To an average onlooker, it might appear as though it was sweet tea inside that glass this early in the day. Those who knew Mr. Dunwoody were aware it was bourbon on the rocks. He preferred a little tipple in the morning, sweet tea at noon, and straight hot black tea at night.
He was a bit eccentric to say the least.
In his early seventies, he’d been a widower for going on thirty years now and rarely spoke of his late wife. After retiring ten years ago from his job as a tenured professor at the local college he started embracing the bachelor life. He was loving every second of having a full dance card.
Women adored him. With his long narrow face, kind dark eyes, quirky bow ties and general happiness, and big bank account, he was a catch and a half.
If he wanted to be caught.
He didn’t. He claimed to be having too much fun as a single man.
Mr. Dunwoody was also famous around town for his weekly matrimonial forecasts. He had an uncanny knack for predicting impending relationship issues. Marriages, breakups, divorces, reunions. Most wrote off his talent as a lark, but I sensed a kindred spirit in this man nearly forty years my senior. There was something mystical about him, and I often wondered how deep his abilities ran. I suspected we had a lot more in common than living on the same road.
“It is morning. Good is debatable.” Pushing open an iron gate, I detoured up his front walkway. Although it had stopped raining, puddles pooled on the flagstone path and shrubby limbs drooped with water weight.
As usual, Mr. Dunwoody was outfitted in his Sunday best. Pressed dress pants, spit-shined wingtips, a baby blue button-down shirt beneath an argyle vest, and a gray flannel bow tie.
Taking a chance, I slipped off my sunglasses as I sat down in a matching rocker next to his. I glanced around to make sure there weren’t any new ghosts nearby. There weren’t. Only Virgil. He lingered at the curb. Haywood had once again wandered off. For a ghost who wanted my help, he wasn’t making my job easy with his disappearing acts.
“No offense, Carly Bell, but you look plumb tuckered.” Mr. Dunwoody tsked. “You want some of what I’m having?” He held up his glass.
“Only when I want hair to grow on my chest.”
He rocked backward and let out a high-pitched tee-hee-hee, his signature laugh. I adored the sound of it.
I wasn’t offended by his observation. I expected no sugarcoating from Mr. Dunwoody. He’d been in my life since the day I was born and was practically family, the uncle I never had. It would have been strange if he didn’t comment on the obvious.
“Coffee, then?” he offered. “It’s not a hundred proof like my beverage of choice, but it’s the good stuff, freshly ground.”
“Thank you, but I’ll take a rain check,” I said as I held on to my locket, sliding it back and forth along its chain.
Scratching his chin with long dark fingers, he said, “What’s going on? Is this about that Haywood business?”
Mr. Dunwoody had been growing out a beard, which was more salt than pepper, and I was still adjusting to not seeing him freshly shaven. Most of the short dark hair on his head was threaded with silver, but above each ear the silver was taking over in patches and spreading upward toward his temples.
Blue jays screamed in the distance as I held his gaze. “Two ghosts, a hornet’s nest, a near catfight, and Patricia Davis Jackson has been arrested.”
Leaning down, he picked up a silver flask that had been hidden next to one of the rocker’s runners. He topped off his drink, then replaced the flask. “Start at the beginning.”
I did, but I gave him the CliffsNotes version of events to keep from sounding like I was whining.
“Gad night a livin’,” he proclaimed. “Haywood is the heir to the Ezekiel mansion?”
“It seems that way. I haven’t had a chance to talk to him about it yet. He keeps disappearing on me.”
“Why?” he asked, bristly eyebrows dropping into a V. “Doesn’t he need your help to cross over?”
“I was asking myself the same thing earlier. It’s not making sense to me.” I should have been thrilled that he was letting me be, but it felt . . . off.
It was as though he was hiding.
From me.
When really, it ought to be the other way around.
“It’s a befuddlement to be sure,” Mr. Dunwoody said.
“Did you know Haywood’s mother at all?” I asked. “I don’t know anything about her other than she died during childbirth. Retta Lee Dodd.” I’d seen the name on the Ezekiel family tree.
Mr. Dunwoody rocked slowly as he pondered. “Not really. She was a bit older than I was, and we didn’t quite run in the same circles, segregation being what it was in those days.”
I hated thinking of him feeling like an outcast. It hurt like a deep bone-jarring ache, not so very different from the pain that came when Virgil was near.
“But I heard rumors about her, all the same.”
“What kind?” I asked.
“About how she’d found herself with child. It was all the talk around town when her mama and daddy sent her away to one of those boardinghouses for unwed mamas.”
“How old was she?”