“Sure.” My smile was brittle, but honestly, I got out of the car and he drove away so fast, I doubt Quinn noticed.
Grumbling, I unlocked the door and went into the building. What I needed was a little therapy in the way of Ben and Jerry’s Crème Brûlée.
That, and something that would distract me from the sad realities of unemployment, baseball, curses, and a TV appearance that would do nothing for my reputation—not to mention my image.
Exactly one week to the day later, I got a kick-in-the-pants reminder about that ol’ be-careful-what-you- wish-for saying.
I asked for a distraction?
Sure, the Universe responded. Here’s a doozy.
As these things so often do, it started out simply enough, with me heading down to the lobby of my apartment building that afternoon to pick up my mail. My unemployment check was there, and for that, I was grateful. I set it on my dining room table, where I could admire it, and promised myself a trip to the bank first thing the next day. A couple other things arrived along with the check, including a box wrapped in brown paper, a couple advertising flyers, a card from my mom in Florida, and…
A postcard fluttered out of the pile and hit the floor and I bent to pick it up and froze, pikestaffed by the photograph that was looking up at me.
“Dan!” I scrambled for the postcard and the photo of Dan Callahan, brainiac scientist, paranormal investigator, husband of the late Madeline who, as it turned out, was a ghost who stole my body for a while and used it to get her jollies with him when those jollies should have been mine.
Shaggy-haired, cute-as-a-button Dan smiled back at me.
Let’s face it, I’m not usually unhinged by cute. After all, I’m used to Quinn, who’s got the whole gorgeous thing down pat, is as hot as freshly poured Boule espresso, and packs as much of a punch (both literally and figuratively). Normally, just looking at Dan wouldn’t have made my knees weak and my hands shake. Chalk it up to the stress of the last few months. And to surprise, of course. The last I’d heard from Dan, he was heading to England to delve into some woo-woo mystery or another and drown his sorrows about finding out his late wife was really a scumbag murderer.
Knees shaking and hands trembling, I dropped down on the couch and flipped over the card, fully expecting some foreign postmark. It looked like a lot had happened since that winter in Chicago a couple years earlier; the card came from New Mexico.
“Going to be in Cleveland in a few weeks.” Out loud, I read the message written in his loose, scrawling handwriting, and the prospect of seeing Dan again shivered in my words. “ ‘I’ve got some exciting news to share. Let’s plan to get together as soon as I arrive.’ ”
By the time I turned the card over again, I was smiling as broadly as Dan was in the photo. New Mexico? Maybe. I took a closer look at the photo and the sweeping panorama of mountains behind Dan, and all I could tell was that it had been taken in a place with a lot of rocks and dust. Dan, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt with a smudge of dirt across the front of it, was standing in front of some ruiny-looking thing, half building, half cave, that was totally nasty looking.
His right hand was raised in a friendly greeting, and on his wrist, he was wearing a watch with a wide silver band.
It was clearly Native American and not my style, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t intrigued as I always am by things that are pretty and valuable. I squinted for a better look at the band engraved with mysterious-looking symbols and studded with teardrop-shaped bits of turquoise.
Southwestern, certainly. New Mexico.
But coming to Cleveland.
Soon.
As distractions went, this was a pretty good one, and I thanked the Universe appropriately even as I set the postcard against the lamp on the table next to the couch, the better to see Dan and consider what his coming to town might mean. To me. To my future. To my Gift.
It’s not like we’re a couple or anything. I need to make that perfectly clear.
Pepper Martin and Dan Callahan had never been anybody’s idea of a pair.
Not officially, anyway.
There was a time, and a place, and one brief shining moment when I think that was actually meant to be, in spite of the fact that when we first met, all Dan wanted was the chance to study my brain and figure out how my Gift worked. But then Madeline swooped in and took over my body, and the golden opportunity for a Pepper and Dan hookup passed us by.
By that time, he’d figured out that it was actually true—that I could communicate with the dead and that I had been in regular contact with Madeline—and Dan was thrilled. It proved a theory he’d always believed: that there is life after death and that those on This Side and those on the Other are connected.
But things are never that simple. Not when it comes to living with the dead. Once the whole ugly truth came out about what a liar Madeline really was, and how she’d played Dan for a sucker, and how I almost got poofed into permanent oblivion thanks to her, the way he handled things said a lot about Dan.
He didn’t try to pick my brain. Or use me as some sort of psychic guinea pig. In fact, he didn’t ask any questions or try to delve into the mystery of my Gift at all.
He left town.
To give me some space, he said.
And himself some time to recover from the trauma of it all.
Not bad, huh? I mean, in a knight-in-shining-armor sort of way.
See, Dan is one of the good guys. Even if he does have lousy taste in wives. And soon—I checked the postmark again; the card had been mailed four days earlier—soon, I’d have a chance to see him again.
Jazzed at the prospect, I opened and read Mom’s card (there was a kitten on it, designed to cheer me up), and finished with that, I turned my attention to the brown-paper-wrapped box.
I hadn’t ordered anything online, so I wasn’t waiting for a delivery, and since there was no return address on the box, I used my detective skills to narrow the field as to where the package might have come from. The postmark was smudged and unreadable. I shook the box and was rewarded by a dull thud. Something inside, and not something big. But then, the box was only the size of those rectangular ones that new checks come in.
I am not a big believer in premonitions and weird stuff like that. Sure, I talk to ghosts, but that has more to do with the bad luck of the draw than it does with ESP. Still, a shiver like the touch of a dead hand crawled up my back.
“Dumb,” I told myself, and ripped the brown paper off the box.
Three cheers for me in the deduction department; it was a box from old checks. I lifted the lid. There was a folded piece of paper inside.
Another chill on the back of my neck.
Another reminder to myself that if I could deal with the dead but not departed, I could certainly handle a letter.
I unfolded the paper and saw the blocks of words, cut out of a newspaper and glued to the page:
If U Want 2 C Dan Callahan alive, follow instructions exactly
Bring Chester Goodshot Gomez (the name was written with a Sharpie, but then, I don’t suppose they’re common words in a newspaper) 2 Tres Piedras, New Mexico. Instructions @ gas station
U have 7 days
It was a joke.
It had to be.
Only I wasn’t laughing.
Especially when I realized there was something under the tissue paper wadded at the bottom of the box. I plucked it out, and found myself staring at a watch with a silver band.
Yeah, that one. A band engraved with mysterious-looking symbols and studded with teardrop-shaped bits of turquoise.
The moment I walked into her office, Ella’s face lit up with a grin as bright as the sparkly yellow beads she was wearing with her orange dress. She was so obviously pleased to see me, I almost felt guilty for being there.
Almost.
I braced myself for what I knew what was coming, and managed one deep breath before she leaped from her chair and wrapped me in a hug that made the air whoosh out of my lungs. Whe
n she stepped back to look up and take a gander at me, there were tears in Ella’s eyes.
“It’s so good to see you,” she crooned and sniffed. “I was afraid we’d never see you here at Garden View again, that you’d never want to come back. I mean, after the way we treated you.”
“You didn’t treat me any way. You were only doing your job. The cemetery had to cut staff. No hard feelings.”
Lie No. 1.
I was still plenty pissed at Garden View in general and Jim, the cemetery administrator, in particular, not so much because he eliminated my job but because, before he did, he actually had me doing things like plucking staples out of old memos to save paper and helping to pick up garbage on the grounds of the cemetery.
I mean, really. If you’re going to fire somebody anyway, it seems more than cruel and unusual to make that same somebody go through all that first.
I bit my tongue and kept my lips clamped shut. The last thing I was there to do was stir up trouble. Or upset Ella.
Pasting on a smile, I untangled myself from her maternal hug and strolled over to her desk. Ella’s office at the cemetery was bigger than the one I used to occupy down the hall, but just barely. Her desk near the window was always picture-perfect, in a Martha Stewart sort of way. Cute china teacup. Cute mouse pad that featured a cute photo of a cute puppy. Cute pictures of her three teenaged girls.
Except today, Ella’s office reminded me a lot of my old office.
And not in a good way.
“Don’t pay any attention to the mess!” Ella raced over to the guest chairs, unpiled a couple mile-high stacks of papers from them, and plopped them down atop the about-to-topple pile already on her desk. “Come on, sit down. Make yourself comfortable. I’m so happy to see you here again.” She could have fooled me since there were tears streaming down her cheeks. “This is where you belong, Pepper.” When I didn’t move fast enough, she patted the seat of the empty chair. “Tell me what’s been happening with you and why you stopped in.”
I sat as instructed, mostly because I knew if I didn’t, she’d bug me forever. In her own, fluffy Jewish-mother sort of way, Ella is every bit as persistent as the ghosts who promise to haunt me if I don’t help them.
“I was just driving by,” I said, and yes, it was Lie No. 2, but it’s not like a person can just march into another person’s office, blurt out one huge lie, and get away with it. Lies are delicate creatures, and they need a framework if they’re going to stand. As the world’s only private detective to the dead, I’d long ago come to accept lying as a fact of my life. Building up to the big lie… that was a skill. One I was getting very good at. “I thought I’d stop in and see how you were doing.”
“Me?” Ella dug through her purse and pulled out a lace-edged handkerchief. She touched it to her already-red nose. “I should be asking you that, Pepper. How are you? Any luck finding another job?”
She was so darned concerned, I didn’t have the heart to tell her I hadn’t exactly gotten up the energy to send out my résumé yet. There was the whole thing with Quinn I’d been dealing with, and the whole bit about how, aside from the lack of money, I wouldn’t mind taking the summer off. Now there was Dan to worry about, too.
I tucked the thought away so my expression didn’t betray me.
“Something will turn up,” I said, forcing my shrug to look unconcerned. “It always does.”
“You’re so brave.” She pulled in a breath that escaped her on the end of a sigh. “And so considerate, asking about me. I’m…” Ella glanced at the devastation that had once been her pristine office. “What with doing your job and mine, filling in for Jim when he’s busy, picking up some of the slack because Jennine out at the front desk has had her hours cut, and helping out with the groundskeeping work so we don’t have to pay the landscaping crews overtime… I’m afraid I’m getting a little behind and feeling a bit overwhelmed.” Her lower lip wobbled, and Ella fanned one hand in front of her face. But then, I could sympathize—the office was stifling.
I glanced at her window, open maybe an inch and a half.
Ella followed my gaze and chirped in the way she always does when something’s bugging her and she won’t admit it. “Don’t get the wrong idea. The heat in here isn’t a problem. Really. I’m comfortable. I was actually cold this morning.”
I pinned her with a look. “It’s got to be at least ninety degrees in here, and let me guess, Jim won’t let anyone turn on the AC because he doesn’t want to pay for the electricity. And he won’t let you open your windows more than that because…”
“Dirt.” Ella’s shoulders drooped. “If we open the windows, who knows what will blow in from the outside, and then the office will get dirtier and we’ll have to pay the cleaning crews more and… well, enough of that nonsense!” Ella popped out of her chair. There were a couple plastic grocery bags on the floor near where I was sitting and she scooted around to the other side of the desk to get at them.
“This is so lucky, you showing up here. I was going to call you this afternoon and ask if I could stop by your apartment on the way home this evening. To chat. Like old times. I thought maybe I could convince you to stop by for dinner one of these days. You know, I have been calling and inviting you and I’m sure you’re busy. Yes, of course, you’re busy, a young woman like you always has so many things to do. I understand. Of course, I understand.”
I carefully prepared Lie No. 3. “I’m sorry I haven’t been as good as I should be about returning your calls. There’s something wrong with my cell phone. I get some of your messages, really, and I keep meaning to call, but—”
She held up one hand to stop me. “No apologies necessary. You’re a young woman with a busy life, and I’m sure you’re spending time with that nice policeman boyfriend of yours.”
Ella was on a roll, so I didn’t bother to correct her. Nice had never been one of Quinn’s strong points. Then again, I don’t think boyfriend applied, either. A boyfriend was a man who wanted to share a woman’s life and her dreams and even her goofy Gift if she happened to have one. In all the time I’d known him, the only thing Quinn wanted to share was my bed.
“Well, who can blame you?” This time when Ella fanned her face, I don’t think it had anything to do with the temperature in the office. “What with him being so dreamy and all. And how he almost died a couple months ago! I can see you’d want to spend a lot of time with him. And with looking for a job, of course. I’m sure you’re taking hours and hours every day to pound the pavement and look for work. Oh, Pepper…” She bit her lower lip. “I wish I could do something to help you. Well… well…” Ella pulled in a bracing breath. “I have done something. Like I said, I was going to call you and stop by.” Her shoulders back and both her chins lifted high, Ella held out one of the blue plastic grocery bags to me. “I know it’s hard for you living on unemployment so I’ve gone through my closets. You know, to find some things for you to add to your wardrobe.”
It was the wrong time to say, “Over my dead body,” so I forced a smile, plucked the bag out of her hands, and held it close to my chest. If I didn’t look… if I never opened it… I wouldn’t feel obligated. Or guilty. Or horrified.
Then I could just stop at Goodwill on my way home and—
“It’s not much, I know, but it’s the least I can do for you, Pepper. When I think about you sitting at home with no job and us, here at the cemetery, and how we could use your talents… well, it just makes me crazy. That’s why… well, I know you’re going to love these things.” As fast as I’d taken it from her, Ella grabbed the bag back from me and dug around inside it. She came out holding a white peasant blouse embroidered with bright flowers at the neckline and cuffs.
White peasant blouse.
In Ella’s size.
“Perfect for summer,” she crooned. “And here’s a nice little sundress that will look adorable on you. I mean, once you nip in the waist just a tad.” Ella held up said object for me to admire. It was turquoise and three of me would fi
t into it. “Some night when that nice policeman wants to take you out and you’re looking to impress him—”
I jumped out of my chair, snatched the sundress out of her hands, and folded it—carefully but quickly. Before anyone could see. And think that I might actually…
The thought turned my brain to mush and froze my insides. Before I could succumb, I blurted out, “That’s so nice of you. But you really shouldn’t—”
“I know. But I can’t help myself. You’re just like one of my girls, Pepper, and with all you did for Ariel…” Her expression softened into that squishy motherly smile she always has when she thinks about her youngest daughter and how the kid used to be trouble with a capital T and is now, thanks to me, an annoying overachiever whose sole goal in life is to become a librarian and be as geeky as her mother. “That’s why I brought along another bag, too.”
I was almost afraid to look, but at least while I did, I could set down the bag of clothes in the corner, where I could then pretend I’d forgotten it.
The second blue grocery bag contained five boxed macaroni and cheese mixes, two jars of spaghetti sauce, a couple boxes of pasta, and one box of hot chocolate mix. Yes, it was summer and hotter than hell. To Ella, nothin’ says lovin’ like hot chocolate.
It was ridiculous, but I couldn’t help myself; my throat closed around a lump of emotion. “I couldn’t,” I said, handing the bag back to her and hoping she didn’t hear the catch in my voice. “You and the girls need—”
“Not as much as you do.” That was that, and to prove it, Ella crossed her arms over her chest. “The least I can do is help out. After all, I was the one who—”
Fortunately, the phone on Ella’s desk rang so I was spared listening to how guilty she still felt about having to let me go.
I glanced at the clock on Ella’s wall and thanked whatever guardian angel looked out for Gifted PIs. Right on time!
Wild Wild Death Page 4