Synopsis |
Reviews |
Excerpt
As Tara and Flynn are closing in on Dee Dee Broyles'
killer, a deadly new ghost begins to threaten them. It's just another day in
Tara's lunatic life. . .
All during the day at school, Tara kept picturing the
moment when she and Nate would find DeeDee's grave. Even the classes she had
with Flynn, who made everything fun, never seemed to end. By the time the
last bell rang, she was fired up like a roman candle on the Fourth of
July. She bolted from her seat, made a quick stop at her locker, and slipped
out a side door instead of taking the front, knowing full well she was
going to miss seeing Flynn. She didn't have time to delay or explain, and she
had a feeling he wouldn't be all that thrilled in what she was doing. He
was pretty cool about her psychic stuff, but digging for bodies fell way
out of the realm of normal-even for her.
Sharon Sala is the bestselling author of romance,
suspense and historical novels for adults, and now, of the popular Lunatic Life
mysteries for young adults. She's hard at work on her next Lunatic Life
novel. Visit her atwww.SharonSalaBooks.com
"…My Lunatic Life is fast-paced and engaging…a delightful book…I look forward to the sequel,The Lunatic Detective." -- Teri Davis, NetGalley Review
"Tara Luna was great...With plenty of paranormal intrigue,My Lunatic Life is a fun, lighthearted read." -- Hannah Bowles, NetGalley
"A wonderful job of showing how hard it is to keep going to new schools and trying to fit in." -- Jo Ann Hakola,The Book Faerie
"It was nonstop action from page one." -- Julie Witt,Good Reads
"It had a fabulous suspense[ful] edge that just made my heart pound." -- Tiffiane,GoodReads
Chapter One
Worms crawled between the
eye sockets and over what had once been the bridge of her nose. The lower jaw
had come loose from the joint and was drooping toward the breastbone, as if in
eternal shock for the circumstance. The finger bones were curled as if she’d died
in the middle of trying to dig her way out.
Tara stood above the newly opened grave,
staring down in horror.
"Is that you, DeeDee?”
But DeeDee couldn’t answer. There was
the problem with her jaw.
All of a sudden, someone pushed Tara
forward and she felt herself falling... falling...
into the open grave... on top of what was left of poor DeeDee
Broyles.
That was when she screamed.
Tara
Luna sat straight up in bed, the sheet clutched beneath her chin as she
stared wild-eyed around her bedroom, her heart pounding against her ribcage
like a drum. All of a sudden, the loud roar of an engine swept past her window.
VVRRROOOMMM! VVRROOOMMM!!
She flinched, then relaxed when she
saw the familiar silhouette of her uncle, Patrick Carmichael. She glanced at
the clock and groaned in disbelief as the roar of a lawn mower passed beneath
her bedroom window again. It was just after eight a.m.—on a Saturday! Couldn’t
he have waited a little longer before starting that thing up?
I
think you’d look great as a red-head.
Tara rolled her eyes. Millicent! She’d
just had the worst dream ever and was not in the mood for any input on
hairstyles from the female ghost with whom she shared her life.
"I am not dying my hair.” She swung
her legs over the side of the bed and stood up.
I
was once a red-head... and a blonde... and
a brunette.
Tara arched an eyebrow, but
resisted commenting. She’d always suspected Millicent had been quite a swinger
in her day because she was still way too focused on men.
"I’m going to shower,” Tara
announced, and headed for the bathroom across the hall. She opened the door
just as Henry, the other ghost who shared her world, came floating by. Before
she could stop herself, she’d walked through him.
She swiped at her face. "Eww! Henry!
I hate when that happens!”
Henry didn’t appear too pleased
with her either, and vaporized himself in a huff.
He
doesn’t like to be displaced.
"Yeah, well I don’t like to be
slapped in the face with frozen spider webs, and that’s what that feels like.”
Interesting.
I remember once when I was in France—
"Millicent. Please? I just woke up
here.”
A pinkish tinge suddenly flashed
across Tara’s line of vision, then she heard a very faint pop before Millicent’s
voice disappeared. "Oh great. Now she’s ticked, too.”
Still, finally glad to be alone, Tara
closed the bathroom door behind her. Just because Henry and Millicent were no
longer alive in the strict sense of the word, didn’t mean she wanted them as
company while she showered.
A short while later, she emerged,
wide-awake and starving. She dashed across the hall to her room, and dressed
quickly in a pair of sweats and a new white tee from Stillwater, Oklahoma’s
world famous burger joint, Eskimo Joe’s.
As she entered the kitchen, it was
obvious from the dirty dishes in the sink that Uncle Pat had already cooked
breakfast. She began poking around, hoping he’d left some for her, and hoping
it was regular food and not one of his experiments.
Her uncle had a tendency to mix
things that didn’t necessarily go together. It was, he claimed, his way of
‘going green’ by not wasting perfectly good food. If she could only convince
him to quit stirring everything into one big pot to heat it up, she would be
happy. She didn’t mind leftovers. She just wanted to know what it used to be
before she put it in her mouth.
As she passed by the sink, she saw
a shot glass sitting inside a cereal bowl and stopped. This wasn’t good. If
Uncle Pat had already started drinking this early in the morning, the day was
bound to go to hell before dark. Still, after she found a plate of food in the
microwave that actually looked good, her mood lightened a little. She could
smell sausage and potatoes, which went well together. She just hoped the yellow
stuff on the side was scrambled eggs. He’d been known to try and pass off
mashed squash on her before, claiming eggs and squash were both yellow and
fluffy, so he failed to see her issue. She poked her finger into the food. It
had the consistency of eggs. She licked her finger, then grinned. Eggs!
"Bingo! Lucked out on this one.” She
popped it in the microwave to heat and poured herself a glass of juice.
With the first couple of months of
her senior year at a new school behind her, she was beginning to feel like she
belonged. She’d gotten off on the wrong foot with one of the cheerleaders,
which had resulted in some pretty hateful gossip and hazing. When that had
started, Millicent had felt an obligation to retaliate on Tara’s behalf. Flying
dishes and ink pens had then shifted the gossip about Tara at Stillwater High
to an all-out accusation that Tara Luna was not just a lunatic, but also a
witch. She could handle being both a psychic and a medium, but a witch? How
lame was that?
As she dug into her breakfast, she
couldn’t help thinking about the one-eighty her life had taken after she’d used
her psychic powers to figure out who had kidnapped Bethany Fanning, the head
cheerleader of Stillwater High School. With the help of her new boyfriend,
Flynn, and Bethany’s boyfriend, Davis, they had managed to rescue Bethany just
before she became fish food in Boomer Lake.
Just thinking about Flynn O’Mara
made her shiver. He was one smooth hottie.
All in all, it had been an eventful
two months.
She was still eating when she
sensed she was no longer alone. Since the sound of the mower was still going
strong, it couldn’t be Uncle Pat. She could also sense that whoever was here
wasn’t mortal. She looked over her shoulder. When she saw the sad little ghost
who’d come with the house they were renting, she sighed and pointed to a chair
on the opposite side of the table.
"Hey, DeeDee. Have a seat. I had a
dream about you last night. I’ve been waiting for you to come back. We need to
talk.”
DeeDee drifted past the chair Tara
had indicated, choosing instead to hover near the doorway.
"Okay, here’s the deal,” Tara said,
as she chewed. "Millicent explained your situation to me. I know you used to
live in this house. I know you were also murdered here. I also know there was
never an investigation into your murder because no one reported you missing...
which leads me to the question, why not?”
DeeDee didn’t have an answer. With
a ghost, that usually meant she didn’t know it. Spirits were often confused
after they died. Sometimes they didn’t understand what had happened to them, or
where they were supposed to be. Tara knew that after the traditional ‘passing
into the light’ they could come back and forth if they wished. But she
suspected DeeDee had never crossed over. Ever. Which she found really sad.
"I’m really sorry that I don’t have
any answers for you, yet. But you already know I’m having problems with your
brother, Emmit.”
When DeeDee suddenly went from
passive to a dark, angry shadow, Tara flinched. Talk about being in a mood. DeeDee
was certainly in one now.
"So, what do you suggest?” Tara
asked.
The dark shadow swirled to the
ceiling and then down to the floor, like a puppet dancing on a string.
"That is not a helpful answer,” Tara
muttered, and scooped another bite into her mouth, her eyes narrowing
thoughtfully as she chewed. "Here’s the deal. I’ve already done a lot of
legwork on this mystery. I found out you and Emmit once owned this house
together, although he totally denies he ever had a sister.”
At that news, the dark shadow
bounced from one end of the kitchen to the other, rattling dishes in the
cabinets.
"Easy,” Tara cautioned. "No
breaking dishes, please. I also found out where he lives now. You know I went
to see him, which opened up this huge can of worms. Something I said to him set
him off in a big way because now he’s stalking me.”
The dark shadow shifted back to
DeeDee’s ghost again, drifting about a foot above the floor like dandelion
puffs floating in the wind.
"But you already knew that, too, so
don’t play dumb,” Tara muttered. "And, thank you again for scaring him off
before he found me here the other day.” She frowned. "However, I still can’t
figure out how he got a key to this house. There’s no way the lock on the front
door is still the one from back when you guys owned the house. Your freaky
brother either picked the lock, or had some kind of master key. Either way, he
scared the you-know-what out of me... digging through all our
closets and stuff. I don’t even want to think about what he would have done to
me if he’d found me hiding in the back of Uncle Pat’s closet. Like I said
before, I owe you for scaring him off like that. But!” She pointed her fork at
DeeDee. "Did you know he’s stalking me outside of the house, too?”
Tara felt the little ghost’s
empathy as if she’d been hugged. "Yes, well, I’m sorry, too. Thanks to you and
Millicent, I’ve managed to get away from him both times, but my luck can’t hold
forever. If only you could tell me where your body is buried, it would open an
investigation, and the guilty party, whom I suspect is your brother Emmit,
would be caught.”
Like before, an image of upturned
earth and a pile of leaves flashed through Tara’s mind.
"Okay. I get that the killer dug a
hole, and that it was probably in the fall, because there were leaves all over
the ground. But where? No. Wait. I know you were buried in the back yard.” Then
she grimaced. "Imagine my joy in learning that. What I meant was, I don’t know
where in the back yard.”
Another image of the backyard
flashed in Tara’s mind. It was like looking at a postcard someone had sent her.
In this instance, the postcard had come from DeeDee.
"I already know it’s in our
backyard. But it’s huge. I can’t just start digging holes. I don’t know how
deep the hole was where you were buried, or where to start looking.”
Sadness swept through Tara so fast
that she was crying before she knew it.
"Oh, DeeDee,” Tara whispered, as
she swiped at the tears on her cheeks. "I’m not giving up. I’m just talking out
loud.”
Within the space of a heartbeat,
she found herself alone.
"Bummer,” Tara muttered. "What a
way to start the weekend.”
She glanced down at her plate. The food
was not only cold, but after the interlude with DeeDee, Tara had lost her
appetite. She carried her plate to the sink, ran the leftovers through the
garbage disposal, and put her plate and the rest of the dirty dishes into the
dishwasher. Then she waved at her uncle, who was passing by the window again. After
that, she turned, put her hands on her hips and frowned.
"Time to get down to business. There’s
laundry to do. The floors need sweeping and I need to make a grocery list.”
Tara didn’t feel sorry for herself.
Her life was her life. She didn’t remember anything else. She had no memory of
her parents, who’d died in a car wreck before her first birthday. Her family
consisted of her and Patrick Carmichael, her mother’s brother—a fifty-something
bachelor with an itchy foot and a gypsy soul. They’d lived in so many different
states during the seventeen years of Tara’s life that she’d lost count. Except
for his tendency to drink too much, too often, he was a good man and good to
her.
They moved to Stillwater just
before the beginning of school, and if Tara had anything to do with it, they
would still be here when she graduated high school next year, and still here
for the ensuing four or five years it would take for her to graduate college. Oklahoma
State University was one of the best universities in the state, and it just
happened to be right here in town.
The possibility they might not move
again so soon was better than usual because her Uncle Pat had gone sweet on a
waitress at Eskimo Joe’s. The waitress just happened to be her boyfriend’s
mother, Mona, which was a little creepy, but there was nothing Tara could do
about that.
The morning passed quickly as Tara
finished cleaning house. Her uncle came inside at mid-morning and helped with
the laundry. They’d done it together so many times that they had their own
routine.
The last load of laundry was drying
and Tara was mopping the last strip of floor when Pat came back into the
kitchen.
"If you make out a grocery list,
I’ll do the shopping,” he offered.
"Yay!” Tara said. She hated grocery
shopping. "Give me a couple of minutes to finish up here and I’ll get right to
it.”
"I’ll be outside,” Pat said. "I
need to clean out the trunk of the car anyway.”
"Okay,” Tara said, as she put up
the mop.
She went back to the counter and
picked up the list that they’d started earlier in the week and began sorting
through the pantry and the refrigerator, making notes of the things that needed
to be replaced while absently dancing to a little Katy Perry playing on her iPod.
The front door had barely shut
behind her uncle before Millicent popped up.
You’re
out of shampoo.
Tara looked up from the list and
frowned. "And you know this because?”
There
was a small accident in the bathtub.
Tara dropped the list onto the
kitchen table. "Dang it, Millicent. Have you been making bubbles again?” She
stomped off to the bathroom, muttering under her breath as she went. "I don’t
know why you persist in this when you know good and well you can’t do bubble
baths anymore.”
Tara squealed as she ran into the
bathroom, turned off the water running into the tub, then pulled the plug to
let it run out. Of course, it was too late to stop what had already overflowed.
"Look at the mess you’ve made!” she
shrieked. "You explain all this to Uncle Pat, will you? This stuff costs money,
and we’re not rolling in it, in case you’ve noticed.”
Money?
Isn’t that what you got for finding that blonde bimbo?
Tara ignored the remark regarding
the reward she’d gotten for finding Bethany Fanning, because that was going to
be her ticket to four years of college. She sighed as she surveyed the
partially flooded bathroom floor.
"I hope you’re happy. I had just
mopped this.”
Sarcasm
does not become you.
Tara knew her little ghost was
gone, even before the sound of Millicent’s voice disappeared.
"Henry! Why didn’t you warn me?” Tara
wailed, as she went to get the mop and bucket again.
Henry manifested long enough to
blow her a kiss, then vaporized.
Tara wasn’t amused. It seemed
everyone had a place to be but her. She finished cleaning up the bathroom—again—and
ran back to get the list before her uncle came back. She didn’t want to explain
why she was mopping the bathroom twice. Even though he’d finally accepted the
fact that she was as psychic as the other women in his family had been, he
didn’t like to dwell on it.
She added a couple of other items
to the list and hurried outside, only to find him engrossed in a conversation
on his cell phone. From the laughter in his voice and the little she could
hear, she guessed he was talking to Mona. When he saw Tara, he quickly said
goodbye and stood.
"Got the list?” he asked.
Tara slipped it in his hand. "Are
you going out with Mona tonight?”
He blushed. "I don’t know...
I might. Is there a problem?”
Tara sighed. "Flynn and I are going
bowling.”
"That’s great,” he said.
Tara shrugged. "You don’t think
it’s weird? I mean, I’m going out with Flynn and you’re dating his Mom?”
Pat frowned. "I fail to see the
problem. I’m just taking a woman to dinner. We’re not getting married. Flynn’s
not going to turn into your step-brother overnight.”
"Ew! Ew! I hope not!” Tara cried.
"How wrong would that be? All of us living under the same roof?”
Pat hugged her. "Honey, that is so
far down the road of ever happening that you need to calm down. Dinner and a
movie is not forever after, okay?”
Tara sighed. "Yeah, okay.”
"So, I’ll be back in a couple of
hours. Kick back and take a good rest. I’ve got the back yard all cleaned up,
but I’ve been thinking about putting in a small mum garden. You know...
they’re colorful and hardy and good to plant this time of year. Why don’t you
poke around and figure out a good place for us to plant them?”
Tara immediately thought of DeeDee.
"Great idea, Uncle Pat. I’ll do that.”
He tweaked the end of her nose,
then winked. "Okay. I’m leaving now. Later gator.”
Tara rolled her eyes as he got in
the car and drove away. Uncle Pat was a hoot with his funny old-time sayings.
Where
are you planning to dig first?
Tara rolled her eyes. "Here’s the
deal, Millicent. It’s not like you can just start digging holes. Our landlord
would toss us out for tearing stuff up.”
Tara went back into the house and locked
the door firmly behind her as Millicent continued.
Then
how are you going to find DeeDee?
"I don’t know, okay? I’m going
outside now, and if I’m real lucky, DeeDee will pop up, point her little
ghostly finger and say ‘X marks the spot.’”
As I have stated before, sarcasm does
not become you.
Tara sighed. Great start to her
Saturday. She’d displaced some of Henry’s molecules, ticked Millicent off, and
made DeeDee sad. And that was only the ghost side of her troubles. Uncle Pat
had a date with Flynn’s mom. What if there was hugging and kissing involved? What
if they actually hooked up?
OMG. OMG.
Her feet were dragging as she
headed out the back door, then paused on the bottom porch step with her hands
on her hips.
"Okay. If I wanted to hide a body
out here, where would it be?”
A picture popped into her head and
she realized it was another ‘postcard’ from DeeDee. Just as she started to
dismiss it, she realized what she was seeing wasn’t what the back yard looked
like now. It was different. Decidedly different. The back yard fence wasn’t
chain link, it was wood, and roses were climbing up the trellises against it. There
was a circle of irises around a birdhouse on a pole, and a vegetable garden in
the far north end. And there were morning glory vines all over the side of a
shed that was no longer here.
OMG. DeeDee was showing her what
the back yard used to look like.
"Okay, DeeDee! I get it. Keep it
coming. I see it. Trees. There were big shade trees. And before you showed me a
pile of leaves. I remember. I remember.”
Tara leaped off the step and
started out across the yard, following the old stone path that wound through
the yard. Now the path even made sense. It had led to different parts of the
garden.
As she walked, she couldn’t imagine
the depths of depravity it would take to kill someone, let alone a member of
your family. And even though she didn’t know who had killed DeeDee Broyles, her
brother seemed the obvious culprit. He had denied ever having a sister, then
broke into Tara’s house and was still stalking her. It wasn’t looking good for
Emmit.
She wondered what the prison system
did with old men like him. Was there a senior citizens wing in the
penitentiary? Did they still draw Social Security and get retirement checks? How
weird was that?
Tara was lost in thought as she
followed the path, trying to figure out where someone could dig a hole big
enough to hide a body and make sure no one found it when she realized she’d
been looking at the answer all the time.
The fence. It used to be tall. Wood.
All around the yard. No one could see over. No one could see through.
OMG. You could dig holes all over
and no one would know it. You’d have all the time in the world to plant bushes
or shrubs, or anything you wanted to hide the fact that earth had been
overturned.
She stopped, put her hands on her
hips and turned around, looking back toward the house. Uncle Pat wanted her to
find a place to plant some mums. She wanted to find a body. Both required
digging holes. Piece of cake.
Henry suddenly popped up in front
of her, waving his hands.
Tara frowned. "What’s up? Don’t
tell me Millicent is making bubbles in the bathtub again? No? Uncle Pat? Something
happened to Uncle Pat?”
I
think he’s trying to tell you someone’s coming down the alley.
Millicent’s explanation wasn’t
warning enough. Tara pivoted just in time to see a car coming down the alley
between the houses. No one was supposed to drive through there except maybe
city employees. Then she realized she’d seen that car before—and the man driving
it.
It was Emmit Broyles.
Oh crap! He was doing it again. He
was still stalking her.
She started to run toward the
house, when she realized it would give away the fact that she was scared of
him. So far, Emmit didn’t know she was on to him. She remembered reading once
that the best defense was an offense so she lifted her hand and started waving
as she moved toward the alley.
"Hi, Mr. Broyles,” she cried, and
jogged toward the fence, as if expecting him to stop.
The look on his face was priceless.
His bushy white eyebrows shot upward as if someone had tied strings to them and
given them a yank. He must have tried to stomp on the accelerator, but he was
obviously distracted enough that he missed and stomped the brake instead.
All of a sudden he was flying
forward. His chin hit the steering wheel and the hat he’d been wearing shot off
his head and landed on the dash.
"Are you all right?” Tara yelled,
as she neared the fence.
Even though all the windows were
up, she could tell he was cursing at the top of his voice. He grabbed his hat,
shoved it back on his head. Ignoring the blood dripping from his chin, he
finally found the accelerator and roared off down the alley.
Tara grinned.
I
think that went well.
Tara’s smile widened. "Yeah, it did,
didn’t it?”
She turned around to go back to the
house only to realize DeeDee was standing right beside her.
"Oh. Man. You did it again, didn’t
you?” Tara asked.
DeeDee disappeared.
"So, obviously we’re not discussing
this.”
How
would you feel if your brother was the one who ended your life?
Tara’s smile died. "I never thought
about that.”
Because
you never had a brother?
"No. Because I didn’t think how
DeeDee would take the news. I guess I just assumed they didn’t get along.”
You
know what they say about assume. It makes an—
"Yes, yes, I know. An ass out of u
and me. Very funny.”
Tara heard the phone ring and
sprinted toward the house. She was slightly out of breath when she answered.
"Hello?”
"Hey, Moon girl, I must be getting
better by the minute. The mere sound of my voice has left you breathless.”
Tara laughed out loud. "You are too
funny,” she said. "I was in the back yard looking for... uh...
I was in the back yard.”
"So, are we still on for tonight?”
Flynn asked.
"Absolutely,” Tara said. "We’re
going bowling, right?”
"Yeah, unless you’d rather do
something else?”
"No. No. I love to bowl. I’m not
very good, but it’s fun.”
"Good. How about some Hideaway
pizza before we go?”
"Oh, yum! I’ve heard they make the
best.”
"Oh, yeah,” Flynn said. "So I’ll
pick you up about six, okay?”
"Yes.”
Tara started to hang up, then
thought of his mom and her uncle. "Hey, Flynn?”
"Yeah?”
"Did you know your mom and Uncle
Pat have a date tonight, too?”
There was a moment of silence. Then
a chuckle. "No, but I’m cool with it. Aren’t you?”
"Oh, it’s not that. It’s just...
kind of weird.”
"You think too much, Moon girl. Let
the old folks have their fun.”
Tara laughed. "See you at six.”
