Ghost Seer

by Robin D. Owens

  “Why?” she repeated.

  “Because you can talk to ghosts, probably can talk to the ghost of Jack Slade, and he knows where the gold is from the robbery he masterminded,” Ted said, as if that were reasonable.

  She stared at him, feeling her pupils dilate even more than needed in the twilight. How could the research assistant have possibly guessed? Did he have some sort of psychic gift, too?

  Clare grasped for rational thought. “That’s an interesting theory,” she said. “But Jack Slade died in Virginia City, Montana. He didn’t even spend much time in Denver.”

  Ted shrugged and didn’t come any closer. “You began acting odd at the library. I followed you once to an upscale shrink’s office, heard something about ‘ghosts,’ and then you added books on being psychic and mediumistic to your reading pile.”

  She glared at him, outraged. “You followed me!”

  He nodded, then waved a casual hand. “Then there was that whole business outside the library during lunch. You were obviously interacting with someone or something.”

  Suppressing a wince, Clare stared at him. “It was you,” she accused. “You spread the word that I was a medium.”

  “Just wanted to see what would happen. It was interesting, especially when you got rid of that Native American ghost. I was watching then, too. So I knew you were the real deal.”

  “Believing in ghosts is crazy.”

  “‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’” Ted quoted. “I guess you proved that to me.” He rubbed his hands and smiled, and Clare knew the man wasn’t quite sane. “Now, let’s get down to business. You tell me where the missing gold shipment is.”

  “There is no missing gold shipment.”

  Ted tsked. “Now that is wrong. The robbery occurred, that’s a fact.”

  “When?”

  “Eighteen hundred and sixty-three.”

  Clare gritted her teeth. “When?”

  “Dunno. I found an entry in the library for gold receipts, but by that time I knew you were my best and fastest lead.”

  “Jack Slade did not mastermind the robbery.”

  Ted pursed his lips. “Everything online says he did.”

  “Don’t you know that you can’t believe everything you read on the Internet? What of your own studies?”

  He jerked a shrug. Even in the gloom, she could see his lip curl. “It was taking too long. Summer doesn’t last forever, you know, especially at higher elevations when you want to dig something up. You know about digging up treasure, don’t you, Clare?”

  This time her stomach seemed to swoop inside her. She blocked the image of an “almost whole” ear. “I didn’t dig up a chest.”

  “No, it didn’t look like that,” Ted agreed.

  He’d been there, watching! And she hadn’t even sensed him. Hadn’t seen a car. Neither of the ghosts had informed her of that. Geez, she’d been so clueless. And worried about the wrong people observing her.

  His smile widened, showing the edges of his teeth now. “I’d prefer you to talk to your friendly ghost sooner rather than later so we can get on with this.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.” She moved her tongue across her teeth to get a little moisture going in her mouth. “What are you going to do to me?”

  “Oh, I’ll let you go when you tell me what I want to know. I don’t think you’ll be able to hold out very long. This house is hot and I’m not going to let you have any food, and not much water. You’re not a woman accustomed to that, are you?”

  She just stared, could feel her throat dry as he spoke.

  “So why don’t you tell me about the gold?” he persisted.

  “I don’t know anything about that gold.”

  He tilted his head in the opposite direction. “You know, I believe you. After all, with your new inheritance you don’t need money, do you? You inherited upward of twenty million, didn’t you?”

  He’d been researching her! Fury helped drive the fear away.

  Ted jutted his chin. “Just talk to Slade for me, why don’t you?”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” Clare said.

  “Oh, I believe you can ‘call’ him or ‘summon’ him or whatever”—another casual gesture—“whenever you want. After all, your great-aunt Sandra Cermak boasted that in an interview or two I’ve read.”

  Geez.

  She blinked rapidly, sorting through arguments. “I’ll be missed.”

  A ripe chuckle. “I don’t think so. I saw that touching farewell to your ex-lover; that was a break for me. Your new house’s security hasn’t been breached, though I did disable the garage door. All will look fine, there. And I drove you here in your own car.”

  “My neighbors here will—”

  “Accept that you came back for some reason . . . and if we can’t reach an agreement in a couple of hours, I’ll move it, leave you alone here in the dark.”

  That really didn’t matter to her much, but she managed a flinch as if it would.

  “I’ll let you stew all night.” He wrinkled his nose. “I’m sure the room won’t be very pleasant when I come back in the morning, and it will be harder to sell a house when someone’s urinated and defecated in a room, won’t it? All lose-lose options for you, Clare.”

  She might vomit first.

  “Perhaps I should offer some incentive.”

  He stepped back and locked the door, but returned in under a minute.

  Under his arm appeared to be a plastic bottle of water; his right hand leveled a gun at her.

  Sweat popped from her and she bit her lower lip to focus on that instead of her churning belly.

  ENZO, she shrieked in her mind. The phantom dog did not answer. Great. He’d been pretty nearly inseparable from her and now he wasn’t here. Where the heck was he?

  She stared at Ted, tasting bile again, acid searing her throat. He didn’t look scary, really. Unless you looked at his eyes . . . or his smile . . . or the gun he was holding. Her throbbing head indicated he would use violence to get what he wanted.

  “So, what do you think? Ready to talk?” He offered the water.

  She yearned for it. But, blinking, she saw that the cap had been broken and the bottle opened. No telling what filthy drug he might have put in there. Or could it be a fake-out and he expected her to notice that it had been opened and have qualms.

  She realized she didn’t know enough about the jerk.

  She could hold out for a little bit, until her aches subsided, her head felt less muzzy.

  “I think I’ll refuse your so-generous offer.”

  Color flushed his face reddish. The heat couldn’t be good for him. As for her, she knew she had a sweat stain along the spine of her shirt. “Fine!” He kicked the door shut hard. The tongue of the lock didn’t catch, and it bounced. Clare could have told him it would.

  Scowling, he shut the door and locked it. This time she heard additional sounds, as if he’d added another lock on the outside of the door!

  This was her house, had been her home, and she knew all its quirks. She went to the high window that didn’t close all the way, leaving a tiny gap she had to block during the winter.

  Ted had managed to shut it, but she’d bet anything that even without the crank handle, she could open it. She set her hands against the window and tried to slide it open. It budged a tiny bit. She hissed a frustrated sigh. Maybe in several hours she could get the thing open. She didn’t think she had that amount of time, despite what Ted said. He was an impatient man, wanting, like so many people did, instant gratification . . . like quick access to mythical 1863 gold.

  Now that Ted had mentioned it, she needed water. It had been a “trip day,” so she hadn’t drunk a lot. It had also been hot and she’d done minor physical labor. She was probably dehydrated.

 
; She hadn’t eaten much either, and the way acid pitched in her stomach, she was glad of that. Soon, though, her bladder would be bothering her. She’d stopped once on the way back at a gas station to refuel the car to full and to pee, but that had been hours ago.

  Enzo! she called again, and waited futilely for an answer.

  She was right; Ted returned only a few minutes later with only the gun.

  “A gunshot will be noticed in this neighborhood.” The area was solidly middle class.

  His pursing lips made his mouth tiny. She’d never noticed his mouth was smaller than average, though when his grin showed his teeth all the way to his incisors, his mouth looked huge.

  “You’re right.” He pouted. “I’ll have to work with a knife first, I suppose.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  HE TURNED AND left, not even closing the door, but Clare was busy holding her hands over her mouth swallowing and swallowing again. She should just upchuck and get it over with, instead of fighting to be mannerly, civilized, decent. Belatedly she lumbered to the door, found it blocked by Ted.

  Again he shoved her back and she landed on her rump and winced, and then her eyes went to the gleam of a knife in his hand.

  “I should maybe start with a knife. I have handcuffs and ropes and stuff, too, but I wanted to be nice about this.”

  Her heart thumped hard, her pulse in her temples drowning out everything else.

  • • •

  Around sunset, after a workout and shower and dinner, Zach got so twitchy that he couldn’t stay in.

  The bartitsu studio was having a class that he’d been invited to observe and he decided to do that, dressed in old jeans that had plenty of give and a T-shirt.

  As he exited his apartment, his scalp tingled and his hair rose. He heard a caw and instinctively his shoulders hunched. Didn’t matter that he couldn’t see the damn crows, he knew they sat on a power cable above and behind him. He could almost imagine the number of them . . . No. No, he couldn’t. So he’d have to turn around and look.

  He let his shoulders sink, gripped the handle of his cane, and pivoted around.

  Seven. Just like a few days before. Seven for a secret not to be told. Hell, he was in the business of secrets, ferreting them out. Shouldn’t he have expected this more often?

  Then two more crows joined their friends. Fear skewered Zach. Nine. Nine for hell.

  The last time he’d seen nine had been when he’d gone to help Clare and had noticed the bank robbery. Clare’s secret, the bank robber’s secret, whichever had pulled him had been . . . dire, hellish.

  Not just run-of-the-mill secrets like who bought Mrs. Flinton’s antiques.

  And he knew deep down in the marrow of his bones, in the ache around the damn titanium, that trouble had found Clare. Again.

  If he went to her, he’d be admitting her insights were right, wouldn’t he? That he really had to accept the changes in his life, move past the denial part of the stages of loss that the shrink he’d talked to had laid out.

  He’d passed right through the bargaining, not his kind of deal, and hard to bargain when you usually figured you’d lose, especially when you couldn’t control your own damn foot. Not hard to show the anger part, but he’d faked the acceptance, hadn’t truly gotten out of the denial phase. Deny, deny, deny. Change his venue so he could continue to deny.

  Usually he didn’t let his mind play tricks on him, but he had now. He wasn’t ready to accept that his previous career was over, that his life had changed.

  Crap. Where had his balls gone? Emotional courage. He’d always thought of himself as strong in every way, but he was nothing but an emotional coward.

  Disgust at himself rolled tsunami-like through him, threatening to overwhelm. He could just go under. Prove himself weak, a lot weaker than his father. The thought of that man flashed anger that buoyed Zach. Like always, he wouldn’t ever be less than the General.

  As far as Zach was concerned, the guy knew nothing about emotions. So Zach hurt, in his ankle and his mind and his heart. He damn well grieved for the life he had lost.

  He stomped to his new vehicle, lifting his knee high so there was no chance of dragging his foot.

  Yeah, he’d been avoiding the gut knowledge that Nothing Would Ever Be the Same. Because he sure didn’t want to wack out like Clare had.

  She was better now . . . and his father, who’d stuck his always-vestigial emotions into the deep freeze when Jim had died . . . Zach didn’t want to be anything like General Slade. Better to hurt and suffer and . . . be a whole man. So he wouldn’t lie to himself anymore. He might not be able to admit, aloud and in words, that he hurt, but that was different.

  Time to find out what danger threatened Clare.

  He opened the door and stepped up into the truck, bumped his ankle and sweated and swore as his vision went white with pain. Then he set his jaw and went on, hit the ignition, exited from the drive, and turned onto the street. He glanced up at the line of crows. They were gone. He kept on swearing as he drove to Clare’s new place.

  She wasn’t at home, the security was on, and there was no sign of her car. As far as Zach knew, she could have decided to keep on going to Cold Springs.

  Wait, wait, she hadn’t taken the puzzle box with the other ear. He was certain of that. He’d left after her, and the box had been on the fireplace mantel in the living room. He’d noticed because it was the only object on the mantel.

  He looked at his watch: after seven. Naturally he’d checked out the trip time, and she should have been back midafternoon at the latest, even with the worst traffic streaming into Denver.

  A cop hunch about trouble skittered along his spine. He’d just have to find her.

  • • •

  Clare moved to the cot, sat with her feet together and her hands in her lap.

  “Such a good, quiet girl you look,” Ted crooned. “Ready to reconsider?” he asked.

  Through stiff lips she said, “What will you do to me if I do tell you whatever you want to know?”

  “Let you go . . . if it’s soon. You don’t want to make me too mad.”

  As far as she was concerned, he already was mad in the crazy sort of way.

  “Let me go? That’s it?”

  He chuckled. “You wouldn’t go to the police about this.”

  “Yes, I would,” she shot back before she could think better of it.

  Shaking his head, he said, “You’d sound crazy . . . some guy kidnaps you because he wants you to talk to ghosts?”

  She swallowed. “I’m not the crazy one.”

  His lips tightened and his hand holding the gun quivered a little bit. “Maybe not. But you’re getting a rep as a medium. The cops don’t care for frauds.”

  “I’m not a fraud!” She jumped to her feet and the knife jerked as he followed her movement. She wrapped her arms around herself.

  He waved the knife again and she couldn’t prevent a shudder. His smile widened to the crazy grin she distrusted. His creaky cackle of a laugh rasped her ears and her nerves. “Tsk, tsk, Ms. Cermak.” He shook his head. “Such a liar you are, about being a psychic medium, about being able to summon ghosts and talking to them, about everything!” He sliced air with the knife. “About not knowing of the gold robbery. Especially the gold robbery.”

  Nothing she could say would make a dent in Ted’s obsession; she was doomed.

  “I—”

  A timer dinged. “Ah, my pizza is done,” Ted said.

  Clare stared. “You used the oven in the house?”

  “Yes, the heat is incredible; I thought it might add incentive.” With a glance around the bare room, he said, “This bedroom sure holds on to the heat, doesn’t it? But I think I’ll have some food and a nice cold drink now.” Smacking his lips, he shut and locked the door.

  Instants later the smell of hot cheesy dough and pe
pperoni seeped through the cracks in the bedroom, making her mouth water, though she still felt queasy.

  Clare got to work on trying to inch the window open; it moved about a sixteenth of an inch a shove. She’d become more and more aware of her bladder until she shifted from foot to foot. This bedroom shared a wall with the bathroom; so close and too far!

  The cot had wooden legs. She could lift it and break the window glass, then set the cot down and try to climb out through a narrow window jagged with glass. But she believed it would take more than one jolt and neighbors wouldn’t notice the noise. Ted would hear it and run in with his knife and his gun and rope or chains or whatever else he might want to use on her.

  So she grunted and pushed and pushed and . . .

  A chain rattled. How could he eat so fast? Would he torture her with food and drink?

  Yes, he would. He stood in the doorway, with the gun, snarfing down pizza and making yummy noises, all the while watching her.

  If she’d had any outrage left she’d have spit at him.

  Think and think again!

  Her car was out front. He’d said so. All she had to do is get out, run away. She might be able to do it. Outrun a bullet? Her inner critic laughed and laughed. But Ted wanted something from her; he wouldn’t shoot to kill, would he? Any shot in this neighborhood would be heard and reported. She could run faster than he. She was younger and probably fitter. She hadn’t ever seen him move at more than a walk. And she didn’t know what kind of shot he was. Was it worth the risk?

  Yes, said Enzo, materializing next to her. He sat and offered a paw as if to shake.

  Where have you been!

  With Jack Slade. There are problems, he is devolving.

  I have effing problems, too!

  Enzo cocked his head. Yes, you should leave. We should leave.

  Can you help? Distract him somehow?

  The Lab barked loudly, circling the room at a run. Ted showed no sign that he saw or heard the dog.

  Maybe if I talk to you . . .

  I don’t think that would be good, Clare.

  She huffed a breath.

  Enzo went up and sniffed Ted. He doesn’t smell sane, Clare.