Dream Dancer (Ghosts Beyond the Grove Book 2) (21 page)

     Rachel immediately pulled her phone out of her purse.  “What are we looking for here?  Describe it and I’ll have Mom search Zach’s room for it.  I can have her package it up and overnight it to New Orleans.”

     “Didn’t your pretty little blonde head hear a word that I was saying?  It could be anything—something as simple as an ordinary coin.  There’s no way for me to know what exactly we’re looking for.”

     Rachel sighed and slammed her phone back into her purse.  “So now what?  How do we find something when we don’t know what we’re looking for?”

     Good question.  There had to be a way to narrow things down a bit more.  I’d always felt sure that he came across the negativity in Chicago, not California.  We needed to backtrack there first.

     “Zach seemed normal until I talked to him while he was at O’Hare.  If only there was a way to trace all of his steps that day.”

     “There is,” Queen Elva replied and made her way to the telephone near the cash register.  A few seconds later, I was a million steps closer to solving my mystery.

     “Well hello there, Detective Bailey,” she drawled in the sweetest of voices.  “Ready for a little vacation?  Good.  I need you to go to Chicago for me.  I need you to secure some camera footage from O’Hare.  I’ll let Ruby give you the details.”

     I gave him the day and time of Zach’s flight from Chicago to Pittsburgh as best as I could remember.  Over six months had passed though and I’d had so many more important things to try to remember in the meantime.  His last request was a photo of Zach so that he knew who he was looking for on the surveillance videos.

     I was all set for an answer soon when Detective Bailey reminded me that patience was still the main course on my menu.

     “Yeah, it’s a big airport with tons of footage.  Sifting through all of that will take me awhile.  I’ll get back to you when I know more.”

     So that was it.  Things were out of my hands yet again.  I flew all the way to Louisiana only to find out that the answers—
hopefully
this time—lay much closer to home in Chicago.  I wanted to cash in my return ticket to Pittsburgh and head straight to Illinois but I knew it would be pointless.  What I needed to do was wait for my next sign to move forward.  And I found that sign in my very own pocket.

     After leaving Elva’s Armoire, Shelly insisted that we do a little shopping before heading back to the hotel.  Neither Rachel nor I were in the mood but she dragged us along behind her anyway.  There wasn’t a single thing in any of those stores that appealed to me until I found the one thing that I didn’t know I’d been looking for.

     My next sign came in the form of a necklace.  It wasn’t my usual style—too plain and boring for me.  In fact, a year ago I wouldn’t have given that piece of jewelry a second glance.  But when I saw the delicate sterling silver and rose gold feather necklace, I knew it had to be mine.  I’d been good lately as far as my spending went, so I didn’t feel the slightest bit bad about picking up this inexpensive treat.

     I fished through my wallet for some cash and was about to hand over the money without looking at any of it.  But when something about that crinkled five dollar bill caught my eye, I hurriedly snatched it back and completed the purchase with my debit card instead.

     What I held in my hand was the same bill Madame Ruisseau refused to take from me weeks earlier.  Since I rarely carried cash, I remembered exactly when and where I’d last come into contact with it.  What I never paid attention to before was the writing scrawled across the back of it.

     “Robicheaux.”

     Since I no longer believed in coincidence, I knew my other stop in Louisiana was an essential one along my path.  Before the cashier could get that necklace into a box, I asked her to cut off the price tag so that I could wear it out of the store.  Feathers were once again showing me where I needed to be.

     “There’s one more place I need to visit before we leave Louisiana—but I think I want to go there alone.”

     Amid protests that I wasn’t allowed to go off on my own and have fun without them, I calmly announced my destination.

     “I need to go to Robicheaux.  It’s about thirty miles out of the city.”

     Shelly put on her detective face and questioned what could be so important in Robicheaux that I wanted to go there alone.  Alone was dangerous, hadn’t I learned that already?

     I had a good comeback for that.  “I’m going to visit my grandparents.  That’s where Mom grew up and where they still live as far as I know.  It’s where she’s sending me to next.”

     “Oh,” was her first reaction.  “Are you sure you don’t want us to come with you?  You know, just in case—”

     I knew exactly how she wanted to finish that sentence.  She was thinking I would need their moral support just in case my grandparents had no interest in seeing me.  I got where she was coming from, really I did.  But if Mom was sending me there, it was for a reason and I really didn’t think it was so I could experience the same kind of rejection she felt from them.

     “Nope.  I’m good.  I figured I could take a taxi out there in the morning.  Tomorrow is our last day here—it’s my last chance before our flight home.  I’m sure you and Rachel are more than capable of getting into trouble out on Bourbon Street without me for the day.”

     “Yes, I’m sure we are.  But be careful out there, Ruby.  Weird things happen in the bayou—people go missing and their bodies are never found.  When I think of the bayou, I think of alligators and serial killers.”

     I gently stroked the multicolored feathers now draped gracefully around my neck.  “I’ll be fine.  Trust me.  I won’t really be alone, now will I?”

     “No, I guess not.  But make sure your phone is fully charged when you leave.  And don’t talk to strangers.”

     “Since when do I talk to strangers on a normal day?  I’m more likely to befriend an alligator than I am a serial killer!” 

     “True story,” Rachel confirmed without hesitation.  “She likes animals better than she likes people.  Even scaly ones with sharp teeth.  Animals, that is.  Though I suppose that holds true in reverse too.  Scaly people are gross.  I have this weird thing about people with bad skin.”

     That was a little known Rachel fact that I soon wish had remained a mystery.  For the next half hour, she rattled on about how acne grossed her out and that flaky skin was simply uncalled for considering the wide variety of moisturizers available.  Listening to her bad skin monologue wasn’t pleasant but it did serve a useful purpose.  It got my mind off of where I was going in the morning.  Even with the best reception, this was still going to be an awkward meeting.

     When I got in bed that night, I tried to think of the best way to introduce myself to them.  “Hello, I’m the granddaughter you never wanted” was bluntly true but didn’t seem appropriate.  As I lay there churning it around in my mind, something from my tarot reading popped into my thoughts.  Go with the flow.  There was no better advice to be had in this situation.  I needed to get there first, an then let the right words present themselves at the time.  Soon after that, I fell soundly to sleep.

     I felt fine all through breakfast and the taxi ride to Robicheaux but once I saw the sign for Turtle Creek Road, I almost told the driver to turn back around.  With shaking hands and an unsettled stomach, I clasped the silver feathers on my necklace for strength.  The house numbers rolled past one by one taking me closer and closer to the next clue in my weird little mystery.  Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would meet my grandparents.  And my dreams were pretty wild most of the time.

     5213 Turtle Creek Road was so heavily hidden by weeping willows that the driver nearly missed it.  His sudden slam on the brakes was a physical reminder that I was about to face something emotionally jarring.  I paid my fare being careful not to hand him the five dollar bill that led me there in the first place.  I’d started a box of souvenirs from this wild adventure I was on and that bill was going into it the minute I got home.

     The house was nothing more than a tiny bungalow at the end of a small lane engulfed by the drooping foliage of the willow trees.  With only one step forward, I realized how soggy the ground here was so I walked with my head down to pick out the drier spots to walk on.  That’s when I saw them.  Feathers.  Tons and tons of feathers lining the path.  Enough feathers that I could have knitted myself an entire duck.

     As I walked, it became apparent that the feathers weren’t just leading me to the house; they were actually showing me where the driest spots were.  I practically hopscotched my way through the mine field of feathers until I got to the broken down porch of the house.  I took a deep breath, stroked my necklace one more time, and then gave a light tap on the weathered front door.

     After a moment of waiting and hearing no signs of movement inside, I rapped sharply against the wood until I thought my knuckles were going to go shooting straight through the rotting panel.  This time a slow, quiet shuffling noise could be heard behind that door, growing steadily louder until someone was standing only inches away from me on the other side.  As I watched the door knob turn, my breath caught in my throat.  Of all the places I’d been, this was the scariest moment yet. 

     The door creaked openly slowly, revealing a tiny old man with the darkest eyes I’d ever seen.  He was barely my height and couldn’t have weighed more than a few pounds heavier, either.  He was much older than I expected but I could tell by his facial structure that this indeed was my grandfather.

     “You’re Elijah Redwaters, correct?” I asked full well knowing in my heart the answer to that question.

     “Yes,” he replied with some hesitation as though his mind was somewhere other than this time or place.  “I think I know who you are, but I don’t know your name.”

     It hadn’t occurred to me that he would know so little about me or that he would recognize me in any way.  I swallowed hard, choking back my nervousness, and then introduced myself.

     “My name is Ruby Matthews.  I’m your granddaughter.”

     His lips formed into a wistful smile as he repeated my name.  “Ruby.  She named you Ruby.  I never would have guessed.  Come on in.”

     So far, so good.  This wasn’t nearly as awkward as I thought it was going to be.  Sometimes the monsters inside my head convinced me that bad things were always going to happen.  I needed to start thinking more positive thoughts—stop throwing negative curses at myself. I smiled politely and crossed the threshold to the final piece of the puzzle known as Mom.

     It was a quaint little cottage barely bigger than my small apartment in Ohio.  There were minimal furnishings inside but the walls were hardly visible behind the myriad of framed photos hanging there.  Most, if not all of them, were photos of my mother.  Family photos, photos of her with friends, newspaper clippings dating back to her days as a dancer.  They may have disowned her but they certainly never stopped loving her.

     Elijah pointed to a small photo poised in front of the television.  “Ruby, meet the other Ruby.”

     I leaned in for a closer look and found a lady who looked exactly like my mother only slightly older.  “My grandmother? I asked quietly.  Her name was Ruby, too?”

     “Yep,” he proudly proclaimed, “Married sixty-two days to the year when I lost my gem.  Pneumonia.  She was too stubborn to go to the doctor.  Always thought she could handle things on her own.  But she wasn’t the medicine woman she thought she was.  Died in her sleep with her hand resting on my heart.  She was all I had—until now.”

     His attempts to choke back the tears grew less successful with every word he uttered.  And gradually, so did mine.  When I decided to go with the flow, I never expected it to come in the form of tears. 

     “Oh, Grandpa!” I said as I flung my arms around him.  The frail little stranger I met only a few minutes ago was now one of the most important people in my life.

     “You look exactly like I pictured you—like Camille,” he said between sobs.  “Too bad you never got the chance to meet her in person.”

     “But I
did
.  I don’t remember her much but I did get a chance to meet her.  She died when I was four.”

     Elijah dropped our embrace immediately and gave me an odd look.  “She was wrong?  Her predictions were wrong?”

     “Yes.  Sort of.  She died giving birth to my sister, not me.  But I’m still kind of fuzzy on the facts here.  Tell me about my mother.  Tell me about the Dream Dancer.”

     We sat down across from each other at the kitchen table both clearly filled with emotion.  He seemed in shock.  I was more nervous than anything else.  Whatever he was about to tell me related back to Zach’s situation in some way.  But how were her dreams from over thirty years ago going to shed light on my present mystery?

     “Your mother was a dream psychic—she predicted future events through her dreams.  From the time she was old enough to remember what came to her sleeping mind, she told us time and time again about things that were going to happen.  I still remember her very first prediction like it was yesterday.  She came to breakfast one morning and calmly announced that we needed to stock up on supplies because of the hurricane.  At her age, she didn’t even know what a hurricane was so we were baffled when she used that word.  When we asked her who told her about hurricanes, she said it was the pictures in her head.  On my way home from work that night—on nothing more than sheer whim—I stopped at the market and picked up a few extra things that we didn’t really need but that would come in handy in an emergency.  About an hour later, Hurricane Colleen took a drastic turn in the mid-Atlantic and swept up the gulf with very little warning.  We had no electricity for a week after that.  Roads were impassable for days.  The only reason we didn’t go hungry was because of your mother’s prediction.”