by S. E. Harmon
“About a month before her disappearance.”
“Any other beneficiaries?”
“Nope. But no worries—she took one out on the step-pops too. I also found records of two other insurance settlements in her past—a fire that burned down the family home and another fire that destroyed her car ten years ago.”
I clicked my teeth as I pondered that. It certainly put a new spin on things. “So she could be a lifelong con artist rather than a killer.”
“Jury’s still out. You want to put a unit on the stepfather? You know, so he doesn’t end up facedown in a river somewhere?”
As much as Luke Greene might deserve that fate, I figured I should do something. I was pretty sure protecting people was in some oath I’d taken or whatever. “I can give you a tentative yes on that. I want to run it by Danny first, and then I’ll text you,” I said begrudgingly. “You can set it up with Kevin St. James.”
“St. James. You mean that yummy detective back in Brickell Bay?”
“He’s married.” I did so love to douse her joy with a bucket of cold water.
“Aren’t they all?”
She clicked off with a disgruntled noise, and I slid the phone back in my pocket. I stood for a moment in the silence and analyzed the few threads of energy that remained.
“Another room frozen in time,” I murmured as I picked up one of the signed baseballs. “But for whom?”
“This room belonged to my brother, Aaron.”
I didn’t need to turn around to know Jenna was behind me. I turned anyway and hoped I didn’t look as guilty as I felt for snooping. “I thought you said you were an only child.”
“I thought you said you had to use the bathroom.” She scowled. “The bathroom is downstairs.”
“I got turned around.” I shrugged. “What happened to Aaron?”
“My brother died when he was ten.” She plucked the baseball from my hand and set it back on the dresser. “He was coming home with a friend, and they were in a car accident.”
“I’m sorry.” I felt lower than dirt for even asking. “I didn’t mean to bring up any bad memories.”
“It’s fine. I guess it’s your job or whatever.” She folded her arms across her chest. “So who’re you going to talk to next?”
“We’re seeing where the investigation takes us. Who do you think we should talk to?”
“Maybe you should talk to Brock. That was her boyfriend.”
I nodded. “He’s on the list. Anyone else?”
“Rachel, maybe. They used to be close. Maybe Amber. They used to live on the same street. Amy would give her a ride to school sometimes.”
“She’s on the list too.” I didn’t want to destroy the equanimity between us, but I wanted to get some straight answers before Margaret-the-mouthpiece showed up again. “Are you sure there’s nothing you can tell me that I might not already know about Amy?”
“I’ve told you everything I know.” Her blue eyes met mine steadily, but her body language said something different.
“Do you know where she could’ve been earning extra money?”
She blinked. “Extra money?”
It clearly wasn’t what she expected me to ask. Which made me wonder. What had she expected?
“She had a job at the gas station.”
“I’m talking serious money.” For a teenager who worked part-time anyway. “Like a couple grand.”
“Grand?” She shook her head. “No. I have no idea.”
I nodded. “Thought I’d ask. What about her relationship with her parents? Was everything copacetic?”
“Far as I know. I will say that she was getting….” Jenna trailed off, and looked apprehensive.
“She was getting what?” I prodded.
“She was getting a little curious about her father. Her real father,” she clarified. “Wanted to know who he was, at least.”
“Did she talk to her mother about finding him?”
“Yeah. She wasn’t pleased. Told her to stop digging up long-buried business.”
My brow furrowed. I’m sure that went over well. “And did she?”
“Did she what?”
“Stop digging.”
“That’s not exactly Amy’s style,” she said wryly. “Of course she kept digging. Just behind her mother’s back.”
“Do you know if she spoke to anyone about it? Hired anyone?”
“As far as I know, it was mostly internet searches. I don’t think she got all that far. She told me his name was John Travis.”
I sighed. The internet. Oh, goody. That should really narrow down the pool of weirdos. “Anything else you need to tell me?”
She sent me a glare. “Why do you keep asking me that?”
Because you seem shady as fuck. I smiled tightly. “No reason.”
I WAITED until we were in the car to fill Danny in. He listened without interrupting, and the only sign of his impatience was the tapping of his long, square fingers on the steering wheel. Even then it wasn’t an impatient tap. More of a thinking tap. It’s one of the reasons we always worked so well together—he knew when to jump in and when to step back and let me do my thing.
“So this John Travis person,” he said, when I finally wound down. “You think he’s bad news?”
“I don’t know. He’s definitely someone we need to find,” I said as I tapped a message into my phone.
“Easier said than done. I wish we had her computer.”
“We don’t need her computer. I have Chevy.”
“I have a Ford,” he said blankly. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Chevy,” I said, as though saying it louder would make more sense. “As in my agency contact. If she can’t find him, he wasn’t meant to be found.”
“Fobbing off legwork on someone else? Count me in.” He stared off into space for a moment and then shook his head. “I’ll never understand why people go hunting for the parents who gave them up. For whatever reason. Some things are better left alone.”
“Spoken like someone who knows exactly where he came from.”
“Unfortunately.” His mouth twisted. “Most times the person they’re hunting for is a person who walked away without a second glance. People don’t change.”
“Some people do.”
I could feel his eyes on me as I typed, but I didn’t expound and he didn’t ask. He broke the silence first, voice purposefully neutral. “We should head back. Maybe grab some dinner?”
I paused. “I was thinking about eating at Sky’s. Did you want to—”
“No thanks.” Danny’s mouth twitched. “There’re many things I’ve forgotten over the years, but your sister’s cooking will never be one of them.”
“I’ll give her your compliments,” I said with a grin. “I need to get my butt over to her house before she comes looking for me. So, when I return, I’ll probably smell faintly of honeysuckle candles and narcotics.”
He chuckled. “It’d better be faint. I’d hate to book you, Rainstorm.”
Chapter 9
MY SISTER’S house was a cozy, low-energy wonder that she and my intrepid brother-in-law, Rick, built with their own hands. At first glance it looked like a strangely large hill of grass. Upon closer inspection the windows and doors—all natural wood, of course—differentiated them from the surrounding landscape. When they finished building, I stood in their driveway—sorry, cobblestoned walkway—in speechless silence as they proudly told me details of its construction, which used locally sourced and natural woodland materials. I blurted out, “and the city gave you permits for this?”
They were not amused.
I had to admit, once the grass grew in lush, thick, and green, the house looked like it was almost built into the hillside. Form and function existed in perfect harmony with nature and imagination. Surrounded by trees and wild purple flowers, the overall effect was like something out of a Brothers Grimm fairytale. It was unique. It was odd. It was beautiful. And it definitely fit my offbeat sister.
A single energy-saver porch bulb glowed in the dark hollow of the front door as I made my way up the drive. My nose twitched. The smells of home cooking filtered through the open windows, but I wasn’t fooled. Sky was entirely too invested in health and living in harmony with nature to cook anything that could taste good. The birchwood door was unlocked—despite my constant preaching—and I ducked into the cozy living room.
“Sky?” I called out to the empty room.
“In the kitchen.”
I batted past an intrusive dream catcher and made my way to the small kitchen. My brain had barely a second to send my arms the Open signal before a blonde-haired shape launched itself at me. I had another moment to hug the five-foot-two flurry of energy, and she smacked me upside the head.
“Ow! Jesus, what is wrong with you?” I added a little drama to it, but it did hurt. I let her go and rubbed at the back of my head.
It didn’t seem like a tiny little thing with flowers in her hair would be able to do that much damage. But our parents put us in karate. Our sensei dubbed Sky a slacker who couldn’t slouch her way past a yellow belt. Must be all that kale juice, then.
She smacked me again.
“What the hell, Sky?” I growled and ducked a little. “Is this what passes for a greeting around here?”
“It is when you haven’t been home in a year,” she snapped. Then she hugged me again. “I’d better take a picture of you, just so I’ll remember what you look like.”
“You have a fucking mirror, don’t you?” Despite being only fraternal twins, we shared a lot of the same fine-boned features. A long, straight nose. Long-lashed, deeply set hazel eyes. Growing up, the same “pretty” features that made her popular just netted me a lot of grief.
I watched her warily as she went back to the stove. In case she decided to Chuck Norris me again. Slap me once, shame on me, and all that. “I do have a demanding job, you know.”
“I’m sure it is demanding, trying to find any way possible to avoid home.”
I wasn’t going to touch that with a ten-foot, electrified pole. Luckily I was an expert at deflection. “Where are my nieces?”
“Somewhere upstairs pretending to do homework,” she said. “You want some tea?”
I barely held in a shudder. Just barely. Her tea usually had more leaves than liquid and was just this side of awful. “No. Do you need help with dinner?”
“No, I’m almost done. As usual your timing is useless. I hope three bean salad is okay.”
“Anything you make is fine.” I hadn’t had a home-cooked meal since… well, the last time I’d eaten there. I gave her a sly look and secretly hoped, in the way all little brothers can’t help but hope, that I could set her off. “Any hopes for chicken?”
“Does chicken have a face?” she asked, not really expecting an answer.
“Of course. What kind of scaryass chicken have you been eating?”
She shook a cucumber at me, and I held up my hands in peace. I don’t know exactly when she went to the dark side, but she’d been a vegetarian since we were kids. She’d stormed into my room, ranting and raving about some PETA video, and then proceeded to use tongs, gloves, and a garbage bag to rid the house of “anything with a face.”
Just remembering made me grin. Mom was less than pleased about that. It provoked a spectacular argument. Considering it practically took a political coup to get our hippy, New Age mother to lift an eyebrow, the volume they achieved was impressive. I only heard the beginning before our father flushed me out of my eavesdropping space and sent me outside.
Despite my misgivings, dinner was actually tasty. I had two helpings of the colorful salad and something soy—still didn’t know what it was supposed to be—and washed it down with carrot juice. I think. Afterward I chucked my tie, rolled up my sleeves, and helped Sky clean up. She washed and I dried in companionable silence. Or what I thought was companionable silence. I glanced over between dishes to find her looking at me expectantly, holding out a skillet.
I met that look with a blank stare of my own. Silent. Stubborn. You will not speak. You know how Sky does this. She gets to staring at you with those eyes, and suddenly you’re drinking kale juice and getting your aura cleansed. You will not say one bloody—
“Will you stop staring at me?” I finally blurted and snatched the pan. I dried it vigorously. “I can’t discuss an ongoing case with you.”
“I don’t remember asking you to.”
No, she hadn’t. But some needy, desperate part of me wanted to share with my twin, and she knew that. I wanted to understand what was going on in my own body, in my own head. Maybe I couldn’t talk about the case, but… well, for the first time in a long time, I was glad that Sky was so different. She embraced eccentricities. And seeing ghosts could definitely be classified as… eccentric.
In for a penny, in for a pound. “Sky, do you ever… see things?”
She raised a brow. “What kind of things?”
“I don’t know. Things. Things that no one else can see?”
“Like what?”
I huffed out a frustrated breath and balanced the pan in the drying rack, folded the dish towel about four times, and draped it over the sink. Stalling. Worrying my lip with my teeth. She was going to make me say it, and I might as well get it over with. “Like spirits?”
I expected her to look at me like I was crazy. I should have known better. She just cocked her head. “You know, it’s funny. I’ve never pictured you as the type.”
My brow furrowed. “What type?”
“I don’t know, it’s just that… you’ve always been so determined to be straight and narrow. On the right path. Straight As, early admission, FBI… I guess some part of me has always wondered if you saw them too.”
“Straight and narrow?” I scowled. “You know, someone recently called me a buttoned-up G-Man. I’m starting to get offended. Just because you wear a tie doesn’t mean… wait a minute.” Something she said finally filtered in, and I blinked. “Wait a damn minute. What do you mean too?”
Her face creased in a smile, and tiny laugh lines deepened around her eyes. “I see them sometimes. Glimpses of them. Shadows of them. They don’t talk to me, though. I keep trying to channel my energy to get more in tune with my spiritual side, but it hasn’t worked yet. Do they talk to you?”
“They won’t fucking stop talking,” I muttered.
“Figures.” Her smile faltered a bit. “Well, I wouldn’t have thought you were spiritual enough to guide a Fig Newton, but they’ve obviously chosen you.”
I was going to let that Fig Newton thing go. For the moment. “Chosen me? What does that even mean?”
“Exactly what it sounds like.”
“God.” It was a little more than I bargained for. A little too much for my “straight and narrow” mind to take. I rubbed my temples. “Does this mean I have to get some sort of superhero outfit and report to S.H.I.E.L.D.? Is Samuel Jackson going to pop out someplace and tell me to catch these motherfucking ghosts?”
When she just looked at me, I sighed, folded my arms, and leaned back against the sink. “Do you ever wonder why we are… the way we are?”
“No.” She shrugged. “We’re just able to access different channels than other people do.”
“My… channels?” I didn’t need a mirror to know my eyebrows were just about in my hairline. “How do you turn them off?”
“Do you even want to?”
“Of course I do,” I exploded. “I don’t want ghosts popping up in my fucking room all the time. In my car. In my office. In my life.”
“Well, maybe if you talked to them, they wouldn’t have to track you down.”
That was one solution. I shook my head. Or they could just find someone else. “So what are you saying? I’m some kind of medium?”
She shrugged. “It’s all just energy of the Earth. And energy can neither be created nor destroyed. So when you die, your energy is still here, just absorbed into the Earth. It takes a very
special person to get in touch with that energy.”
I dug my thumbs into my temples. I was getting a real headache. “Don’t bring Newton into this. Please. Don’t fucking desecrate Newton.”
“You and your science.” She rolled her eyes. “You’re always looking for a reason why. Sometimes it just is. We’re like this because our parents were. And their parents were. Just like your children will.”
“I’m gay,” I said wryly.
“You can still have children. Last time I checked, when you don’t sleep with women, they don’t make you turn in your sperm.”
“Always the poet, Sky.” At her shrug, I scowled. “I’m just glad we weren’t triplets. One of you is truly enough.”
She shrugged. “I’m glad too. They would have probably named that poor bastard Earth.”
I raked a hand through my hair and tried to think for a moment. I hated to admit it, but she was right—about our parents naming our triplet Earth and everything else. My concrete mind was ready to explode with such abstract ideas. I liked things to make sense. To be in order.
My colleagues saw a well-ordered desk and an unruffled appearance. My few lovers called me cold and reserved. At least that’s what Danny called me before I left. My mouth quirked. Some of the things anyway.
I was a Jedi master at faking order. Ghosts fit nowhere in my master plan.
“This is a lot to process,” I finally whispered. “A lot to believe.”
“Then prove it to yourself. Ask your ghost something. Really talk to him.”
Well, that there just proved how crazy we both were. That actually sounded like a good idea—for the next day. In the meantime I was going to relax and try to forget this conversation ever happened. “Thank you. I think you’ve been helpful. For once.”
She scowled. “Earth would never talk to me like this.”
“Shut up, Sky.”
Chapter 10
THE HOUSE was dark when I came in.
I stood in the foyer just for a moment and enjoyed the strange feeling of being back… well, home. No matter what happened between us, this just felt like home. Danny might be a no-frills kind of guy, but he knew how to create comfortable surroundings. And his house, chock-full of large, handcrafted, masculine furniture and dark, polished hardwood floors certainly qualified.