Third Grave Dead Ahead

by Darynda Jones

  He looked at me, his eyes filled with fabricated grief. “So, you’ll take the case?” he asked, his face brightening. After all, a grieving husband doing anything possible to find his missing wife would look less suspicious.

  “Well, I have to be honest, Dr. Yost, with the FBI already on it, I’m not sure what more I can do.”

  “But, you can do something, right? I can write you a check right now if it’s about the money.” He pulled out a checkbook from the portfolio and patted his shirt pocket for a pen.

  “No, it’s not about the money,” I said, shaking my head. “I just don’t want to take yours if there’s nothing I can do.”

  He nodded in understanding.

  “Let me look into this for a couple of days. If I think I can be of any help to your wife, I’ll give you a call.”

  “All right,” he said, a spark of hope resurfacing. “So, you’ll call me?”

  “Absolutely.”

  I led him to the door and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I promise, I’ll do everything I can for her.”

  A sad smile slid across his face. “I’ll pay anything.”

  I saw the good doctor out, waited a hot second, then turned to Cookie with a roll of my eyes. “That man is as guilty as my accountant.”

  Cookie gasped. “He’s guilty? He doesn’t look guilty.”

  “Neither does my accountant,” I said, sifting through the papers on her desk.

  She reached across and slapped my hand. “What’s your accountant guilty of?”

  I sucked on the back of my hand before answering. “Fudging numbers.”

  “Your accountant fudges numbers?”

  “Why else would I pay someone to do my taxes? Anywho”—I hitched a thumb over my shoulder—“guilty. And we have another missing wife. They must be in season.”

  We’d just solved a missing wife case a couple of weeks ago. In the process, I was kidnapped, tortured, shot at, and I came pretty darned close to getting Garrett, Cookie, and our client killed. Not a bad week, if I did say so myself.

  “So, he’s guilty. Does that mean his wife is dead?”

  I knew the statistics, and there was about a 95 percent chance of a resounding yes, but I refused to work under that assumption. “That part’s a little fuzzy, but this guy is good. He only let his verb tense slip twice, letting me know he believes she’s already dead. And he never once said her name.”

  “That’s not good,” Cookie said, her face lined with worry.

  “If I hadn’t felt the guilt radiating out of every pore in his body, I would’ve been completely fooled.”

  “I was fooled.”

  With an appreciative grin, I said, “You’re always fooled. You always think the best of people. That’s why we get along so well. You can’t see past my charm and stunning beauty to the real me.”

  “Oh, no, I see the real you. I just feel sorry for the mentally challenged. I think you guys deserve just as much of a chance at a normal life as the next guy.”

  “That’s so sweet,” I said like a cheerleader on meth.

  She shrugged. “I try to be a positive influence on the less fortunate.”

  Then a thought occurred to me. “Crap.”

  “What?”

  “I just realized something.”

  “Did you forget to put on underwear again?”

  I glanced at her point-blank. “Since the good doctor is guilty, he’ll probably try to kill me soon. You might want to take precautions.”

  “Got it. Where should we start?”

  “A Kevlar vest, maybe. Pepper spray at the very least.”

  “I meant on the case.” Cookie looked past me into my office. “Oh, hi, Mr. Davidson.”

  I turned as Dad walked in. He’d come up from the bar by way of the inside stairs, which was fine, since he owned it and all. His tall, thin frame seemed to sag just a bit. His blond hair looked barely combed, and his bloodshot eyes were lined with a purplish hue. And not a pretty purple either. It was that dark grayish purple that depressed people wear.

  Things hadn’t quite been the same between us since he tried to have me murdered a while back. One of his collars from his former life as a detective had been released from prison and decided to get even with Dad by going after his family. So, by deftly placing a target on my back to save my sister and stepmother from the guy’s dastardly plan, he’d almost gotten me killed. That part wasn’t the problem. The problem lay in the fact that, believing they would catch the guy before any harm could be done, he neglected to tell me that he’d sent a killer my way. Thus leaving me vulnerable. He’d put Garrett Swopes on my tail, which would normally have been enough protection for the president making an anti-gun speech at the NRA, but the new guy Garrett had assigned to me decided to go for coffee right when the parolee decided to go on a killing spree. And I had a nasty scar across my chest to prove it. Or I would have had I not healed so fast. A grim reaper thing, apparently.

  Those kinds of family indiscretions were hard to get past. Nevertheless, I was willing to let bygones be bygones, but the guilt that wafted off him like bargain-brand cologne acted as a constant reminder and seemed to keep him just out of arm’s reach. He seemed unable to forgive himself. And that guilt was taking its toll, as guilt is wont to do.

  So I couldn’t tell if the powerful emotion pouring out of him now was a by-product of that incident or if this was something new and improved with no preservatives, fillers, or artificial colors. He was definitely frowning. Maybe he had heartburn. More likely, he’d heard the pepper spray comment.

  “Hey, Dad.” I bounced up and kissed him on his grumpy bear cheek.

  “Hon, can I talk to you?”

  “Abso-freaking-lutely. I’ll be right back,” I said to Cookie.

  Dad nodded to her, then closed the door between our offices, not that it would help. That door made cardstock look indestructible.

  “Is this about the coffee?” I asked, suddenly nervous.

  “Coffee?”

  “Oh”—whew—“um, want a cup?”

  “No, you go ahead.”

  I made a quick cup of contraband coffee, then sat behind my desk as he folded himself into the chair across from me. “What’s up?” I asked.

  His gaze flitted toward me, paused, then veered off again, never quite touching mine. Not a good sign.

  With a heavy sigh, he said what was on his mind in all its psychotic glory. “I want you to quit the investigations business.”

  Though his statement was only slightly less welcome than chlamydia, I had to give him kudos for using the direct approach. For a former detective who’d retired with honors, he could be the most evasive man in my immediate gene pool, so this was a nice change.

  But give up my business? The same business I’d built from the ground up with my own two hands and designer Louis Vuittons? The same business for which I’d sacrificed blood, sweat, and tears? Well, maybe not sweat and tears, but there was blood. Lots of blood.

  Give it up? Not likely. Besides, what else would I do? I totally should’ve gone to Hogwarts when I had the chance.

  I shifted in my chair as Dad waited for a response. He seemed determined, his resolve unwavering. This would take tact. Prudence. Possibly Milk Duds.

  “Are you psychotic?” I asked, realizing my plan to charm and bribe him if need be flew out the window the minute I opened my mouth.

  “Charley—”

  “Dad, no. I can’t believe you’re even asking this of me.”

  “I’m not asking.” His sharp tone brought me up short, and all the huffing and puffing that had built beneath the surface slammed into me, knocking my breath away. Was he serious? “You can tend bar for me full-time until you find something else.”

  Apparently.

  “Unless, of course, you want to stay on. I could use someone to do my books, keep inventory, and do the ordering.”

  What the hell?

  “But I’ll understand if you don’t want to. I can help you get on somewhere else. Or you
could go back to school, get your master’s.” He looked hopeful. “I’ll pay for it. Every cent.”

  “Dad—”

  “Noni Bachicha is looking for a new office manager.”

  “Dad, re—”

  “He’d hire you in a heartbeat.”

  “Dad, stop.” I bolted out of my chair to get his attention. When I had it, I placed both my palms on the desk, leaned forward, and said as nicely as I could, “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not?” I threw my hands into the air, flabbergasted. “For one thing, this isn’t just about me. I have employees.”

  “You have Cookie.”

  “Exactly, and I hire other investigators when the situation warrants, as well.”

  “Cookie can get a job anywhere. She’s overqualified and you know it.”

  He was right. I didn’t pay her nearly what she was worth, but she liked it here. And I liked her here. “And I have a case. I can’t just pack up and call it a day.”

  “You didn’t accept his money. I heard you. You don’t have a case.”

  “There’s a woman missing.”

  He stood as well. “And that man did it,” he said, pointing toward the front door. “Just tell your uncle Bob and stay out of it.”

  I let the frustration I felt slip past my lips. “I have resources they don’t. You know that better than anyone. I can help.”

  “Yes, by passing along anything you get to your uncle.” He leaned forward. “And staying out of it.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  His shoulders deflated, anger and regret churning inside him. “Will you please just think about it?”

  I stood dumbfounded by the whole idea. My own father asking me to give up my livelihood. My calling. I should’ve known something was up when he tried to have me killed.

  He turned to leave, so I cornered the desk and clutched his arm much more desperately than I’d have liked. “Dad, what brought this on?”

  “You can’t guess?” He seemed surprised that I’d asked.

  I fought to pinpoint his exact meaning. This was my dad. My best friend growing up. The only person I could turn to, who believed me, in what I could do, without looking at me like I was a sideshow freak. “Dad, why?” I tried to squelch the hurt in my voice. It didn’t work.

  “Because,” he said, his voice harsh, “I can no longer sit idly by and watch as you’re beaten, kidnapped, shot at … hell, you name it, and it’s happened since you started this business.” He raised his hands, indicating my office—his second floor—as though the building were somehow at fault.

  I stepped back and plopped back into my chair. “Dad, I’ve been solving crimes since I was five, remember? For you.”

  “But I never put you in the thick of things. I kept you out of it.”

  I couldn’t help the harsh bark of laughter that escaped me. Of all the asinine things to say. “Two weeks ago, Dad. Or have you already forgotten the target you painted on my back?” It was a cheap shot, but so was his coming in here and basically demanding I quit my job.

  The guilt that seemed to swallow him whole bit into my resolve. I fought it. No matter what his intentions had been when that ex-con came after us, he’d handled it poorly, and now he was taking it out on me.

  “Fine,” he said, his voice soft, “I deserve that, but what about the others? The time that angry husband came after you with a gun. The time those men kidnapped you and beat you to a pulp before Swopes showed up. The time that kid hit you and sent you crashing through the thirty-foot roof of a warehouse.”

  “Dad—”

  “I could go on. For quite a while, in fact.”

  I knew he could, but he didn’t understand. Those were all very explainable. I lowered my head, feeling oddly like a pouting child, amazed that my father could make me feel so small. Amazed that he would. “So, your answer is to ask me to give up everything I’ve worked for?”

  He exhaled slowly. “Yes, I guess it is,” he said as he turned and started for the door. “And stop taking my coffee.”

  “Do you really believe my leaving this business will alleviate your guilt?”

  He didn’t even slow his stride, but I’d stung him. I felt it in one quick burst before he disappeared around the corner.

  After stewing a few minutes—only partly because of the coffee thing—I gathered myself up and walked back into Cookie’s office.

  “We’re so busted. He knows about the coffee.”

  “He’s wrong,” she said without looking up from her computer, almost as though her feelings were hurt.

  “No, I’ve really been taking his coffee.” I sat in the chair across from her.

  “I’m not overqualified.”

  “Yes, hon, you are,” I said, hating that whole honesty-is-the-best-policy business.

  She stopped typing and focused on me. “No. I love this job. Nobody does what we do. Nobody saves lives like we do. How could anyone ask for more?” Her passion surprised me. I’d never realized how she felt about what we did.

  I forced a smile across my face. “He’s just upset. He’ll calm down. Well, maybe not about the coffee.”

  Cookie thought a moment, then said, “Maybe … maybe if you told him.”

  “Told him what?”

  “I mean, he knows you can see the departed, Charley. He would understand. Really he would. Even your sister knows you’re the grim reaper.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t tell him something like that. What would it to do him? To know that his daughter was born the grim reaper?” The death-incarnate gig had such a bad rap.

  “Give me your hand.”

  I glanced down at my hands, then eyed her warily. “Did you get into palm reading again? You know how I feel about that stuff.”

  She chuckled. “I’m not going to read your palm. Give me your hand.”

  I did, reluctantly.

  She took it into both of hers and leaned toward me. “If Amber were capable of what you’re capable of, I would be so proud of her. I would love and support her no matter how creepy her job title.”

  “But you aren’t like my dad.”

  “I disagree.” She squeezed lovingly. “Your dad has always supported you. All of this negativity, this pent-up aggression and self-loathing—”

  “I hardly loathe myself. Have you seen my ass?”

  “—all of it is because of your stepmother, the way she’s treated you. Not your father.”

  “My stepmother is a bitch,” I said, semi-agreeing. “But I don’t know if I can tell Dad. Not that. Not the grim reaper thing.” I pulled my hand back.

  She let me. “I just think it might make him feel better about all of this, if he knew you had more on your side than just your ability to talk to the departed.”

  “Maybe.”

  “So, seriously, your accountant is crooked?”

  “As a do-it-yourself haircut,” I said, grateful for the change in subject. “It took me forever to find an accountant with flexible morals.” I added a double wink to get my meaning across. “Apparently there’s this whole code-of-ethics thing they have to get past.”

  My cell rang. I fished it out of my front pocket and checked the caller ID. It was Neil Gossett, a friend I’d gone to high school with who was now a deputy warden at the prison in Santa Fe.

  “Hello?” I said, because Charley’s House of Pasties seemed wrong.

  “Reyes wants to talk.”

  3

  Damn it, Jim!

  —T-SHIRT

  “A long time ago, in a galaxy pretty much exactly like this one, a little girl was born to a set of wonderful parents named Mom and Dad.”

  “I already know this part.”

  “She had a head of dark hair,” I said into my phone, ignoring Gemma, my slightly OCD sister, as I steered Misery onto the interstate toward Santa Fe. Hopefully, there were no cops around, because I really didn’t need another ticket for talking on the phone while driving.

  Garrett had dropped off Misery after h
e checked for any mechanical damage from the fender bender, and Misery seemed to have forgiven me, so we were good to go. I set Cookie on the mundane task of checking out the good doctor’s background, then tore out of the office so fast, papers went flying behind me.

  “And she had shimmering gold eyes that the nurses cooed over for days,” I continued.

  “The nurses cooed? That’s what you’re telling people?”

  “The mom so loved her daughter, she sacrificed her life to give the little girl a chance at one.”

  “I don’t think it was really a choice.”

  “On the day her daughter was born, the mom died and crossed through the infant, as the girl was made of magic and light, but this saddened her father. Not the light thing. He didn’t know about that. But the mom passing thing.”

  “Yeah, I got that.”

  I charged past a trucker who clearly didn’t get that ninety was the new seventy-five. “And the little girl lay in the nursery for three long days.”

  “Three days? Are you sure?” Gemma asked, doubtful.

  Gemma and I had been sisters my whole life, and she’d always known that I could see the departed, that I’d been born the one and only grim reaper this side of the Milky Way, which resulted in my assisting Dad and now my uncle Bob with their cases. But we’d never been particularly close. I figured my whole status as death incarnate had put her off, and I’d only found out recently that it wasn’t my job title that kept her at a distance, but my insistence that she stay far, far away. I never dreamed she’d take me seriously.

  “Yes, stop interrupting,” I said, swerving to miss a tire in the road. Of all the places to leave a tire. “Where was I? Oh, right. No one came to get her. No one came to see her, except for a plethora of dead people who’d gathered around, standing vigil until her father could fight through his grief long enough to come back and take the little girl home.”

  “I don’t think it was three days.”

  “The infant remembered all of this because she had really good short-term memory for a newborn.”

  “Obviously,” Gemma said. “Get to the good part.”

  Gemma was a psychiatrist, which meant she could take care of everybody’s problems but her own, just one of a dozen ways we were alike. But our looks was not one of them. While I had dark hair and gold eyes, she was the classic blond-haired, blue-eyed beauty that set men’s hearts aflutter. I could set men’s hearts aflutter, too, but I owed my success to mad skill. The things I could do with my mouth.