“He left for Sacramento this morning,” Nevada said. “I talked with him down on the beach before he took off,” she added in response to Trick’s questioning look, then turned to Marcello. “Saw Britt, too. She told me more of your brush pile washed up on her beach last night, and she didn’t sound happy about it.”
Marcello muttered something extremely rude in Italian. “I do not understand how this keeps happening. I am very careful to pile everything well above the high-water mark.” In his free time, Marcello was trying to clear away enough trees and brush to provide a view of the lake from the mansion. Every Realtor they’d talked to had promised that a lake view would up the selling price by thousands.
“Beavers?” Nevada suggested.
Trick fought a smile as Marcello turned to her with an incredulous, “What? What are these beavers?”
“Large rodents with flat tails?”
Frowning, Marcello looked at Trick. “She is making a joke at my expense, no?”
“No.” Nevada said. “Beavers gnaw down trees and build dams.”
“In streams, not lakes,” Trick pointed out.
Nevada shrugged. “It was only a suggestion.” She took a bite of her tuna sandwich.
“Maybe it’s a bunch of kids,” Trick said. “They drag the branches down to the lake, intending to tie them together to make a raft.”
“I have not seen any children on the property.”
“Maybe it’s the ghost,” Nevada said, a remark Marcello didn’t even dignify with a response.
Trick was reaching for some grapes when he remembered the message. “You got a call earlier,” he told Nevada. “A Jonathan Calhoun from the Midas Lake Historical Society. He said he’d found more information for you on Blanche Smith.”
After lunch, Nevada hitched a ride downtown with Marcello, who was headed for the grocery store. Even though Trick hadn’t asked, she’d made a point of promising to make up her lost hours that evening after dinner. That way, if he wanted to avoid her, he could. And if he didn’t…even better.
“Drop me at the mercantile,” Nevada said when Marcello was stopped at the first traffic light.
“You told Trick you were going to the Midas Lake Historical Society.” He made it sound like an accusation.
“And so I am,” she said, “but in case you hadn’t noticed, my clothes are getting shabbier and more threadbare by the day. I need a couple more shirts and pairs of jeans, which I can pick up chea kn pe gp at the Salvation Army, but I want new underwear, and the mercantile has the most reasonable prices in this overpriced tourist trap.”
Scowling, Marcello avoided eye contact. Probably wasn’t comfortable discussing women’s underwear. He didn’t say another word until he pulled to the curb in front of Foster’s Mercantile, a big, old-fashioned general store that still carried the basics despite the latte bar in back and the three aisles devoted exclusively to souvenirs.
As Nevada was unfastening her seat belt, Marcello turned to her, still looking uncomfortable and a little embarrassed. “Do you need money?” he asked. “An advance against your wages?” She wouldn’t receive her first week’s pay for another two days, and Marcello knew that.
She smiled, caught off guard by the thoughtfulness and generosity of his offer. “Thanks, but I’ll manage,” she said and let herself out of the Jeep.
Forty-five minutes later, she walked into the historical society headquarters, the proud owner of some colorful new underwear, socks, three pairs of secondhand jeans, a pink sweater, and four nearly new T-shirts. Plus, she had over two dollars left.
Jonathan Calhoun, apparently engrossed in a book, didn’t glance up until she was halfway across the room. “Ms. White.” The corners of his mouth trembled for a moment, as if they were trying to smile but couldn’t quite remember how.
“Call me Nevada, Mr. Calhoun.”
“Call me Mr. Calhoun, Nevada.” He did smile then, a miserly little stretch of the lips, there and gone in a flash, but a smile nonetheless. “No, I’m joking. Call me Jonathan.” He set his book aside and got up out of his armchair. “I didn’t expect you this early.”
“I took the afternoon off,” she told him. “So what new information did you dig up about Blanche Smith?”
Jonathan studied her over the tops of his glasses. “I found a list of the items mailed to her next of kin after her death. It was stuck in between the pages of one of Miss Opal’s account books.”
“May I see?”
“Of course.” He crossed to the desk on the opposite side of the room, found the list he was looking for, and handed it to her. “Careful,” he warned. “The paper’s old and fragile. If you have trouble deciphering the words, I can help. I’ve had a lot of experience reading nineteenth-century script.”
Nevada handled the yellowed paper carefully, tilting it to get the best light. The handwriting was faded but easy enough read. She skimmed through the list. “One gold amulet,” she read aloud. The last item on the list.
“Check out the scribbled notation at the bottom of the page,” Jonathan suggested.
Nevada squinted, trying to make sense of the squiggles. Whoever had added the line at the end hadn’t been quite the stickler at penmanship as the person who’d penned the original list. “Okay, I give up. What does it say?”
Jonathan’s smile was just this side of smug. “It’s a personal note from Silas kote> < Granger, telling the Smith family how sorry he is for their loss.”
“Was that standard procedure,” she asked, “for brothel owners to write notes of condolence?”
Jonathan shook his head. “No. Definitely not.”
She frowned. “Then why?”
“Good question.” Jonathan pursed his lips. “Perhaps he was truly sorry.”
“Or maybe he was guilty as hell and trying to throw them off the scent.” Nevada stared at the yellowed paper. “The Smiths,” she said. “They were locals then?”
“Oh, no.” Jonathan looked surprised that she would suggest such a thing. “They were Romanichal, British Gypsies.”
“So they were English?”
“Originally, though at the time of Blanche’s death, the family was living in San Francisco.”
Her heart gave a little jolt. The address that had been attached to her file at the Appleton Institute was in San Francisco.
Trick studied the photograph of Blanche Smith on the wall in the dining room, struck afresh by the woman’s startling resemblance to Nevada.
“Strange, is it not,” Marcello said from the doorway, “that two women from two different centuries could look so much alike?”
Trick nodded. “Nevada thinks she may be related to my ghost.”
Marcello crossed the room, stopping in front of the stable. “Nevada does not remember her past. Correct? She remembers nothing of the time before she was committed to the Appleton Institute.”
“What are you getting at?” Trick asked.
“What if she is older than she looks?”
Trick frowned. “I don’t see—”
“Much older,” Marcello suggested. “As in a century and a half older.”
“What are you suggesting, Marcello?”
“Perhaps the reason Nevada looks so much like Blanche Smith is because she is Blanche Smith.”
Trick turned to Marcello, waiting for a punch line that never came. Marcello wasn’t joking. His expression was dead serious. Trick mustered a halfhearted laugh. “That’s crazy.”
“Not if she is a vampire,” Marcello said.
“Are you serious? If she were a vampire, wouldn’t she have to avoid the sun?”
“Have you never heard of sunblock?”
“But what about blood? Don’t vampires crave blood? Hell, Nevada won’t even eat rare steak.”
“Perhaps she is suppressing her cravings,” Marcello suggested.
“How?”
“With medication. She has a plastic bag full of pills. She takes one tablet every morning. I have seen her.”
“That pro
ves nothing. I take pills every morning, too. They’re called vitamins.”
Marcello gave him a pitying look. “Then you would have no objection if I had one of her pills analyzed?”
“Knock yourself out,” Trick said. “You’re wrong about Nevada, and the sooner you figure that out, the better.”
“And if I am not wrong, what then?”
“Look,” Trick said, “even if I believed she was a vampire—which I don’t—I still wouldn’t buy your theory that she’s Blanche Smith.”
“Why not?” Frowning, Marcello tapped Blanche’s photograph. “The resemblance is undeniable.”
“Nevada can’t be Blanche,” Trick said, “because Blanche is a ghost, and by definition, a ghost is dead.”
“I know you think you’ve heard the ghost.”
“Wrong, Bellini. I have heard the ghost and seen her, too.”
“According to Granger family legend,” Marcello continued as if he hadn’t even heard Trick’s interruption, “the manifestation is a ghost, but what if it’s not?”
“If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck…” Trick said.
Marcello stared. “I do not understand the duck reference.”
Trick suppressed a sigh of exasperation. “It’s a saying. In other words, what else could my apparition be but a ghost?”
“I have been doing research,” Marcello said. “Some experts estimate that over half of so-called hauntings are nothing but residual psychic energy leftover from emotionally traumatic events.”
“Events like being stabbed to death?” Trick suggested, heavy on the sarcasm.
After dinner, Marcello stopped by Trick’s room on the second floor to say he was going for a jog on the beach. Trick suspected his assistant was more interested in trying to catch the culprit responsible for dragging limbs onto Britt’s beach than he was in exercise, but either way, Trick had no problem with the plan. The truth was, he could use some time to himself, time to think, time to poke a few holes in Marcello’s ridiculous Nevada-is-a-vampire theory.
But he didn’t get much thinking done. Trick had just settled back against the pillows, hands folded under his head, when he heard a shriek from the third floor.
The two fake cops, he thought. Somehow they’d slipped into the house and cornered Nevada. Galvanized by sheer terror, he took the dimly lit stairs faster than good sense dictated, then paused on the landing at the top, listening hard. No sound disturbed the stillness, at least nothing he could hear over the pounding of his heart. Light spilled out into the hallway from one of the bed konenesrooms at the far end.
“No!” Nevada cried.
Visions of mayhem flashed through Trick’s mind. He lunged down the hall and burst into the room, fully prepared to use his cane as a weapon, only to find Nevada standing alone under the ceiling fixture, studying something cradled in her palm.
“My God, you scared me to death,” he said. “I thought you were being torn limb from limb.”
Her puzzled gaze met his. “Why?” Then, slowly, realization dawned. “I must have shrieked, huh? Sorry.”
“What was it? What set you off? A spider?”
“No.” She smiled. “Though I have faced my share of cobwebs up here. I was cleaning out this old highboy.” She patted the chest of drawers. “And guess what I discovered? A secret compartment. Look what I found inside.” She extended her hand, palm up.
“Pebbles?” he said.
She laughed. “Not exactly.” She passed him a handful of stones. “Have a closer look. Unless I’m mistaken, those are—”
“Gold nuggets,” he finished. “Nice. Worth quite a bit right now, too, with the price of gold through the roof. Was there anything else in the secret compartment?”
“I don’t know. I was so fascinated with the nuggets that I didn’t check any further. Look.” She pulled out one of the top drawers. “Notice how deep it is?”
He nodded. “A foot, more or less.”
“Okay, then. Compare this one.” She pulled out the next drawer. “See? It’s a good three inches shorter.” She pulled out a third drawer that was the same length as the first. “The compartment is hidden behind the second drawer.” She hooked the edge of the false back with her fingernail and nudged at it. “It slides sideways.”
He peered into the dark slot. “Hard to see all the way back in there. Hard to tell if there’s anything else inside.”
“I couldn’t feel anything. Nothing loose. Just the nuggets.”
“There’s a flashlight in the drawer of the bedside table in my room. I think I’ll go get it. I’d like to take a closer look at the secret compartment.”
“I’ll get the flashlight,” she offered, and without waiting for a response, bolted out the door and down the stairs.
Trick studied the nuggets in his hand. Dull gold in color, rough ovals, smooth to the touch but with a few random pockmarks. Most of them were half an inch long or less, but three were over an inch in length. They would have represented a small fortune back in the 1850s. Who, he wondered, had hidden them? And why?
“Found it.” Nevada dashed back into the room, flourishing his penlight. She directed its narrow beam into the secret compartment.
“Empty,” he said, trying not to feel disappointed. He’d hoped for some clue to the nuggets’ original owner.
“No,” Nevada said. “I don’t think it is.” She leaned closer, holding the light steady with one hand while probing the narrow space with the fingers of the other. “There’s something jammed up against the back of the compartment. See?” She shone the light on it. “That’s not wood. It looks like fabric. Or maybe leather.”
“You’re right.”
“Got it!” she crowed. Seconds later, she drew a small leather-bound book from the hidden compartment.
“Who would go to all that trouble to hide a book?”
Nevada leafed through the yellowed pages. “Not a book,” she said. “A diary.” She met his gaze with a stunned expression, her cheeks pale.
“What?” he said.
“Look.” She opened the diary, pointing to the name inscribed on the inside cover.
“Blanche Margaret Smith,” he read aloud, then whistled softly.
SEVEN
Blurry-eyed from too little sleep and too much time spent deciphering Blanche’s tiny, crabbed handwriting, Nevada took her morning pill like a good little girl, then trudged down the path to the beach.
The sky was still dark at a little after six, but the first hint of dawn backlit the mountains to the east with a ruddy glow. Fog hugged the lower slopes, trailing wispy white fingers through the pines. She shivered nonstop, not dressed warmly enough for the early morning chill in jeans and a sweatshirt. Ski pants and a parka would have been more appropriate. Still, there were advantages to being out here in the great outdoors—solitude for one thing. And the complete absence of dusty, musty, old-house smells. She breathed deeply. Room fresheners and dryer sheets might claim to be pine-scented, but nothing, she thought, could accurately duplicate the real thing.
On the other hand, room fresheners and dryer sheets didn’t slap the unwary hiker in the face with their aromatic but dew-drenched branches. Nevada wiped moisture from her cheeks with the sleeve of her sweatshirt as she trudged downhill. She was just mopping away the last of the dampness when the lake came into view. The lake and Britt Petersen.
“Oh,” Britt said, the way people did when they were caught doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing. She dropped the pine bough she was dragging, trying hard to be casual about it but only succeeding in looking shiftier. “I promise this isn’t what it looks like,” she said.
“Okay.” Nevada fought a smile. “What is it then?”
“I was…I was…returning this rubbish that floated over onto my beach.”
Nevada glanced pointedly at the drag marks in the sand. Britt had clearly been hauling the big limb away from Marcello’s trash pile and toward her own pristine strip of beach.
“Why go to so m
uch trouble?” Nevada asked. “Are you that determined to tick him off?”
Embarrassment and then defiance flitted across Britt’s beautiful face. “Okay, here’s the truth, lame as it is. Marcello’s the first man I’ve been attracted to in years. Unfortunately, the big, dumb Italian seems impervious to my charm. In fact, he totally ignores me. The only way I’ve been able to get his attention is to pick a fight.”
“So when there’s nothing to fight over,” Nevada guessed, “you manufacture a problem…like the branches that keep mysteriously washing up on your beach.”
“It sounds silly, I know,” Britt said, “but I think it’s working. Several times when he didn’t think I was paying attention, I’ve caught him looking at me…I don’t know…with a sort of hungry expression. Hungry and maybe a little speculative.”
“Like he’s wondering if you’re as feisty in bed as out,” Nevada said.
“Exactly.” Britt nodded. “You’re not going to tell him about my little subterfuge, are you?”
Nevada did smile then. “And divert the path of true love? No way.”
Nevada burst into the kitchen, all rosy-cheeked, the wisps of hair that had escaped her ponytail curling around her face in tendrils. “Where’s Marcello?”
“Good morning to you, too,” Trick said. “Would you like to split an omelet?”
“As long as it doesn’t have any eggs in it. Where’s Marcello?”
Trick raised an eyebrow and planted one fist on his hip. “What do you mean ‘as long as it doesn’t have any eggs in it’? Haven’t you heard? You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”
“Exactly,” she said. “That was my way of saying no, thank you. Where’s Marcello?”
Trick cracked another egg on the edge of the counter, then dumped it into the bowl that already held two. He was hungry this morning. Apparently that was what happened when a ghost didn’t keep you up all night. He selected a whisk from the kitchen implements bunched like flowers in an old blue enamel coffeepot. “Marcello took the rowboat out early. Said he planned to do a little fishing.”
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