The Haunting Of Tana Grant - Robert Baty

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The Haunting Of Tana Grant - book excerpt

Chapter 1

Tana was on deadline the day the ghost crept out of the grave. Lifeless skies hung over the city. Shadows filled the streets. The living, it seemed, were nowhere to be found. A good day to write about the dead, Tana Grant thought, as she turned away from the window and resumed working on an obituary for a woman she never heard of. Most of the people whose lives she memorialized for The Bay Area Bugle were famous in one way or another. But Helen Mayfield wasn’t famous. She was just dead.

A shadow fell across Tana’s cubicle. She looked up and saw Jack Donahue, aka JD, taking up space. He was a stocky white man in his fifties, with a barrel chest, graying red hair and glasses. He was wearing his managing editor uniform of white shirt and tie, khaki Dockers, and suspenders.

“How’s it going with the Mayfield obit, Montana?” JD said.

Tana sighed.

Montana.

What kind of name was that for a girl? She blamed it on her parents. They thought it was cute to name her after the state where she was born, and mom and dad had a ranch. They had hoped that Tana, a rangy brunette who looked good in the saddle, would stay on, and grow up to be a cowgirl. Instead, she fled to San Francisco and became a reporter.

“Fine, no problem,” Tana said. “I mean it’s just really sad she never saw her kid again.”

Donahue shrugged, as if to say that they were all sad stories. “Maybe they’ll find each other in the afterlife.”

Tana looked at the photos that had been selected to run with Mayfield’s obituary. One was a news photo of a woman in her thirties trying to fend off the media crowding in around her as she walked out of a courthouse. The other was a snapshot taken at a playground of a little girl coming down the slide with her arms in the air and a smile on her face.

“Her name was Emma,” Tana said.

“So what’s the lede?” JD said, his voice edgy with impatience.

Tana flashed a nervous smile. “You know what, Jack? I’m still working on it.”

“I didn’t ask you whether you were still working on it.”

Tana felt the heat rush into her face. “Right, sorry,” she said.

“Read me what you got.”

Tana turned to her computer and read the copy on the screen. “Helen Mayfield, a juror whose lone vote to convict an alleged killer resulted in a hung jury and may have led to her daughter’s disappearance, died Tuesday in San Mateo. She was 46.”

JD nodded, impressed. “Not bad, Montana.”

“Thanks, Jack, but it’s Tana, okay?”

JD grinned. “Yeah, I know. Send me the rest when you’re done.”

“Sure, no problem,” Tana said as JD turned and walked away.

Tana had just resumed working on the Mayfield obit when a black woman in her late thirties with a tight afro, nose ring, and lacquered nails swung by her cubicle. Her name was Janelle, and when she wasn’t swiping right or left on Tinder she worked on the online edition of The Bugle.

“What’d JD want?” Janelle said, nodding at Donahue, who was making his way across the newsroom toward his office.

“The usual. What was the lede.”

“Then he asked you to read it to him, right?”

Tana nodded.

“Did he like it?”

“Yeah, he did.”

“So you’re done.”

Tana rolled her eyes. “Janelle, I am so not done.”

Janelle dismissed it with a wave of her hand. Her hot pink nails caught the light.

“You got the hook, baby.” She glanced at the Apple Watch on her wrist. “I’d say that calls for a drink. And you know what? Happy hour’s on the horizon.” She looked up at Tana. “What do you say?”

“I gotta finish this.”

“Do it later, girl. You got time, right?”

Tana gave herself a moment to be tempted, then looked up at Janelle and said, “You’re on.”

Janelle flashed a smile. “First round’s on me.”

An hour later, just before it started raining, Tana and Janelle grabbed a table by the window at a downtown dive bar. They ordered lemon drop martinis and snacked on beer nuts while they waited for their drinks.

“This is the part I hate,” Janelle said, glancing at the bartender.

“What do you mean?”

“The waiting.”

“What, for our drinks?”

Janelle nodded.

Tana smiled to herself. That was Janelle. Always in a hurry to get the party started.

Janelle threw another glance at the bartender, then turned to Tana. “So how do you like the obits desk? You’ve been there, what, a couple years now?”

Tana gave a disappointed shrug. “I don’t know. Not exactly what I had in mind.”

“What do you mean?”

“Duh, they’re dead, okay?”

“Yeah, but they weren’t always dead.”

“Well, they sure are now,” Tana said. “You know what JD told me when he hired me? Do a good job on the dead and we’ll give you a shot at the living. That was two years ago.”

“Give it time, girl, he’ll come around.”

Tana shrugged. “He keeps calling me ‘Montana.’ It’s so annoying.”

Janelle grinned. “I think it means he likes you.”

“Yeah, right.”

The barmaid returned with their drinks. “Here you go, ladies,” she said, and set their drinks on the table. “This’ll take the edge off.”

She moved away from the table. Tana and Janelle raised their glasses in a toast, then sipped their drinks.

“Ooh, that’s good,” Janelle said, smacking her lips.

“You happy now?” Tana said with a teasing smile.

“And getting happier by the minute.” Janelle took another sip, then set her glass down and looked at Tana. “So whose obit you working on?”

“Some woman named Helen Mayfield.”

Janelle’s eyes widened. “The Helen Mayfield?”

“Yeah. You know who she was?”

“Honey, back in the day everybody knew who Helen Mayfield was. It was all over the news. You read about how she never saw her daughter again, right?”

Tana nodded. “I wonder if she’s still alive?”

“The kid?”

Janelle made a face. “Can we change the subject?”

“You brought it up.”

“Yeah, and now it’s bringing me down.”

“JD said maybe they’ll be reunited in the afterlife.”

Janelle shuddered. “The man’s been spending way too much time around dead people.”

“Yeah, I know. But what if it’s true?”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

Tana sipped her drink. “Sounds crazy, huh? Maybe I’m the one who’s spending too much time around dead people.”

It was raining hard, coming down in sheets that blurred the streetlights when Tana and Janelle came out of the bar.

“Hang on a sec,” Tana said, opening her umbrella.

Lightning streaked across a starless sky. Tana tried to shield herself from a sudden, blinding flash that seemed to envelop her. She could feel herself losing her balance as the light swirled around her. Then a clap of thunder detonated in her ears. The umbrella fell out of her hands and she collapsed by the door.

Janelle froze. “Oh my God! Tana!” She crouched down beside her. “Are you okay? She looked around as the pouring rain drenched both of them. “Help! Somebody help!”

“It’s okay, Janelle, I’m okay,” Tana said, starting to come around.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Tana said, feeling woozy. “I guess it was the lightning or something. It was like all of a sudden I went blind. There was just this flash of light and then everything went dark.” She looked at Janelle. “But it was weird…I saw something.”

“What do you mean, you saw something?” Janelle said as she helped Tana to her feet.

“I don’t know…I can’t explain it.”

Janelle’s face tensed with worry. “Are you sure you’re okay? Maybe you should go to the ER.”

Tana shook her head. “I’m okay, seriously.”

A Toyota Camry with an Uber sticker in the lower right corner of the windshield pulled up in front of the bar. The driver, a Latino in his forties with an Oakland Athletics baseball cap and a salt-and-pepper beard, looked out at Tana and waved as the wipers swept the rain across the windshield.

“Here’s my ride,” Tana said.

“You want me to come with you, make sure you get home okay?”

Tana smiled and shook her head. “I’m okay. See you tomorrow.” They embraced in the rain, then Tana climbed into the Camry and the car pulled away.

Fifteen minutes later, the driver double-parked in front of Tana’s building on Nob Hill. She still felt woozy, but she wasn’t sure if it was the lemon drop martinis or the lightning. What Tana did know was that she was soaked to the bone and couldn’t wait to get out of her clothes.

“Thanks,” she said, and pulled on the handle. But the door failed to open. She glanced at the driver, whose face was hidden in the shadows. “Could you open the door? It’s locked.”

A flash of lightning lit up the car. The driver turned and looked at Tana. But what she saw was no longer an Uber driver wearing an Oakland A’s ball cap.

What she saw was the late Helen Mayfield.