Dead Girls Are Easy Read online

  TERRI GAREY

  DEAD GIRLS ARE EASY

  For Bob, who believed from the beginning,

  for Sheila-Rae, who believed when I didn’t,

  and for my mother, Louise,

  who believed in ghosts,

  and believed in me.

  Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  “She’s coding. Give me another round of epi, stat.”

  CHAPTER 2

  “Ech—can you believe that woman? As if my Morty would…

  CHAPTER 3

  The Vortex is a well-known hangout down in the Atlanta…

  CHAPTER 4

  “Married.”

  CHAPTER 5

  What the hell was a “duppy”? Or a “mambo”?

  CHAPTER 6

  “I need your help.”

  CHAPTER 7

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  CHAPTER 8

  “Tell me that’s not what I think it is.”

  CHAPTER 9

  “Don’t worry about the store, Evan—Jason and Heather have it…

  CHAPTER 10

  Granny Julep was waiting for me the next morning.

  CHAPTER 11

  Nothing happened.

  CHAPTER 12

  “So let me get this straight.”

  CHAPTER 13

  “You got a phone call while you were at lunch.”

  CHAPTER 14

  What Joe lacked in technique, he made up for in…

  CHAPTER 15

  As close as Evan and I were, and as close…

  CHAPTER 16

  As usual, whenever something significant happened in my life, I…

  CHAPTER 17

  A half hour later I was in the extremely upscale…

  CHAPTER 18

  “Man, it’s good to be home.”

  CHAPTER 19

  We were almost too late. One look at Granny Julep’s…

  CHAPTER 20

  Home improvement stores have everything.

  CHAPTER 21

  The afternoon sun filtered through the blinds, casting slanted shadows…

  CHAPTER 22

  Ivy was wearing Chanel today, a gorgeous hot pink suit…

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  OTHER BOOKS BY TERRI GAREY

  COVER

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  Whoever said, “Dead men tell no tales,” obviously wasn’t listening very hard.

  Unfortunately for me, I’ve always had a very good ear.

  And dead men love to talk. A lot.

  But dead women are the worst.

  My name is Nicki Styx, and I’m a dead chick magnet. A psychic magnet, if you will. One near death experience, and my life was changed forever. Now restless spirits seem to sense a kindred one in me, and they all want to tell me their stories.

  Believe me, those stories aren’t always as fascinating as you might think. When a girl who’s been murdered by her boyfriend wants to whine about how misunderstood the jerk is, I’ll take my coffee to go, please.

  CHAPTER 1

  “She’s coding. Give me another round of epi, stat.”

  “Doctor—”

  “Keep bagging her, nurse. I’m not letting her go yet. Charge it to 360.”

  Had I left the TV on? I’d never cared much for medical dramas. Too much intensity, too much crying, too many doctors undergoing personal crises of faith—I’d rather believe they were professionals who knew what they were doing and leave it at that.

  The body on the table jerked at least a foot in the air when the paddles touched its chest. A hand flopped to the side, revealing red fingernails and a silver thumb ring. A woman.

  A high-pitched whining from one of the machines was getting on my nerves, but I had to give the director credit. The urgency on the faces of the people clustered around the gurney looked pretty real.

  “Again.” That doc just wasn’t gonna give up, was he? Maybe he was hoping for a daytime Emmy—wasn’t that what they gave for bad soap operas? The heartburn that made me lie down on the couch was finally gone, but it seemed too much trouble to look for the remote, so I just watched.

  The camera angle shifted so that now I was above the action, looking down from a high corner of the room. There was a blond nurse standing at the head of the table, squeezing a bulb-like thing over the patient’s face.

  The body flopped again at another jolt of electricity while I winced in sympathy. She wasn’t a car battery, for goodness sake.

  “Check her pupils.” The nurse holding the bulb stepped back while another one leaned in with a little flashlight and pried the woman’s eyelid open with a thumb.

  “No reaction, Doctor. Nothing on the EKG, either.”

  The guy holding the paddles let his shoulders slump, while the two nurses gave each other significant glances. It was then I got a good look at the woman on the bed. Dark hair, cropped short like a boy’s, with a telltale streak of pink.

  She was me.

  No sooner had the realization hit when a pulling sensation jerked me up and out of the deathbed scene. Suddenly I was in a dark tunnel, rushing along like I was on the subway, only there were no seats, no drunks, and no rhythmic rattle of rails. There was just me, and a light that grew steadily brighter the faster I went.

  I was weightless, and somehow a part of the light, becoming more so the closer I got. It radiated and shimmered like coiled lightning, pulsing white with a golden center, and it drew me like a lodestone. I couldn’t wait to see what lay beyond it.

  Silence gave way to music, but it wasn’t like any I’d ever heard before. It seemed to be coming from the light itself, yet it was all around—true music of the soul. There were others there, though I couldn’t see them clearly, bright shapes pulsing and flowing.

  My forward progress slowed, then stopped. I heard a voice.

  “It’s not your time, Nicki.”

  “I’m dreaming, right?”

  “You’ve awakened unto Life, but the dream is not yet over.”

  I can’t explain what perfect sense that statement made, any more than I could explain how so many things that had troubled me in the past suddenly made sense. Like why my mother gave me up for adoption before the cord that bound us had even been cut, or why really bad things happen to really good people. For a few precious moments I actually saw the fabled “grand design” stretched out before me like an infinite spiderweb. I barely had time to grasp it before it was snatched away.

  “Go back, Nicki, but don’t forget—do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

  My body felt strange, heavy. It was an effort to open my eyes, and when I did, I wished I hadn’t. The glare of a fluorescent bar surrounded by stained ceiling tiles was not the light I longed for.

  “Hey.” I felt a hand touch my hair. Evan’s face came into view, a very uncharacteristic look of concern in his blue eyes. “How you feeling, girlie?” he asked.

  My chest felt like there was an elephant sitting on it and my mouth was dry as sand, but I managed to croak out a reply.

  “Like shit.”

  That brought back the lopsided grin I knew so well, and made me feel a little better. My best friend since childhood, Evan wasn’t the type to play nursemaid unless there was a handsome guy around who wanted to play doctor. We’d shared backyards, homework, and confidences while we were growing up, so it had come as no big surprise in junior high when we shared a crush on the same football player.

  “What happened?” Talking was an effort.

  “You faked a heart attack and almost gave me one in the process.” Evan’s joking still carried overtones of worry. “Good thing I decided to come check on you when you didn’t answer the phone.
I knew you didn’t have a date, and I couldn’t believe you’d go out for Chinese without me.”

  I licked dry lips, not entirely sure I was awake. “A heart attack?”

  “Mitral valve prolapse.”

  I slid my eyes toward the unfamiliar voice. There was a dark-haired man at the foot of the bed, studying my chart. He wore green surgical scrubs and the typical stethoscope around the neck, and when he glanced up, I recognized him. He was the soap opera guy who tried so hard to save the woman on the gurney.

  Me.

  “A small heart defect, normally benign, but in your case nearly fatal.”

  He moved to stand across the bed from Evan. “We thought we’d lost you, Miss…” He consulted the chart again. “…Styx, is it?” He grinned. “I guess you didn’t have the right change for the ferryman.”

  Evan looked at him blankly, but I managed a weak grin. Anybody who understood Greek mythology couldn’t be all bad. I’d always found it so ironic that the wholesome, middle-American parents who’d chosen to raise me had the same last name as the dark river that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead. And yet they’d found my teenage goth period troubling—I considered that fact weird in itself.

  “I’m Dr. Bascombe.” He lowered the chart and looked at me critically. “I was the attending E.R. physician when you were brought in last night. You have a weak valve in your heart, usually genetic, which may cause an occasional erratic heartbeat or a racing pulse?what we call a ‘heart murmur.’ Does this type of thing run in your family?”

  “I have no idea.” That answer would have to do. I was too tired to explain.

  The doc frowned and took my wrist between his fingers.

  “What about drugs? Did you take any recently?”

  I opened my mouth, but Evan got there first.

  “Nicki doesn’t do drugs.” He sniffed, as though highly offended. “I already told you that. Why don’t you check your ‘tox screens’ or whatever they are and move on?”

  Dr. Bascombe cocked an eyebrow at Evan but didn’t seem to take any offense.

  “Had any dental work done recently?”

  “Yesterday. Just a cleaning.”

  “Ah.” He hooked his stethoscope in his ears and put the other end to my chest, listening intently.

  Up close he was kinda cute, even if he did smell like hand soap. I closed my eyes, taking my observation as further evidence that my heart wasn’t quite ready to give up the ghost.

  “You’re doing very well, Ms. Styx, and I’m pleased to say it looks like there was no lasting damage.”

  I opened my eyes, relieved but not really surprised.

  After all?it wasn’t my time.

  “We’ll need to do further tests, of course, and keep you for a few days just to make sure, but I think you’ll do fine.”

  While he was talking, an older woman came into the room and stood quietly by the door, as though waiting for him. She was wearing a loud floral print blouse over black stretch pants.

  “That’s it?” Evan sounded outraged. “A twenty-eight-year-old healthy person has a bad heart and you’re not gonna fix it? What? Is there a problem with her insurance?” His voice was rising, taking on that histrionic note I knew so well. “If she was an old bat on Medicare you’d be falling all over her to give her a heart transplant, for God’s sake!”

  To my surprise, the woman by the door was nodding in total agreement.

  Dr. Bascombe sighed. “There’s no need for such drastic measures here. I’d planned to discuss this with the patient when she was feeling better, but MVP is hardly a death sentence.” He looked down, addressing himself to me and effectively ignoring Evan. “You need to be aware of it, of course?watch your stress levels, take antibiotics before any dental work or surgery, avoid drugs and limit alcohol?that type of thing—but there’s no reason you can’t live to be an old bat on Medicare yourself.”

  He was smiling at me, apparently unconcerned about offending the old bat who stood by the door. “Surgery might be needed in extreme cases, but you’re not one of them.”

  “Could it happen again?” My voice still sounded pretty wimpy—I hated that.

  His smile faded slightly. “I can’t promise that it won’t. But something tells me you’re a fighter.” He took my cold hand in his warm one and squeezed my fingers. “So fight.”

  What a great idea. One I’d attend to as soon as I could keep my eyes open.

  When I woke up again, Evan and the doc were gone, but the old lady was still there. She was sitting in the chair beside my bed, plump fingers crossed over her plump stomach, patiently watching me sleep.

  “How are you feeling, dear?”

  The woman’s voice was almost as brassy as her outfit. The garish purple flowers on her blouse clashed with her hair ? an unfortunate shade of orange, faded and thinning.

  “I’m okay.” I felt better. Tired and thirsty, but better.

  Stiff from lying in the same position so long, I made an effort to hoist myself up. She didn’t make any move to help, though her fingers twitched as if she considered it. Rings glittered on both hands, outshone only by the polished length of her fake nails.

  “You’ve slept the day away, dear. Good thing I had nothing better to do.”

  The drapes on the window were closed, but I took her word it was evening. The quality of light in the room had changed, and the noises from the corridor were quieter now, more muted.

  “Do I know you?” I’d never seen the woman before, but she acted like we were old friends. “I’m sorry, but I’ve had a pretty bad day. Things are still fuzzy.”

  She waved a hand, dismissing my words. “Ech. Don’t tell me about a bad day?you should have the kind of bad day I’ve had.” Then she laughed. “Oh, wait?you did.”

  There was an edge to her laughter that raised the hair on my arms. I glanced around for the nurse’s call button. There was always one handy in the soap operas, wasn’t there?

  “Don’t bother calling anyone.” She reached up and patted her hair in what seemed a habitual gesture. “They can’t see me.” A charm bracelet tinkled on her chubby wrist.

  More and more convinced I was entertaining an escapee from another wing of the hospital, I found the call button on the bed rail and pushed it.

  The woman shrugged. “Suit yourself, dear.”

  I eyed her warily while I waited, saying nothing. Who knew what would set the fruitcake off? She didn’t say anything, either, examining her nails as though completely unconcerned.

  “Sleeping Beauty wakes.” A black nurse, plump and smiling, bustled into the room holding a tiny cup. “Just in time for meds.” She put the cup down on the bedside table and picked up a plastic pitcher sitting there. “How you feeling, honey? How about some water?”

  “Nurse, I think this lady is confused.”

  The nurse’s eyebrows went up. “This lady?” She shook her head, chuckling. “Would ‘this lady’ like a drink?” She poured water into a foam cup and offered it to me, never once glancing over at the woman in the chair.

  I shot a horrified glance at the old lady, and she shrugged again, as if to say, I told you so.

  “You don’t see her?” My voice came out as a squeak. “You don’t see the lady in the chair?”

  The nurse’s smile became fixed. She followed the direction of my gaze, then looked back to me.

  “Honey,” she said decisively, “you were right the first time. The lady is confused.” She picked up the little cup of meds, rattling the pills. “They ain’t nobody here but you and me. Now you take your medicine like a good girl, then lay back and close your eyes. I’ll get you a dinner tray and be back in five minutes. We’ll get some food in your belly and get you comfortable. You’ll be better tomorrow.”

  In a daze, I did as she asked, and she bustled from the room a moment later, a cheerful, professional smile firmly in place.

  “Irene Goldblatt.” The woman in the chair spoke as though we’d never been interrupted. “The name is Irene
Goldblatt.”

  “Nicki Styx.” I answered automatically, still dazed. This whole experience had such a sense of the surreal about it that talking to an invisible woman seemed to fit right in.

  “I need you to do me a favor, Nicki.” Irene leaned forward, serious now. “I need you to go tell my Morty that I didn’t mean what I said about his matzo balls.”

  I giggled. This was one weird dream.

  “His matzo balls?” I giggled again, unable to help myself.

  She rolled her eyes at me, obviously impatient. “Yeah. His matzo balls. You go tell him that they weren’t dry at all. I just said that because they were better than mine. It wasn’t his fault.”

  A hiccup of laughter escaped me. Irene frowned, so I tried to contain myself.

  “What wasn’t his fault?”

  Irene looked at me like I was an idiot.

  “That I choked to death on them, of course.”

  I’d never been so glad to see morning come. Long before light crept in around the hospital room drapes, I heard the building stir to life. The squeak of shoes and the rattle of stretchers, murmured voices and ringing phones?all were a relief after the night I’d had.

  Irene finally left me alone, but not until she’d told me her life story and made me promise to help her. As if I’d had any choice. Who wants a Jewish grandmother with a grudge popping up any time she feels like it? Irene made it politely clear she was willing to be, as she put it, a “nudnik” about the whole thing. I understood only that she’d make my pathetic little goyishe life a living hell unless I talked to her Morty. Her funeral was the day after tomorrow, and we would both be attending.

  Pretty creepy stuff. Either that or I’d suffered brain damage during the heart attack and was hallucinating about a little old lady with a Yiddish accent. Needless to say, I hadn’t slept much.

  “Miss Styx?” A swath of light spilled from the corridor as the door swung open. Dr. Bascombe saw I was awake and said, “Good morning. Early rounds. Can I turn on the light?”

  “Sure.” The fluorescent lighting flickered, then flared to life as I rolled onto my back, shading my eyes against the glare. “Could you adjust the bed so I can sit up?”