PM09 - Supernatural Born Killers

by Casey Daniels

“Forgot?” If I’d been with anyone else, I might have gone for a withering look here. There was no use wasting the effort on Quinn. He wouldn’t notice, anyway, and even if he did, he is not the withering type. “You sent flowers.”

  “I did, and you know I meant it when I wished you good luck with the evening. But that was before—”

  “Before you forgot I just got my job back, and a huge promotion, too.” I unlocked the door to my apartment. “And that I was in charge of the biggest cemetery event of the year even though I’ve only had my job for a few weeks. And—” When it looked as if he might try to say something, I stopped him cold. “That I’ve been working like mad to make sure everything went off without a hitch.”

  “I didn’t forget.” When I pushed open the door, he let me step through first. “I just—”

  “Forgot.” I turned on a light and tossed my keys on the table near the door. “It was kind of a big deal.”

  “And I’ll bet you did a great job.”

  I set my purse next to my keys, the better to fold my arms over my chest. “I’ll bet you don’t really care. If you did, you wouldn’t have forgotten.”

  “You know that’s not true. It’s just that—”

  “What?” I pinned him with a laser look. “It’s just that it doesn’t matter that I might have pulled off the biggest coup in Garden View Cemetery history? And maybe roped in the biggest donor around? All because I was able to make the most of a chance meeting?”

  “Really?” There was a momentary flash of admiration in those impossibly green eyes of his, otherwise I would have taken the comment personally, and not well.

  “Really.” I headed into the dining room and from there, to the kitchen for a bottle of water. “None other than Milo Blackburne,” I called out so he could hear me. “Big bucks, and I charmed the socks off him.”

  “I don’t doubt it for a moment.”

  Good thing I had my head in the fridge when he said that. Otherwise, I might have seen the look I knew went along with that last comment. Believe me, I knew it well. Hotter than lava and just as deadly. See, Quinn didn’t get it. He thought that just being his old sexy self was enough to get things back to the way they were when we slept together on a regular—and very satisfying—basis. Oh yeah, typical guy. He was completely missing what I’d figured out since then—it wasn’t about the sex, it was about the relationship. And a relationship with a guy who’s been dead and refuses to talk about it…well, that doesn’t say much about trust and sharing and all those other important things a relationship should be based on, does it?

  It was no wonder I’d fallen into Jesse’s arms without a moment’s hesitation. Jesse accepted me for who I was, ghosts and all.

  While I was in the kitchen, I’d grabbed a bottle of water for Quinn, too, and back in the dining room, I shoved it at him and kept walking. I plunked down on the couch, kicked off my shoes, and after a long, cool drink, tilted back my head and closed my eyes.

  “They put me on desk duty.”

  I knew I hadn’t fallen asleep, but I must have been in some la-la land just next door to dreaming because I sat up, startled, and looked at Quinn, who was standing in the doorway between the living room and dining room. “What did you say?” I asked him.

  “They put me on desk duty.” He marched into the living room and sat in the chair across from me. “I went back to work today and—”

  “They gave you a desk job?” This was crazy talk. Quinn was hard-charging, smart, and successful in his job as a homicide detective. Okay, I was biased, but when it came to Cleveland’s finest, I considered him at the top of the list. He’d just gone through months of grueling rehab, and he’d finally been cleared to return to work. They wouldn’t have done all that and then saddle him with—

  “A desk job? Are you sure?”

  He hadn’t opened his bottle of water. He set it down on the coffee table. “I got down to headquarters this morning and was told to get right back in the car and report to the Second District.”

  “A neighborhood station?” The fact that he’d forgotten all about the sponsorship event suddenly made sense, and I felt like a moron for not picking up on his mood sooner. “After you took a bullet in the line of duty?”

  He got up and paced to the far side of the living room. “Kind of what I was thinking,” he said, and since Quinn is not usually into sarcasm, his words were all the more acid. “My captain told me they wanted to make sure I was one hundred percent before they gave me back my old job. One hundred percent! Hah!” He held out his arms at his sides as a way of telling the world to take a look and dare to tell him he wasn’t in perfect shape.

  He was. Perfect. Trust me, I knew.

  “And they’ve assigned me to the Community Services Unit. You know, as a district liaison.”

  I didn’t need him to tell me that stung. I could see it in his eyes. I leaned forward. “You mean like you’re supposed to go to schools and tell kids they shouldn’t do drugs?”

  “And work with school crossing guards, and hold meetings to listen to neighborhood complaints.” Too antsy to keep still, he crossed the room and plopped back down. “My first duty assignment? They’ve got me acting as the contact between the police and some convention that’s coming to town and setting up shop at a hotel not far from the station.” He folded his arms over his chipped-from-granite chest. “I’ve got half a mind to quit.”

  “You wouldn’t. You couldn’t. You don’t know how to be anything but a cop. It’s in your blood. Maybe if you just wait—”

  “For what? The doctors have cleared me. They say I’m as good as new. I’m going to get lost out there in the boonies and never make my way back to Homicide.”

  “You don’t really believe that.” I’m not very good at rah-rah cheerleading, which might explain why the words were encouraging enough, but even I didn’t sound like I believed them. “They’d be nuts to lose you in Homicide.” This I did believe, so it wasn’t hard for the statement to pack a punch. “You’re good at what you do. Better than good. Besides, you’re bound to have people who will go to bat for you downtown. When word gets out that they’ve banished you—”

  “Yeah. Banished. That’s exactly what it feels like.” For a few, uncomfortable minutes, we stared across the room at each other, me, trying to come up with the words to take away some of the hurt and him, too angry to listen even if I could find them.

  “Maybe you’re right.” The words escaped him on the end of a sigh. “There are a couple of guys who I know will put in a good word for me. Until then…” He stood. “I’ve ruined your evening, and I didn’t mean to. I’ll just put this away.” He grabbed the water bottle. “And I’ll get out of your hair.”

  He walked out of the room and a few seconds later, I heard the fridge open and close.

  “Hey!” He paused on the way back and poked a thumb over his shoulder. “Did you know there’s a big puddle on your dining room floor?”

  Do I need to say how this bit of news made me grumble?

  I dragged myself off the couch and went to check it out.

  It was a puddle, all right. Just like the puddles I’d found in my office earlier that evening.

  “I’ll clean it up,” I told Quinn, even though he hadn’t made a move to beat me to the task. I went into the kitchen for paper towels and when I came back, Quinn wasn’t alone.

  “What?” He looked from me to the puddle and back again. “Why is your mouth hanging open? It’s just a puddle.”

  “A puddle and a ghost.” I looked over the guy standing not three feet to Quinn’s right. He was sixty, maybe. Short-cropped hair, khakis, golf shirt. Not as tall as Quinn, but his chest was broader. Like he worked out with weights. His face…

  I hadn’t turned on a light in there, and I leaned forward for a better look, gasped, and jumped back. Hoping the shadows were playing tricks on my eyes, I flicked on the light above the dining room table and then was sorry I had. The blood drained from my face.

  Above the piece of
silver duct tape slapped over his mouth, one of the ghost’s eyes was swollen and bloody. His jaw looked like he’d shaved with a cheese grater, and there was a rusty streak on his shirt that was particularly gruesome against the yellow cotton. His hands were lashed behind his back with one of those big plastic ties, and his legs…

  I gulped.

  The ghosts legs were bound up in heavy rope, one end tied in a sturdy knot just above his ankles and the other laced through the square opening of a cinder block he dragged behind him.

  His clothes were soaked.

  And the puddle on my floor was getting bigger and bigger.

  “You’re kidding me, right?” Quinn looked where I was looking, but obviously not at what I was looking at. That didn’t stop him from taking a step to his left. “What’s this ghost doing, watering his ghostly garden or something?”

  “Or something.” I dared a step closer to the horrible apparition, unable to look away. “You don’t see him?”

  The noise Quinn made wasn’t exactly a tsk. That would have been too polite. “What, you think that I’ve suddenly got an inside track on the woo-woo just because I was dead myself for a while?”

  Pikestaffed, I pivoted toward him. “What did you say?”

  Quinn’s shoulders shot back. “Nothing.”

  “You said you were dead. You finally admitted it.”

  His chin came up. “Now you’re having auditory hallucinations as well as visual ones. I never said that.”

  “And you’re trying to rewrite history. I know what I heard. I know what you said.”

  “I said—”

  “That you were dead for a while. Your exact words.”

  When he shook his head, Quinn’s inky hair glimmered in the overhead light. “You obviously heard me wrong.”

  “I did not. You said—”

  “That you’re talking crazy. There’s no ghost here with us. And even if there was…even if there was such a thing to begin with…you couldn’t see it.”

  “And you—” I pointed a finger at Quinn. “You’re trying to change the subject. And I’m not going to let you. It’s about time you admitted it. You were dead. You were a ghost. When you were, I saw you and I talked to you. Right here in this apartment. You need to come clean about those couple minutes, Quinn, or—”

  “Hmhm Mmm. Mmmmnm.”

  The words—if they could be called words—came out of the ghost and I swung his way.

  “What did you say?” I asked.

  Quinn’s mouth thinned. “I said—”

  I put out a hand to shush him. “I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to him.” I pointed toward the ghost and the puddle. “He said something.”

  “Hmhm Mmm. Mmmmnm,” the ghost repeated.

  “Only I can’t understand him,” I said, for Quinn’s benefit as well as for the ghost’s since he kept mumbling whatever it was he was mumbling and he needed to realize it was getting us nowhere.

  Quinn took another look at the blank space next to him. “I don’t see anything.”

  I tossed my head. “Of course you don’t see anything. You’re not the one who sees dead people. I’m the one who sees dead people. Although since you were dead for a while…” This was a new idea and I cocked my head, considering it. “Maybe if you tried,” I suggested to Quinn. “You know, if you sort of thought back to what it was like when you were a ghost and how it felt. You might be able to connect with the Other Side and see what I see.”

  “Only there’s nothing to see.” I think he actually believed this, but he took another step back, anyway. “Why is the puddle getting bigger?”

  “The ghost is…” I did my best to demonstrate, fluttering my fingers in an “Itsy Bitsy Spider” sort of way. “His clothes are wet. They’re dripping. And you know, he must have been at Garden View today. There were puddles there, too.”

  The ghost nodded.

  “Yeah,” I said, interpreting. “The ghost says I’m right. He was the one who left the puddles in my office this evening.”

  “Right.” Correct word. Not so much a correct look from Quinn, which was more like mouth twisted and eyes screwed up with disbelief. “What else does the ghost have to say?”

  “Hmhm Mmm. Mmmmnm.”

  “He can’t exactly say anything. I mean, he’s trying. But…” Demonstrating, I patted my hands against my mouth. “He’s got a piece of duct tape over his mouth. He’s trying to talk, but I can’t understand anything he’s saying.”

  “Hmhm Mmm. Mmmmnm,” the ghost said, confirming my statement.

  “Duct tape.” Obviously, the comment came from Quinn. I mean, what with the ghost only being able to mumble and all. “Who dies with a piece of duct tape over their mouths?”

  “Well, obviously, this guy.” I pointed toward the ghost again before I realized I was really wasting my time and energy and brought my hand back to my side. “His hands are tied, too. And there’s this rope around his legs that’s attached to a big block. Ohmygosh!” The thought hit and so much for keeping my hands at my sides; I clutched them to my throat in a feeble effort to contain the bile that rose there. “He was murdered. Drowned!”

  The ghost nodded.

  “He says he was,” I told Quinn. “Well, he nodded when I said he was. That explains why he doesn’t look like the other ghosts have always looked.”

  Quinn’s eyebrows did a slow slide upward. “And that is…?”

  “You know, like they must have looked when they were laid out at the funeral home. All clean and well dressed. This guy must have been drowned and I’ll bet his body is still in the water someplace. That explains the puddles, right?” I looked at the ghost, who nodded to confirm my theory.

  “And that explains why he looks the way he does, too. Like he got worked over before he died.”

  Nod. Nod.

  “And dumped in the water.”

  Nod.

  “That’s just awful.” I am not usually the emotional type. I mean, unless there’s something worthwhile to get all emotional about. But the thought of the horrifying way the man died and the fear that must have gripped him when he hit that water…

  I coughed away the knot in my throat at the same time Quinn asked, “So what does this ghost want?”

  I thought I knew the answer, but I put a hold on considering it. At least until I dealt with the more pressing issue.

  “You’re asking me about the ghost,” I said to Quinn. Ms. Obvious, yes, I know, but something told me it wouldn’t hurt to point it out to him. He was a man, after all. And hardheaded went along with the hard-charging. “So you must believe I’m really talking to a ghost.”

  His shoulders shot back another fraction of an inch. “I never said that.”

  This time, he was actually right. But…

  “You didn’t have to,” I pointed out. “You wouldn’t have asked me what the ghost wanted if you didn’t think I was talking to a ghost. Therefore—”

  “Therefore, nothing. I’m just…” Quinn glanced away. “I’m just making conversation. Just being polite.”

  “Since when are you worried about being polite?”

  “Hmhm Mmm. Mmmmnm.” Apparently, the ghost was not a patient man. He hopped forward (cinder block, remember) and poked his head in Quinn’s direction. “Hmhm Mmm. Mmmmnm.”

  “I think he’s trying to say something about you,” I told Quinn. “Maybe he just wants to remind you that you said you were dead. You know, because he heard you say it, too.”

  “That’s it!” Quinn whirled around and headed for the door, sidestepping the puddle on the way. Call me perceptive, but I noticed the little shiver that crawled along his shoulders when he walked by the ghost.

  “Chilly?” I asked him.

  He was already at my front door. “Just a draft.”

  “Or a ghost. You know, like the kind of ghost you were when you—”

  “There’s really no talking to you when you get this way.” He opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. “I’ll give you a call.”r />
  I tried for some really good comeback, but before I could come up with one, Quinn was gone.

  When I walked back into the dining room, the ghost was, too.

  Fine by me. Two annoying men out of my life. At least for now.

  And didn’t it figure, they left me with a puddle to clean up.

  After all these years, I know how ghosts think. It goes something like this:

  Pepper Martin.

  Private investigator for the dead.

  Need her.

  Find her.

  Bug the heck out of her—and threaten to haunt her forever—until she agrees to help.

  Was it any wonder that I arrived at the office the next morning fully expecting to find the drippy ghost in there waiting for me?

  Turns out I was right. Sort of. Sure enough, there was a ghost behind my desk.

  It just wasn’t the ghost I was expecting.

  “About time you showed up, sister.” This ghost was short, square, and puffing on a fat cigar. He was wearing a gray double-breasted suit with wide pinstripes and huge shoulders, and he had a hat jammed way back on his head. While I was still trying to process who he was and why his pudgy ectoplasm was in my desk chair, he pointed at a paper on my desk.

  “We gotta talk,” he said. “Don’cha know anything about a lead?”

  I hadn’t quite recovered from the exhaustion that was the sponsorship party, not to mention my encounter with the wet ghost and my head-to-head with Quinn. I went over to my desk, deposited my purse in the bottom drawer, and stepped back, fists on hips of the black pants I was wearing along with a sweet little schoolboy blazer in a mossy green that looked especially good with my red hair.

  “I know about leave,” I said, emphasizing that last word in hopes that he’d get the message. When he didn’t, I rolled my eyes. “All right, get it over with. What do you want?”

  “Want? Me?” He took the cigar out of his mouth, studied the mushy end of it, then stuck it right back where it came from in the first place. “I don’t want nothin’, sister. You’re the one who should want somethin’.”

  “Like a little peace and quiet?” No way he was moving, so I went around to the other side of the desk and sat in my own guest chair. “Or to be left alone so I can actually try and get some work done?”