Raintree: Haunted

by Linda Winstead Jones

  “You’re her cousin, which means you’re too close to her to be objective. Besides, you’re a man.”

  “You make that sound like a bad thing.”

  “It can be. The point is, she might tell me things she wouldn’t tell you.”

  “I doubt it.”

  The woman got her hackles up. “Should you even be working this case? After all, you have a personal connection here.”

  “I met Sherry Bishop one time. Maybe twice. There’s no reason—”

  “I’m not talking about your relationship to the victim, Raintree. Until we eliminate her, your cousin is a natural suspect.”

  “Echo wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

  “You tell her, Gideon,” Sherry Bishop said in an irate voice. “How dare she insinuate that Echo would do this to me?”

  “You’re not objective,” Malory insisted.

  Gideon did his best to ignore Sherry’s ramblings, which had nothing at all to do with her death. “We’ll establish my cousin’s alibi first thing, if it’ll make you feel better. Once she’s eliminated from your list of suspects maybe it’ll be okay with you if I do my job.”

  “There’s no reason to get snippy.”

  Gideon leaned down slightly and lowered his voice. “Detective Malory, if you’re determined to be my new partner I don’t guess there’s much I can do about it. Not at the moment, anyway. But do us both a favor and act like a detective, not a little girl.”

  Her nostrils flared. Ah, he’d hit a nerve. “I am not a girl, Raintree, you—”

  “Snippy,” he interrupted. “A word not used by real men anywhere.”

  “Fine,” she said with unnecessary sharpness. “I’ll just grunt a lot and scratch my ass now and then, and maybe I’ll fit in.”

  Sherry grimaced. “I’ll bet a chick like her never scratches her ass.”

  The truth of the matter was that Gideon knew it didn’t matter what Hope Malory did or said. She was going to get under his skin big time. Like it or not, she was already there, and she was going to stay until he found a way to get rid of her. Out of sight, out of mind, right? It wasn’t as if she was the only pretty woman in Wilmington.

  He didn’t need a partner; he didn’t want one; it would never work. And in the end, it wouldn’t matter.

  Malory wouldn’t last long.

  THREE

  Monday—2:50 p.m.

  “Lunch?” Gideon glanced at his new partner briefly as he negotiated a turn in the road. The wind blew Malory’s carefully styled sleek hair into her face. He could have put the top up, he supposed. Then again, why make this easy on her? She’d insisted on coming along, and he’d insisted on driving. She didn’t want to know what could happen to her new, electronically handicapped car if he was too near it at the wrong moment.

  “I thought you wanted to talk to that club owner,” she shouted to be heard above the wind.

  “He won’t be in until four or later.” They’d already spoken to the manager at the coffee shop where Bishop and Echo had both worked for the past seven months. Mark Nelson knew nothing of interest, but Gideon wanted to go back tonight and have a look around. Maybe the killer would be there, watching for a reaction to the news of Sherry Bishop’s death.

  “Okay,” Malory said reluctantly. “I could eat something, I suppose.”

  She sounded less than enthusiastic, but Gideon figured she would never admit that the murder scene had dampened her appetite.

  He made a couple of turns on narrow downtown streets and pulled into the parking lot of Mama Tanya’s Café. It was late enough in the afternoon that the lunch rush was over. The gravel parking lot was practically deserted.

  “Where are we, Raintree?” Malory asked suspiciously, eyeing the small concrete block building that could use a coat of paint and a bucket of spackle. And maybe a window or two.

  “Mama Tanya’s,” he said, opening his door and stepping out. “Best soul food in town.”

  She followed him, her heels crunching in the gravel. “If you’re trying to scare me off…” she muttered.

  Gideon ignored her and stepped into the dimly lit, windowless restaurant. He hadn’t been kidding when he’d said this was the best place in town for soul food. It was also a good place, filled with good people. Even the ghosts who dropped in here were happy.

  “Detective Raintree.” Tanya herself greeted him with a smile that deepened the wrinkles on her serene face. “The usual?”

  “Yep.” He grabbed his regular booth.

  Tanya looked at Malory and raised her eyebrows slightly. “And for you, young lady?”

  “I’ll just have a salad. Vinaigrette on the side.”

  The order was met with silent surprise. Gideon glanced back at Tanya as Malory joined him. “Just bring her what I’m having.”

  Malory started to argue, then thought better of it.

  “What if I don’t like what you’re having?” she asked when Tanya was out of hearing distance.

  “You’ll like it,” he said.

  It was the first time all day they’d been in a quiet place, alone, and he took the opportunity to study Hope Malory critically. Her hair was mussed from the ride in his convertible. She’d smoothed it with her hands but hadn’t run to the ladies’ room to make more extensive repairs. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes smart. Take-no-prisoners smart. Man, she was gorgeous.

  And she was pissed.

  “So what are you doing here?” he asked.

  “I just wanted a salad,” she said softly.

  “In Wilmington,” he clarified. “This is a relatively small department. I know the detectives from the other divisions, and I know the uniforms. You’re not one of them, so how did you end up with this ill-advised and temporary assignment as my partner?”

  She didn’t take the bait. “I transferred in from Raleigh. I worked vice there for the past two years.”

  He was surprised. She looked too young to have been a detective for two years. “How old are you?”

  She didn’t seem to be offended by the question, as some women might have been. “Twenty-nine.”

  So she was on the fast track. Ambitious, smart, maybe even a little bit greedy. “Why the move?”

  “My mother lives here in Wilmington. She needs family close by, so I decided it was time to come back home.”

  “Is she sick?”

  “No.” Malory squirmed a little, obviously getting uncomfortable with the personal nature of the discussion. “She fell last year. It wasn’t anything serious. She sprained her ankle and hobbled for a couple of weeks.”

  “But it worried you,” he said. Of course it did. Malory was so earnest, so relentlessly dedicated and serious. If anything had happened to her mother, she would see it as somehow being her fault. And so here she was.

  “It worried me a little,” she confessed. “What about you?” she asked quickly, turning the subject of the conversation around. “Do you have family close by? Other than Echo, that is.”

  People who asked too many questions always made him nervous. Why did she need to know about his family? Of course, he had started this personal discussion. Turnabout was fair play, he supposed. “I have a sister and a niece who live in the western part of the state, a few hours away, a brother in Nevada and cousins everywhere I turn.”

  That last bit got a small smile out of her. Nice. Maybe she wasn’t entirely earnest, after all.

  “What about your parents?” she asked.

  “They’re dead.”

  Her smile faded quickly. “Sorry.”

  “They were murdered when I was seventeen,” he said without emotion. “Anything else you want to know?”

  “I didn’t mean to pry.”

  Of course she hadn’t, but his blunt answer had killed the conversation, just as he had hoped. This woman could play hell with his life on so many levels if she made even half an effort. Scary notion.

  Tanya placed two very full plates on the table, along with two tall glasses of iced tea.

  “Raintree,” M
alory said in a lowered voice, after Tanya walked away. “Everything on my plate but the turnip greens is fried.”

  “Yep,” he answered as he dug in. “Good stuff.”

  They both turned their attention to eating, Hope slightly less enthusiastic than Gideon about the fare, though after a few bites she relaxed and started to enjoy the meal. Gideon was glad for the silence, but it also made him nervous, because there was a level of comfort in it.

  He didn’t need or want a partner. He’d tolerated Leon for three and a half years, and in the end they’d made a pretty good team. Gideon solved the cases; Leon did the paper work and handled the bullshit. At the end of the day they both looked good and everyone was happy. Hope Malory did not look like a happy person.

  “I think she’s killed before,” a soft voice called.

  Gideon turned his head to glance into the unoccupied booth behind him. Well, it had been unoccupied—until Sherry Bishop arrived. She looked less solid than she had back at the apartment, but it was definitely her. “What?” he asked softly.

  “Raintree,” Malory began, “are you all…”

  He silenced his new partner with a lifted hand but never took his eyes from Sherry.

  “The woman who killed me,” the ghost said. “She wasn’t at all afraid or even nervous, just anxious. Wound up, the way Echo and I always were before a gig. I think she liked it. I think she enjoyed killing me.”

  “Raintree,” Malory said again, her voice sharper than before.

  Gideon lifted his hand once more, this time with a raised finger to indicate silence.

  “Shake that finger at me again and I’ll break it off.”

  Sherry Bishop disappeared, and Gideon turned around to face an angry and confused Detective Malory.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I was just thinking.”

  “You have an odd way of thinking.”

  “I’ve heard that before.”

  Something in her expression changed. Her eyes grew softer, her lips fuller, and something worse than anger appeared. Curiosity. “But apparently it works,” she said. “How do you do it?”

  “Think?” He knew what she was asking; he just didn’t want to go there.

  “I’ve never known a detective with a record like yours. Except for that one case last year, your record is flawless.”

  “I know Stiles did it, I just can’t prove it. Yet.”

  “How?” she whispered. “How do you know?”

  It was easiest to pretend that he was like everyone else when the question came up. He had a gift for seeing small things that others missed; he had an eye for detail; he saw patterns; he was dedicated to solving each and every case. All those things were true, but they weren’t the reason for his almost flawless record.

  “I talk to dead people.”

  Malory’s response was immediate and not at all unexpected. She laughed out loud. The laugh did great things to her face. Her eyes sparkled; her cheeks grew pink; her lips turned up at the corners. It struck Gideon sharply that he felt much too comfortable with Hope Malory. That laugh was nicely familiar. He could get used to this…and he couldn’t allow that to happen.

  Hope drove slowly past Raintree’s house, and the sight of his house didn’t allay her suspicions at all.

  The three-story pale gray Carolina-style house right on Wrightsville Beach hadn’t been bought on a cop’s salary, that was for sure. This was one of the nicest areas along the strip, and he owned one of the nicest houses. She’d already done some investigating, and she knew what he’d paid for the place when he’d moved in four years ago.

  There was a three-car garage at the end of a short paved driveway. She knew, even though the garage doors were down, that every bay was filled. Raintree owned a black ’66 Mustang, the convertible he’d driven today; a ’57 Chevy Bel Air, turquoise and cream; and a ’74 Dodge Challenger in rally-red, whatever that was.

  Money aside, no one was as good a cop as Gideon Raintree seemed to be. Most of the murders he’d solved were drug related, which meant he could very well be connected to someone in the community of dealers. Someone high enough up to be able to buy his own cop. Was her new partner involved with the criminal element in Wilmington?

  I talk to dead people my ass.

  The houses on this strip of the beach were impressive, but space was at a premium, and they had been built very close together. One colorful house after another lined this street, and Raintree’s tastefully painted gray was one of the finest. Why hadn’t anyone ever questioned his lifestyle?

  Every detective she knew wanted to work homicide. It was high-profile; it was important. And yet five months after his partner’s retirement, Raintree was still working alone—or had been, until she’d come along. The new chief had told her the other detectives weren’t interested in working with Raintree. They didn’t want to get lost in the shuffle, always being second man on the team, or else they knew Raintree liked to work alone and didn’t want to be the one to rock the boat. In other words, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

  Hope had never minded rocking the boat.

  Maybe there were completely reasonable answers to all her questions about Raintree, but then again, maybe not. She had to know, before she got herself in too deep. Before she trusted him, before she accepted him.

  She knew in her gut that Raintree was a liar. Of course he lied on a regular basis: He had a penis. The question was, how deep did the lies go?

  Hope parked her blue Toyota down the street, where someone was having a gathering and an extra car wouldn’t stand out, and walked back to Raintree’s house. It was unlikely she would see anything this late at night, but she was so curious and wound up that she couldn’t possibly sleep. Since her mother never went to bed before 2:00 a.m. and the apartment over the shop was small, sleep wasn’t all that easy to come by, anyway.

  The house, the expensive suits, the cars…Raintree was definitely into something.

  The recently retired partner, Leon Franklin, came off as clean as a whistle when she looked into his background. Franklin had a little money in the bank, but not too much. A nice house, but not too nice. And everyone she’d talked to said Gideon Raintree was the brains of the operation. He got every homicide case in Wilmington, and he solved them all. It just wasn’t natural.

  Hope slipped into the darkness between Raintree’s house and the less subtle yellow house next door. She’d dressed in black for this outing, so she blended into the shadows. She wasn’t going to peek through a window and catch Raintree red-handed, but the more she knew about this guy, the better off she would be. There wasn’t any harm in just looking around his place a bit.

  Movement on the beach caught her attention, and she turned her head in that direction. Speak of the devil. Gideon Raintree was coming in from a swim, too-long hair slicked back, water dripping from his chest. He stepped from the sand onto his own private boardwalk and into more direct lighting. When the light from his deck hit him, she held her breath for a moment. He wore old, holey jeans that had been cut off just above the knees and that hung too low on his waist, thanks to the weight of the water. He wore nothing else, except a small silver charm that hung from a black cord around his neck.

  “Gideon,” a singsong voice called from the yellow house next to his. He stopped on the boardwalk and lifted his head, then smiled at the blonde who was leaning over her own balcony. Hope hadn’t seen so much as a hint of a smile like that one all day. Yeah, the guy was definitely trouble.

  “Hi, Honey.” Raintree leaned against the boardwalk railing and looked up.

  “We’re having a party Saturday night,” Honey said. “Wanna come?”

  “Thanks, but probably not. I’m working a case.”

  “That girl I saw on the news?” Honey said, her smile fading.

  “Yeah.”

  Another woman, a brunette this time, joined Honey at the balcony railing. “You’ll have the case solved by Saturday,” she said confidently.

  “If I do, I’ll drop by.”


  Both women leaned over the railing. They were wearing skimpy bathing suits, as any self-respecting beach bum would be on a warm June night. They practically preened for their neighbor’s benefit.

  Raintree was the kind of man a shallow woman might go for, Hope imagined. He had the looks and the bank account, and an obvious kind of charm that came with self-confidence. With those eyes and cheekbones, and the way he looked in those cutoffs, he might make a silly woman’s heart race.

  Hope had never been silly.

  “Why don’t you come on up now and have a drink with us?” Honey asked, as if the idea had just popped into her head, though she’d probably been planning to ask her studly neighbor up from the moment she’d seen him on the beach.

  “Sorry. Can’t do it.” Raintree turned toward his own house—and Hope—and it seemed to her that he actually looked directly at her. “I have company.”

  Hope held her breath. He couldn’t possibly see her there. Someone else was coming over, or else he was making an excuse to be polite. As if any red-blooded male would turn down “drinks” with Honey and the brunette bimbo.

  “Company?” Honey whined.

  “Yeah.” Raintree leaned against the walkway railing again and stared into the dark space between the two houses. “My new partner stopped by.”

  Hope muttered a few soft curse words she almost never used, and Raintree smiled as if he could hear her. That was impossible, of course. As impossible as him seeing her standing in the shadows.

  “Bring him on up,” the brunette said. “The more the merrier.”

  “Her,” Raintree responded without glancing up to his neighbors. “My new partner is a girl.”

  He’d said “girl” just to rile her, Hope knew, so she did her best not to react to the gibe.

  “Oh.” Honey sighed. “Well, you can bring her. I guess.” She sounded decidedly less enthusiastic, all of a sudden.

  “Thanks, but we’ll pass. We have work to discuss. Isn’t that right, Detective Malory?”

  Busted. Hope took a few steps so that she was caught in the soft light cast from both decks. It was apparently too late to hide. Was Raintree dangerous? Maybe he was. He looked dangerous enough. Then again, she was armed and knew how to defend herself, if it came to that. Somehow, she didn’t think it would.