The crazed woman comes out onto the front porch and screams, “I won’t be ignored, Dan!” She glares into the darkness looking for me.
Who the heck is Dan? Even better, who the heck is that crazy woman and how did she get into Dahlia House? I creep around to the side of the porch and peer up at her. She stands, feet apart—bare feet in this bitter cold—in a diaphanous white dress. Therefore she must be freezing, but I’m not seeing any reaction to the cold. My teeth are about to chatter and will be a dead giveaway of my location.
“You play fair with me, I’ll play fair with you!” the woman calls out into the night.
She stares as if she’s looking for someone to appear in front of her. It occurs to me that it isn’t really me she’s hoping to see. I creep a little closer until I get a good view of her under the chandelier that lights the front porch. Glenn Close! It’s the actress Glenn Close! My first thought is to call Millie Roberts, the owner of Millie’s Café here in Zinnia, and the local authority on celebrities and what makes them tick. Why is Glenn Close in my ancestral family home—with a knife in her hand and blood in her eyes?
“Dan, you can’t pretend we didn’t happen.” Her voice is honeyed now, as if she will behave all harmless and playful. The knife blade glints in the light and I know she is deadly.
“Any bunnies in the barn?” she asks.
I knew the reference then. Dan Gallagher. Alex Forrest. The movie was Fatal Attraction. Close played a woman whose obsession with a married man ended in tragedy—and a dead bunny. It was a movie scene I’d never forget. And now the crazy woman was in my house. Was she waiting for Coleman?
Now that thought really made me shiver. Was my man up to something I needed to know about? I rejected that idea immediately. Sure, people cheated. People made mistakes. It happened. But the one thing I knew about Coleman Peters was that he would not deceive me. If he found someone he wanted more than me, he would step up to the plate and say so.
So why was a murderous woman on my front porch?
That question troubled me until I snapped out of the Christmas fog and realized that the apparition haunting my porch was Jitty, my nemesis and heirloom haint.
I crept out of the shrubs and put my hands on my hips. “Dammit, Jitty, you nearly scared ten years off my life.”
She stepped out of her aggressive stance and sauntered toward me. “Girl, you don’t have ten years to squander. Your eggs got a shelf life of”—she consulted a pretty watch on her arm—“maybe ten hours. They don’t last forever, you know.”
Jitty’s primary job at Dahlia House was to aggravate me to the point of near insanity. And also to offer cryptic advice that rarely meant anything to me until it was too late. But this Jitty-incarnation, this cheating and vengeful woman, touched a nerve I thought was long dead.
“Is Coleman cheating on me? Is that what this”—I waved a hand at her—“getup is all about?”
Jitty was slowly morphing from the blond Alex to the mocha Jitty. “Coleman? Heck no. This has nothing to do with Coleman.” She made an O with her mouth and popped a hand over it. Jitty was never supposed to give me a straight answer about anything she knew from the Great Beyond. It was part of the rule book of ghosts and spirits.
“Aha!” I was smug. “So Coleman is true blue.”
“Any fool would know the answer to that,” Jitty grumped. “You don’t need a ghost to divine that answer.”
I wanted to hear her say it. “So he’s loyal?”
“Kind of like that hound dog sleeping on the sofa and not concerned enough about you to come outside. Maybe that should have been your first tip not to run out of the house without a coat.”
She was right. Had Alex Forrest been a real danger, Sweetie Pie would have been on her like a duck on a June bug. Since Sweetie Pie hadn’t demonstrated the least amount of concern that a crazy woman with a knife was stalking me, I should have deduced that it was Jitty. After all, Jitty had concocted a thousand different ways to interrupt my life. Now she had me out in the cold winter without a jacket while she indulged her penchant for playacting.
I trudged up the steps and went inside. I slammed the door, but Jitty just faded right through it and followed me into the parlor, where Dean Martin sang “Winter Wonderland.” My parents had loved Dino and had slow-danced to his mellow voice, my father steering Mama under the mistletoe to steal a kiss. I made myself a very light Jack and water and plopped before the crackling fire to enjoy the warmth, the music, and my memories. And ignore Jitty. “I’m not going to listen to you,” I warned her. “Go away.”
“Where’s that handsome sheriff?”
“Probably on his way, so you should skedaddle.”
I’d been in love before, but Coleman was bigger than love. We’d grown up knowing each other, and he’d been my grade school friend when I lost my parents. He’d been my competitor in horseback riding, sports, driving fast through the cotton fields, and a thousand other things. He had rescued me more than once when my life was on the line.
Coleman and I shared a love of the natural world, and of the Delta in particular. We both fought for justice. We were children of a particular time and place in the history of a state we both loved and despaired over.
