Grim and Bear It

by Paula Lester

“Maybe you should check again. Just in case? If it is missing, I’ll need to draw up the paperwork.” Tessa held her breath. It looked like Chet’s spirit was holding his too, though she was the one who needed oxygen.

  Mary moved to the armoire in the corner, opening one side. She dug around for a minute and then pulled out a cardboard box. “This is where your cards are, right, honey?”

  “Yeah. But the rookie card isn’t in there.”

  Mark squirmed in his seat and reached for the box. He pulled off the cover and gasped.

  “Seriously? It’s here. I don’t believe it.” He pulled out the card and set it on the desk. It was in a plastic protective case. Attached to the underside of the case, there was a sticky note. Mark scanned it. When he looked up, his eyes were filled with tears. “It’s from Dad. It says he’s sorry.” He handed the note to his wife and wiped his eyes.

  “Well, I’m glad you found it.” Tessa turned to go, giving Chet a meaningful glance.

  The spirit nodded. “That’s all I needed.”

  Tessa stopped in the hallway and turned toward Mary. “Could I use your restroom before we go?”

  “Sure.” Mary gestured toward the room.

  When Tessa closed herself in, Chet was already there.

  “You’ve been a major problem for me, you know,” she whispered as she waved a hand and the beam of light cut through the air.

  “I’m sorry about that.” Chet floated along the beam, his expression serene. “But sometimes you gamble and win. That’s what I did.”

  “Wait a second,” Tessa cried as Chet moved ahead quickly. “Who killed you?”

  But he didn’t answer. And in the next instant, he was gone.

  Chapter 16

  Tessa spent some time fighting the urge to go to her mom’s house and gloat. She was having quite the day. Two spirits. It looked like reality was going to be fine. Now that Chet Sanborn had passed over, there was nothing much to fret about.

  In the end, she figured Cheryl’d probably got some kind of notification from the higher-ups about it. And since she hadn’t already called Tessa to congratulate her, it probably meant she was going to ignore the accomplishment altogether.

  So, Tessa decided not to waste her time. She asked Silas to take her back to the apartment. After all, it was Sunday afternoon and Pepper was probably plotting something evil to get revenge for all the time she’d been forced to spend alone that week. Instead of a hair ball, Tessa may find herself stepping in something worse within the next few days.

  She thought she should spend some quality time playing wand toy with the cat to avoid such a horrifying fate. And maybe after today’s work, she could make things official and start paying Pepper’s pet fee at the apartment.

  But something niggled at her mind. Chet hadn’t told Tessa who killed him. Of course, it really wasn’t her problem anymore. She’d found her mark and sent him to the other side like she was supposed to do. Figuring out who’d killed him in the first place was the cops’ puzzle to solve.

  And yet . . .

  “Aargh.” She turned toward Silas, who had been uncharacteristically quiet.

  "What? Is it talk like a pirate day?”

  “No.” She couldn’t help but laugh. “It’s not. But I need a favor.”

  “Another one?”

  “Can you take me to the casino again?”

  “I guess.” He glanced at her before returning his eyes to the road and doing a legal U-turn after missing several spots to do one illegally.

  “That was kind of strange back at Mark Sanborn’s house . . .”

  A tingle traveled up her spine. She concentrated hard on not biting her lower lip. “Was it? What do you mean?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing, I guess.” After thirty seconds of silence, he said, “I mean, it was just kind of crazy how you put that all together—about the card and it being back in the armoire. And then the note from Chet to his son. It just worked out so . . . so perfectly.”

  She recognized the strange tone in his voice. He knew something was up. Tessa worked to keep her tone even—and from biting her lip.

  “Just a lucky guess on my part, really,” she said. “I mean, he took out both policies through our agency, one on himself and one on the Hank Aaron card. I was doing my due diligence.”

  “Yeah. Lucky.” He turned onto the highway, heading toward the casino. “And you’re still not a very good liar by the way—even when you don’t bite your lip.”

  Silence filled the cab for the rest of the ride. Tessa worked hard not to squirm. She didn’t want to confirm Silas’ suspicions that something wasn’t right.

  When he dropped her off in the casino’s parking lot, he offered her a simple goodbye with no offer of waiting for her or coming along. She waved and hurried away, feeling his gaze on the back of her head.

  Tessa marched onto the main floor of the casino, trying to ignore the smoke. She located a security camera and waved directly into it. She only had to wait for a few minutes before Horner showed up. He wasn’t in the greeting mood.

  “What do you want?” he growled.

  “I want to talk to the boss.”

  “She doesn’t have an appointment available. Call first next time.” He turned his back to her.

  “I need to talk to her about Chet Sanborn and the money he owed.” She tried to sound mysterious, like she may know where the money was hidden. Then she held her breath, waiting to see if she’d hit the mark.

  Horner stopped and turned back around, frowning.

  “So. Can I please see Melinda?”

  She couldn’t tell if he was scowling or not—his normal expression was pretty much a constant sneer. But he finally jerked his head in a quick nod and led her through the blackjack room to the hallway that led to Melinda’s fancy office. Tessa avoided eye contact with Ricardo as she passed through the blackjack room.

  On the way back, Tessa wondered how Horner had gotten the scar on his face. Was it a childhood mishap or a grown man fight wound? Either way, it made him more menacing, that much was for sure.

  He knocked on the door.

  When Melinda’s clear, strong voice beckoned them, Tessa didn’t wait for an individual invitation. She brushed past the goon and marched up to the boss woman’s desk.

  "Ms. Randolph, you continually surprise me.”

  “Did Chet Sanborn really owe you money?” Tessa demanded. “Or did you owe it to him?”

  Melinda’s overly thin eyebrows migrated toward each other when she narrowed her eyes. Then she glanced over Tessa’s shoulder. “You can go, Horner.”

  Once the door clicked behind him, Melinda sat back in her chair and steepled her fingers. “You’re a nosy one, aren’t you?”

  Tessa didn’t figure that required a reply. “Chet Sanborn didn’t owe the casino money, did he?” she repeated. “I think you’re trying to get the blackjack tournament prize money back.”

  “You do, do you?”

  “Because you need it for your new house,” Tessa added. In for a penny . . .

  “My house? Really?” Melinda sighed. “No. We believed he was cheating. But the cameras weren’t enough to get us the proof we needed.”

  “So, what, you thought he was counting cards or something?”

  “Using a marked deck. Maddox and Horner went over to search his apartment for it.” Melinda’s tone and expression were cool—as though she ordered breaking and entering every day and her actions shouldn’t be questioned.

  “But how would he insert a marked deck into the game?” Tessa asked. “Doesn’t the casino have safeguards in place for that sort of thing?”

  What Tessa knew about casinos and gambling could fit on one sheet of paper if she wrote it down. It was nothing quite like Gloria’s. But she’d watched a lot of movies.

  Melinda’s thin lips got thinner as her jaw clenched. Her next words came through gritted teeth. “The dealer would have to be involved too.”

  Ah. That makes sense.

  If a casino employee was o
n the take, being blackmailed to use a marked deck, that would definitely be something the manager would want to root out and put a stop to. But at the risk of her goons getting arrested for breaking and entering?

  “So, when your guys switched over to trying to find me because they saw me get arrested . . .”

  “We thought you’d been involved somehow. Perhaps you’d disposed of the marked deck,” Melinda finished.

  It didn’t sound like a story Melinda could make up on the fly. But an eerie thought skidded through Tessa’s mind. What if Melinda hadn’t ordered Chet’s apartment searched? What if she’d been more sure of her suspicions that he was cheating the casino? Had she told the owners? What if this was the reason Chet had been killed?

  Melinda’s phone rang, and she picked it up. “Yes?” She listened for a moment. “No, that’s not right. We need one branded car and twenty-eight golf carts for the charity tournament tomorrow.” Another pause and then irritation flooded her features. She smacked the desk with her palm. “No! No, no, no. How many times do I have to tell you people that there will be fourteen teams of four. Fourteen fours. It’s not hard.”

  Unable to shake the feeling that Melinda’s actions had led to Sanborn’s murder, Tessa took the opportunity to scoot out of the room and hurry down the hallway. Her thoughts raced as she tried to fit the puzzle pieces together. If someone connected to the casino had killed Chet, and they thought she was in on it too, then maybe they’d planned to kill her next.

  Male voices drifted into the hallway from a side room. Something about the tone made Tessa pause and listen. “That’s ridiculous! Chino’s not going to go for that.”

  “She doesn’t have a choice. This is a real mess, and if she wants to keep her fancy job and build her extravagant house, she’ll let me handle it.”

  Tessa was sure that was Horner. He sounded venomous. She had a vision of him strangling Chet Sanborn and tossing him in the frigid water at the bottom of the pool. She hurried past the doorway, not glancing into the room. She didn’t want Horner and whoever he was talking with to think she’d overheard anything.

  Relief flooded her when she exited the hallway into the table games room. Ricardo was still at the blackjack table, but now, Gloria sat next to him, her chin resting on a fist. She wore dark maroon eye makeup and exactly matching lipstick, but her expression was forlorn.

  Tessa started to cross the room to greet the other reaper, but then Ricardo surged out of his seat, fist pumped the air, and cheered, lunging forward to gather a big pile of chips into his arms. The others at the table grumbled and moaned. Gloria looked disinterested.

  Someone brushed past Tessa, coming from behind her. It was Horner, approaching the blackjack table. But before he got there, the bulky man suddenly doubled over, clutching his abdomen.

  Gloria sighed and got up, moving toward Melinda’s goon. She waved a hand, and a beam of light appeared in the room. Horner’s spirit rose from his body and hovered there, shock and confusion written all over the semi-transparent features.

  Tessa moved next to Gloria. “Wow. I did not see that coming. Did he have a heart attack?”

  “No.” Gloria shook her head. “That man was poisoned.”

  Chapter 17

  “That Horner guy—what a name.” Cheryl shook her head. “That was supposed to be your assignment.”

  “It was?”

  Cheryl nodded. “You lucked out, and I rearranged your schedule for Ellen Walker.”

  “Thanks for that.” Tessa couldn’t tell if her mother had meant it as a kind gesture or if she’d used it to ensure she stayed employed as a grim reaper. Either way, it had worked.

  But her mother held her cards close, so to speak.

  Tessa sank into the chair across from her mother’s. “Hey, what do you know about that death, anyway? Gloria said it was poison. What kind of poison? Do you know who did it?”

  Tessa had to admit—Horner had been her main suspect in Sanborn’s death. Especially after she overheard his harsh words about Melinda, who had taken her turn as Tessa’s main suspect too.

  Cheryl rolled her eyes. “That isn’t the kind of information we’re given. You know that.”

  “I thought maybe you—"

  “You think I have higher access. And you’re right. I do. I suppose you think I should be thanking you for your little stunt?”

  “For what?”

  “For Chet Sanborn. You probably think you did good sending his spirit away like that—in a room full of people.”

  Chery looked livid, bringing back memories of the time Tessa had used her mother’s crotchet needles to dig for worms in the back garden when she was seven. She’d simultaneously ruined the needles and the day lilies.

  “Technically, he went in the bathroom.”

  “You know what I mean, Theresa.”

  Cheryl tapped her computer keyboard for a minute and then snapped, “I swear, Theresa. Between losing souls, not having your phone on, and insisting on driving that completely unreliable car around, I don’t know how you expect to keep this job.”

  “Linda isn’t unreliable. She’s just picky about when she runs.” Tessa batted her eyes and blinked slowly in an attempt to look innocent when her mother shot her a scornful look.

  “You need to do better if you want to keep this job.” Cheryl leaned forward, her expression suddenly probing with a hint of something else. Insecurity? “Do you want to keep this job?”

  There it was.

  Tessa thought of Ellen and her husband, reuniting in the next life. She thought of Chet, needing some time to make sure his son knew he was sorry for his less than stellar parenting before he moved on. And finally of Mark Sanborn, who would have the gift of spending the rest of his life knowing he’d meant something to his dad.

  “I do,” she said firmly. Tessa knew it was true. She did want to be a reaper.

  Maybe she could even come to terms with what her dad had done for her—and with the hand her mother and the agency had in it.

  Cheryl’s face returned to its usual cool smoothness. “Fine. Then I suggest you start focusing on ways to improve your performance. You can start by giving up on the detective routine. That isn’t what we do here.”

  “I’m not—"

  “Your missing soul is safely across the veil now, so you can move on. Even this new guy—if it’s connected—he’s no concern of yours. Leave the murder mystery to the real detectives. The ones who get paid to solve it.”

  She focused on her computer screen, clearly dismissing her daughter.

  Tessa started to head to her micro-office, but her mother’s use of the word detective rang in her ears. She wasn’t a detective, and she didn’t get paid to be one, but the idea that a killer was loose in the community, still killing, was unsettling. Not only that, but Tessa also couldn’t help but wonder if she may be next on the killer’s hit list. After all, Maddox and Horner had come to her apartment. She wondered what her mother would think if she knew the whole story. But she was smarter than to tell her.

  “You’re right, Mom,” she said when she was out the door. But she was thinking the opposite. Maybe she should act like a detective.

  But what should her next step be? She spun around and made for her car instead, wracking her brain as she went. What next?

  She knew Chet was a gambler. Not a great one, but he managed to get it right sometimes, like when he won the blackjack tournament. Except that had earned him suspicion of being a cheater.

  Tessa got in the car and sat drumming her fingers on the wheel. Would Melinda have suspected any tournament winner of cheating? Probably not. Chet must have had a history of acting less than a hundred percent honestly.

  Of course, Mark Sanborn already knew that about his father.

  Tessa’s brow furrowed. Why had Chet stolen the valuable baseball card from his son and then returned it? He’d told Tessa he never intended for Mark to find out the card was gone—which meant he’d needed the money for something but fully expected to be able to b
uy the card back in short order.

  Maybe Chet had needed it for entry money for the tournament? Who could turn a baseball card into cash?

  Outside almost every casino in the world sits a pawn shop. Mist River’s was no different. She’d seen a pawn shop as she stared out the Silverado’s window while Silas drove her to the casino. That would seem like an obvious choice of places for Chet to sell the baseball card.

  She pulled out of the spot and pointed the car that way. When she got there, she frowned. The place was pretty run-down, with all the requisite neon signs in the big front windows declaring there to be jewelry, video games, sports paraphernalia, gold, and silver handled in the establishment. But the window itself didn’t look like it had been cleaned in months.

  Tessa took a deep breath before getting out of Linda to head into the shop. The bells over the door jangled, and an elderly man looked up from where he sat behind a long glass display case. He was perched on a stool, thumbing through a magazine that Tessa knew wasn’t for the articles.

  “What can I do you for?” His voice was higher than she’d expected.

  “Hi,” Tessa said, her voice sounding a little higher too. “I’m wondering if you can tell me anything about a specific transaction.”

  She approached the desk and peered inside. It was filled with engagement rings, watches, cuff links, and fancy coins. There were even some small metal statues and old-fashioned small appliances. Tessa spotted an open binder with baseball cards inserted in laminated sheets. “It was a Hank Aaron rookie card. Probably came in a week or two ago.”

  The man nodded, wispy gray hair floating around his face. “Yes, yes. I remember it. A man came in and pawned that card. Then he came back a few days later and paid me the money back.” His face scrunched. “It was an odd thing, that. Another man came in a few days later with what looked like the same card. He said he bought it off another guy. But it was a fake.”

  Tessa’s eyebrows shot up. “Seriously? How could you tell?”

  He shrugged but puffed up self-importantly. “I’ve been doing this for a while, young lady. The ink on the second card wasn’t right. Some of it even came off on my fingers.”