Midnight Investigation

by Sheryl Lynn

  “It’s better this way, honey. Trust me. You’ll be happy when you find your family. So you be a good boy and get out of my house.”

  DESI HIT the Print command, and the laser printer fired up to spit out pages of reports. It was tax season. While businesses had accountants to handle tax returns, Desi had to make sure every receipt and invoice was accounted for and every penny balanced so they could do their jobs. She kept up throughout the year, but inevitably business owners began to panic beginning in January.

  She pulled the stack of reports off the printer tray, checked to make sure every page had printed correctly, stapled the pages and slipped it all into the proper folder. She made a face at the rolling file cart, crammed full of hanging folders. Her spare bedroom was lined with more filing cabinets bursting with paperwork that needed to be retained for seven years in case the IRS came snooping around her clients. If she picked up even one more client she’d have to rent a storage unit.

  Or concede it was time to rent office space in a commercial building. Until now she resisted the idea. She liked working out of her home, and she really liked being able to work in her pajamas.

  She opened the next client’s file.

  “Veronica!”

  Desi screamed. She pushed with her heels, sending the chair skittering backward, and it clunked against the coffee table. She jumped to her feet, fists clenched, ready to fight.

  Heart in her throat, she looked around. The house had an open floor plan with the kitchen and living room separated by a breakfast counter. From where she stood she could see the front door past the kitchen and the sliding glass doors leading to the small balcony in back.

  A movement startled her.

  Spike, wild-eyed, his ears laid into sharp, devilish points, crouched on the top step of the stairs. Every hair on his body stood on end. His poofy tail slashed the air. She could hear him growling.

  The growl undid her. Her nearly falling off the chair would have scared him, but only dogs could make him growl like a leopard.

  A dog hadn’t yelled in her ear.

  She snatched a stapler off her desk. Holding it raised, ready to smash an intruder’s face, she crept toward the kitchen, the only possible place someone could hide.

  No one crouched in the kitchen. Desi exchanged the stapler for a heavy-duty flashlight and searched the town house top to bottom, investigating even the skimpiest nooks and crannies. Spike accompanied her. His fur settled and his tail returned to a skinny whip, but he remained skittish.

  Desi kept waiting for her mind to come up with a rational explanation. She’d dozed off and dreamed the yell. A neighbor had turned up the television volume. A power surge had pulsed through the radio and blared a random signal. The salad she’d eaten for dinner contained magic mushrooms and she was hallucinating.

  No, that shout in her ear had been real. She’d felt it.

  It hadn’t been a little kid, either. That had been a man’s voice, deep and angry.

  “Okay, buster, let’s get this straight. This is my house! I don’t tolerate living people yelling at me and I’m sure not taking it from you.” She glanced right, left, up and down. “I mean it. You don’t belong here so get out right now.”

  She waited. And waited. Her back and shoulders began to ache with tension. How in the world did somebody actually know when a ghost had left? Only one person could tell her.

  She snatched up her cell phone and scrolled through the log of incoming calls until she found Buck’s number. Her thumb hovered over the Send button.

  This new phone worked perfectly, with even better reception than the old phone. It still ticked her off that the pimply-faced clerk at the phone store insisted she had to have dropped the phone in water in order to fry the circuits. Like she’d lie just to get a twenty-dollar trade-in on the ruined phone. The new one still cost a hundred and fifty dollars, and that was after the mail-in rebate.

  Feeling foolish, and glad it was after midnight so none of her neighbors could see her outside in pajamas freezing her butt off, she called Buck.

  SO MUCH FOR NOT looking like an idiot. When Buck answered the phone his voice was husky with sleep. Desi apologized for calling in the middle of the night, but he had laughed and said, “It’s okay. I don’t have to be to work until five-thirty.”

  When he arrived at her house, she said, “You didn’t have to come.”

  Those broad shoulders of his lifted in a shrug. “I was awake anyway. So tell me what’s going on.”

  Desi couldn’t launch into the explanation in the hallway. She offered him a drink and invited him to sit in the living room. Playing hostess delayed the inevitable.

  When Spike hopped onto the love seat next to Buck, she warned him, “Watch out! He’s mean.”

  Tail high and welcoming, Spike stepped onto Buck’s lap and butted his head against the man’s chin. Buck honed in on Spike’s happy spot, scratching him lightly behind the ears. Desi had never seen the cat glom onto a stranger like this. When Desi reached for the cat, he hunkered down and gave her a warning glare. Try it, he seemed to say.

  “It’s okay,” Buck said. “I like cats.” He stroked a big hand over yellow-orange fur. “You haven’t returned my calls.”

  In the days since she’d seen the thermal video Buck had left two voice mails. His concern touched her, but it also increased her embarrassment over how she’d acted. She’d been seriously considering quitting Rampart. She’d had enough woo-woo stuff to last the rest of her life and if she never even heard the word paranormal again, that would be perfectly fine.

  “I needed some time to think.”

  “About?”

  You. She liked Buck Walker. She liked his calmness, his voice and the way he looked. But his…gift! No matter how times she replayed the session videos in her mind, she couldn’t come up with a single rationalization for what she’d seen. The only answer seemed to be that Buck was the real thing, and that meant everything she believed disappeared into smoke. It meant her goofy sister had been right all along when it came to ghosts.

  Still, she liked him.

  “Just stuff,” she finally said. “I’m thinking about quitting Rampart. If ghosts are real, then what’s the point of being a skeptic? It just makes me look stubborn.”

  He nodded as if that made perfect sense.

  “But that’s not why I called you.” She fiddled with a loose thread on her ratty sweater, wishing she’d put on something nicer. She hadn’t even brushed her hair. She pointed at her desk where the screensaver scrolled the message “I ain’t ’fraid of no ghost,” across the monitor. “I was working. The house was quiet—no TV or radio. Spike was sleeping in his basket. A man yelled in my ear.” She closed her eyes. “Right in my ear, like he had leaned over my shoulder. I felt his breath! I almost fell off the chair.”

  “What did he say?”

  “One word. ‘Veronica.’”

  Buck’s eyes widened.

  “That means something?” she asked him. “I don’t know anybody named Veronica.”

  “Didn’t you read the research on the Moore house that Tara posted on the Web site?”

  “Sure. The little boy who died. Jonathon. I told him to go away. It’s been quiet. Nothing has happened. Until tonight, that is.”

  “You need to look at what else Tara found. Veronica Skillihorn was murdered in that house. Up on the third floor where I saw the Dark Presence. That’s what you invited home.”

  Chapter Six

  Buck rubbed his eyes. He was wide awake, but his eyes ached with fatigue. Desi gave him a tour of her house. In cop mode, he checked doors and windows for security, and for anything that struck him as out of place. He went through the unfinished basement, the main floor and the two bedrooms and bathroom on the second floor. He found nothing.

  He did notice that top to bottom her house was squeaky clean and uncluttered. It might have been cold, even sterile, if not for the warm colors.

  Desi didn’t possess much in way of belongings, but everything wa
s quality. Like his mother used to say, “Not much, but picked with care.”

  Only her bed gave him pause. Desi was small enough to sleep comfortably on the love seat in the living room but she had a king-size bed. It seemed out of sync with her minimalist style—unless she had an active, athletic sex life. He doubted it. When he’d run into Gwen at Chico’s, Gwen had assured him that Desi was free and single, and knowing told him Desi didn’t pick up men in bars. Still, he couldn’t help imagining Desi draped in filmy chiffon, stretched out on the bed, smiling seductively. It distracted him from searching with his inner eye for signs of the Dark Presence.

  When he returned to the living room, Desi asked, “Well? See anything?”

  He kept getting impressions of the motherly figure he’d seen around Desi before. Her presence relieved him. Benign, friendly spirits usually fled the area when a Dark Presence showed up.

  “It’s quiet,” he said. He glimpsed a sparkle near the love seat. He felt the ghostly presence like cool, soft cloth draped across his skin. “I could use a glass of water. Do you mind?”

  When she went into the kitchen he faced the love seat and whispered, “I can see you.”

  The spirit’s delight passed through his body. A disconcerting sensation, though pleasant. Her image took shape enough for him to see an older woman with light hair. The sparkles he’d been seeing turned out to be gaudy jewelry. Her facial features were vague, but he saw her smile.

  Desi returned and handed him a glass of water.

  “I guess that shows you have to be talking to the right ghost,” she said. “Before I told the little boy to go away. Tonight I told the big guy to get lost.” She widened her eyes.

  She wanted affirmation, but Buck pretended to not know that. It would take a lot more than being yelled at to make a Dark Presence go away. Besides, he liked Desi the way she was now. No-nonsense, feisty, acting as if when she got her hands on a ghost it would be sorry.

  Don’t think about the bed, he told himself. Quit thinking about her pretty eyes and wondering if her creamy skin was as soft as it looked.

  “Maybe it’s a poltergeist.” Even as she spoke she shook her head. “It looks like poltergeist activity. Except, conditions are not right for poltergeists.”

  “How so?” He sensed the female spirit’s interest in the conversation. She lingered close to Desi, but the only thing visible was her jewelry. Buck could just make out a large brooch and part of a necklace. He downed the water and handed the glass to Desi. “Could I get a refill?” As soon as she returned to the kitchen, he whispered, “I don’t think she’s ready to talk to you right now. Sorry.” He picked up Spike. The big cat curled contentedly over his arm. His purr rumbled.

  When she returned, Desi said, “Every single case of poltergeist activity Rampart has investigated has had one common denominator. Teenage girls. We have tons of anecdotes, but we’ve never documented anything. One theory is that poltergeist activity comes from the girls. They’re doing it on purpose, or unconsciously, or maybe raging hormones create physical manifestation. Speaking from my own experience as a former teenage girl, most of them go through a phase where the occult is fascinating and they’re hyper-suggestible.” She handed him the fresh water.

  “Were you?”

  “Me?” Her cheeks pinked. “Not like my sister and her friends. They held midnight séances and played with mirrors and Ouija boards. In any case, my neighbor on one side is an older widow and on the other side is a thirty-something couple with no kids. No teenagers.”

  Buck said, “What I saw was no poltergeist.”

  “Why are you afraid of them? The Dark Presences? Do you think they’re demons?”

  He drained the water glass. When he handed the glass back to Desi, Spike struggled to reach it. He set the cat on the floor.

  “Maybe,” Buck said. “I’ve seen five or six of them. It’s not good to let them know I can see them.” He refrained from watching the female spirit moving around the room. She wanted his attention. Her cool energy turned cold and Desi shivered. Intuition said that now was not the time. Desi had been badly shaken by the disembodied voice. Now she was calm and he preferred she stayed that way.

  “I’m not totally close-minded. I’ve seen enough to realize the chances are good there’s another plane of existence. A paranormal plane that occasionally seeps over into our perception of the world. What I don’t believe is that dead people hang around to harass the living.”

  He got the distinct impression of the female spirit shrugging and showing her palms in the universal gesture meaning, What are you going to do? He caught his lower lip in his teeth to keep from laughing.

  Desi moved restlessly to the breakfast bar and stopped, facing the front door.

  Petite and compact though she might be, her rear end was round and lush, beckoning exploring hands. From upstairs the king-sized bed seemed to call his name.

  “Desi?”

  She turned around. “I’m so embarrassed right now. I dragged you here on a wild goose chase. It’s stupid to get scared.”

  “Every time I put on the uniform I get scared,” Buck said. “It keeps me alive. Not a bad thing.”

  “Oh, please. You don’t get scared.”

  Spoken as if she knew him. “You want fear? Try a traffic stop. You can’t see a guy’s hands, don’t know what the passengers are going to do. Could be a drunk, or a crazy, or some guy drunk and crazy. Smart cops stay scared.”

  “I hate being scared. It makes my stomach hurt.”

  “Maybe it’s time to contact Alec Viho,” Buck said.

  She laughed, but it had an edge. “I don’t need him stinking up my house with burning sage.”

  He glanced at his wristwatch. When he saw the late hour, as if reminded, fatigue weighted his eyelids. Five-thirty was going to come fast. If he ever got Desi and that oversize playground of a bed out of his head so he could sleep. “At least think about it. Alec has a lot of power. It’s all around him.”

  “Right.” She paced, clutching her elbows with twitchy fingers.

  “Just think about it,” he repeated. The presence of her guardian spirit reassured him. As long as she was around, Desi was safe. “If you’re still nervous, go to your sister’s.”

  Or my place.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Okay.” He picked up his coat. “But I need some sleep.”

  She looked away and he placed a hand against her arm. When she didn’t move away, he rubbed her upper arm. The well-worn fibers of her sweater were soft and nubby, hinting at the warmth of her skin. He wondered what would happen if he suggested he stay the rest of the night. “You can call me anytime. Night or day.”

  She lifted her head. Her sideways gaze, her blue eyes shadowed by luxurious lashes, turned him to mush. Except in his groin, which wasn’t feeling at all mushy. If she suggested chaining him at her front door like a watchdog, he’d do it.

  “Are you hitting on me?” Her voice held a smoky note.

  “Do you want me to?”

  She dropped her gaze. “No.”

  No surprise, but it was disappointing. Bench-pressing a hundred and fifty pounds took less effort than it took to pull his hand away. “Too bad. The offer stands anyway. Call me night or day. I live to protect and serve.”

  He left her then. Fat snowflakes settled on his hair and stung his face. He welcomed the cold, hoping it would cool his heated blood. He got into the Jeep and fired the engine. God, she was beautiful. And sexy. He didn’t need psychic ability to realize she had the power to drive him out of his mind.

  He reached out to grab the gearshift and a woman appeared in the passenger seat.

  His foot slipped off the clutch. The Jeep lurched and died. “Shit! Don’t do that!”

  The spirit gazed at him. He saw her clearly by the dashboard lights. Her hair was smooth and shoulder-length. She had elegant features that reminded him of Gwen. When she smiled he saw traces of Desi, too. Their mother, he guessed. He waited a second for his heart to slow.


  “I’ll tell her about you. Eventually. When she’s in the mood. Why are you visiting me?”

  Her smile faded and so did some of her glow.

  “Not a talker, huh?” He restarted the Jeep. “Did Desi let the Dark Presence in?” The spirit actually shuddered. He took that as a yes. “Do you know where it is right now?” She shook her head. “Can you let me know if it comes back? If it bothers her?” The spirit canted her head as if the idea had never occurred to her. Her hair shifted, revealing an oversize earring with glittering stones. She nodded. “Is there anything I can do for Desi right now? Help her feel better?” She lifted her fingers to her pursed lips and blew him a kiss.

  “DID I REALLY SAY THAT?” Desi asked the cat. Spike prowled the room, his tail an agitated semaphore signaling his desire to knock something onto the floor. “‘Are you hitting on me?’ Really? That’s something Gwen would say.”

  Gwen would definitely say something like that to Buck Walker. Given half a chance, Gwen would snatch him up, twist him around in a passion tornado then drop him, dazed and never knowing what hit him.

  It annoyed her that she’d said no to him. Not that she knew him well enough to jump into bed with him, but it couldn’t hurt to see if he was a good kisser. She licked her lips, unsure exactly how long it had been since anyone had kissed her. His name had been Ted, or Ned. His kisses hadn’t left much of an impression. Everything Buck did left an impression.

  He’d have stayed if she’d asked.

  Idiot.

  To distract herself Desi turned on the television. She flipped through the channels until she found an infomercial where excited people swooned over the unlimited possibilities of a pasta cooker. She turned the volume down low as a buffer against silence and went to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. Later, cradling the hot cup in both hands, waiting for the warmth to seep into her cold palms, she studied her desk. She wondered how much time it would take to move everything around so she could work with her back to the wall.