Death Do Us Part Read online

  “Yes, her ghost. But this…if your woman is right, this is being something different. I must see you. Both of you. Tomorrow, nine o’clock. You get me, bring me to your house. Do not go there without me. Goodnight.”

  The red disconnect button flashed, letting Art know Madam Prioleau had hung up.

  “Dammit!” He resisted the urge to call the psychic back. What good would it do? She’d given him the one thing he needed to know until he saw her.

  “Do not go there without me.”

  Great. Looks like it’s back to the hotel tonight.

  * * * * *

  As it turned out, they never made it to the hotel. By the time Missy gave her statement—three times, to three different people, including the shift commander—and wrote up her report, it was already close to four a.m. Rather than wake Connor, who’d fallen asleep on a leather-wrapped bench, Art picked up coffee and donuts for the entire overnight shift and then he and Missy took seats in the training room where they could keep an eye on Connor and finally talk about what had happened.

  “What did you tell them?” Art asked once they were alone. Even more than he wanted to know the details, he had to know what she’d said so he’d be prepared in case he got brought in for questioning later on.

  Missy raised one eyebrow and stared at him with bloodshot eyes. Dark smudges below them magnified the exhausted, shocked expression she’d worn since arriving at the station.

  “I told them the truth, or at least what I could of it. I answered a call about a possible intruder. There was a woman in dark clothes on the lawn, she came at me in a threatening manner with a weapon. I told her to stop but she didn’t. So I fired. She went down, then got up and ran. I fired again but missed. I heard on the radio that backup was on the way. I waited for them to arrive and we looked for her but didn’t find her.”

  “A weapon?”

  “I might have exaggerated that part.” She gave him a tired smile. “My official explanation for why she didn’t go down was either she had on a vest or she was zonked on drugs. I had to say that, ’cause I hit her at least three times so there’s bound to be trace on the scene.”

  “And you’re sure it was Catherine?”

  “I know my own sister, even though she looked like an extra from The Walking Dead.” Missy downed half her coffee and took a bite of donut before continuing in a softer voice. “It was her, Art. She looked…she looked like she’d just dug herself out of her grave.”

  “That’s—” Art stopped himself. He’d been about to say it was impossible, but who knew what the hell was impossible anymore?

  “There’s one way to find out.” He stood up.

  Missy frowned. “How?”

  “I’m going to her grave. If it hasn’t been disturbed, we’ll know this is just another kind of haunting, and that’s why the bullets didn’t stop her. If it’s been dug up, well…maybe Madam Prioleau can explain it.”

  “I’m going with you.” Missy rose but Art stopped her with a gentle push on the shoulder.

  “No. Stay with Connor, in case he wakes up. If anyone asks, I ran to the store for something.”

  He bent down and kissed her forehead. When he stood, she grabbed his arm.

  “Be careful. She…she said she wants revenge.”

  “I don’t care what she wants. We’re going to end this if I have to burn her to ashes myself.”

  Missy watched Art leave the room and wiped a tear from her cheek.

  She had a nasty feeling that getting rid of Catherine a second time wasn’t going to be as easy as before.

  * * * * *

  Art arrived at Eternal Rest Cemetery just as the sun peeked over the horizon, painting the finely-manicured grounds with a golden light that did nothing to improve his mood. The gates were already open, and he drove to Catherine’s grave as fast as the narrow, curving road allowed. From a distance, the grave appeared as green and neat as its neighbors, but Art hiked over to it anyhow.

  Catherine’s plot sat in an area devoid of trees. Morning sun turned dew drops into sparkling crystals. The perfectly-mown grass showed no signs of disturbance. Art walked a circle around the grave, examining every inch of the ground, but saw nothing. He was about to head back to his car when he caught a hint of a foul odor. He paused and took a deep breath. It was there, faint but definite, lurking beneath the more pleasurable smells of flowers and summer grass.

  An odor of decay, of rot. Like meat gone bad in a trash can, or a dead cat under the porch.

  A queasy sensation came alive in Art’s stomach, and with it, a picture in his head.

  Catherine’s dead, decomposing corpse lying just beneath the grass, poised like a trap door spider, waiting for him to take just another step or two closer so it could spring up from its hiding place, clamp its bony hands around his legs and drag him down into the earth, where it would make a meal out of him. Yellowed teeth carving out hunks of flesh. Leathery tongue lapping up his blood.

  “No!” Art shook his head. Letting his imagination get away from him was the last thing he could afford to do. If they were being hunted by a supernatural creature, he needed to stay level-headed. Treat it like an investigation. Step-by-step.

  Okay. So what’s the protocol for the living dead?

  Only one person knows that. He checked his phone. Still almost three hours until he had to meet Madam Prioleau. But his father would be up and about. Jeremy Stanhope was a classic early to bed, early to rise kind of guy. Always had been, unless he’d had a night shift. Then look out; a tired Jeremy was not a pleasant thing.

  We can’t bring Connor to the house while Catherine’s on the loose. And I might need Missy with me if things go bad; two guns are better than one.

  So what do I say?

  He sure as hell couldn’t tell his father the truth. The old man had about as much tolerance for “supernatural drivel” as he did for criminals or politicians.

  Termites. He could say they’d found termites in the house and it needed to be tented for a couple of days. He and Missy would stay at a hotel, but they figured it would be better for Connor to spend some time with his grandfather.

  Perfect.

  Not that he relished calling his father, but at least with Catherine gone, they’d begun a sort of healing process. Missy helped in that respect too. The old man had always held a grudging respect for her, partly because she’d done well as a cop and partly because she didn’t have her sister’s abrasive personality. He hadn’t been exactly thrilled when they told him they were dating—said it was “goddamned weird to date your dead wife’s sister”—but he’d never bitched about her the way he had about Catherine.

  Art opened his contacts list on his phone and then stared at his father’s number for several seconds before touching the dial button. Let’s hope he doesn’t have his bullshit radar turned on today.

  “Hello, son.”

  Even the tiny speaker of the cell phone couldn’t mask the chill in Jeremy Stanhope’s voice.

  Good morning to you too.

  “Hi, Dad. Listen, I need a favor…”

  * * * * *

  After dropping Connor off at his father’s, Art and Missy picked up Madam Prioleau. She was waiting on her porch, dressed in the same outfit as the last time, which made Art wonder if she habitually wore it whenever she dealt with the supernatural, or if plain and gray was just her style.

  “We go to your house,” she said, buckling her seat belt. “On way, you tell me everything.”

  “We already did that.”

  “You tell me again. From beginning.”

  By the time Art fought his way through the morning rush hour traffic and pulled up in front of the house, he’d just finished going over all the facts about Catherine’s death and the hauntings of Missy’s apartment and then his house.

  “Not make sense.” Madam Prioleau shook her head in a quick
, birdlike movement as she climbed the front stairs. “Monstru not possible, unless…”

  “I don’t understand,” Missy said, while Art unlocked the front door. “What’s a monstru?”

  The psychic entered the living room and turned around to face them. “Monstru. Dead thing. What you saw.” She made walking motions with her fingers.

  “And these monstru things come from ghosts?”

  “No! Monstru come from…” her voice tailed off and she stared past Art and Missy at the door.

  “What is it?” Art turned around, half-expecting to see Catherine’s reanimated corpse on the front porch. But all he saw was sunshine and an empty street.

  “Shhh.” Madam Prioleau squinted her eyes and sniffed the air. Following an unseen trail, she moved towards the door then went out onto the porch, where she knelt down and put her nose to the ground. She took several deep inhalations, paused and repeated the process. When she stood up, she pointed at the ground next to the porch.

  “You smell?”

  Art and Missy looked at each other. “I don’t smell anything,” he said. “Do you?” Missy shook her head.

  Madam Prioleau frowned and pushed past them. They stood still, watching while she went from room to room, sniffing the air like a bloodhound. Eventually, she reached the back door.

  “Come,” she said, motioning to them. “Now you smell?”

  Art was about to say no when Missy nodded. “I do. Something rotten, like old garbage.”

  “That’s what this is about?” Art rolled his eyes. “I smelled that last night. There’s some old meat or something in the trash. I forgot to take it out. I’ll do it now.”

  He opened the lid and froze.

  The plastic bag inside was empty.

  “Not garbage smells,” Madam Prioleau said from behind him. “Dead wife smells.” She moved past him and opened the back door. “Here. She stood here. Smell remains, like in bathroom after you flush, yes?”

  Art was about to say there was no way Catherine had been at the house while he was there, when he remembered the knocking on the back door.

  Had it been her? Risen from the grave and ready to tear his throat out right on his own porch?

  But how? The cemetery was miles from the house. He tried to picture her rotting corpse shambling through the streets, reaching the house, crossing the lawn, climbing the stairs, and then leaving again, heading over towards…

  “Oh, no. Wait a minute.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  Art ignored Missy’s question and hurried across the room to the junk drawer that’s found in every kitchen where he pulled out the phone book. The pristine yellow cover showed how infrequently they used it. Why bother, when any phone number was a few swipes away on a cell phone? The phone companies knew it too, which was why new phone books were mostly coupons and ads. But one thing that hadn’t changed over the years was the map of the neighborhoods in the front. Art flipped through until he found Eldorado.

  “Look.” He put the book on the table so Madam Prioleau and Missy could see it. “Here we are. Here’s where Missy saw Catherine last night.” He slid his finger over two inches, then moved it further. “And here’s the cemetery. Notice anything?”

  “Oh, my god,” Missy said. “It’s a straight line.”

  “The house on Eldorado is right between here and the cemetery. She was here, she knocked on the door, and she left. When you saw her, she wasn’t on her way here, she was on her way back to the cemetery.”

  “That’s not the only thing between here and her grave.” Missy’s voice dropped to a whisper as she touched her finger to the map.

  Art looked where she was pointing and his stomach did a sick flip.

  My father’s house.

  “Christ. We have to get over there right now!” Before he could move, Madam Prioleau put a hand on his arm.

  “Wait. The monstru cannot walk in the daylight. Besides, how would one such as you stop it?”

  One such as he? Art opened his mouth to tell the wizened old bat he had enough bullets to stop anything, then shut it again.

  What if bullets didn’t work? They sure hadn’t when Missy unloaded her gun into Catherine’s corpse. What then? He’d be left standing there like a helpless idiot while Catherine killed Connor and then came after him.

  The sad fact was, he knew as much about stopping the undead as he did ridding his house of a ghost.

  In other words, nothing.

  “So what do we do?” he asked, taking a seat at the table. The others joined him.

  “We must find out the truth of your wife’s death.”

  “Dammit! We’ve been over this. She drove her goddamned car off the goddamned cliff.”

  “Maybe,” Madam Prioleau said. “But not for suicide. Only murder make monstru.”

  “Murder?” Art’s thoughts spun like tires in mud, trying to grip the impossible. “Are you saying someone killed Catherine?”

  The old woman shrugged. “It is only explanation. Ghosts, they can happen with suicide or murder. You tell me suicide, so I drive ghost back into body. Once there, it stay forever. Unless…”

  “Unless what?” Missy asked.

  “Unless not suicide. Put ghost back into body that was murdered, body comes back. That is how you make monstru. No murder, no monstru.”

  “This doesn’t make sense. Who would—”

  “I would.”

  Art turned at Missy’s words. She had her eyes cast down at the table and a terrible look of regret on her face.

  “I killed Catherine.”

  * * * * *

  Now I know how Alice felt.

  A tumble into another world, a place where the ordinary didn’t exist and the strange became reality. How else to explain what had happened to his life?

  Because in the world Art Stanhope had always lived in, ghosts didn’t exist, dead wives didn’t come back to life and the woman he loved didn’t commit murder.

  But that life was gone. He’d left it far behind, crossed a line into a bizzaro world.

  A world where Missy sat at the table and poured her story out, the words coming so fast he didn’t even have a chance to interrupt.

  “I kept out of things for so long. You know I did. Even after…after I knew you didn’t love her, that you loved me, I gave you both your space. Because you said you needed to try to work things out. She was your wife. My sister. It wasn’t my place to get in the middle of your problems. But you were so miserable. And Connor, it wasn’t good for him, either. She wasn’t good for him. I knew you’d eventually leave her, but I was afraid a divorce would only make things worse. Custody battles. Visitation rights. Catherine forever trying to turn Connor against you. None of us would ever have a chance for happiness. Not us, not you, not Connor. So when Catherine called me to meet her that night, I figured it was my chance to solve everyone’s problems. Catherine always had Xanax in her purse. We had a few drinks, she told me how you’d said it was over. I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. When she went to the bathroom, I took two and put them in her drink. Not enough to kill her, but she’d be woozy and probably fall asleep behind the wheel. And she did. But now…because of me, she’s back.”

  Missy put her head down on her arms and broke into tears.

  Madam Prioleau gave one of her birdish nods. “See. Murder.”

  Something relaxed in Art’s chest, an easing of a constriction he hadn’t even realized was there. The pressure didn’t disappear entirely, but it lessened enough so that he could speak.

  “No, it’s not. She didn’t kill Catherine.”

  Madam Prioleau frowned and Missy looked up, black mascara lines painting her cheeks in macabre patterns.

  “Yes, murder. You heard woman.”

  Art nodded, part of him happy to deliver good news while another part still tried to comprehend wha
t Missy had done.

  “I heard her. But those two pills didn’t kill her. They probably didn’t help, but Catherine popped them like candy and drank with them all the time. All it did was make her more angry and paranoid. I tried to get her to quit, but she wouldn’t. The autopsy said her bloodstream was loaded with the stuff, way more than just two pills worth. Besides, you’re forgetting one thing.”

  Missy shook her head, unable to voice her question.

  “The note.” Art waited for comprehension to sink in. In the brief pause, he had to time to reflect on how weird it was to be discussing murder and suicide in a bright, sunny kitchen.

  My life keeps getting stranger and stranger.

  “What is this note?” Madam Prioleau asked.

  “Catherine.” Missy’s voice held equal parts relief and confusion. “She left a suicide note. I forgot about that.”

  “She planned on driving off that road. That’s why there were no skid marks. So drugged or not, she was aware enough to do exactly what she wanted.”

  Art turned to Madam Prioleau, whose scowl was more intense than before, creating deep lines in the loose skin of her face.

  “See? Suicide. Not murder.”

  The psychic shook her head. “No, cannot be. Only murder creates the monstru. You,” she pointed at Missy, “you say she talk about killing her again. About revenge.”

  It was Missy’s turn to frown. “Yes, but there’s no way she could have known I put those pills in her drink.”

  Madam Prioleau shrugged. “Who can say what the dead know? What they see or hear from beyond?”

  “Enough talk!” Art slammed his hand on the table, making both women jump. Supernatural revenge, a murderous girlfriend, it was all too much for him and his emotions boiled over, anger and frustration erupting before he could stop them. “Forget about what she knows or who killed her. I just want to know how to fucking stop her.”

  Missy’s lips tightened to a thin line. Art controlled the urge to shout at her too. She wasn’t the person he’d thought she was, and even if she hadn’t killed Catherine, she’d tried. He didn’t know if he could ever get over that, ever trust her. But he wasn’t going to get into it in front of a stranger.