by Paula Lester
“Ah! Very good, then,” the cashier said.
Tessa smiled and hoped he wouldn’t notice when she stole a golf cart to chase Nathaniel down on the first tee.
She changed in the lady’s locker room, then made her way to the practice green where a line of golf carts sat with the keys inside. Stealing a golf cart had to be the easiest thing she’d done all week.
But Nathaniel wasn’t on the first hole. He wasn’t on the second tee either. He played fast. She found him at the turn before the third tee, sitting in his golf cart and enjoying the greasy burger from Sheila’s.
“Need something to wash that down?” She pulled alongside him.
Momentarily, he was taken aback. “Do you work here?”
She nodded. “I’m the new cart girl.” She hoped she remembered the lingo. Hadn’t her first reap thought that’s who she had to be?
“Oh.” Nathaniel scowled. “I thought you folks had a special cart.”
Tessa wanted to slap her forehead. Of course the cart girl had a special cart to carry the snacks and beverages. Here she was with a regular cart and six cans of various soda. “It’s, uh, it’s in the shop. We had to make do with this. You want anything or not?” A little attitude always helped in situations like this.
“Uh, sure.” He nodded, still skeptical, but dug in his back pocket for his wallet. He handed her a twenty, picked a diet soda, and told her to keep the change.
Twenty dollars for a soda. Yeah, he really doesn’t know anything about money.
His face told her she’d already worn out her welcome. Tessa gave the cart a little gas but stopped abruptly. “Hey! Wait.” Her tone made a one-eighty from before. “You’re Nathaniel Neilson, right?”
“You . . . you know who I am?”
“Of course I do!” she said. “You’re practically as famous as your father-in law. You work at Green Holdings, right? I was so sad to hear about Mr. Green’s passing.”
“It’s a tragedy,” Nathaniel said mournfully.
“Does that mean you’re running things there now?”
“I, um. Yes, I guess it does.” He glanced around the greenery, maybe a tad embarrassed he wasn’t there working now. “It basically runs itself these days, though.”
“I’m sure.” Tessa nodding encouragingly. “I’m just glad they caught the guy who did it. I’m sure you are too.”
Nathaniel winced. “I’m afraid I don’t think they’ve got the right person.”
“No?” Tessa wondered if he was truly being honest. Did he really think Lark was the culprit? Maybe so. But Tessa wasn’t convinced.
“It’s a very complicated family dynamic. I’m sure you understand.”
“Not really,” Tessa replied.
“I’m sure you have other golfers to attend to. “This time, it was crystal clear he was meaning to shoo her away. He stretched and rubbed at his back. “And, you know what? I think I pulled a muscle in the last sand trap. I’d better be heading back. It was nice meeting you.”
He nodded, threw his cart in reverse, and looped around her, heading back in the direction of the club house.
Now, Tessa was sure he was lying. Only she didn’t know about what.
Chapter 12
EXHAUSTED WASN’T THE right word to describe how Tessa felt as she fell into bed. She squirmed into her favorite position, on her right side with her knees drawn up a bit. With a deep sigh, she stared into the darkness and began to count slowly from fifty back toward zero. Somewhere around thirty-nine, her eyelids began to get heavy and slide shut.
A horrifying noise from the inky black corner of the room stabbed through the silence and caused Tessa to roll out of bed and onto her feet in a crouch, as though she may need to defend herself. But the fast movement made her dizzy, and she wobbled and then crashed back against the bed.
No matter what Silas thought, she was never going to be a superhero. If anything, he was the superhero around the apartment complex. And with him gone, there were already grumblings about broken furnaces and the leaves piling up around the pool.
But there hadn’t been any sort of talk about break-ins. Tessa scoured her room for a pointy or heavy club-like object. Either or would do, but both was preferred.
The sound repeated, and Tessa recognized it this time. She called off the internal search for a weapon.
“Pepper!” She groaned as she managed to get her feet under her and flipped on the bedside lamp. Sure enough, the cat was in the corner, sitting next to a giant hair ball, looking proud of herself.
"Are you going to clean it up?" Tessa put her hands on her hips and stared at the tortie cat, who stared back impassively, eyes half-lidded.
After a moment, Pepper stalked away from the mess, hopped up onto Tessa's bed, and curled into a tight ball. She closed her eyes, giving a clear signal to Tessa that it was her job to clean up.
"Fine. But don't ask me for any canned food for the next week," Tessa grumbled.
After she’d taken care of the mess, Tessa climbed back into bed, making sure to snap the blankets in such a way that it would disturb Pepper. The cat lifted her head and gave Tessa a searing glare.
"Hey, I'm just returning the favor." Tessa grinned and then settled herself back into her favorite position, snapping off the bedside lamp. She closed her eyes and started at fifty again, slowly counting backward.
This time, the horrible sound that erupted into the black night definitely wasn't the cat bringing up a hairball.
In fact, Pepper was just as startled by the harsh, blaring siren noise. Eyes wide with feral panic, the cat leaped off the bed and ran out of the room, her claws making a scratching noise as they dug into the carpet to give her more momentum.
Tessa sat up, flipped on the lamp again, and reached for her phone—the thing making the horrible klaxon sound. She looked at the screen and noticed it was the reaper app trying to get her attention. She'd never heard it make a sound like that before.
Never a dull moment with this job.
She frantically swept at the screen, trying to get it to shut off. The apartment’s walls weren’t particularly thick, and she could already imagine the neighbors pounding on her door to yell at her.
After fifteen seconds of frantically pawing at the device, Tessa was able to get the alarm off and open the reaper app to discover the thing had been making such a horrid noise because there was a reap happening in less than fifteen minutes.
Tessa leaped out of bed, thinking that she must've missed the original notification. She scrolled through the assignment, scanning the text to find out where she was supposed to show up, but her eyes focused on the name of the assignment instead. Her heart pounded in her ears—she recognized that name. She more than recognized that name.
The time of death and the estimated time of arrival—both provided by the app—were very close. Too close. Tessa glanced down at herself. She was in pajama pants and a long-sleeved shirt, so she decided to call it good enough.
Clutching her phone in her hand, she rushed out of her room, through the apartment, and out the door. She was several steps down the hallway before she skidded to a stop, did an about-face, and rushed back into the apartment to slip on a pair of flip-flops. She knew her feet would probably freeze and turn blue in the cool night, but she didn't have time for anything else. The assignment’s address was at least ten minutes from the apartment building, if she ignored the speed limit. There was almost no way she could make it in time.
Thankfully, Linda started right up. In fact, she seemed raring to go, which was good, because by the time Tessa was on the road, she only had seven minutes to get to the reap. It was in the same general neighborhood as Artemis Green’s house, which was also lucky because Tessa had been there several times in recent days, so she was confident of the route.
This place didn't have a gate out front, and it wasn't as majestic of a home as Mr. Greens, but in Tessa's world, it still qualified as a mansion. It was white clapboard colonial style, and there was one other car in the driv
eway. Tessa jumped out of Linda and hastily checked the upper corners of the porch for cameras, but, unlike at the Green residence, didn't spot any.
She crept up to the front door, half expecting guard dogs or something to leap out of the darkness at her. But nothing happened, and the doorknob turned easily under her hand. She eased herself through the doorway into a big, marble-floored lobby with a spiral staircase in the center. The area was dimly lit by the soft light of a single lamp on the far side of the room.
Movement to her left caught Tessa's attention, and she swung around, trying to think of a way to explain her presence in the home if she got caught by a family or staff member.
But it wasn't her assignment or a member of his household coming out of the doorway. Tessa recognized Jake, another reaper in her office. His expression was grim, which wasn't like him.
Any other time Tessa had ever interacted with Jake, he'd been jovial and friendly—a jokester who liked to have fun. But now, he looked positively solemn. The lamplight cast shadows on his face, which added to the somber effect. He stopped short when he saw her. "Oh, hey."
Tessa glanced over his shoulder into the dark room behind him. "What's going on? I got some weird alarm on the reaper app that I'd never seen before."
"Oh, it was an emergency reap. Something that wasn't on the schedule until the last minute. Everyone within a certain proximity gets a notification, and we’re all supposed to rush there in hopes that someone makes it in time. I was able to get here first."
Tessa was moving forward before she consciously decided to, scooting past Jake into a well-appointed office that made the words man cave leap into Tessa's mind. Everything was all leather and mahogany. But it was lacking in books. There was a stale smell of cigar smoke, but it wasn’t foul smelling. If anything, it was the opposite.
Nathaniel, Artemis Green’s son-in-law, sat slumped in a fine leather chair behind a huge, glisteningly clean desk. Tessa could've almost believed he was sleeping if it weren't for the extreme slackness in his facial muscles and the open pill bottle next to a half-full glass of water on the desk in front of him.
Tessa moved farther into the room to look at the pills without touching the bottle. She couldn’t read the label in the dim lighting, but she could read the big words scrawled on the note that sat next to it:
I'm sorry. I made a huge mistake when I killed my father-in-law. I couldn't live with it. Please forgive me.
Tessa turned to Jake, who had reentered the room with her. "What did he say? His soul, I mean, when you took it over?"
Jake grimaced and ran a hand through dull-copper-colored hair. "I don't usually ask them questions. I've found I sleep better at night when I don't. But he did seem a little confused. Lots of rapid blinking and looking around."
"Confused? If he killed himself, why would he be confused?"
"Well, it happens sometimes when people don't believe in an afterlife. They're surprised to find that they still have a form of consciousness after their death. It seems to happen a lot with suicides."
Tessa pressed her lips together and looked around the room, but there weren’t any other obvious clues. "You sure that's what happened? He committed suicide?"
Jake shrugged. "I guess I can't be sure. By the time I got here, he was already dead. Luckily, his soul was just standing there, like I said, confused."
With a start, Tessa realized they were talking in normal voices. What if they got caught? She lowered her volume. "Have you seen anyone else here?"
He shook his head. "I don't think anybody’s home. Listen, I'm going to take off. I want to get a little bit of shuteye tonight before work. You know how it goes with our job—never a day off." He gave her a wry smile.
Tessa nodded. "Have a good night. I'll be right behind you."
But when Jake left the house, Tessa didn't immediately follow. Instead, she made her way quickly through all the rooms on the ground floor. All empty. Next, she crept up the spiral staircase in the center of the foyer and did a quick check of all the rooms up there. They were equally dark and deserted, including what was obviously the master bedroom.
Where was Hannah? It was the middle of the night—shouldn't she be sleeping in her own bed?
Tessa went back to the office and looked one more time over the note. Nathaniel’s penmanship was exquisite. He’d even signed his name—probably something he was used to doing working at Mr. Green’s business.
Beside the note, there was an open envelope and a letter addressed to Nathaniel and Hannah. It was from Mr. Green’s estate attorney about his will. They were going to have a meeting at the residence.
A bit unorthodox.
But even more interesting, Tessa found Lark’s name amongst those invited to attend. Maybe Sky was wrong. Maybe Lark was going to come into some money after all.
She hoped so.
Tessa made one last look around, satisfied that she was truly there alone. Then she hurriedly retreated, making her way back out to Linda.
It seemed like an open and shut case, like Mrs. Cross had called Artemis Green’s murder. Nathaniel, feeling guilty about having killed Mr. Green, had taken an overdose of pills. It made complete sense.
So why was Tessa’s gut telling her that Nathaniel's death hadn't been a suicide?
Chapter 13
TESSA MADE HER WAY through the lobby of Mist River Manor Apartments with her thoughts still churning over Nathaniel's death. Could he really have killed himself?
When she and Gloria had watched him from the safety of invisibility, he'd been accusing Lark of the crime. And Silas had been arrested for it already. And at the golf course, he’d practically admitted that Mr. Green’s death left him in a prime position with their company. He liked the small bit of notoriety Tessa had given him.
So, why would Nathaniel admit to murdering Mr. Green when he didn't have to? He basically got off scot-free, with a lucrative company to boot.
Something didn't add up. Tessa had pretty much convinced herself that Mr. Green’s son-in-law had been murdered too. But would the police think that?
She highly doubted it. The cops in Mist River seemed to like their cases straightforward, and this one was pretty much just that. If Nathaniel and Artemis had both been killed by the same person, it was going to be up to Tessa to figure out who that culprit was.
But how was she going to do that? Tessa rolled the question over and over in her mind, wondering about the best place to start with the investigation the next morning.
She tried to go back to sleep, but the thoughts were too many. Counting backward wasn’t working. She was caught somewhere in the middle between dreaming and scheming her next move in tracking down this killer when several knocks rapped on her door.
Still dressed in her pajamas and struggling to figure out what time of day it was, she checked the peephole and opened the door.
“You’re out of jail!”
Silas nodded. “They let me go. Someone else admitted to the crime.”
"I see.” Tessa knew who that someone was. She ushered Silas inside, unsure what the past few days meant for their friendship. She checked the time, and it was an unholy hour. Some people called it morning, but Tessa wasn’t included with them.
Silas sat on the couch, and almost immediately, Pepper strode in, acting as if she’d had the best sleep of the century, and she leaped on the couch. She curled up next to him as he stroked her head slowly.
Tessa suddenly felt self-conscious in her pajamas. She sank into an armchair across from Silas and pulled a blanket over her. "Okay, so this is the first place you go when they release you from jail? Why? I would think you’d want to go to your own apartment and chill for a while. I can’t imagine you got much good rest or quality food lately."
"I came here because we need to talk. While I was sitting in that cell, I had a lot of time to think about what you said—that you’re the Grim Reaper—”
Tessa stiffened. "I'm not the Grim Reaper," she corrected. "I'm a grim reaper.”
“Well, I believe it. I believe you. I want you to know I didn't say a word about that while I was in custody. I didn't say anything about you at all, actually, or the death I saw you perform."
“I didn't perform that death. That's not how it works. Deaths just happen the way they happen and we reapers escort the souls across the veil to the next step in their journey. We don't aid, abet, or cause deaths."
She wrinkled her nose a little as she thought about Lee Stuart. Then she shook her head to clear that particular thought. Lee hadn't killed people because he was a reaper. He'd killed people because he was a bad person.
Silas pursed his lips and seemed to mull over what she'd said in silence for a few minutes, continuing to pet Pepper, who purred softly at the attention.
Finally, he blew out a breath. "Okay, I get it. And also, that's really crazy. But I can accept it—I mean, I'm sure there are a lot of things in the world that can't be readily known or understood by the average human mind. But that’s not the problem.”
“No?” Tessa tried to understand where he was going with this. But her morning brain was sluggish. It would’ve helped if she’d had a little sleep.
“My real problem with this whole thing is that you lied to me. I knew from almost the time you took the job with Cooper's Life Insurance that something wasn't adding up. I asked you about it repeatedly. And you always lied."
Tessa winced at the pain in his voice. It was obvious she'd really hurt him.
"I can't trust you." His words were soft, but they carried a huge weight that made them sound deafening to Tessa's ears. "Lying is not a great way to start a relationship. In fact, it's pretty much the most horrible way to start one."
He got to his feet and Tessa had to crane her neck to look up at him as he continued, "I'm not going to tell anyone your secret. But I'm also not going to get any deeper into this thing. You've made it clear you don't trust me enough to tell me the truth about things, so I'm out."
Tessa cowered into her blanket. She didn’t know what to do or say. She felt like someone had hit the pause button on her.
