Gilt

by JL Wilson

  I stared at him, amazed at such a graceful maneuver for a handicapped man. Another splat of rain on my face woke me from my trance. I raced around the back of the car and slipped into my seat as the heavens opened, buckets of rain drenching the car in an avalanche of sound and moisture. I grabbed the door and got it closed, my head and shoulders getting a thorough soaking in the process. I cowered in the driver's seat when lightning and thunder crashed overhead, flinching every time a jagged streak tore through the sky.

  Conversation was impossible given the din of the pounding rain and I decided not to try driving since I could barely see a foot in front of us. Steele said something to me but his voice was drowned by the noise. I shook my head to show I couldn't understand and he leaned over. I tilted toward him. "It will probably pass in a minute," he said, his voice loud in my ear and his breath warm on my neck. "These summer storms never last long."

  I shivered and straightened, nodding. He gestured with the file folder and said something else but I shook my head again. Steele sat back and adjusted his cane so it was tucked beside him on the floor near the car door, then he waited with the folder on his lap, watching the rain as it pounded on our now foggy windshield. His left hand tapped a gentle beat on the folder, not impatiently but almost as though he heard a melody in his head and was playing along with it. The man appeared totally placid in the middle of the chaos. I envied him his calm. Storms always jangled my nerves and I usually found a good reason to go to the basement during storms at home.

  I had no such refuge now. I hunched my shoulders and gritted my teeth, resisting the urge to grip the steering wheel. A minute or so later the downpour lessened enough so we could speak. I wasn't sure what to say to this stranger sitting in my car, so I settled on the banal.

  "I exercise there, too." I gestured to his T-shirt.

  He glanced at his chest as though unsure what he was wearing. "Really? I don't think I've seen you. When do you usually go?"

  "Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, early in the afternoon. I only work part-time so I go early and beat the rush."

  "I usually go at night. I guess that's why I never saw you."

  I started the car and turned down the stereo, lest Pink Floyd blast the man's ears. I switched on the air conditioner and set the vents to defrost to clear the windows. "Which way?"

  Steele pointed to the right, where the road wound past the tall Civil War general. "Around the corner there." He paused. "Would you mind if I joined you at the library? I'd like to talk about the investigation."

  I hesitated. I wasn't sure if Paul would appreciate a stranger sitting in on our impromptu discussion. "I'm going to do a little research," I murmured, driving along the narrow roadway flanked by trees. "Nothing much."

  "Arson research?" He pointed ahead. "My truck is there, around the curve."

  I pulled in behind the forest green pickup truck parked on the side of the road. I turned to him. "I wanted to see if I could find out what the procedure for an investigation is." Several other faux excuses raced through my brain but when I looked into his dark brown eyes, I knew he would see through my hesitation.

  "I know they did a thorough investigation at the time. I was kept apprised of everything they did." He put his hand on the door handle, his face set and hard.

  Good Lord. I longed to slap myself on the head. Of course he knew about the investigation. His wife was murdered and he was an ex-cop and he had friends who would keep him informed every step of the way.

  "Something must have happened to make this an active case, something new that came to light," he continued, oblivious to my embarrassment. "It's not like you see on TV. These things don't always get solved in a few hours."

  "I realize that. I just want to know what to expect."

  "The best thing I can say is to expect the unexpected." He probably saw my exasperated expression because he smiled apologetically but it didn't seem to reach his eyes. I realized that I was seeing a dispassionate, objective cop. "From what I heard, your husband was implicated in starting the fire."

  "They're lying." I met his gaze squarely.

  Steele didn't look away. "It's been two years. It's a hard thing to prove or disprove."

  "John loved his job." He loved his job more than he loved me. I pushed the thought to the back of my mind. "He hated fires. He would never do anything like that." My wedding and engagement rings, worn now on my right hand, glittered as a fickle sunbeam peeked through a hole in the clouds. I felt as though my rings were drawing energy from my temper. "They've reopened the case and I want to know why. I want to know what kind of evidence they have that could possibly implicate John."

  Steele shifted his gaze to the gravestones around us then opened the car door. As he predicted earlier, the rain had stopped, turning into a light mist hovering in the hot, muggy air. His maneuver to leave the car was almost as fast as his maneuver to get into it, including dropping the accordion folder back to the seat, almost exactly where it was before he entered my car. I admired his dexterity then silently berated myself. The man had been injured decades earlier. Of course he would be adapted to his handicap by now.

  He leaned into the car, resting one arm on the frame. "I was a cop for thirteen years. I can't tell you how many suspects had families who were surprised by what their loved one was capable of doing."

  I scooted forward and faced him over the console of the car. "Not John. He would never put anyone's life in danger. Never." I struggled to keep my voice from rising.

  Steele's tanned hands opened and closed on the handle of his cane. "And you're going to prove them wrong?"

  "I don't know what I'm going to do," I admitted, my hammering heart starting to slow. "I'm not going to let them smear him without a fight." It was futile to explain. Unless you knew John, you wouldn't know how appalling the charges were. "John died trying to save a child. Whoever set that fire put a fireman and civilians in danger. It's not possible John did it."

  Steele's eyes narrowed slightly and his mouth twitched as though he wasn't sure whether to frown or smile. "I'd like to help."

  "Why?" I heard how blunt I sounded. "I mean, thank you, but why would you want to help me?"

  "If your husband did something to cause that fire, then he is implicated in my wife's murder. And if he didn't, then someone else did cause it and killed her. So I guess you could say I'm interested." His voice was so cold I shivered. "I'll meet you at the library." He closed the car door before I could protest and went to his truck, tossing his cane inside and pulling himself into the cab with a powerful grip on the overhead bar on the driver's side.

  Damn. I turned on my CD player and cranked the volume, letting Pink Floyd's soaring orchestration fill the car. I drove through the cemetery to the exit, my mind in chaos. One thought above all kept repeating in my brain: for better or worse, an ex-cop was going to be examining the evidence. Did I want him poking around in John's past? Was I really sure about what he might find? I looked in the rear view mirror, expecting to see a green pickup following me.

  What I saw was John, sitting in the back seat of my car.

  Chapter 2

  I jammed on the brakes so hard I'm surprised the air bags didn't go off and smash me in the face. "What are you doing here?" I demanded. I fumbled for the volume control.

  "I'm glad someone is helping you." His fire gear appeared hot but John didn't seem flushed or uncomfortable despite the small sweat tracks inching through the smudged dirt striping his cheeks. I don't know if he even noticed as the droplets rolled down his face. I suddenly remembered the day he died. We had been in a heat wave for a week prior to that with temperatures in the nineties and with high humidity. The deadly heat combined with the size of the fire meant that several different departments were called in to help. Three other firefighters were injured that night and two had heat exhaustion but John was the only one who died.

  I caught a whiff of smoke, that distinctive damp charred wood smell that seemed to cling to him. "Why are you here, John?" I ask
ed again.

  "This investigation might be dangerous. I don't want you to be hurt because of me, Gem. Please be careful."

  "I don't understand." I glimpsed movement in my car's exterior mirror and saw the dark green pickup truck in the distance behind me. I moved my foot off the brake and drove down the cemetery lane, my eyes flickering between the rear view mirror, the exterior mirror, and the road ahead. "If you have something to tell me, why don't you do it? Do you know who set that fire? Why are you here? Why are you haunting me?"

  His eyes opened wider. "Haunting you? You're the one who's haunting me. Every time I go away you draw me back."

  "Go away?" I shivered. Where did he go? I shivered again. Someone's walking on your grave. That's what Aunt Portia used to say when a shiver came out of nowhere like that. I checked my rear view mirror. The back seat was empty. All I saw was the green pickup, coming around a curve in the cemetery, silhouetted against the gravestones.

  I drew in a long, steadying breath and drove through the black wrought iron gates that marked the cemetery's exit onto the quiet city street. My brain felt numb or frozen, as though the ghost sighting had driven away all rational thought and simply left behind an elemental me, one who drove like a robot and only appeared to be a thinking, logical human being.

  Was I really being haunted? Or was I only imagining things? I looked into the mirror. There was nothing to indicate anyone had been there. Of course, no one had been there. What about the smell? Was that figment of my imagination?

  I checked the back seat nervously, expecting John to reappear because I had thought about him. It remained empty, though, and I breathed a sigh of relief. The streets here had more traffic. If John popped in, I would probably have a heart attack and ram someone with my car.

  I turned on the wipers as rain began to pound again, the sound bringing me back to reality. I briefly considered calling Paul to have him meet me at home but I immediately dismissed the thought. I couldn't evade Dan Steele. He was an ex-cop and he knew my name. He could easily discover where I lived, and probably a lot more about me since the Internet made everyone's lives invisible. Besides, he was following me. I glanced in the rear view mirror and saw the pickup several car lengths behind me, like a phantom Navy ship dogging my pirate heels.

  Why did John keep appearing like this? Despite what he said, I knew he was haunting me, not vice versa. Maybe when I was at the library I should research ghosts as well. I nodded, feeling better already. If I could figure out why a ghost was haunting me, maybe I could...

  Could what? Stop him from haunting me? I thrust all thoughts of ghosts aside for now and focused on Dan Steele, a real person who was haunting me. His last words were bothersome. Would he have a vendetta against John because of his wife's death? Would I have to cope with a widower's grief or his anger? I didn't want to face that. I had enough jumbled emotions about John. I didn't want to add someone else's grief into the mix.

  But despite that misgiving, I still felt buoyed by the thought of another person helping me. I didn't realize until that moment how much I wanted to talk over what had happened with someone who didn't know John. In a corner of my mind, I thought if I could prove to a stranger that John had nothing to do with it, everything would be okay.

  It also helped that the guy was an ex-cop, I mused. He probably knew the ins and outs of investigation, some techniques that could help. I mulled it over as I turned onto the boulevard that ran in front of the Ninth Street fire house, automatically glancing at the parking lot to assess who was on duty. I recognized a couple of the cars and trucks there but I didn't see Paul Denton's gray SUV. He was on call 24/7 and split his time between the three fire stations in town, often stopping in at each one throughout the course of the day or night. I half expected to see his vehicle there since it was so close to the library.

  I forced my thoughts back to Dan Steele. He said he and his wife were separated when she died. Did that mean they were headed for divorce or was it a trial separation? What were his feelings for his late wife? I should know that in order to evaluate any help he might give me. Good heavens! His wife was murdered. I couldn't begin to imagine what he must be thinking. What if he let his emotions cloud his judgment? I began to compose a mental list of questions, which kept my mind occupied until I turned onto LaGrange Drive, the street that led into the complex of buildings that comprised our city center, if such a thing could be said of a town with a population of ten thousand.

  The library shared a large parking lot with the city hall, police station, post office, and community center but on this Sunday only the library and the police station parts of the lot held cars. I parked in front of the one-story library, a relatively new building composed of brick and glass windows that glistened with rain on this foggy July day. Normally it was bright and airy, cheerful with the sound of voices, unlike those gloomy libraries I frequented as a young girl.

  A light rain still fell as I opened the car door. I snatched the folder from the seat and dashed to the front door, where I waited in the vestibule. I peered through the side window and saw the green pickup pull into a space next to mine in the parking lot. Odd. Dan Steele didn't use one of the available Handicapped slots near the building. I peered closer at his car. There was no handicapped sticker or license plate. Perhaps he didn't like to use his disability for preferential treatment. Or maybe he didn't think of himself as handicapped.

  I watched as he hurried through the now-heavy rain, moving with a limping gait that was more like a run. His actions confirmed my thought. This was a man who didn't acknowledge physical disability. "Guess I timed that wrong," he said when he reached me, his voice low and husky. He ran a hand over his close-cropped hair and flicked away the rain drops.

  Oh, no, you timed that just right, I thought then I wondered where that thought came from. I normally didn't find overtly muscular men appealing, but Steele had a compact, solid competency about him that was amazingly attractive. The brief downpour had plastered his T-shirt to his chest and also plastered his jeans to his thighs. It was very sexy, especially the way the dampness clung to the curly hair on his forehead and his clothes clung to, well, to him.

  The librarian watched us as we passed, her eyes on Dan Steele. Her gaze flickered to me and I could sense her assessment. For an instant I felt a brief proprietary thrill which I ruthlessly squashed as soon as I felt it. Good heavens, the man was interested in who killed his dead wife, not in me. I looked around the lobby but I didn't see Paul anywhere. I glanced at the clock over the front desk and saw it was not quite one-afternoon, so I was early, which explained why there was no Paul.

  "You said you were meeting someone?" Steele asked, plucking his shirt away from his body in small tugs to help it dry.

  I was momentarily flustered and stammered, "Paul. He's not here yet."

  "Paul?"

  "Paul Denton. He used to work with John. He's captain now at the fire station where John worked. He's the one who told me an investigation was being reopened."

  Steele peered around a bookcase. "How about we wait over there for him?"

  I looked where he pointed. "Fine." I led the way to a table at the back of the building, near windows that faced the rainy day. Steele took a seat with his back to the windows. I sat across from him, putting the accordion folder on the table in front of me. I had a clear view along an aisle of books to the front of the building so I could keep an eye on the front door and see Paul when he arrived.

  Steele leaned his cane against the side of the table and propped his arms on the surface, hands clasped in front of him on the gray laminate top. "Were you surprised when an investigation was opened?"

  His dark brown eyes regarded me with alert interest but I sensed that was a façade. I reminded myself again: this man was an ex-cop, his wife was murdered, and he was accustomed to interviewing strangers. I took a second to compose my thoughts. "I was stunned. Paul called me last night to tell me." Before Steele could speak I said quickly, "My turn to ask a question."

/>   One corner of his mouth twitched. "Okay. Ask away."

  "You said you were separated from your wife at the time of the fire. Was she living there? Did she know the child who died?" A sudden horrifying thought made me blurt, "The child wasn't related to you, was she?" Surely I would have remembered if there was a double tragedy like that, wouldn't I?

  "No, the little girl wasn't related to us. I didn't know where Diane was living. She moved out of our home about a month before the fire. That's why she wasn't..." He hesitated. "That's why she wasn't identified immediately."

  Now it was my turn to hesitate. "How did she die?" I stumbled over my words. "I was so disoriented after John died. I didn't pay attention to the investigation that closely." Disoriented was a mild term for the mixture of guilt, anger, and confusion that plagued me in the months after John's death.

  "She was drugged." He said it flatly, his voice cold.

  "Was it possible she had taken--I mean, was she depressed or--"

  "No."

  That single word stopped me in my tracks. "Are you certain?"

  "Yes. Now it's my turn."

  I sat back, piqued. But his calm, faintly accusing expression made me give a grudging nod.

  "Why are you so anxious to prove your husband is innocent of any charges?"

  I started to snap a quick reply but his impassive face made me pause to consider my words carefully. "I won't have John's name slurred."

  "Why?" Before I could speak, he lifted his hand slightly. "Perhaps the question I should have asked is, are you still in love with your husband? Is that why you want to clear him?"

  Several retorts echoed in my brain. None of your damn business. I was never really in love with John. Of course I am. Instead of any of those words, I said, as calmly as I could, "That's really not your business, Mr. Steele."

  Small lines crinkled around his eyes as he smiled. "Call me Dan, please. And yes, it is my business. If we're going to investigate this together I want to know your emotional stake in the outcome."