by Unknown
He frowned. “You keep saying that. Is it because your grandmother said a man with the initials N.M. could help you?”
She nodded.
“Come now, Miss Carlisle. Sacramento is a large city with many attorneys, and there have to be several N.M.’s. Any one of them could be the man you’re looking for.”
“You’re the only man with those initials that has been able to hear me.”
The serious look on her face stole all humor from the moment—that and her knowledge of his past. Maybe she was a reporter with some newspaper, here to get a story. Wouldn’t they ever leave him alone?
Nick’s head throbbed, so he pinched the bridge of his nose and took in a deep breath. Miss Carlisle still sat in front of him, looking very proper. If she were from a newspaper wanting to do a story on him, would she have taken on the role of a 1912 dame? Probably not. So why was she here and dressed like that? Steve and Travis. It had to be them.
Enough was enough. Nick didn’t know how his fraternity brothers knew, but it was time to end this and force the young woman to confess. He slapped his hands on his desk, making her jump. “Listen, Miss Carlisle, I have to be honest with you. You look like a nice person, but you have to admit what you’ve told me is pretty unbelievable.”
She frowned, and the spark in her eyes disappeared. “But I haven’t even told you the whole story.”
She was harder to break than he’d expected. He pushed away from his desk and walked to the door. “Please, don’t make this any more difficult. You don’t need a lawyer—you need a psychiatrist, which I’m not. If you’d like, I could give you the number—”
“No, thank you.” Miss Carlisle rose from her chair, keeping her back perfectly straight, and walked toward him. Mere inches away, she stopped and stared him in the eyes. “I’m not insane, Mr. Marshal. Just dead.”
Nick couldn’t hold back a laugh. “Lady, I don’t know where Steve and Travis found you, but I have to admit, you’re good.”
Her hands rested on her small hips. “Nobody found me. I will give you one day to consider this, and I shall return tomorrow. I cannot put this off any longer. I need to discover who killed me so I can stop living in this . . . this . . .” She swiped a hand down the length of her. “This ghostly existence.”
“Really, Miss Carlisle. The game is over. Where are Steve and Travis?” He peeked around the door into the hallway. Empty. But he was sure his friends were close by. He looked back at the woman, expecting her to give in. Instead, her expression remained impassive.
She scrunched her brow. “I’m afraid I don’t know anyone by those names.”
“Then who paid you to come here and tell me this story?”
She stomped her foot. “Mr. Marshal, I assure you this is not a story, and I was not offered money. I’m truly in need of your help!”
He motioned toward the door. “Miss Carlisle, if anything, it was a pleasure meeting you. You’ve made me laugh, which is something I haven’t done in a while.”
She grumbled, turned on her heels, and marched out. The gentle sway to her backside—was that a bustle she wore?—made his eyes widen. He shook his head. Miss Carlisle moved as if she had been born in that dress, as if it was second nature for her to walk without getting the skirt caught in her legs. His friends had certainly gone to a lot of trouble to find such a well-trained actress.
He shut the door and ambled back to his desk, shaking his head. Now he had to wait for his friends’ phone call. Nick had been one step ahead of them the whole time.
Sitting behind the desk, he glanced at the voice recorder. He clicked it off. Perhaps he’d missed something in their conversation, something that might give him a clue as to who the real joker was.
He clicked rewind. When it stopped, he pressed the button to turn it on. His voice boomed clearly, but only dead air space lingered in places where he knew Miss Carlisle had spoken. He turned up the volume, but her melodic voice did not come through.
Nick’s attention snapped back to the door. A ghost? No way! He didn’t believe in them. Besides, hadn’t she felt real? Thinking back, he realized he hadn’t touched her, but there had to be something concrete to latch onto, something to explain the whole thing.
He scowled. Fancy-dressed women usually smelled fabulous. He inhaled, but didn’t detect a scent. He jumped up from his desk, ran to the door, and pulled it open. The hallway was deserted and the elevator door was closed.
There had to be an explanation, because no way was that woman a ghost.
Two
“Your mother is a crazy woman!”
Nick snapped to awareness from a deep sleep. He sat up in bed with cold sweat covering his body. When he was a child, his classmates had teased him because of his mother’s reputation. But why had he dreamed of it now?
He fell back on the mattress,flinging his arm over his head and inadvertently hitting the headboard. Pain shot through his wrist. He flinched, then rubbed the red mark growing on his skin.
Why would the echoes of people taunting him about his mother’s lifestyle bother him after all these years? He’d tried to forget the hurtful teasing and then the pain that followed his parents’ divorce. But he never understood about his mother’s so-called psychic powers. Good ol’ mom; she had called it her special gift.
Nick shook his head. Gift or not, people still thought she wasn’t in her right mind. And because of what had happened yesterday at work, Nick wondered if his mother’s “gift” was hereditary.
He glanced at the bedroom window. Through the closed shades, the light of the rising sun was starting to peek inside. He threw off the covers and climbed out of bed. Why let those memories of long ago rattle him now? He had to figure out how to wipe them from his memory for good.
After a shower, Nick dressed in a navy blue Armani suit and ate breakfast. Yesterday, after the mysterious crazy woman had left his office, he’d acquired his first three real clients. Not clients like he’d had while working with Burns, Copeland, and Whiting, but Nick wasn’t looking for that kind of influence again. During those years, he had careened down the road of life at full speed. Women and money came quickly, and left just as fast. He had been a pawn in their game, and he vowed he never would be again.
He drove to work with the top down on his convertible, letting the cool morning air slap against his skin and bring him fully awake. By the time he arrived at his office and parked his car, he felt prepared for whatever challenge the day could bring. Nothing could be as odd as his encounter with the old-fashioned beauty the day before.
When he hurried through the door of his office, Nick half expected to see Miss Carlisle waiting for him. He might be paranoid, but talking to self-proclaimed ghosts made him feel as crazy as his mother was reputed to be.
The two winged-back chairs on the other side of the desk were empty. Thank heavens! He still couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t seen Miss Carlisle when he’d entered the room with Vanessa. He recalled glancing at the Persian rug, the cabinets that matched his desk, and the coat rack to the side of the door, but not her—not until she stood, anyway. Her bright magenta hat should have grabbed his immediate attention.
Nick sat behind his mahogany desk and pulled out the file of his first client. The appointment wasn’t for another two hours, and he knew he should study up on the case but his mind wouldn’t stop wandering. He pushed away from his desk, went to the window, and pulled the cord to lift the blinds. A light drizzle hit the morning rush of cars on the street, and people scurried up and down the sidewalks to get out of the rain.
“Excuse me, Mr. Marshal.”
Nick swung around so fast it knocked him off balance, and he fell against the window. The woman from yesterday stood in the same spot he’d noticed her the first time, wearing the same clothes. But today she held a newspaper.
When she smiled, no sparkle lit her lovely green eyes like it had yesterday. “Forgive me once again for startling you, Mr. Marshal.”
He straightened, moved to his chair, and sat. “You have
a talent for popping out of thin air.”
“Yes, I’m rather light on my feet. Ghosts usually are.” When she chuckled, the tone of her voice chimed with merriment.
Nick frowned. “Have you returned to convince me of your ghostly state?”
“Yes, Mr. Marshal, and I have brought proof with me.”
She tossed the newspaper on his desk, and he glanced at the front-page headline: “Heiress found dead. Suicide.” A large black-and-white photograph was plastered beneath the headline, and it appeared to be an image of the very woman who now stood in front of him. Nick ran his finger over the curled, brown edges of the newspaper. It looked authentic, but he automatically assumed it was a fake. Wow, my friends went to a lot of trouble, he thought with a smirk.
The woman pointed to the top of the paper. “Notice the date, if you will. April 27th, 1912. Also notice that name in the article. Does it not say ‘Abigail Carlisle, the heiress’?”
Nick lifted his head and arched an eyebrow. “Miss Carlisle, do you really expect me to believe this paper was printed in 1912?”
She scowled. “But of course it was. Why would it have that date if wasn’t printed then?”
“There are many ways a person can create a newspaper, add a historical date, and make the paper look antique. In Hollywood I met plenty of two-bit prop men who could make up something like this for five bucks.”
“You don’t believe me?” Her voice came out small and tight.
He shook his head, realizing that he wanted to believe her. Sadness took out the gleam in her eyes, and the anger lines disappeared from her forehead. Liquid gathered in her green eyes as she bit her bottom lip. Nick’s heart wrenched at her display. Instinct urged him to take her in his arms and comfort her, since that’s what he’d always done with pretty women. But only the old Nick would do something like that. The new, professional Nick would stay behind his desk and not touch her.
“I thought for certain you would believe the newspaper.” She sank into one of the brown leather chairs, dabbing the corner of her eye with a gloved finger. “Now I will never cross over. I will remain in this state forever.” Her voice broke.
Nick sat forward in his chair and linked his fingers together on the mahogany desktop. He just had to know what was going on, and it looked like the only way to make her talk would be to play along. “Okay, Miss Carlisle, for the sake of argument, let’s say you’re from 1912 and you’re dead. Why would you seek a lawyer?”
She sniffed. “On my eighteenth birthday, my maternal grandmother spoke to me about my future. She was a spiritual woman, and she told me she had a dream about me, and that I would need a man’s help with the initials N.M.”
A crazy woman like my mother? How interesting, Nick thought. “What do you mean by ‘spiritual’?”
“She believed in God, and when she had dreams about her family, that was God’s way of communicating with her.”
He nodded. “Go on.”
“Anyway, she told me that her dream foretold of something terrible happening to my family just after I turned twenty-five. She said the man who could help me would be a solicitor.”
Nick couldn’t understand it, but the longer he watched the helpless emotion in her eyes and heard the forlorn tug of her voice, the more he wanted to believe her.
“My grandmother mentioned that this particular man would not be from my time.” Miss Carlisle shrugged. “Back then, I had no idea to what her words meant. Now I do.”
“Because I can see you?” Yesterday’s conversation came to his mind, and a chill ran through him.
“Yes. After my death, I realized I was still alive in a sense, but nobody could see or hear me.” She pulled her chair closer until she could rest her hands on the desk. “Since that time I have been searching for a solicitor with the initials N.M. I have come across a few, but they could not see or hear me.”
Drawn into her story, Nick studied her expression. Her longing gaze penetrated deep into his soul, crying out for help. Am I crazy? A feeling of unease settled into his spine. Her story mirrored one Nick’s mother had told him, one in which he would meet his soul mate. His mother had come to see him during the time he represented Leslie Blake, the almost ex-wife of the famous movie producer. His mother had given him a warning. If he had listened to her then, his life might not have become so miserable.
His mother had told him that through her so-called psychic inspiration, she’d learned that if he didn’t change his lifestyle, something bad would happen. But Nick’s ego wouldn’t let him believe it. He’d believed Leslie knew he was a good lawyer and knew he wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize their working relationship. His mother had also told him to stop looking for women in bars, insisting he wouldn’t find his soul mate there. Instead, she’d said, his soul mate would be a woman who had traveled a great distance for his help.
A coincidence? Nick doubted it. Now he wondered if his mother was somehow behind Miss Carlisle’s unbelievable story.
He scratched his head. “How did you know where to find me?”
“I knew you would come to this building.”
He widened his eyes. “You did? How?”
“Because I was killed here.”
Another cold chill ran through him. “Here, in this room?”
“No. This was my father’s building in 1912. Although the original building has been renovated many times, this is still the very same structure, and a few pieces of furniture and such still remain.”
Nick nodded. “So, Miss Carlisle, do you know who killed you?”
“No.”
“Do you remember the events leading up to your death?”
Miss Carlisle straightened in her chair. Her gaze dropped to her hands as they smoothed out the material of her dress. “My father, Edward Carlisle, died of a heart attack two weeks before my demise. Needless to say, I was devastated. I came here to be near the people who had meant the most to him.” She paused, and Nick noticed the tears filling her eyes.
She moved away from the desk to the window and touched the rain-streaked glass. “I had closed myself in his office and didn’t want to talk to anyone. I felt so alone, like I had never felt before.” She glanced over her shoulder. “My mother passed on when I was five, and other than my grandmother, I had no close family.”
The young woman switched her attention to something outside and stared. “Anyway, about an hour later, my uncle knocked on the door.”
“Your uncle?” Nick frowned. “Didn’t you just say you had no other family besides your grandmother?”
Her steely green eyes bored into him. “I didn’t have any close family.”
“Go on.”
She turned and sat on the windowsill. “My uncle had come to see me a couple of days after my father died, wanting more of his inheritance. I refused him then, so he returned. This time he wanted to be my guardian, and I refused again. My father hadn’t trusted him for many years.”
“What were his reasons for wanting to be your guardian?”
“Although I was twenty-five, I hadn’t wed. My uncle said I wasn’t mature enough and that I was a spendthrift. He said my father had spoiled me and because of that I wouldn’t know how to handle his estate. My uncle insisted he was the only person who could help me. He also stated that if I didn’t make him my guardian, he would contest the will and see that I didn’t get anything.”
Nick leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. “Your uncle wouldn’t have been able to do that, Miss Carlisle. I know the law quite well.”
She shook her head. “Times were different back then. If my uncle proved that I was not in the right frame of mind, he would have been able to take my inheritance from me.”
“Then what happened?”
“I screamed at him to leave. I promised he wouldn’t get a penny of my father’s wealth. After he left, I cried until I fell asleep. None of my father’s employees tried to wake me. They left me alone to mourn and to be near my memories, I suppose. When I finally awoke, the roo
m was dark. I had no idea what time of the night it was.”
Miss Carlisle wrung her hands against her stomach. “Someone was in the room, but it was too dark to see. I asked who was there, but no one answered. I heard the clicking of a pistol. The last thing I remember was the pungent odor of the bullet’s powder as a fierce pain exploded in my head.” Her gloved fingers touched her temple. “After that, I remember standing beside my grave while people threw flowers on my casket.”
She was a great actress—and what an interesting story! If Nick hadn’t given up his private detective business years ago, he would love to invest his time in a case like this, if it was real.
He tapped his forefinger on his chin. “Tell me, if somebody killed you, why does the newspaper say you committed suicide?”
“The murder weapon was found in my hand.”
“That makes sense, but tell me, how am I supposed to discover who killed you if it happened all those years ago? I would think the person who killed you is more than likely dead by now.”
She lowered her gaze to the ground. “That is a good question, but finding my killer is the only way I can cross over. I suppose you would have to use your investigative skills to help me.”
Nick drummed his fingers on the desk and studied her. In all his years practicing law, not one of his cases had sent excitement flowing through his veins like this, or made him feel so alive. If he could take on this case and solve the nearly one-hundred-yearold murder, it would definitely boost his reputation.
But what was he thinking? Even if he did solve her case, who would believe him? Nick knew people would simply think he’d gone crazy like his mother. After all, Miss Carlisle was a ghost—wasn’t she?
He loosened his tie. After undoing the first button at his neck, he cleared his throat. “How about I start using my investigative skills now?” He pushed away from his desk and stood.
Her body stiffened, and she held his gaze.
“Tell me one more thing, Miss Carlisle. What if I were to touch you?” He reached his hand toward her face, stopping just a few inches away. “If you are a ghost, I won’t be able to feel anything. Am I correct?”