Ghost Sickness

by Amber Foxx

  “You’re kind of exaggerating.”

  “Am I? I’ve known him a lot longer than you have.” Niall flipped the quarter and slapped it down it on the back of his hand. “Call it.”

  “Heads.”

  He lifted his top hand. “Some psychic you are. Tails. Typhoon Jamie coming up.”

  The coffee shop was busy when they arrived. Niall brought her to an art-topped table in the center and introduced her to Daphne Brady, who rose and shook Mae’s hand with a firm, assertive grip. The lawyer wore a tight-fitting sleeveless blouse and a short, equally tight skirt. She was thin to the point of emaciation, that old-smoker look like Niall had, only worse. Her skin was the loose-fitting garment that her clothes were not. Cascades of wrinkles bagged on her shoulders, arms, neck, and knees, as well as her face. She needs some muscle to fill that skin. Mrs. Brady’s stick-straight hair, a faded graying blonde, was clipped in a low ponytail with a big sparkly barrette, a jarringly youthful touch.

  They exchanged a few pleasantries, sat down, and then Daphne said, “Niall says you don’t have your own place to practice yet. Mind if we do the healing work in my office? It’s a long way to our house out in Arrey, and it’ll be quieter without Chuck and the dogs.”

  “That would be fine.”

  “Wednesday night? Six o’clock?”

  “Perfect.”

  Misty delivered an iced coffee and a pastry to Daphne. Mae was surprised to see her. “You didn’t take the whole four days off?”

  “Just two. I’m only working lunches, though, and I’ll go back at night. It’s a fun ride on the bike.”

  To her relief, Mae didn’t sense that Misty had heard the witch rumor or that she blamed Mae for Will’s rejection of Montana—a good thing. Misty had been the only supporter of that relationship. “How’s Montana this morning?”

  “Hungover. But nowhere near as upset as I thought she’d be. Can you meet me when I get off at three?”

  “Sure.” Mae had promised Misty information about Reno’s secret activities and hadn’t been able to learn anything yet. Maybe Misty had something of Reno’s Mae could use. “Meet you here?”

  Misty nodded.

  Niall glanced at a note Daphne slid toward him. “What’s that?”

  “The code we’ll use. You asked Florencia to install ... you know. Chuck’s putting it in later this week.”

  Misty stepped back a little. Decent of her, with something private going on. Niall folded the note and tucked it into his shirt pocket. “Should I shred it and swallow it after I memorize it?”

  “Something like that, yes. Florencia thinks the whole expense is ridiculous, that she’ll be dead by the time Chuck gets around to installing it. And she doesn’t want the studio opened before she dies—but we can work around that. Or Chuck says he can.”

  Niall asked Mae what she wanted to eat and followed Misty back to the counter to order and pay. Daphne bit into her pastry and wiped frosting off her mouth. “I’m so ready for something to finally work. Especially after watching what Florencia is going through. I’ve tried the patch, gum, hypnosis, cold turkey, and I still missed my cigs and went back to them. Every time.”

  Niall’s healing had left him disoriented. He was normally so cranky Mae couldn’t tell if he was having withdrawal symptoms or just being himself, but he certainly wasn’t at ease with his experience. She didn’t want Daphne to be so unprepared. “Maybe if you do a few things to get ready, like making a list of the reasons you want to quit, it’ll go better.” And maybe I won’t see your unfinished business.

  Daphne studied her nails. “I’d love to spend my smoking money on a manicure. I hate the nicotine stains.” She looked up. “But what I really want is to go dancing with Chuck and not get tired.”

  “I bet he’ll be happy about that.”

  “He sure will. Back when we were in law school, he almost didn’t ask me out on our first date because I smoked. He’s always said it’s my only fault, and I’ve said it’s the only one he doesn’t have.” She drank her coffee. “Just kidding. He’s the love of my life. Pain in the ass, but the love of my life.”

  I know that feeling. “If y’all were in school together, you must be the same age.” Daphne looked older, but she probably wasn’t. “How come he retired and you didn’t?”

  “Prostate cancer. Scared him into wanting to have more fun. He’s been in remission for three years now, but he never wanted to go back to work after that.”

  Niall returned to sit with them, bringing coffee for himself and handing Mae an iced tea.

  “Florencia’s the opposite of Chuck,” Daphne said. “Having cancer makes her want to work more. She can’t do much, but when she’s feeling up to it she sketches.”

  Niall took a long slow drink. “It’s what makes her feel alive. I need to bring her some colored pencils. She wouldn’t want to go out in black and white.”

  Mae had an image of David’s intricate black-and-white art, his weaving-lightning pot. She asked, “Does she ever talk about making up with her family?”

  “No,” Niall replied. “They’re still banned and so is Reno.”

  Daphne pulled a chunk of her pastry off. “Florencia wants to die on her own terms, according to her idea of going in peace. That means that if people pissed her off or hurt her, they don’t get to stress her out in her final hours by crying and asking for forgiveness.” She popped the bite into her mouth and chewed. “I told her we should play Sinatra at her funeral. ‘I did it my way.’ ”

  Niall half-laughed, rubbing his eyes behind his glasses. “What funeral? Why bother? Who’s left in her life to come to it?”

  A promising cluster of dark clouds huddled west of town while Mae hung out her laundry in the side yard next to the carport, trying to get up the nerve to tell Jamie not to come tonight. The storm gave her a reason to put it off. She needed to get the clothes up quickly so they’d have the hour or so it would take them to dry. Voices drifted to her from the backyard, where Niall was working on the deck project with help from Mae’s neighbor Kenny.

  Hanging the fire-danger shirt brought her back to the night Jamie had vanished from the tent, the night of Zak’s party. She realized now that it wasn’t Zak’s shirt—he wore his clothes skin tight and it had fit loosely on Jamie—and that it was more than a firefighter joke. Either Zak had given it to Melody as a way of warning her off any smoldering passion for her old flame Will, or she’d chosen it as a comment on Zak’s jealousy. Either way, it was a reminder of what a mess their relationship was, a kind of warning label. If you don’t communicate, you could end up like this couple.

  The wind blew a few puffy strands of plastic packing material over the fence at the end of the property past the laundry shed. They skittered through the carport and Mae ran to catch them, popped them, and brought them inside to the trash.

  Her phone was ringing. She checked the caller ID. Jamie. And she hadn’t figured out what to say to him yet

  “Had an idea,” he said. “Lonnie wanted me to go back to my teachers and I didn’t want to, but he’s usually right, so I called Fiona and she’s doing a three-day workshop next month. Sort of intermediate training, but she said we could handle it.”

  “It does sound good, but I have my young’uns in August.”

  “They can come up to Santa Fe with you. I want to meet them. Spend some time with them.”

  “You will, but I can’t be in a workshop for three days while they’re here.”

  “I already signed us up. There weren’t a lot of spaces left.”

  “Did you pay for it already?”

  Silence, then—half-pleading, half-joking, “It was cheaper than a parrot ...”

  Stop charming me. Mae wanted to argue on principle. This was another surprise. But she’d read Fiona McCloud’s book on energy healing and had wanted to study with her. Jamie had finally hit on a surprise Mae wanted. He understood her better than she’d given him credit for. “Thank you, sugar. I’ll see if Daddy can come up with me and do something wi
th the girls during the day. That was generous.”

  “Nah. Selfish. I’d be scared shitless going by myself. I don’t like getting better at this crap.”

  Reassuring him that it wouldn’t be scary with his teacher there, Mae went back outside and tucked the phone against her ear to resume hanging laundry.

  A piercing squeal drowned out Jamie’s next words, followed by small fussing voices and another squeal. “Sorry. Dean and Deanna. I’m at the powwow with Mel. Trying to get up the nerve to talk to David.”

  I know how you feel. As thoughtful as Jamie had been with this latest surprise, she found it even harder to ask for a night on her own, though she still needed it. “Talk about what?”

  “The tent. Think he’s the one who hurt it. Dunno how to mention it. Thought I’d just tell it like a story, y’know? Tell him how upset I was. Normal stuff I’d share with a mate. See how he reacts.”

  “If he’s a good liar, he won’t react much at all.” Mae clipped Jamie’s parrot-print shirt to the line. “I have another idea. What if you got someone to buy some inexpensive thing he made? Then I could find out for you. He can’t know who all your friends are.”

  “Nah. He’s already thought of that. He was taking all his cheap stuff off the counter last night. Don’t want you doing the psychic stuff with him anyway. I just wanted to know about the tent. And Placido. Not this whole big secret about the money—we have to drop that.”

  Mae moved the phone to her other ear, hunched her shoulder up to hold it, and hung the next item of clothing. “I can’t drop it if Misty and Melody don’t want to.”

  “Yeah, you can—” Dean or Deanna made another nerve-rattling noise. “Seriously, love. You’ll do more harm than good if you dig it all up and try to stop them.”

  “Harm? I’m trying to prevent it. I’m gonna see Misty in a few hours and I hope she’ll have something of Reno’s I can use. She needs to know the truth before she marries him.”

  “Let them sort it out for themselves. I’ll explain more tonight. Gotta go. Hopi rain dancers are coming on. Catcha.”

  “Hang on a second. If you’re not taking your van to your mechanics in Santa Fe tonight, why don’t you stay for the ceremonies? No one thinks you’re a witch. You could share your parents’ tent.”

  “Nah. Rather be with you. I’ve seen the final morning a lot. It’s nice, but it starts really fucking early.”

  Mae stalled for time. Telling Jamie no hadn’t gotten any easier. “What am I missing?”

  “The girls run down the arena and back. Really beautiful. After that there’s a giveaway. Families drive pickups in and toss truckloads of stuff to everyone. Fruit, paper towels, laundry baskets. Things that won’t break if you pitch ’em into a crowd. The tipi comes down. And then the medicine men bless you if you want. They pray and mark your face with something. Think it’s ashes from the fire that was in the tipi.”

  “This is when the girls have healing power?”

  “Yeah. They have a lot of power that morning.” He sighed. “Wish Reno hadn’t said that about you. If anyone believed it and saw you there, it’d be bad.”

  “I’m sure that’s why he said it.” Mae felt her jaw clench. She had to get off the Reno track and back to un-inviting Jamie. “But I could use a good night’s rest—”

  “Yeah, it’ll be nice to be in your bed, won’t it? I’ll give you a backrub. Foot massage.” The noisy twins began chanting a did-not-did-too argument with no admonishment from Melody. Mae could tell by the fading of their voices that Jamie had moved away. “Love this dance. Girls have this fringe over their eyes like the way rain looks when it’s just a thin band of it. I can leave when they’re done. It should rain then. They’re good at that. Be at your place in about three hours.”

  “I’m meeting with Misty then, remember?”

  “No worries. I’ll do some grocery shopping or something. Hooroo, love. Catcha.”

  Mae put her phone in her pocket and watched the clouds piling up. She hadn’t told him no. Hadn’t even known how to try.

  A fringe of gray rain stroked the mountains, in harmony with the Hopi dancers she was missing. She pulled Jamie’s old Don’t Worry, Be Hopi sweatshirt from the laundry basket. The tent vandal had ground a lot of chocolate into it, and some stains lingered. The shirt was probably like the tent and the roo, though. He couldn’t throw it out. And she didn’t want him to. He’d loaned it to her the chilly evening in Santa Fe when they’d first met, when he’d first started both charming her and sticking to her.

  Mae brought her laptop with her to the coffee shop, arriving a little early. She still hadn’t done the research she’d wanted to, and this way if she found something of interest, she could show it to Misty. The café was almost empty, with only a few people drinking coffee and working quietly on computers. Mae had her choice of tables and selected the one with the lizard in the desert painted on it. The reptile was appealingly realistic, with a subtle orange-and-brown checkerboard look to its skin. The artist had gotten the shades of orange just right, how it was brighter at the mid-back and shoulders and faded out toward the tail.

  Enough lizard-gazing. She bought an iced tea and began her first inquiry. She was curious to explore David and Shelli’s web site, and Letitia Westover-Brown’s. Also, she wondered if Will Baca had taken the embarrassing video of Jamie off his Facebook page. Since David was a tent-slashing suspect, she started with him.

  The MVP pueblo pots site featured his and Shelli’s most impressive pieces. No earrings or little cats. The “about” link stated the pueblos the couple came from and mentioned that David was the nephew of the well-known Acoma painter Florencia Mirabal. A late relative of Shelli’s who had been the governor of Pojoaque Pueblo also earned a few proud lines. Did the potters like to ride coattails?

  The photography on the home page was excellent and the marketing simple: a list of events at which the couple would be selling their work. They didn’t take online orders, and the page under the link for Shops and Galleries said under construction. David and Shelli had obviously been deterring her from a purchase, not encouraging her. They might even have taken down their retail information temporarily.

  Mae bookmarked the site and looked up Letitia. Her home page featured a striking black-and-white portrait of a bare-chested man riding a racing bike, his lean, sculpted body gleaming with sweat. The heading Notable Men of New Mexico: Portraits and Calendars by Letitia Westover-Brown floated above him. In the text below, he was identified as the winner of the Tour of the Gila the previous year. A sidebar described the photographer’s appreciation of the beauty and vitality of her male subjects, and how she drew her inspiration from artists as diverse as Michelangelo and Delmas Howe. Howe. He’d painted the cowboy angel in Florencia’s collection. Mae looked up at his tabletop displayed on the wall, an entanglement of male arms. As far as she could tell, it never came down to take its turn as an eating surface the way the others did.

  Letitia and Florencia both liked the same artist—but then, he was famous. The coincidence probably didn’t mean anything.

  Mae clicked on the Calendars link and found a list of Letitia’s annual productions. Howe-dy Pardner, a tribute to Delmas Howe’s cowboys, featured real cowboys posed like the paintings. It wasn’t risqué, not the sort of thing Lonnie and Orville had been joking about. The cowboys were sexy, but they had their clothes on. The next title was more suggestive, another cowboy calendar called Wild Riders. The one listed as the bestseller was Smokin’ Bare: New Mexico’s Hottest Firefighters. Was Zak going to be in it? Mae clicked on the title. A new tab opened, showing a muscular man wearing nothing but Smokey Bear’s brown hat and holding a massive hose in a strategic location. He gave the viewer a mischievous grin.

  Misty stopped by Mae’s table. “You need a refill— Whoa, what are you looking at?”

  “Letitia Westover-Brown’s web site. The photographer that was hanging out with Zak and Reno.”

  “You think they’re—? No. No way.”

 
“You don’t think Zak would pose with his hose? He seems vain enough.”

  “Can you imagine what that would do to his image with those kids he coaches? And Reno is not calendar material. I love him, but undress him and he looks like a twelve-year-old.”

  Mae felt her face redden. She didn’t want to think about Reno undressed, but Misty was right. David Mirabal was even further out of the picture. “I was just looking to see what kind of connection they all might have.”

  “You don’t need to.” Misty glanced back at the counter. A customer stood there smiling at her, poised with his cup, asking for a refill. “I’ll be back in a second. You want a refill on your tea?”

  “Thanks. Yes.”

  Mae switched to Facebook. She’d finally given in to pressure from friends in Virginia and gotten a Facebook account, which she used about once a week for staying in touch with them. Her search for Will Baca brought up his fan page as a rodeo pro, filled with pictures of him holding trophies and riding bulls, and videos of Will in action. It wasn’t the page Melody had looked at. Mae tried again and found his personal page, but all it showed was the header and Will’s name, age, and place of birth. The rest was blank.

  When Misty delivered her tea, Mae asked, “Could Will have taken everything off his Facebook page?”

  “He never put Montana’s picture up to have to take it down.”

  “I didn’t mean that.” But it said a lot about him. “I can’t see any pictures.”

  Misty looked at the screen. “You don’t do Facebook much, do you? He’s got it set private, so only his friends can see his personal stuff.”

  “Jamie told me that Letitia was looking at Will’s page and this video he took of Jamie. That means she’s Facebook friends with Will?”

  “Why not? If he’s on her naked cowboy calendar. But you don’t have do all this Nancy Drew online stuff. What I was starting to tell you is—” Misty lowered her voice. “All you need is the table. Reno painted that lizard.”