Date with a Ghost in Colorado (Cozy Mystery Thriller) (Ghost Mysteries of the Southwest Book 1)

by Angela Pepper

  Then Warren had gone for that midday hike not far from where Samantha was staying, and he'd died. The police ruled it an accident, saying that he'd been distracted by the incoming storm, or had gotten too close to the edge to take a photo, slipped, and fallen to his death. The body had been located by a homeowner investigating the barking of their dog.

  Now his ghost was hanging around Samantha, occasionally dropping hints that she go out and talk to people. His first hint led to the buxom redhead, Toni Winters, a woman who suffered delusions of her own, believing she and Warren were more involved than they were. She'd even been mourning the alleged loss of a pregnancy. Toni hadn't been aware of Warren dating someone else, and Samantha wasn't about to tell her. Toni seemed friendly enough, but her behavior was erratic. Samantha couldn't understand why Toni had wanted to hike up to the point from which he'd fallen.

  She'd met with the bartender, Finn Bruno, with no help from Warren. On their afternoon date, she'd made the uncomfortable discovery that Finn was hung up on Toni and possibly jealous of Warren. Also, the man was disturbingly interested in locking people up in rooms, whatever that meant.

  The ghost had also hinted at concerns about Toni's second cousin, Caitlyn Winters, when he'd pointed out her dropped barrette. But Caitlyn was just a tiny, sweet girl—no threat to anyone. She'd enjoyed getting to know Caitlyn, but as far as she could tell, Caitlyn and Warren had barely been acquainted. That was when Samantha decided the ghost simply wanted her to get out and make friends, live her life.

  It had crossed Samantha's mind, as just one of countless theories, that Warren could have been the one stalking Caitlyn by sending letters. He hadn't struck Samantha as the stalker type, but then again, what did she know? Lucky for his reputation, the letters had apparently continued beyond his death, which cleared him as the culprit.

  Another person, however, did seem suspicious. Wendy Jameson was obsessed with women she believed to be her daughter. Caitlyn was adopted, and had been getting letters she'd described as “creepy.”

  The stranger on the ghosts and psychics message board asked Samantha to define what she meant by “creepy,” but Samantha didn't know the specifics of the letters.

  Scooby75 wrote back: Your ghost friend must be concerned about the girl. Maybe he's sticking around out of concern for his aunt getting help with her mental health. Maybe his death really was an accident, and he's only sticking around to do a few good deeds.

  Samantha couldn't argue with that theory. It was as good as any. So, now what? She didn't want to confront Wendy Jameson. Nor did she want to dump this information on sweet, anxious Caitlyn. There was one logical choice.

  She thanked Scooby75 for her help, logged off the computer, and located the cards for Deputy Sheriff Daniel Robichaud.

  She waited until 5:55 a.m. before she called his number.

  He made a groggy sound. “Hello?”

  “It's me,” she said. “Samantha Torres.”

  He cleared his throat. There was a rustling sound, and she imagined him sitting up in bed. “I'm listening.”

  “I just wanted you to know that I believe you,” she said. “About how you were dead, and how you saw angels, and everything.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “You're not crazy.”

  “That's always good to hear.” There was amusement in his voice.

  “I think there's a lot in this world that we can't explain.”

  There was a pause, and he said, “I've been dreaming about you.”

  She was surprised by the husky intimacy of his voice, and giggled in response.

  He cleared his throat again. “Was there anything else you wanted to tell me, or do you have a psychic gift for calling people at six in the morning on their day off?”

  “I wanted to talk to you about some police stuff.”

  “Vague,” he said. “I like it. Who wouldn't want to talk to a gorgeous woman about police stuff?” He yawned. “Even at six in the morning. Have you been to Yolanda's?”

  An image of a neon spatula popped into Samantha's mind. She hadn't been to Yolanda's All-Day Bar and Grill, but she'd seen it and the charming neon sign. “I can meet you there,” she said. “How about an hour?”

  He groaned. “I'm up now, so why not? I'll see you there.” He said goodbye and ended the call. Samantha smiled and bit her knuckle. She liked how he'd made it sound like breakfast had been all her idea.

  The idea of sharing a meal with a living person who was both male and handsome excited her. She glanced around guiltily, looking for Warren, but he'd already disappeared with the sunrise.

  * * *

  7:10 a.m.

  Yolanda's All-Day Bar and Grill

  The restaurant was well lit, all the better to show off the artwork on the walls, which consisted of nature scenes, clocks, and images of Jesus, lacquered on thick slices of wood and yellowed with age. Many of the wood-slab clocks had peeling price tags.

  Deputy Sheriff Daniel Robichaud noticed Samantha smoothing out a tag with her index finger. He commented, “Hope springs eternal.”

  She yanked her hand away quickly, lest he get any ideas about future gifts. “Oh, no. I'm not interested,” she said.

  “Hope springs eternal,” he repeated. “The old man who makes those things—Yolanda's father—was going to take down all his artwork and let his daughter update the decor in here, but then some sucker bought a picture of Elvis, swinging his hips in a blue jumpsuit.” Robichaud gave his laminated menu a snap with his hand, making a soggy plastic thunderclap. “Straight after the sale, the old man peeled off the old price tags and marked everything up ten percent, on account of inflation.”

  Samantha squeezed her lemon wedge over her ice water and leaned across the well-worn tabletop. “Deputy Sheriff Robichaud, am I to believe you have a genuine photo of Elvis, embedded in resin on a slab of tree trunk, somewhere in your home?”

  He shrugged. “If arousing your curiosity about my decorating habits is all it takes to entice you into visiting my home, so be it.”

  “Careful what you wish for,” she said.

  The waitress came by and rattled off the Early Bird Special for the day. It was the same as the All-Day special, but a dollar cheaper. Samantha couldn't decide what she wanted. Her stomach was confused about the time, since she hadn't slept the night before, other than a brief nap slumped over her laptop for forty-five minutes that felt like five.

  Robichaud was in no rush to order, and made friendly small talk with the waitress while Samantha tried to focus on the laminated menu. There seemed to be a thousand different combinations. The eggs alone came from her choice of five different farms and levels of organic certification. While she deliberated over whether preferring the pale-yolked, tasteless eggs from factory farms made her a bad person, Robichaud passed the time by asking the waitress about her aging parents, the condition of the family home's leaking roof, and how the new puppy was settling in.

  The waitress, a wooden-bead-wearing, sinewy woman of about sixty who would look equally at home at a yoga retreat, responded that all of the above were getting along just fine, but that she was definitely going to quit drinking.

  “Come on, Marlene,” Robichaud said. “You don't drink that much, do you?”

  She shrugged her bony shoulders. “I had a tipple the other night with some of the regulars, and I woke up eight hours later, kissing a salt and pepper shaker.” She nodded for emphasis and continued, “Didn't wake up 'til Yolanda came in to open up the next morning. Can you imagine? Me, passed out, face down on the staff table. You won't tell nobody, will ya?” She glanced from Samantha to Robichaud. “Gotta protect what's left of my dignity. People talk in a small town.”

  Robichaud broke into one of the most handsome smiles Samantha had ever seen. He had dimples she'd barely noticed before. He swore to the waitress that the information would remain confidential, and then ordered the Early Bird special with cage-free eggs.

  Samantha said, “I'll have the same, plus coffee.” />
  Once they were alone, they talked about food, and how complicated things like eggs had become. They wondered aloud what sort of technological and societal changes they might see in their lifetimes. Robichaud was fascinated by something called the Singularity. Samantha wasn't familiar with the concept, so she listened, interested, as they ate breakfast. He explained how it was inevitable, in the fullness of time, that humanity and computers would eventually merge, changing the very notion of consciousness.

  “We'd all become ghosts,” Samantha said.

  “No,” he said slowly, as though explaining a simple concept to an idiot. “We'd be immortal. We'd live forever.”

  “As ghosts,” she said.

  “You don't get it,” he said. “But don't worry. It's a lot to grasp.”

  She was annoyed by his dismissal of her thoughts. She felt she understood the concept perfectly, but he was ignoring her input just because she used the most simple of terms. Breakfast with Deputy Sheriff Daniel Robichaud had been illuminating. She'd seen how much he cared for the residents of Owl Bend, noted the location of his dimples, and also gotten a strong whiff of his intellectual superiority. At least the former two more than made up for his one detectable flaw.

  When the bill came, she grabbed it and paid it despite his fuss. Then, when it was time to leave, they both remained seated.

  Robichaud said, “You're not moving. Are you stuck to that vinyl seat? Bare legs and vinyl are a bad combination.” He pretended to wave for the waitress. “I'll see about getting some cornstarch from the kitchen.”

  She laughed and gestured for him to put down his hand. “Actually, I did call you this morning for a specific reason,” she said. “I feel awkward bringing it up.”

  “Something tells me it wasn't to learn more about the Singularity.”

  She winced and agreed it was not. Then she told him about her dinner with Caitlyn Winters, and learning of the stalker letters. She relayed what the deceased Warren Jameson had told Samantha about his oddball aunt, and how it was possible the woman was obsessed with Caitlyn.

  Robichaud nodded slowly. “The letters are troubling. I have a file folder full of them at the station, but as I'm sure you've guessed by now, it hasn't been a top priority. The tone of the letters is benign, at least.”

  “If you consider crazy the same as benign.” Samantha tipped her water glass back and crunched on the remaining ice chunks. “Most people are a bit crazy, but they know better than to let it out.”

  The off-duty cop gave her a sidelong, guarded look. “What's that supposed to mean? Is that a crack at me?” Just when his glare was about to get uncomfortable, he cracked into a grin to show her he was only joking. There were the dimples again. He looked down and swiped some stray crumbs off the table. “But seriously, thank you for the tip. I think you may have solved one of the town's big mysteries.”

  “Did you have any other suspects for the stalker letters?” she asked, her voice pitching up to dog-whistle levels.

  “Spit it out,” he said. “What else do you know?”

  She jerked her shoulders up in a guilty shrug. “Just that... Charles DeWitt said something to Caitlyn about finding out who's sending them now and why the letters are still coming.” She paused and repeated some words for emphasis. “Why someone's sending the letters now. And still coming.” She tried to calm her body so her voice wouldn't pitch up so nervously and continued, “It's almost as if Charles or Caitlyn did something to make the letters stop.” Something like push Warren off a cliff, she finished in her head.

  It was an utterly crazy idea, but Warren's ghost was sticking around Owl Bend for a reason. He'd led her to a table at the Watering Hole, where she'd met Caitlyn Winters, and then he'd made a ghostly fuss over the blonde's dropped barrette. Caitlyn had told her she'd been at the station that day, but she could have been lying. What if she and Toni had done something together, and then provided each other with an alibi?

  Robichaud's face gave away nothing. He only nodded, frowned, and then looked up with a breezy expression. “The letters did stop for a while. There hadn't been one for...” He tapped his fingers on the table. “Not for about four weeks, give or take a few days.”

  “Not since Warren Jameson was killed.”

  His face went through a series of expressions, too quick for Samantha to interpret. “You mean killed by the fall.”

  “Yes.” She nodded quickly. “The accident.” She crunched on the final chunk of ice. “Do you think Wendy's the stalker?”

  “It would explain the letters stopping for a month,” Robichaud said. “After her nephew's accident, she was preoccupied with funeral arrangements, and then the art show. It all makes perfect sense.”

  “So, what are you going to do? Knock on her door and ask to see her magazine collection, then flip through looking for cut-out words?” She smiled at how absurd it sounded.

  “I could try and get a warrant.” His eyes glazed over as he looked up. She followed his gaze to a resin-coated chunk of wood featuring a waterfall scene and brass clock hands. “Or I could stop by tomorrow before the garbage truck comes by.” He grinned, showing the relaxed, off-duty dimples that were now becoming familiar to Samantha. “A person doesn't need a warrant to look at whatever's on the curb.”

  “Looks like my work here is done,” Samantha said, grimacing as she worked on peeling her bare legs from the vinyl.

  “I owe you one,” Robichaud said, sliding out of his bench effortlessly thanks to his jeans. “Let me buy you a meal or something. How about lunch? Do you have plans today?”

  She stood and patted her stomach, which was full from the Early Bird Special. “Just digesting, and maybe napping.” She yawned. “I didn't sleep at all last night.” They started to walk, and she tripped herself with the edge of her flip-flop sandal.

  Robichaud caught her before she face-planted on the diner's floor. “You do look tired,” he said. “And being as tired as you are is very dangerous for driving.” He continued to hold one arm around her waist. “My place isn't far from here, and I insist you come with me for a nap.”

  She laughed. “A nap?”

  “I have an extremely comfortable couch. Whenever my sister comes to visit, she stays with me instead of her other friends, because my couch is famously comfortable.”

  “Okay,” Samantha said. “I'll come to your house for a nap, but if this couch of yours isn't all you promise, I'm going to have a bone to pick with your sister.”

  He chuckled and led her outside to the parking lot. As she walked past her rental car without getting in, she got a twinge something was very wrong with the situation, but she pushed the feeling down.

  Chapter 12

  Daniel Robichaud's house wasn't much bigger than the one-bedroom cabin Samantha had been renting. It met her expectations for a cop's bachelor pad so closely, she wondered if she hadn't been there before and forgotten. The walls were gleaming white and sparsely decorated. The only artwork in the living room other than an enormous black flat-screen TV was a glorious round of timber featuring Elvis wearing a blue jumpsuit. According to Robichaud, the photo was taken at a concert in Buffalo in 1972, the first time he wore that blue nail jumpsuit.

  “But why Elvis?” Samantha asked. “Do you really love his music or something?”

  “No reason,” Robichaud said, and he continued giving her a tour of his modest home. Finally, ten minutes later and after much more prying, he made a confession. “Because Elvis is eternal,” he said. “When I was a kid, people were still reporting sightings of him. I love that the public adored him so much, they wished him back into existence again.”

  “Like a ghost,” she said.

  He shook his head. “You and your ghosts.”

  She gave him a serious look. “They're not mine. And you should talk, Mr. Talks to Angels.”

  He snapped his fingers. “Music. We need music, and I can show off my new surround sound.”

  She yawned and surveyed the large couch that dominated the living room
. It was big, black, leather, and L-shaped. And he had not overstated its comfort.

  She took a seat, and for the next twenty minutes, she nodded sleepily as Daniel Robichaud demonstrated the surround sound and played his favorite songs. Then she was nodding off, falling asleep with a soft, clean-smelling pillow under her head and a crocheted blanket draped over her body.

  * * *

  The pretty, dark-haired woman on Daniel Robichaud's sofa slept soundly, barely stirring.

  To keep himself from watching her sleep and feeling creepy about it, he left the room. He went outside and pulled some weeds from his tidy rows of carrot tops, raked up some stray leaves, and washed and waxed his truck. He contemplated cleaning the gutters, but decided it would be too noisy. He went back inside, where he read a paperback in the bedroom for all of twenty minutes before his eyelids got droopy.

  He went to the kitchen, made a pot of coffee, and started watching some TV with headphones on. The flickering light from the big screen didn't seem to disturb Samantha's slumber, and the couch was large enough that he had his own wing, his movements dampened by a mile of upholstery and black leather. He kept looking over at her sleeping face, and his thoughts kept returning to the mystery that was Samantha Torres. What had brought her to Owl Bend? How long would she be in his life? What could he do to prolong her stay?

  She frowned in her sleep, and he looked away guiltily. A moment later, he returned to watching her slumber. Her soft, full lips parted, as though she was about to speak. He wished he had some way to see what she was dreaming about.

  The creases in her forehead deepened, and she began to twitch and move restlessly. Robichaud removed his padded headphones. She was talking in her sleep, murmuring. A tinny sound was still coming from the headphones in his hand, so he paused the movie that he hadn't been following anyway. She mumbled some more, whimpered, and rolled onto her back.