. My husband agreed to work with his uncle’s construction company one weekend a month in exchange for our healthcare coverage. Once I get back to Tennessee and get checked out I’ll spill the beans. For now, though, it feels wrong to discuss my situation with anyone else before I tell my husband.

  Especially considering all we’ve been through.

  “I’ll be okay. When’s lunch?”

  Winnie’s not having it. She’s a mom of three, raises goats on a farm outside Oxford, Mississippi, and writes travel for several freelance outlets, including the popular blog, Might as Well be Talkin’ to a Fence Post. She sends me the stink eye, letting me know she sees right through me.

  Just then the rest of the group arrives, huddling around the van but not yet climbing inside, even though the brutal temperatures and wind must be getting to them as well. This dance around the van happens often on press trips. We’re all journalists, whether on staff at publications or freelance, like me. Destinations around the country charge hotel and motel taxes and share that money with local economic development offices or tourism, who then invite press to their towns, putting us up at lovely accommodations, feeding us well, and showing us sites like the beautiful, but cold, Door County Peninsula Park. They almost always pick us up at the airport and drive us around in vans and buses.

  Here’s the rub. No one likes to sit in the back of the van. You must climb over seats, stumble over seatbelts that get tangled in your feet, squeeze into tight spaces. Which is why everyone’s milling about, some checking their phones, others looking at photos they captured on digital cameras. If you wait long enough, other writers will climb into the back and then the van’s second aisle is free and so is the passenger side in the front. Usually on every press trip, there’s one or two people who hang back while others pile inside. Sometimes, there’s even a person or two who claims car sickness and immediately climbs in front.

  I’m a Southern girl taught to give up seats to my elders and most of the time I’m one of the younger journalists on the trip, unless the destination brings in bloggers. I’m also not one to stand around while others are pretending work so they can nab a choice seat. I just huff and climb in the back.

  This morning, I’m not in the mood.

  “Okay, everyone,” says our guide Nellie Peters, hoping to get everyone on board. “We’re off to lunch.”

  Two or three people glance up but they’re not moving.

  “Pa-leese,” says Winnie under her breath in her thick Mississippi accent and climbs in the back. She hasn’t left the van’s rear since arriving two nights before.

  I usually follow her but today I’m feeling aggressive. Funny, how pregnancy does that to you, taking over your body and mind and giving you superhuman strength. I won’t be picking up this van like Wonder Woman but I will stand up for the disagreeable creature inside of me who’s demanding sustenance. I open the front door and climb into the passenger seat, pull the door close before the editor of a Wisconsin cheese magazine will object. She’s been complaining about headaches since day one — only during van rides, of course. I must admit, picking the front also keeps me from having to explain more to Winnie.

  We travel to a quaint town located on the Lake Michigan side — thankfully not too far away — and pile out, Miss Cheddar complaining about her head the whole time. I find a seat inside the café next to my favorite couple, Stephanie and Joe Pennington, who produce an award-winning newsletter, a radio show, and webinars on travel. I’ve traveled with them before and still feel guilty for doubting Joe’s photography skills. Sometimes husbands join wives (and vice versa) and pose as photographers to get a free trip but Joe’s the top in his field, producing stunning photographs and videos. The Penningtons are also from Wisconsin so I pick their brain every chance I can.

  I lean in close. “Why is Michigan on that side of Door County?”

  Stephanie doesn’t judge, simply takes out a pen and draws how Michigan rises north toward Canada, but there’s a piece to the left that hangs over Wisconsin. I smile my thanks, all the while shoving crackers into my mouth.

  “Slow down,” Joe says with a laugh. “You know they’re going to feed us well.”

  Another thing about press trips. You never go hungry. Even if they didn’t feed you enormous meals to showcase the destination’s culinary prowess, they leave you snacks in the hotel room. Every time I go on a press trip I swear I will watch my intake and not eat the Hershey Kisses and local food products the PR people have left in the room, usually in a fancy shopping bag with coffee cups, brochures, and other remembrances of the visit. Of course, I eat the snacks. I’m a freelance writer so money is scarce and I never know when I’ll eat as well. At least that’s how I’m spinning it.

  Right now, I’m starving but as soon as I down several crackers I’m reminded why I’m hungry. The green monster has returned.

  Or maybe it’s that fish smell again.

  I look up to see Gorton staring at me through the front glass of the restaurant, his gaze painfully pleading. A few expletives leave my lips, along with some cracker spittle. I wipe my mouth and apologize. Another thing I hate about being pregnant, I turn into a slob.

  Just as that thought hits my brain, guilt pours through me. For not the first time in my thirty-year life, I wonder if my lack of being happy the first time I was with child brought on what happened to Lillye. In all honesty, it’s the main reason I haven’t told TB. I know it’s crazy to think my daughter died because I didn’t want a child fresh out of college, but my emotions are raw these days.

  I push that horrid feeling aside and rise, placing my napkin in my chair. “Excuse me,” I tell the group.

  I grab my jacket and enter the parking lot. I don’t care if anyone sees me talking to air, I just want this man and his nasty odor gone.

  “What do you want?” I say too harshly.

  He doesn’t answer but this time his lips move slightly.

  “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me.” I pull my jacket tight around my chest. “And I’m freezing out here. I was born in New Orleans fish man.”

  He stares at me with those vacant eyes and, although I feel sorry for the man, I just want him to tell me the message and let me ease the grumbling in my innards.

  “Last chance?” I say when nothing happens. “I’m leaving in the morning and I really don’t want you around tonight. We’re going to a fish boil, whatever that is, and I’m exhausted from not sleeping well and throwing up every morning so I need a break.”

  Still nada.

  “Okay, then.”

  I turn around and head back inside when I feel a small earthquake. I look back at my fisherman who I swear is the guy on the Gorton’s box and he’s stomping his feet on the asphalt, looking as if he’s happy the movement entered my physical plane.

  “Okay, cool.” I don’t know what else to say. “Well done, ghost Jedi.”

  His confidence is rising and he looks around, hoping to find a way to communicate. He spots the restaurant sign and points, first to an M and then to a B.

  “MB?”

  The smile he delivers is almost blinding.

  “What’s an MB?” I ask and his smile fades.

  He glances at the sign again, but this time in frustration. I’m about to think this is hopeless when he sees a
n advertisement for a lawyer on the back of a bench. He points to the word, “Accident.”

  Now we’re getting somewhere. “You had an accident at sea?”

  He frowns, frustrated.

  Then I think of why most ghosts reach out to me. “It wasn’t an accident?”

  He nods, thrilled I got the message.

  “Out there?” I point to Lake Michigan.

  That aggravated look returns and he shakes his head.

  “Some other place that involves water.”

  He puts a finger to his nose like a contestant in Charades.

  I pull my jacket tight across my chest, feeling peevish and ready to be warm again. “Is that it? I’m freezing here.”

  The sadness in those eyes makes my pity come, as my Aunt Mimi likes to say. He seems like a nice guy and I’m sorry I was so abrupt. I’m about to tell him as much when he evaporates. Poof, he’s gone. But the smell lingers for some reason. And in that moment I revisit those crackers I hurriedly ate only moments before.

  As I’m barfing in the shrubs, guess who shows up? I feel Winnie’s soothing hand on my back. “How far along are you?”

  I straighten, feel so much better, and once again I’m ravished. I’d kill for a sweet tea right now.

  “Ten to twelve weeks maybe,” I say. “It happened on November eighteenth.”

  We’re into February in the great year of 2009 so I’m pretty accurate, although the way my clothes are filling out it feels like I’m further along.

  “When’s your due date?”

  I accept the handkerchief Winnie’s offering and wipe my face. “There’s the rub. I don’t know yet. Sometime in August probably.”

  “What did the doctor say and why the big secret?”

  I look over and see the group watching us through the window. “Later. Okay?”

  We head toward the restaurant and retake our seats, me ordering a club sandwich with potato salad, plus an iced tea that I saturate with sugar while everyone stares. Nothing I hate more than having to add sugar to tea, but it is Wisconsin. Someone comments about my four empty sugar packets and I look at Winnie who’s fighting back a laugh. In the South, sugar is a food group.