“Let the girl through or she’s going to wet herself,” a woman shouted.
Leave it to the elderly Neighbors to assume I suffered from incontinence, despite being identified as a “girl.” I threaded my way through the carts until I broke free of the traffic jam. I arrived at the front of the line to see Didi crying over her steering wheel, stuck halfway into a spot as a dozen horns blasted at her. Despite the urgent nature of Zach’s call, it seemed to cruel to pass by Didi without offering assistance.
I ditched my bike on the grass and approached the hot-pink golf cart with the nameDidispelled out in glitter on the side.
“Hello, Didi. I’m Maya August, acting director of security.”
Didi turned her tear-stained face toward me. “Are you here to arrest me for causing a public disturbance?”
“Of course not. I’m here to help you. Hands on the wheel.”
Didi dragged her sleeve across her face and placed her hands in the ten and two position. “Now what?”
“Turn your wheel to the left and keep backing in.”
“But I’ll hit the cart behind me.”
“You won’t. Plenty of space. Keep going until I tell you to stop.”
She inched the cart backward, then forward a smidge, then back again. I continued directing her, keeping my voice calm and clear, despite the cacophony of horns behind us. Her hot-pink wheels fit perfectly between the other two golf carts.
“Did I do it?” Didi asked, peering over the dashboard.
“You did. You’re in.”
Golf carts accelerated past us, with drivers either cheering or shouting obscenities. They were lucky Judd wasn’t here, or he’d write up each of them for code violations.
“Thank you, Maya. You’re an angel. Now hurry to the bathroom before you have an accident.” She shooed me away.
“I don’t actually need…Never mind.” I ran to my bike and sped the rest of the way to Zach’s office.
Zachariah Johnson was the island mortician and resident necromancer. Unlike Justine, he preferred not to keep an assistant on hand, although he wasn’t alone when I arrived. The corpse of Darlene Garvey was on the necromancer’s table.
“You’re too late,” he said.
“I encountered another emergency en route.” My gaze returned to the body. “I didn’t know Darlene died.”
“Her death hasn’t been formally announced yet.”
“Suspicious circumstances?”
“Not until now. I had a nice little chat with Ms. Garvey. I thought you might be interested in joining our conversation, but the connection broke a couple minutes ago.” Once a connection ended, Zachariah couldn’t perform the ritual again. Well, he could, but it wouldn’t work.
“Why did you speak with her?”
“Her niece and nephew were here to ask about a will. Darlene was quite the people pleaser. She’d told her niece that she’d left everything to her and told her nephew the same. They each had a will stating as much.”
Poor Darlene. Even in death she couldn’t escape family squabbles. “And this is interesting to me why?”
“Because Darlene mentioned something else during our conversation. She appeared to have died in her sleep of natural causes, but she claims there was someone in the room with her when she died.”
My mind went straight to the oni. “A harbinger of doom?”
“One of those blue monsters running around the island? Didn’t sound like it.”
“Did she give a description?”
“A shadow of a man. Well, she thinks it was a man’s shadow. She couldn’t swear to it.”
