by Sharon Pape
Rory shook her head. It was unsettling to learn how much she didn’t know about her “client.”
“His father died a few years back, a stroke or something. And now his mother’s battling liver cancer. She threatened to write Jeremy out of the will if he didn’t clean up his act.”
“And he didn’t,” Rory supplied.
“A few months ago, he owed a couple of hundred grand to some mafia guy, and he asked Gail to bail him out again. She was a hardcore bitch, but she’d always had a soft spot for her baby brother.” Casey shrugged. “I guess even that gets old after a while. When she refused to help him this time, Jeremy was so desperate that he even asked David to lend him the money.”
“Did he?”
“He couldn’t even if he’d wanted to. Don’t get me wrong, David does okay, but he doesn’t have that kind of pocket change.”
Which, thought Rory, was why he and Casey were prominently featured on Mac’s list of suspects. She wondered if this little “tip” of Casey’s was actually an effort to shift suspicion to someone else.
“Anyway,” Casey went on, “according to Jeremy, not only wouldn’t Gail help him, but she was going to tell their mother that he was still gambling. Tough love or whatever they’re calling it these days.”
“So Gail winds up dead and now Jeremy has to prove to his mother that he isn’t a killer or a gambler?”
“There you have it,” Casey said with a self-satisfied smile.
Rory leaned back in her chair “I’m not sure why you’re telling me this,” she said. “I don’t have the sense that you and David are particularly broken up over Gail’s death. And I doubt that you’re such good citizens that you’re determined to see justice served. The fact is, with Gail out of the way you have clearer sailing to the altar. And given the timing of her death, you and David will inherit her very sizeable estate. It’s all rather serendipitous, wouldn’t you say?”
Casey recoiled as if she’d been slapped. Gone was the look of composure that bordered on arrogance. “I didn’t have to come here and tell you any of this,” she sputtered, rising from the chair. “I was trying to do the right thing, that’s all.”
She turned and stormed out of the office, the snap of her stiletto heals echoing along the hallway.
A few minutes later, Rory picked up the carton and her purse and left the office. She drove home looking forward to a quiet evening and an early bedtime. But when she turned the key in her front door it met no resistance. The door was already unlocked.
Chapter 20
Rory hesitated outside the house, her heart thrumming a ragged tune that reverberated down through her stomach. She’d locked the door when she left in the morning, hadn’t she? No, she couldn’t be absolutely sure. It was one of those things that she did on autopilot when she was rushing off to work, like turning off the coffeemaker or putting the milk back in the refrigerator. But the coffeemaker could be relied upon to turn itself off after an hour if she failed to do it, and the milk could be replaced for a few dollars. Unfortunately, there was a lot more at stake if she forgot to lock the door.
She drew her gun from its holster, turned the knob and slowly pushed the door open. She stepped inside. The house was strangely still, as if in entering it she’d slipped into the eye of a hurricane. It took her a moment to realize why. There was no tone indicating the alarm system was on. No way in hell had she forgotten to set that too.
She held her breath, straining to hear sounds that would mean an intruder was still on the premises. No ancient floorboards groaned under mortal weight. No door hinges squealed. No whispers penetrated the silence. If anyone else was in the house, they must be frozen in place and holding their breath too.
Still, she forced herself to count to one hundred, Mac’s only bit of advice upon her graduation from the academy playing like a mantra in her head: “Never act in haste. Never act in haste.”
“Ninety-nine, one hundred.” Satisfied that she’d done due diligence in her uncle’s memory, she called out to Zeke. There was no response from the marshal, nor any sound that might mean a trespasser was making his way toward her now that she’d given away her position.
“Zeke?!” she tried louder. What good was living in a haunted house if she couldn’t even count on the resident ghost to scare intruders away? She’d be better off adopting a dog from the pound.
A moment later one of the high hats in the entryway flickered on, then off again, and Zeke appeared beside the bench. His hair and clothing looked more rumpled than usual, as if he’d just been roused from his bed. Of course, there was no actual bed, and as far as Rory understood it, the image he projected was, within certain parameters, his choice. Perhaps he was just trying to provide her with a picture of his current emotional state.
“You can put the gun away,” he said soberly. “They’re gone.”
“Who’s gone?” Rory asked, not ready to loosen her grip on the pistol. She noticed that Zeke was wearing his gun belt, the one he’d had on the night they’d met. Had he conjured it up again, thinking that it would make him more threatening to intruders? She was pretty sure that a ghost materializing in front of them, armed or not, would have done the trick.
“You’ve got no need to worry,” he said. “I’ve taken care of it.”
“Taken care of what?!” Rory demanded. “What’s going on here?!”
“Maybe you oughta have yourself a seat first,” Zeke said, clearly taken aback by the fire that flashed in her eyes and the deep flush of color on her cheeks. “You’re lookin’ a mite feverish.”
“I assure you, Marshal,” she snapped, “that I am not about to swoon or have a bout of the vapors, whatever they’re supposed to be.” She regretted her tone immediately. Zeke hadn’t done anything wrong, unless she counted concern for her as wrong. She’d just needed to vent her anxiety and frustration, and he was a convenient target.
“Yes, ma’am. You do whatever suits you,” Zeke said. “Let me know when you’ve calmed down some, then we’ll talk.” He started to fade away.
“Okay. Okay.” She took a deep breath and slid her gun back into its holster to prove that she was calming. If she let him go, she might not find out for hours what had happened in her absence, and that was even more unacceptable then being treated like she was made of glass. Besides, she had to remember that back in Zeke’s day women played the part of more delicate creatures and men were obliged to take care of them. If he was having a hard time figuring out what was expected of him in any given situation, who could blame him? She could only imagine how hard it would be if their roles were reversed and she had to fit into his world. Zeke was slowly coming back into focus, as though he wasn’t at all sure that he wanted to stay.
“I’m sorry, it’s been a long, trying day,” Rory said, doing her best to relax. “But I’m fine. Really. We can talk now.”
“All right then. About an hour ago, two fellas broke in here,” he said slowly, studying her face as if he still thought she might break down or faint at any moment.
With sudden clarity, Rory realized what had happened. The black Jeep had been following her to the office after all, because the driver wanted to make sure that she wasn’t going straight home.
“They came in a black Jeep, didn’t they?” she said.
“Well, it was black; that’s pretty much all I can tell you about it. But how did you know that?”
“It’s not important. What I want to know is whether the alarm went off.”
“I didn’t hear it, but I figured with all the dandy tools folks have these days, breakin’ and enterin’, even with alarm systems, has gotta be downright easy.”
Rory had too many questions jockeying for position in her head, to waste time explaining that it wasn’t quite that simple.
“Do you know what they were looking for?” she asked instead. From what she could see, the living room and dining room were exactly as she’d left them, which didn’t surprise her. She already had a pretty good idea of what they’d been afte
r.
“They weren’t after cash or jewelry or the usual things. I found them in the study, goin’ through the filin’ cabinets and the papers on the desk. When I popped up, I scared the bejesus out of them and they ran out empty-handed.” Zeke seemed to puff up with pride over his triumph.
Rory had finally reached the limits of her ability to remain passive and calm. “Did they get into my computer files?” she asked as she ran up the stairs.
Zeke was already on the upper landing, waiting for her. “I don’t think so. But there’s somethin’ more you need to know.”
She stopped short, two risers below him.
“There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just gonna say it. They were the same two fellas who murdered Mac.”
Rory crumpled onto the step as if all of her muscles and bones had suddenly dissolved into gelatin. After having heard all of the marshal’s theories, she thought she’d accepted the possibility that Mac’s death might be linked to Gail’s. Obviously she’d been guilty of what Mac liked to call “the ostrich policy.” She’d buried her head deep in the sand, leaving her tail feathers to weather the storm. A ridiculous sketch of herself in that position popped into her head as she sat there, trying to absorb this stunning bit of news.
Zeke sat down on the top step. “They were lookin’ for the file on Gail, weren’t they?”
Rory nodded, not ready to trust her voice. In some ways nothing had really changed, and yet everything had changed. She was still tracking the same killer, but now her investigation might lead to the identification and arrest of the person or persons responsible for Mac’s death as well. Until this moment she’d pretty much relegated that bit of closure to the realm of lost causes.
“Whoever’s behind this wants to find out what you know,” Zeke murmured, as much to himself as to her.
“Then we’ll just have to keep them guessing,” Rory said, more determined than ever to see the case through to its resolution. She stood up, feeling a whole lot stronger than she had any right to expect after her little meltdown.
She looked Zeke in the eye. “Are you in or out?”
“If I can’t talk you out of this, than count me in,” he said, moving out of her way as she marched up the last steps. “Somebody’s gotta try to keep you in line.” The study looked like a mini version of the office after it had been ransacked. Rory stepped over the fountain of papers and folders that had cascaded out of the filing cabinet and onto the floor, and went straight to the bookshelf. Based on nothing more than instinct, she’d been keeping the hard copy of Gail’s file behind a world atlas and several other oversized books since the day she’d brought it home. Thanks to Zeke, it appeared undisturbed. The intruders had left before they’d had a chance to look for it there.
She brushed a few papers off the desk chair and sat down in front of the computer. When she touched the mouse, the screen came up on the home page of her filing system, the cursor blinking on the window that asked for her password. With more time and the right skills the intruders might have gained access. For a moment she felt as if she’d won a bout in a boxing match, but in reality what had she won? In spite of their impromptu encounter with Zeke, these were not the type of men who were likely to give up as long as they were being well paid for their time and trouble. But at some point, whoever was footing the bill was going to decide that it was more cost-effective to get rid of her than to keep tabs on her.
Zeke was leaning against the doorjamb, thumbs hooked into his gun belt. “Anythin’ gone missin’?”
“No,” Rory said, leaning back in her chair with a sigh. “But just thinking about those creeps going through my stuff makes me want to scream. And knowing that they’re the ones who killed Mac . . . it’s, it’s just unbearable.”
“I know. Best thing to do is stop thinkin’ and get busy. You have those pictures you took at the open house?”
Rory sat up straight. “Yes, but I haven’t had a chance to look at them yet.” She opened the lower drawer of the desk where she kept the camera and took out the memory card. Either cameras weren’t on their shopping list, or the thieves had left before they’d had a chance to search the desk, once again thanks to Zeke. Had the marshal been more than smoke and mirrors, she would have jumped up and given him a great big hug.
She slipped the card into a port on her computer and set it for “slide show.” She waved Zeke over to the desk as the first photo came up on the screen. Together they watched the parade of photos without comment. After the last one, Rory turned to him.
“You can see, aside from a little missing wallpaper, there’s nothing that even comes close to being unusual, let alone suspicious.”
Zeke nodded. “It couldn’t hurt to talk to the fella who put the paper up, find out who actually opened the package when it arrived from the manufacturer.”
“That’s already on my ‘to do’ list,” Rory said. “But it sure feels like we’re heading down the wrong road here.”
“It’s not the wrong road if it’s the only road around.”
Rory suppressed a little groan. She hoped Zeke wasn’t spending too much of his free time trying to come up with other pithy words of wisdom.
“Can you leave it so I can look at those pictures again some time?” he asked.
“Sure,” Rory said, trying to figure out the best way to broach a potentially delicate question. In the end she decided to just ask what needed asking and hope that Zeke was in an understanding frame of mind.
“The thing is, if I’m not here, how will you manage to work the mouse, you know, to start the program, pause it, or maybe enlarge a photo if you want to?”
To her relief, Zeke was more pragmatic than emotional about the limits of his current condition.
“I can use energy to move things,” he said. “Of course, there’s the matter of whittlin’ the power down to the right amount for the right job. Too little and it won’t work. Too much and . . . well, don’t you worry, darlin’. I’ll be mighty careful about fine tunin’ it.”
Rory had an awful image of the computer flying across the room and into the wall at the speed of light. She realized too late that her reaction was probably written all over her face. To redeem herself, and in spite of her better judgment, she showed Zeke what he would need to do with the mouse and keys.
He was eager to start practicing right away, but she quickly put that notion to rest. “There’s something more important we have to do first. You saw the men while it was still light out. I need your help to adjust the sketches of them.”
“Sure enough.”
Rory went downstairs to retrieve her sketch pad from the kitchen counter where she’d left it. Zeke was sitting at the table as if he’d been waiting there for hours. The transporter on Star Trek had nothing on him.
She sat down next to him, flipped to the page with the first sketches of the men and showed it to him. “First, tell me what needs changing.”
Zeke studied the drawings. “Okay, the tall guy is younger than I thought. Maybe still in his twenties. And he wasn’t really bald; it was like he shaved his head on purpose, ’cause I could see the outline of where his hair would be if he let it grow. And his nose was flattened lookin’ in the middle like maybe someone broke it for him.”
Rory made the corrections.
“Now the shorter guy, I pegged his age right the first time. He had kind of a pudgy face with mean, little eyes. He was the one givin’ orders. And he had a tattoo on his arm that looked like a big old snarlin’ bulldog.”
Rory showed Zeke the reworked sketches, and he suggested a couple of other changes. They were both so engrossed in what they were doing that they were startled when the kitchen phone rang.
“Thanks, that’s a great help,” Rory said as she reached for the phone.
Zeke gave her a nod and a quick salute of good-bye and disappeared to do whatever ghosts did when they weren’t hobnobbing with mortals.
Rory was pleasantly surprised to find Leah on the other end of the line. They h
adn’t seen much of each other at work, since Leah had been helping out in a narcotics investigation.
“Do you think maybe we could meet for breakfast tomorrow?” Leah asked. “It feels like forever since we’ve gotten together outside of work.”
Rory agreed. She’d been so caught up in settling Mac’s affairs, moving into his house, taking on Jeremy’s case, not to mention learning to live with a ghost, that she’d left her friendship with Leah on a back burner. But there was something in her friend’s voice that didn’t quite match the lighthearted tenor of her words.
“Is everything okay?” she asked. “You don’t sound right.”
Leah didn’t try to make excuses. “Well, I do need to talk to you about something, but I’d rather wait until I see you tomorrow.”
“Oh, come on now. Are you really going to make me wait?” Rory complained with a laugh.
Leah wouldn’t be swayed, and she wasn’t laughing. “It’ll keep till then.”
“Yes, but will I?”
“I guess we’re going to find out.”
Chapter 21
The diner was noisy, crowded with Saturday morning families of squirming children and work-weary parents. Leah was ensconced in a booth, drinking coffee when Rory arrived. Although Rory was hungrier for information than she was for food, she managed to wait until they’d given the waitress their order before she until they’d given the waitress their order before she demanded satisfaction.
“Okay, what’s so important that you couldn’t tell me over the phone?”
Leah took another sip of her coffee before setting the cup down. “I got an interesting call right before I left work yesterday.”
“And?”
“You tell me. What kind of mischief have you been up to, my friend?”
“Do I get to know who’s accusing me of mischief?” Rory forced a laugh even as her pulse shifted into overdrive. It was a good bet that her little foray into private investigation was no longer as private as she’d hoped to keep it. Her goose might be well and truly cooked.