I picked up the bottle of green sugar sparkles and started to put them on the half-decorated cookie. But again the red specks on the white frosting distracted me, brought back a memory I clearly had been holding back for a long time.
Blood splatters on the snow.
I remembered the woman now. It was my first kill, my first wife, actually, long before Lisa.
Her name was Stephanie, and we had met in college. She had been tall, blonde, with green eyes. Everything about her shouted sex, and I remember liking that the most about her.
For some reason Stephanie and I had been arguing the night I killed her. The police had never found her body, and never would. I had buried her up in the Boise National Forest, deep, very deep, and then killed our dog Harvey and buried him two feet above her, so anyone digging would find the dog bones and stop.
Since she had no parents or close family, I told friends she had taken Harvey and left me for New York City. She had always talked about going to New York to try to break into acting in the theater, and every friend we had knew that we fought all the time. So her leaving me was no surprise to anyone.
I acted upset, angry, then upset again.
Everyone bought my little hurt-husband play-acting.
And after some time had passed, I got a divorce and people stopped asking about her.
That was over twenty years and thirty-five other kills ago. And not once during that time had anyone even questioned me about any of the deaths. I was that good, and that careful. The Foothills Killer had the police stumped.
Now I was happily married, had a wonderful daughter, and taught school in a local high school. I even was an assistant coach on the football team. I only killed once or twice a year, always in my private storage building near the river that I had bought to store sports equipment.
Only Stephanie had been killed out in the open, where I couldn’t control every detail. In the storage building, I controlled the details, controlled the mess, even had a shower to wash up in, along with a washer and dryer to clean my clothes. With gloves and hot water I washed down every woman I killed, then stood them up to dry. I always left them nude, never left any trace of myself on them, and dumped them by keeping my van on the pavement of a well-traveled road in the foothills.
I also changed vans every year.
So why now, sitting in my kitchen, did seeing red specks on a cookie take me back to the memory of that first murder? I hadn’t thought of Stephanie for a decade.
Suddenly around the cookie I could feel the wonderful kitchen, the image of Lisa, slipping away. I tried to hold onto it, but I couldn’t.
TWO
The fresh smell of baking cookies was still around me, but now instead of a covered oak dining table, I was sitting at a Formica kitchen table. The room around me was smaller, clearly less expensive.
“Jason!” my wife demanded, glaring at me from across the room. “Are you all right?”
I glanced up into Stephanie’s face, the face of the woman I had thought about killing for twenty-five years.
“Fine,” I said. “Just day-dreaming.”
Stephanie snorted and shook her head, clearly disgusted. “Wow, that’s a surprise.”
She always complained that I never seemed to be there, never talked to her, never wanted to touch her anymore. The truth was that she was right. I was always off daydreaming, imaging a life where I had killed her.
I glanced around, wondering what had happened to me? How I had become this weak person?
I had the memories of Lisa and Jennifer, yet I knew that in reality Stephanie and I had gotten married right out of college, had two children, one named Craig and one named Leslie. Both kids were now off at college and would be coming home in the next day or so.
Stephanie had wanted us to decorate cookies like we always did, so the kids would have some.
“Make it feel like Christmas,” she had said.
I had agreed because it was just easier to agree with Stephanie than fight her. I had learned that long ago.
The cookie in front of me had white frosting with red sparkles, just like I imagined the snow would have after I cut Stephanie’s neck. For twenty years I had imagined killing Stephanie, imagined doing my dream job of teaching high school.
I also imagined killing dozens of other women I had met in my corporate job, women like Stephanie who deserved to be killed and hung naked to dry.
But instead of acting, I simply did nothing.
That was the story of my life it seemed. I only dreamed of acting while doing nothing. And by doing nothing, I got nowhere. I agreed with my wife, worked my boring job, and came home to the same old bitching. Somehow I had lost the person I might have become.
All I had left was my daydreams.
I stared at the white icing on the cookie, letting the red specks become something besides sugar as I imagined killing Stephanie, slicing her throat, letting her blood spurt out over the snow.
THREE
“Jason,” Lisa said, putting her hand on my shoulder as I stared at the cookie. “Can I get you something?”
“Yeah, Dad, take a break,” Jennifer said. “You’re acting even stranger than normal.”
The memory of cutting Stephanie’s neck, of killing all those other women was there again.
“I’m fine,” I said. I glanced up at my beautiful Lisa. “Honest. I was just thinking how lucky I am to be here with you two.”
“Oh, weird,” Jennifer said.
Lisa laughed and kissed me. “I’m glad you’re here too.” She gave me a wonderful hug and went to get another batch out of the oven.
I looked around the kitchen, at my perfect family, at the wonderful, rich-textured room filled with the smell of fresh-baked sugar cookies. I had made a life for myself with Lisa. Not Stephanie. And it was in this life where I wanted to live.
I stared at the cookie with the red sprinkles, remembering how wonderful it had felt to cut Stephanie’s neck and watch the blood spray.
Then I took another cookie, put white frosting on it, and again put the red sprinkles on it, just to remind myself how lucky I had it.
Poker Boy and his team have saved the world countless times. The Ghost of a Chance agency follows a similar charge. Superheroes and ghosts, all working for the greater good.
But as the holidays approach, both groups face a challenge with higher stakes than either can tackle alone.
The Ghost Agents, including newly dead recruits Belle and Nancy, team up with Poker Boy and his team to stop a deadly threat—and save Christmas.
HEAVEN PAINTED AS A CHRISTMAS GIFT
A Ghost of a Chance Novel
For Kris
Even more popcorn for the brain.
Section One
TRAINING NEW TEAM MEMBERS
ONE
No one expects to die. Belle Watson sure didn’t. Not on a beautiful November day in downtown Boise, Idaho.
Of course dying wouldn’t have been any better on a crappy, rainy day, but this Wednesday afternoon was far, far from crappy. Clear blue fall sky, the leaves on the trees lining the sidewalks bright orange and red, and the afternoon temperature a perfect sixty-five, with no wind. Boise in early November, with the threat of winter right around the corner, didn’t get much better, and that made dying just flat seem impossible, especially at the young and healthy age of twenty-eight.
No one dies while taking a day off work to just spend time with her best friend and do some clothes shopping. Not a high-risk kind of activity.
Belle felt and looked good, better than she had felt and looked in years. She had dropped the thirty pounds she had gained from the eight-year horrid marriage to Brad Duncan, the high school quarterback who became the fat, sloppy, mean, self-proclaimed king of drunks.
He had seemed proud that he didn’t work much and spent all his time in the Varsity Bar down off old Highway 99. He would see how proud he got when he didn’t have her money so he could buy a drink.
She had only been in that bar o
nce and had left in two minutes. It was dirty, smelled of piss and stale beer, and every surface she touched felt slimy. Yet her ex-husband had loved the place.
That alone showed how different they were.
The divorce had now been final for six months and Belle hadn’t spoken with the slob in exactly six months.
And with luck, she never would again. To her friends and people at work she wouldn’t even give him the title of her “ex-husband.” To her he was just “the slug.”
Now she had a brand new apartment in the beautiful, tree-lined streets of North End of town, with new furniture and a new red Mercedes convertible. She had also splurged on a brand new wardrobe that fit her thin, five-five frame perfectly and looked and was expensive. She didn’t need to worry about money since she didn’t need to support the slug anymore and had saved her mother’s inheritance.
Besides, her job paid real nice as well. She had managed to finish college and get a masters degree in forensic accounting, marrying the slug as she finished the last of her thesis. Wow, what a mistake that had been. He couldn’t even manage finishing two years of college. That should have been her first clue, but in those early years, he still looked like the football jock he had been in high school and could sweet-talk her out of her panties without a problem.
That part of their relationship had ended not long after they got married and she hadn’t missed it in the slightest.
Now, on this beautiful afternoon, Belle hoped to improve the already expensive wardrobe some by adding in some fashionable winter clothes.
Belle had her long blonde hair pulled back and felt great walking the wide sidewalk down two blocks from the capital building, her low heals clicking on the pavement. She had been born and raised in Boise and had grown to love the downtown area with all its small shops, older buildings, and tree-lined sidewalks.
Strolling beside Belle was her long-time friend from high school, Nancy Bend. Nancy was also freshly out of a divorce from a worthless idiot who she had supported for years by working at a high-level development job at a start-up computer firm.
Belle and Nancy had gone to college and done their master’s work at the same time. Nancy had her degrees in computer technology and could make any computer just get up off the desk and dance. What Nancy did for a job looked like magic to Belle. Nancy said what Belle understood about corporation financing and network systems was flat out magic period.
Nancy had caught the bastard she had been married to sleeping with a waitress from Denny’s where he spent most of his days drinking coffee and pretending to look for work.
Nancy hadn’t talked to him either in five months, since the moment their divorce had been final. And Nancy had told Belle that sex with her husband had turned sour almost from the start and she didn’t miss it either.
Belle and Nancy, after their divorces, had decided they needed to celebrate at least once a month, even though they spent a lot of time with each other normally, by taking a day off in the middle of the week, shopping, having a great dinner, going drinking, and otherwise just letting their hair down, so to speak.
Belle couldn’t imagine the world without Nancy beside her. They spent most nights together having dinner and watching movies at one or the other’s apartment.
Nancy was three inches taller than Belle, but just as thin. And Nancy also had money from the stock in the start-up firm she had been working at. Nancy had long brown hair that she usually kept up against the back of her head and large, green eyes that Belle loved.
And they made each other laugh. They had needed that laughter a lot over the last few years climbing out of those marriages. Luckily, for both of them, there were no kids involved. For Belle, the idea of having a kid with that slug of a human she had married made her just shudder.
Besides, she and the slug hadn’t had sex in years and that had been just fine with her.
Belle and Nancy had been friends for so long, they basically did everything together. They had spent many a night drinking in the old Idanha Hotel luxury bar, laughing and holding each other while they cried and schemed during those years of first separation and then divorces.
And together, they had sworn off all men, which suited Belle just fine.
The November sky was clear, the weather warm, and they were shopping and laughing and enjoying life. Finally, for both of them, life was good again.
Dying was not in either of their plans for the day.
TWO
Dr. Jewel Kelly sat across from her best friend, lover, and fellow Ghost of a Chance Agent, Tommy Ralston, eating breakfast in the cozy Golden Nugget Casino and Hotel buffet in downtown Las Vegas.
She had gone with scrambled eggs, a muffin, and some fruit, plus an orange juice. Tommy had skipped the fruit and gone for bacon.
As always, the food tasted wonderful, one of the real benefits of this new life Jewel found herself living. All food tasted better than she could have ever imagined food tasting.
She and Tommy were both dressed in their running clothes. They had just finished a two-mile run from their apartment in the University District to the Golden Nugget. Jewel would have never normally liked going out in public in her running t-shirt, sweat pants, and with her hair pulled back, but since not a person in the room could see them, she was getting used to being comfortable instead of fashionable.
She had been a general practice doctor in Buffalo Jump, Montana, working to pay off student loans when she met Deputy Tommy Ralston. They had been attracted to each other instantly, but on the way to a medical emergency just a short time after they met, they had crashed in his patrol car and both been killed instantly.
At that point, they had been recruited for an organization called “Ghost of a Chance.” They basically worked as ghosts in the real world to help keep the future peaceful.
So they were both ghosts and now very much in love. And she had to admit, she was enjoying life a lot more now that she was dead than she had when alive. Sex was better, food tasted wonderful, and nothing except missions seemed that important.
While alive, she had been one of those people who didn’t laugh much and thought everything critically important. She figured that medical school had made that worse. Tommy thought it had just been part of her normal personality.
It certainly wasn’t now.
As Jewel was about to finish her eggs, K.J. Moore (their “handler” as he liked to call himself) appeared and pulled up a chair. Jewel was surprised, since they hadn’t seen him in two weeks since they had solved a small crime with a casino employee taking a guest’s money from the guest’s room.
She and Tommy didn’t ask why they were sent on some missions or why the missions were important. It seemed their main boss, whom they had yet to meet, knew which event would have lasting impact and which event to stop.
So now with K.J. here again, Jewel figured they had another mission.
K.J. was a short man with brown eyes who loved to dress in the wildest, but almost fashionable clothes. He at least thought them fashionable. But this morning he had on a fairly casual gray silk business suit, a bright pink tie, and pink loafers. Except for the first time they had met, that was as tame as K.J. got with his clothes.
“This looks serious,” Tommy said, indicating K.J.’s outfit.
“Two new recruits coming on board,” K.J. said. “And since I did such a good job with you two, my boss wants me to bring the new recruits to Las Vegas as well for a coming mission.”
Both Jewel and Tommy laughed.
“What’s so funny?” K.J. asked, pouting and looking hurt.
“You met us hours after we died, told us nothing,” Jewel said, shaking her head, “and then told us to learn as we went and get to Las Vegas on our own.”
“Worked, didn’t it?” K.J. said, again pretending to look hurt and fluttering his big eyelashes at her.
She just laughed. Damn she loved the little guy even though at times he could be downright frustrating.
“So you want us to go with
you and help with the two new people?” Tommy asked, picking up a piece of bacon and biting on it as he stared at K.J.
“Oh, would you?” K.J. asked. “That would be so helpful. It would mean a lot to me.”
Jewel again just laughed. She and Tommy had only been dead since August, but clearly they knew now almost as much as K.J., who had been an agent for over a hundred years. And Jewel and Tommy were learning more about how to be a ghost every day. Surprisingly, there were lots and lots of tricks to it.
Tommy looked over at her and she shrugged. Then she said, “Better than letting these two new people try to learn this on their own.”
“So we’re in,” Tommy said to K.J., nodding. “When are they dying and where?”
“About now,” K.J. said, looking at his pink-banded watch under his gray silk suit sleeve. “In Boise, Idaho.”
“It’s going to take us half a day to get there,” Tommy said. “Unless you want to teach us how to teleport.”
“I’ll jump all of us,” K.J. said.
“Can we at least go home and change clothes?” Jewel asked.
K.J. looked at both of them, then waved his hand. “You two look fine. Typical American heterosexual couple.”
The next moment the three of them were standing on a sidewalk in downtown Boise, Idaho.
The air was filled with sirens and ambulances were pulling up from all directions.
And the scene in front of them was far, far from pretty.
Jewel turned to K.J., feeling about as angry as she had in years. “If we knew this was going to happen, why didn’t we stop it?”
K.J. just shook his head. “When a person is scheduled to depart the planet, we can’t interfere with that unless The Brigade is interfering and we are trying to set things straight. You know that. But we can offer the newly dead a job if they want to stay and help out.”
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