Have Spacecat, Will Travel: And Other Tails by John Hartness (best color ebook reader .txt) 📗

“I asked her what was wrong, if the guy did something wrong, and she said, ‘Yeah, he left his wife and two kids alone on his daughter’s birthday to come out here to a titty bar.’ Turns out the guy was her first cousin, and she had turned down an invitation to his kid’s birthday party because she was working that night. Then she sees the dad at her job instead of celebrating with his family, and that, coupled with realizing her first cousin just saw her pretty close to stark naked, rattled her something fierce.”

I thought about all my first cousins and how very little I wanted any of them to see me naked and nodded. “I can see how that would do it.”

“Yeah, I got it, too,” Tina said. “We all got family issues, but ain’t never been any of them solved with a lap dance. I tried to calm her down, get her to stay back in the dressing room until her cousin left, but she was done. When the backpack got full, she threw the rest of her shit in a Walmart shopping bag and hauled ass out the back door. That was the last time any of us ever saw her. She dove her Mustang convertible off the side of the road on the way home to where she was sharing an apartment with a couple girls up in York. Went off the road in one of them deep gullies up on 49. Right close to where you found Pete’s car, I reckon.”

“Pretty close,” I said, remembering a police report from two years ago about a fatality in a wreck that mentioned an Adler. It was the first in the string of deadly crashes along that stretch of highway.

“Then it oughta all make sense to you now,” Tina said. She poured another slug of whiskey into her coffee cup, and I motioned for her to give me one. She did, eyebrows raised a little, and we clinked ceramic mugs and drank.

“It does,” I said. “I know where we’ve got to go, and I know what we’ve got to do.”

“I’m gonna guess this is going to be one of those things where I sit in the car a lot,” Willis said.

“Unless you suddenly started seeing dead people, then yeah. Come on Willis, Pete. Let’s go see if we can get this young lady to let go of her anger and get y’all both some rest.”

Teenie’s head jerked up. “Wait a minute. Did you say Pete? Is he here?”

Pete, who’d been standing off to one side of the bar listening this whole time, gave her a little wave.

“She can’t see you waving, Peter,” I said.

“Where is he?” Tina asked, her head whipping around.

I pointed to Pete’s translucent figure. “Right over yonder at the end of the bar.”

Tina walked down to pretty close to where Pete stood and held up her mug. “You’ll be missed, Petey. You were a good dude, and a good tipper. You treated all my girls with respect, and we’ll miss you. Even if you were a no-count Steelers fan.” She raised her cup and drained the last of the whiskey. “So long, Pete.”

“So long,” Pete replied, then looked over at me, tears as glowing trickles of light streaming down his face. “I’ll…meet you where I wrecked. Is that okay?” I nodded, and he vanished.

“He said thank you, and goodbye,” I told Tina with a pat on her arm as I stood up and headed for the door. “Come on, Sheriff. We got us a ghost to whisper.”

And that’s how, for the second time in twenty-four hours, I found myself standing on the side of Highway 49 on the northern edge of Union County looking for a ghost. “Come on out, Chastity. Let’s talk for a minute.”

I felt a little stupid talking to thin air, then realized that’s what it looks like to people every time I’m talking to a ghost. It made a lot more sense then why they shunned me for so many years. When I was a kid, before I realized that not everybody’s life was surrounded by ethereal playmates, I wasn’t too good about not blurting out everything I saw around me. While this was cute in a four-year-old with her “imaginary friend,” it became less cute when the seven-year-old was still talking like her “imaginary friend” wasn’t imaginary. Fifty years later, the town caught up to my reality, but it still made for a lot of lonely school lunch periods.

“Chastity, I need to know what you’re doing and why you’re hurting people. We need to work together to let you move on, so maybe people can drive home from the club without being scared you’re gonna run ‘em off the road somehow.”

“Then they ought not be going out to a titty bar and leaving their wife and kids at home waiting for ‘em. ‘Specially not on their young’un’s birthday. Not when their wife’s pregnant, neither.” I turned and saw a shimmery young woman in a Gamecocks sweatshirt and blue jeans standing a few feet away from me. She hadn’t been there two minutes before, and besides, most living people are more opaque.

“Hey Chastity,” I said, keeping my voice calm, like talking to a skittish animal. “I’m Lila Grace. You want to talk about what you’re doing?”

“I’m punishing the unrighteous, just like my granddaddy said we ought to. He was a preacher. He knew about that kinda stuff.”

“Well, I always thought it was God that was supposed to do the punishing, sweetheart, not us here on Earth.”

“Sometimes God don’t take care of his own business, I reckon. Or maybe I’m doing the Lord’s work. You ever think of that? Maybe I’m the instrument of his righteous fury. What about that?”

“I hate to tell you, honey, but I think God’s probably a Notre Dame fan,” I said, pointing at her sweatshirt. I smiled, trying to let her know my blasphemy was all in good fun, and