by Sheryl Lynn
Annaliese loved to bake, but she always claimed an excuse for it—it was a holiday, or somebody’s birthday, or it was raining. She even said once that it was so miserably hot she might as well make cookies to justify the heat.
“I can’t wait,” Desi said. “I’m sorry about the noise. It will not happen again.”
Desi followed the older woman out, returning to her car to collect the rest of her bags. It was definitely possible Spike had turned up the volume on the TV. The more Desi thought about it, however, the more positive she felt that she had not left the TV on in the first place.
After carrying the rest of the bags inside, she called, “Spike? Here, kitty. Where are you, bad boy?”
A meow answered. She looked around and heard paws pattering frantically against the basement door. She opened it and the cat sauntered out, his tail flipping in annoyance about being locked in the basement.
DESI SANG ALONG to the golden oldies radio station as she keyed numbers into a spreadsheet. Piles of receipts were spread across her desk. She’d spent an hour organizing scraps of paper for her client. She liked Joe. He always fed her a big plate of his special lasagna whenever she visited his Italian bistro downtown. She hated his habit of filling a paper sack with receipts without making the slightest effort to sort them by type or date. He was almost as bad as her sister. But at least she didn’t have to scour his restaurant to find mislaid papers the way she had to at the antique store.
Spike jumped onto the desk. She picked him up, again, and set him on the floor. He stretched against her leg, unsheathing his claws. “Ow!” She shoved him away. He sat and glared at her, tail twitching. “What do you want? You’re driving me crazy this morning. I already fed you.” As soon as she began typing, he stretched against her leg again. His claws pricked through her jeans. “Ow! That’s it!” He tried to run, but she caught him, tossed him onto the basement stairs and closed the door. “Cat jail for you.”
The phone rang then, so she settled back in front of the computer and answered.
It was Gwen. “Guess what?”
“I’m busy, Gwen.”
“You’re always busy. But you’ll never guess who I ran into at Chico’s.”
“Paul Newman.” Desi peered closely at an invoice. The printer ink had been low and the numbers were only partially printed.
“Didn’t you hear? He passed away months ago. I saw your cute cop friend.”
A ripple ran through Desi’s chest and belly. Buck had called but, uncertain if she wanted to go out with him, she’d let it go to voice mail. She hadn’t listened to his message yet. What if he ate with his fingers or flirted with servers or was a lousy tipper?
“The girls and I stopped in for nachos and a beer. There he was. He’s even cuter out of uniform. He was with a friend. Will. Have you met him?”
A most unpleasant image of beautiful Gwen chatting it up and laughing with Buck formed in Desi’s head. Buck drowning in Gwen’s eyes, and sneaking glimpses of her ample breasts while she charmed him into following her to the ends of the earth and slaying a few dragons along the way.
“Buck and I don’t have a personal relationship,” she said. “I don’t know his friends.”
“You should. Will’s a hoot. He had me laughing so hard I almost peed my pants.”
The scene in Desi’s head shifted to the Mexican restaurant with its cozy booths and dim lighting. The girls, as Gwen called them, were her two best friends. The Three Blonde-keteers, Grandma used to call them when they were in high school. In her mental scenario they charmed Buck and his friend with intimate conversation and lots of flirting.
“I really am busy, Gwen. Let me call you later.”
“Buck asked about you.”
“He did?” She winced at the eager squeak that came out of her mouth.
“He wanted to know what you do for fun. I told him you’re a total stick in the mud, but you like to hike. Turns out he hikes, too. He likes you, sweetie.”
Warmth replaced the sourness in her stomach. She went into the kitchen to make a fresh cup of tea. “I barely know him,” Desi said. She studied boxes of herbal teas. She bet Buck would be an excellent companion on a mountain trail. He wasn’t the type to run his mouth and make a lot of noise, and he sure wouldn’t have any trouble keeping up no matter how tough the trail.
“The girls and I voted,” Gwen said. “You two are meant for each other. It’s unanimous.”
Laughing, Desi selected blackberry tea, filled the cup with water and put it in the microwave.
“Don’t laugh,” Gwen said. “When’s the last time you had a boyfriend? Or even a date? Maybe a little…sugar would loosen you up.”
Gwen didn’t get it. Gwen never lacked for male companionship. Sometimes she had three or four men vying for the chance to take her out for dinner and dancing. But Desi was a loser magnet. She could easily imagine Buck Walker as a buddy, but as a boyfriend? He could have any woman he wanted. Not even Gwen was out of his league.
The microwave dinged. “I have a ton of work to do,” Desi said. “I’ll call you later.”
There was silence on the line, then Gwen said, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“I was just teasing. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
“It’s okay, Gwen. Really. I’ll call you later. Maybe we can watch a movie or something.”
She disconnected but stood for a moment, annoyed at herself for caring what Buck did or did not do. She felt relieved, too, that he’d kept his mouth shut. If he’d mentioned psychic crap to Gwen, then Gwen would have been at her door instead of merely calling.
She set the phone down and pulled the steaming tea from the microwave. Desi held the cup near her nose, hoping for soothing effects. She never got upset about a guy. Sure, she felt lonely sometimes and wished for a little romance. Overall she liked her life. She had a nice house and lots of good friends, and she certainly stayed busy with her work and Rampart. It wasn’t like she mooned around, bored and dissatisfied.
She walked past the breakfast bar and stopped short. The cup slipped from suddenly numb fingers. It bounced on the carpet, splashing her jeans with hot tea. Breath lodged in her throat, and her lungs froze.
All the receipts, invoices and other papers that had been on her desk were now scattered across the floor.
DESI CHECKED the caller ID. It was Buck.
This had not been a good day. After cleaning up tea stains, broken china and scattered paper, and unable to blame the cat, since he’d been locked in the basement, she’d wasted over an hour trying to figure out how the papers had blown off her desk. She checked every door and window for drafts. She even climbed onto a chair and held a candle around the ceiling light fixture to see if there was an air leak. All that proved was that holding a burning candle near a popcorn-textured ceiling was dumb. She’d had to clean off soot then vacuum the bits of texture material that fell on the floor. She had turned the furnace fan on and off several times. Nothing on her desk so much as twitched. She’d even flipped through news stations on the radio and television to see if Colorado Springs had experienced any seismic activity. Nerved up, jumping at every little noise, she’d managed to finish the monthly bookkeeping for Joe’s restaurant, but it had taken twice as long as usual.
On the fourth ring she answered the cell phone.
“Hi, Desi,” Buck said. “What’s wrong?”
Quit being spooky! “Nothing’s wrong.”
“Do you know what the guys at work call me? The Human Lie Detector.”
Bad enough that apparently a mini-tornado had run through her living room, but now he was going all woo-woo on her. She had chills on top of goose bumps. “Good for you,” she sputtered. “I’m busy. I have to go.”
“Desi, come on, talk to me. Is something going on in your house? I’ve been thinking about you all day. I’m worried.”
Before she could reply, noise blared from the phone and banged against her eardrum. She cried out and almost dropped the
cell phone. The screen flared then went black. Though she thumbed the Power button, the phone merely screeched and popped, and a wisp of blue smoke curled from the casing. She flung the phone away, half expecting it to sprout legs and come after her.
For the very first time since she’d signed the papers making this house her own, she wanted to be anywhere but here.
BUCK REDIALED Desi’s number. It went straight to voice mail. He knew for certain she hadn’t hung up on him then turned off her phone. The fear he’d heard in her voice rattled him.
He paced aimlessly through his apartment. He picked up a magazine and set it down. He lifted his old Gibson guitar from the stand. He fingered a few chords and played a few notes, but his nerves were as taut as the guitar strings. Not even a rerun of a college football game on ESPN could hold his attention.
Desi needed him.
He pulled on a coat, picked up his keys and cell phone, and left the apartment.
Ghosts rarely harmed people, he knew. A poltergeist might damage household items, and even slap a person or scratch them, but there was not one credibly documented case of a ghost or poltergeist seriously injuring or killing a person.
Dark Presences, on the other hand, operated by different rules. He didn’t know if they were ghosts at all or were instead something demonic. They did hurt people. They killed.
He drove across town to Desi’s town-house community. He parked in a guest space and got out of the Jeep. He exhaled white clouds. Weather reports predicted snow in the next few days.
An empty parking space drew him. He saw 1411 painted on the asphalt. Desi’s space.
He turned to the double row of town houses designed to vaguely resemble Colonial-style row houses. Most of the windows glowed with interior lights and the flickering of television sets. Number 1411 was dark. He rang the doorbell anyway.
The front door of the neighboring house opened, the storm door squeaking. “Do you look for Desi?” a woman with an accent asked. German, Buck thought.
“Yes, ma’am.” He walked down the steps. “I’m a friend of hers. I tried to call, but she’s not answering. I’m a little worried.”
The woman emanated a touch of suspicious nervousness, but a lot of friendliness, too. The warm, rich, yeasty aromas drifting from the open door made Buck’s belly growl.
The woman flipped her hand. “I tell her, those cell phones are no good. Why do all you young people need to talk, talk, talk all the time? A good black telephone, plugged in the wall, is all you need. You don’t answer? Pah! Let them call back if it’s so important.”
He sensed this woman’s loneliness. She held a lot of good will, too. Desi’s living guardian spirit. “She had trouble with her phone?”
“It blew up. Boom! I tell her, get a good black phone and she won’t have problems like that.” She laughed. “Poor little thing, had to go buy another. I tell her, buy one tomorrow. No need running around when it so cold.” She shook a finger at Buck. “You young people are addicted to your cell phones.”
As if on cue his cell phone rang.
The woman cried, “See!” She hooted laughter.
Buck checked the caller ID. It was Dallas Stone. Sheepishly, he mumbled an apology to the woman. She assured him she would let Desi know he’d stopped by, and she withdrew into the warm and fragrant house.
Headed for his Jeep, Buck answered the phone.
Dallas said, “Hey, Buck, are you still free tomorrow?”
He got in the Jeep and started the engine. He knew why Dallas called. The team was working with the single mother with the “sensitive” cousin. “I am. How did the investigation go?”
Dallas grumbled. “Good and bad. We spent eight hours in the house, hitting it with everything we’ve got.”
“Did you catch anything?”
“Only that goofball cousin. Get this. She claims to channel the spirit of Morgan le Fay.”
Buck lifted his eyebrows. He’d heard many mediums claim to channel such historical figures as Cleopatra and Marie Antoinette, but King Arthur’s witchy half-sister was a first. “Um, has anyone let her know that’s a fictional character?”
“I wish she was fictional,” Dallas said. “I thought we were going to have to knock her out and tie her up to get her out of the way. Pippin has a good idea what’s really going on. The cousin is unemployed. She can’t afford her own place, so Joan, our client, lets her cousin live rent-free in exchange for babysitting. The cousin wants a bigger house.”
“Lofty motives.” The Jeep’s heater vents began blowing hot air. “Do you still want me to do a reading?”
“Tomorrow morning, nine o’clock, if that works for you. We’ll do it at headquarters. That’ll guarantee the cousin doesn’t interfere. I think meeting a real medium will give Joan the push she needs to stand up to her cousin. Or, better yet, throw her out.”
“Sounds good to me.” Buck glanced at Desi’s empty parking space. “Will Desi be there?”
Dallas snorted a laugh. “Don’t need the negative vibes.”
“It might give her some perspective about what I do.”
“Don’t count on it, Buck. She hates psychics.”
“I kind of get that impression,” Buck said.
“She has a sister—”
“Gwen.”
“You’ve met her?” Dallas sounded surprised.
Buck picked up an undercurrent of jealousy. “She’s interesting.”
Dallas said, “Yep, that’s Gwen. Interesting. She blew through about a quarter of a million dollars on séances and mediums. Almost her entire inheritance. Desi is still righteously pissed off about it.”
Before the situation turned ugly at the Moore house, Desi had mentioned she was a bookkeeper. Not exactly the sort of job he’d associate with an heiress. It made Buck wonder if Gwen had somehow blown through Desi’s money, too. That would explain a lot of Desi’s hostility. “I see.”
“I really want you on the team, man,” Dallas said. “I’d love to gather hard evidence about what it is you can do. I don’t know how to do that yet, but we’ll figure it out. In the meantime, it’s better if you and Desi don’t interfere with each other.”
“Makes sense. I’ll see you tomorrow at nine.” After he ended the call, the car was warm enough that he’d stopped shivering. Desi had lied when she said nothing strange was happening in her house. However, his instincts said—and he always trusted his instincts—pushing Desi Hollyhock’s back against a wall was a mistake. He had no choice except to wait for her to come to him.
DESI PARKED HER CAR on the street in front of Dallas’s duplex. He had called while she was with a client, and the message he’d left sounded very mysterious. When she finally got him on the phone he’d sounded like a kid at Christmas. All he would tell her was that she needed to get to Rampart headquarters.
John Ringo opened the door before she had a chance to knock. He was a big, bearish man with a full black beard. Usually Desi thought he was a big goof, but at other times she sensed something much deeper about him. He never talked about his personal life. Nobody, except Dallas, seemed to know what he did when he wasn’t ghost hunting.
“Baby girl, we are about to rock your world.”
Pippin poked her head out of the bedroom Dallas had turned into the tech room. “Good! You’re here. Come on, Desi. Come on!”
Curious, but wary, she dropped her coat, hat and purse on the conference table and followed Ringo to the tech room. She debated telling Dallas about the oddball things happening her house. But Ringo would tease her mercilessly and she’d lose credibility as a debunker. In fact, quite a few Rampart members would take far too much satisfaction from her reports of paranormal activity.
Seeing Buck she stopped short. Damn, he was good-looking. His dark brown hair was cut short, almost military, and it gleamed with rich highlights. It took some effort to keep her eyes on his face rather than perusing his body and pondering how he’d look naked.
Dallas grabbed her arm and sat her on the chair facing
a pair of computer monitors set up side by side. Desi held up her hands. “Tell me what’s going on. You’re all acting like nuts.”
Pippin said, “Buck did a reading on Joan. The single mom with the crazy cousin.”
“Uh-uh,” Dallas interrupted. “No preliminaries. Let Desi see for herself.”
Desi could have groaned. It was below zero outside, the weatherman predicted snowstorms, things were going wonky in her house, and Dallas dragged her across town for a psychic reading? Unless Buck had levitated or a camera had caught a full-body apparition who actually talked, Desi could not imagine what had them so excited.
“I will tell you this much,” Dallas said. “Joan signed an affidavit. She and Buck never met before the reading.” He pointed at himself then at Ringo and Pippin. “None of us told Buck any personal info. He didn’t look at any of the video or recordings from our investigation at Joan’s house.”
“Okay.”
“We covered the session with cameras, recorders and meters. We held it here to keep outside influence to a minimum.” Dallas winked and patted a device sitting on the table. Desi didn’t recognize what it was. “My new baby. It’s a thermal camera.”
“Wow,” Desi said. She’d seen what other investigators captured on thermal cameras. Cold spots were a common phenomenon associated with paranormal activity. Since investigators and researchers had begun using thermal cameras, which recorded heat as opposed to light, there was a lot of documentation of what appeared to be apparitions. “That must have cost a fortune.”
“It did.” Dallas glowered at Ringo. “And any knucklehead who messes with it will end up with broken fingers.” He sat and pulled a keyboard onto his lap. “I’m going to show you the regular video first.”
Desi folded her arms and settled comfortably on the chair. She glanced at Buck. She got a distinct impression that the excitement and attention made him uncomfortable.
The screen came alive with a black-and-white video. Joan was a chunky woman. Seated, her knees and elbows drawn tight, she twisted a strand of hair around her fingers and appeared to be chewing gum. Buck sat on a chair facing her. He sat straight, his shoulders square and with his hands on his knees. Off camera Dallas stated the time, date and the names of the participants before he told Buck to begin. Worry flashed across Buck’s face. He looked as if he wanted directions. Finally, his shoulders rose with a heavy breath and he smiled at Joan.
