Ghost Seer

by Robin D. Owens

  “Seems to me an ear cut off in the August heat in southeastern Wyoming might mummify and still be around after more than a hundred and fifty years.”

  Gulping, Clare nodded.

  A short honk came from the street. “I guess my car’s here.” Zach put the ear back in the box, then tilted the lid closed. Clare let out a little breath.

  “I seem to recollect,” Zach started in that Colorado ranch drawl Clare had noticed before, “that Jack Slade cut off both of Beni’s ears.”

  “That’s the legend,” Clare whispered.

  That is the truth, Jack Slade the specter said mournfully. That’s my great sin I need you to help me to rectify so I might pass on.

  Her inner shivers were getting stronger, and she might not be able to hide them from Zach. She wanted him gone before he noticed the tremors, and she wanted him to stay, just because he was Zach.

  “And Jack Slade wore one of Beni’s ears as a watch fob?” Zach said. “That’s a story that sticks in the head.”

  Also true, the collection of shadows said. Involuntarily she looked at the vision. Yes, he wore a watch chain. No ghostly ear attached.

  “So they say,” Clare croaked, holding herself so she wouldn’t shudder.

  “No hole in this ear,” Zach tapped the box as he leaned forward and put it on the coffee table. He stood, and when he smiled at Clare with masculine appreciation in his eyes, she forgot about her hallucinations. He stepped closer to her, lifted his hand as if to touch the vicinity of her chin, and she ran backward a step or two. “Don’t you touch me with that hand!”

  Zach blinked, then his head tilted back as he roared a laugh. When he was done he just shook his head and strode to the kitchen and washed his hands, Clare stood at the threshold and made sure he did so thoroughly.

  When he came back she let him tilt up her chin and kiss her, more than just a press of lips; his tongue sought her own and she opened her mouth, gave in again to sweet desire. To blessed warmth.

  Again he was the one to draw away and she was left aching, spinning in time and space and needing more, more heat and sizzle and release to this desire he stoked.

  He walked to the doorway. “I like you, Clare Cermak. See you at tea at Mrs. Flinton’s tomorrow.”

  The very idea cleared her mind a bit. “You? Tea?”

  His smile flashed, easier than she’d seen before. The depressing fog of emotions that he’d seemed wrapped in earlier that day appeared diminished. If she’d had anything to do with that—well, probably just the notion of sex for him, she supposed—anyway, she was glad.

  He said, “Mrs. Flinton offered me an apartment. I think I’ll take her up on it. See you later.”

  The screen door slammed behind him when he left. She went to the front door and saw him wave to two men in a car that looked a lot like the one Mrs. Flinton had been driven away in. Clare wondered about the car service. Probably top of the line, and the one she was using was good enough and no doubt less expensive. Sounded like Zach had also signed on with a premier firm. Envy stabbed her; she’d been with the best accounting business in Denver. Zach got into a shiny newer-model car and drove off, giving her a wave, too.

  She smiled reflexively at him, then shut the door to keep any cooler night air from getting into the house, which felt chilly enough. She touched the arm of the couch and thought she felt Zach’s warmth, so she took the wool blanket she’d gotten out of the closet and folded over the couch, wrapped the throw around herself, and perched on the arm, not looking at the box. Enzo hopped onto the couch and stood staring at her with sad eyes.

  You ignored me ALL NIGHT LONG!

  “I didn’t want to be taken for insane,” she snapped.

  Enzo slid her a sly glance. Mrs. Flinton believes in me. We will have a fine tea tomorrow.

  Clare didn’t have the energy to contradict him. Tomorrow morning she’d go to the library by hired car for more research, but she wanted to drive herself to Mrs. Flinton’s, just to prove to herself that she could do it . . . even though she might have to map a way around town to avoid shades.

  One particular shade bowed to her. Thank you, Clare Cermak, for retrieving the box and the ear for me. The worst thing I did in my life was to cut the ears off Jules Beni, and now I must make amends before I am allowed to leave this place.

  No one really knew if Jack had cut off one or two of Beni’s ears—until Clare had learned it straight from the ghost’s mouth. Nor had anyone known for sure what had happened to the ears. The last report of one of them had been in a glass case in the Virginia Dale Station, but that information was hearsay, too.

  Halfheartedly, she said, “You’re welcome.”

  Enzo leapt from the couch and rubbed against the man, who petted him. Clare is a very good woman, the dog said.

  Yes, she is.

  I must return the ears to the place Jules Beni died and give them to him, as if I never cut them off, Jack Slade said.

  Clare didn’t know what that entailed and didn’t want to ask. She sighed, then slipped from the chair arm to the corner of the couch, huddled in her blanket. “Where’s the other ear?”

  Lost near my headquarters, Virginia Dale stage station.

  At least that building was still standing; Clare had a sneaking suspicion that the station at Cold Springs, where Slade had cut off Beni’s ears, wasn’t around since she hadn’t been able to locate it on her computer. Which reminded her that she’d wanted to look up Zach’s story on her tablet, but her bag in the tiny room she used as a home office was too far away to get right now, and she was too tired. She closed her eyes to sleep, though she suspected she’d already fallen into a nightmare.

  • • •

  When Zach stopped at Mrs. Flinton’s house, he fished his old laptop out from under the driver’s seat and limped to the side entrance to his apartment. Tomorrow he’d have to go back up to the motel in Northglenn and get the rest of his stuff. Man, his whole body ached. He set his jaw and hobbled to the side door. The guy who’d brought him his car had given him a set of keys for the apartment. Zach already had the alarm code.

  He opened the fancy and heavy iron security door with a grunt, then the thick door of solid oak, which swung silently inward. As he closed the door behind him, his nose twitched. He smelled pie. So he set his laptop on the bar counter and took a tall stool. Yep, under a ceramic cover was a piece of pecan pie. His mouth watered. A note written in nice cursive said, Milk is in the refrigerator—Bekka.

  Zach was so damn achy he didn’t want to move off the round-cushioned stool; instead he fumbled at the silverware drawer just within reach, yanked it open enough to get a fork, and plunged it into the pie.

  Homemade, oh yeah! Really rich on his tongue, a lot of calories, fattening. Eh, he could afford to put on some weight. Still, he took each bite slowly, turning on his computer and checking his e-mail account in between bites. The first one he saw was an announcement of the date and time of a funeral for two deputy sheriffs. Tongue sour, he sent that message to archives, didn’t quite delete it.

  What would be his welcome if he showed up? Looks from the rest of his department as black as a crow’s wing, and low voices muttering about him. Nah, he sure didn’t need that. He was done with that; this very full day had proven so.

  The next message was from Rickman, brief and to the point. Aunt Barbara praised your actions tonight. Good job. Show up at 11:00 A.M. for consultation with T.R. in re: tracing Flinton antiques. Zach made a mental note of that, figured now he was in a big city he’d have to break down and buy a smart phone. He was ready to click the e-mail closed when he saw an attachment labeled Clare Cermak.

  He stared. Mrs. Flinton must have given Clare’s name to Rickman. No doubt at all that the old lady had already burbled about the whole evening to the man . . . even regarding the invisible dog? Zach winced. But he hovered his cursor over the attachment . . . and opened i
t.

  He skimmed the information. He already knew her address; he memorized her landline phone and cell numbers. Background of Gypsy extraction. He grinned at that. She did have fire under those prim clothes. Her parents were still living but world travelers, “employment unknown.” Sounded like flakes. Might be why she’d been so focused on business. Zach could only agree with her need to contribute.

  She had an older brother who was a golf pro in Williamsburg, Virginia; the guy was married with a nine-year-old daughter.

  Seemed to be family money.

  And Clare’s Aunt Sandra Cermak had died a few months previously; Clare had been named the executor and sole heiress. That would bring problems, Zach figured. She’d inherited . . . millions, eight figures’ worth of millions. Seriously wealthy.

  Didn’t stop his dick from rising as he looked at a gallery of photos. Beautiful woman.

  A big paragraph in bolded type. Sandra Cermak had inherited the base of her fortune from her uncle, invested it well, but had made a lot more through her consulting services as a psychic.

  A medium, a woman who saw and spoke with ghosts.

  Bullshit, and no wonder Clare might be conflicted about her aunt and the woman’s money. Clare didn’t strike Zach as a woman who tolerated woo-woo. Just like him.

  The memory of what Mrs. Flinton had said earlier at the auction house plucked at Zach’s mind: The ghost dog accompanying Clare. Ghost. Dog.

  But Clare hadn’t said anything about a ghost dog.

  Zach snorted, stood up from the stool, put the pie plate in the sink, and ran water in it to soak.

  Just before he punched the button to turn off his machine, he saw the last paragraph, a comment by Rickman: Aunt Barbara approves of Clare Cermak and says she can see and interact with ghosts.

  Zach winced.

  Aunt Barbara also thinks that you have “the sight.”

  No, he damn well didn’t.

  But Aunt Barbara has informed me several times that she prefers to associate with people who have a touch of psi power.

  Zach rolled his eyes and turned off his computer. His stomach squeezed and rumbled as if his juices didn’t like what he’d read. As he limped to bed, he wondered what “Aunt Barbara” saw in Tony Rickman.

  Didn’t matter. None of them—Rickman, Zach, or Clare—believed in psychic gifts.

  Zach slid into sheets softer than any he’d slept in since his grandmother had died. Luxurious sheets. The kind of quality of sheets that he believed Clare would have on her new bed. He couldn’t wait to try them out with her.

  And he would.

  • • •

  Clare gritted her teeth as she wrote another check to Dr. Barclay. She’d taken his first session the next morning to get the appointment over with.

  He’d asked if she’d resolved her issues with her aunt before Sandra had died. No. Clare hadn’t told him there was no resolving clashing points of view on the reality of ghosts.

  Then the doctor had led Clare to realize with a thunking in her mind that not only hadn’t she resolved her issues with Aunt Sandra, but she’d been handling the full burden of that estate, and the money from that estate had drastically changed Clare’s life. And Clare had quit her job. Not to mention that she’d decided to move.

  Death, job loss, and moving. Three huge stress factors in her life.

  Still . . . all she wanted to do was to talk about whether she was going crazy because she was seeing ghosts; just fix that one problem.

  Dr. Barclay thought Enzo was a manifestation of a need she had for friendship and fun. The gunfighter—for some reason she hadn’t informed the psychologist that she’d discovered who he was—symbolized her rebellion against her careless parents and their stupid lifestyle, or heavy unresolved issues with Aunt Sandra herself, a psychic medium.

  He was sure they could work through Clare’s concerns and eliminate her peculiar visions with biweekly sessions. Biweekly as in twice a week as opposed to once every two weeks. It had been a good thing Clare had been sitting down because she would have fallen off her chair at the thought of paying so much to the psychologist. But if the sessions rid her of seeing ghosts it was worth every penny. Probably.

  She’d asked about the treatment schedule and he’d mentioned meds and an inpatient center as options if the visions continued and she kept losing weight and having problems sleeping. Those two options had tweaked her whole nervous system and she had to repress a shudder.

  “Have a good day!” the receptionist chirped after Clare had made an appointment for Monday.

  Clare forced a smile, stuck warmth in her voice. “You, too.”

  “Thank you.”

  Nodding, Clare crossed the elegant lobby to the outer door. She’d worked with a couple of happy, optimistic people and just didn’t get them.

  To Clare’s surprise, Dr. Barclay came to stand at the threshold of his office door, scrutinizing her. Checking to see if she’d made another appointment or examining her physical condition, which had not improved after a restless night? She nodded to him and left.

  Enzo reappeared to whine at her. He didn’t like the smell of the place and didn’t even go into the reception room, let alone the inner sanctum that was costing Clare big bucks.

  Walking down the gray and deeply carpeted corridor, she let her body sag. Dr. Barclay wasn’t helping as quickly as she’d hoped. She’d be a thin and frozen skeleton before this thing was resolved, and from the looks he gave her, he was going to prescribe heavy-duty meds soon.

  She didn’t want drugs.

  She did want this over.

  She had some thinking to do.

  Clare hit the library next for more information on Jack Slade and the headquarters he’d built at Virginia Dale. Though the Internet had good data on the current condition of the building that Slade had erected, and even mentioned the ear . . . most sites on the web reiterated what Clare considered a mass of legends and falsehoods about Joseph Albert Slade himself. She already had the books she considered definitive on the man.

  After a couple of hours at the library, she nerved herself to once again leave the place and head for the restaurant she’d used yesterday. Walking in the sun didn’t warm her as much as other people, nor did the sweaty folks in the under-air-conditioned mall bus Clare took to reach the restaurant.

  She arranged the materials she’d copied from the library—noncirculating maps and reference items—and the books she’d checked out on the restaurant table. This time she sat outside in the warm sun.

  It didn’t take the brain of a private investigator or cop to follow the logic that if Zach had a new job with a security firm, the business was no doubt located in a downtown high-rise near the restaurant, since he’d come in the day before.

  She wanted to see him again.

  I do, too, said Enzo. I like him a lot. He smells, really, really, REALLY good. He sniffed lustily in demonstration.

  She and her imaginary companion were rubbing along fairly well today, probably since she’d tossed an occasional murmur to the dog.

  So she’d ended up here in the sun at the restaurant to reward herself and hope for a much nicer session with a much more attractive man than Dr. Barclay, though that individual was sure of his sex appeal. Not that he’d done anything unacceptable. Not while she was giving him a steady income. Still, she got a sense that if—when—she beat these annoying illusions, the doctor might be interested in her. Nothing she could pinpoint, just a sense. And nothing that irritated or harassed.

  She just preferred the rougher and more conflicted and incredibly more sexy Zach Slade.

  “Hi, Clare.”

  THIRTEEN

  SHE JUMPED AT the voice, the wrong voice, of the wrong man just outside the iron rail delineating the restaurant’s space from the mall sidewalk. Frowning, she tried to recall his name. She’d seen him in the Western Histor
y room of the Denver Public Library more than once. He was the research assistant for a professor at a local college. Scrounging through her mind, she at least came up with his first name. “Hello, Ted.” She smiled. “I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your surname.”

  “Mather.” He gave her a wide grin before he wiped a blue bandana across his brow. “Whew, it’s hot today. How can you possibly stand it out here? Must be air-conditioned inside. You should go in there.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Enzo barked. You should put on your hat.

  “I suppose I have a hat somewhere,” Clare grumped. She leaned down toward her briefcase; dizziness had her stilling until she blinked and blinked again.

  “Anything wrong?” Ted asked.

  “No. Just looking for something,” she said. Her mind cleared and she took out a visor. “There, that should be good enough.” It would cut the glare of the light gray flagstones but still leave her head open to the sun.

  You have not been eating well, Enzo scolded. You are fighting me. Us. Your gift. Not eating well. Your health is deteriorating.

  “I’m still used to Aunt Sandra’s place in Chicago near the lake. I haven’t been home a full week yet.” And it had been a cloudy summer in Chicago.

  “I understand,” Ted Mather said with a commiserating smile.

  She’d actually forgotten he was there, a figure nearly too bright in a white polo shirt and beige pants. His hair was thinning and sandy and he had dark brown eyes. He was real, human, and alive, and he had color.

  And her sanity was slipping. Her greatest fear.

  She shoved that aside, forcing herself to deal with the man. “Can I help you?”

  He chuckled. “No, I think I can help you. Can I join you?”

  Help her? How?

  Right now she began to think she should take any help she could get. From under her lashes, she glanced around the street. Her table was on the corner. No Zach Slade.

  “Sure,” she said.

  He nodded and moved into the restaurant.