“Hogwash.”
He smiled, walked toward the door, opened it, then left. Just like that.
God, he drove me nuts.
But I wasn’t a total dummy, so I whispered, “Okay, you’re banned, fake Dean, keeper, collector . . . whatever. You can’t come in here anymore.”
The door was still open when I went there to see if I’d wished him away by some miracle, but no such luck. He was at the threshold, waiting for me. Then, in that unfortunately hunky way of his, he casually lifted a hand, pressing it to the air in front of him, as if laying it against an invisible layer that was keeping him out of the entryway. He even pushed against it, but the barrier held.
He retreated, shrugging. “See? You’ve got a place of your own now.”
“You don’t have a secret way to get inside? Tunnels? Vortexes?”
“Always with the questions. Just trust me on this.”
For the first time, I really did want to, because I’d never had a safer place to go in my life.
With just a grin, fake Dean showed off his skills and took his leave like he was mocking me with his awesomeness, his body folding into itself like fast origami until there was nothing.
I stood there, bewildered. Not only by our strange encounter, but by the transition my body was making because of his absence. I was becoming less solid, molecule by molecule, each one filling with crackling ghost energy until I was one entire boo girl again.
Now, though, I was brimming with extreme Mello Yello energy. I’m talking need-to-run-around-the-earth-three-times hyper. It was because Dean had touched me, and that, multiplied by my recent death-spot visit, clearly equaled major spaz time.
When I turned around to see if he’d lied to me about this house not really being the star place in disguise, I was ready to run if he’d fooled me.
But I was still in the dream house. He’d been straight with me after all.
Huh.
So I darted around the rest of the place, exploring the elegant bedroom with its flat-screen TV, serene blue walls with a couple of waterfallish paintings, and a bedspread with flowery silhouettes over a wide queen mattress. The bathroom had lots of bells and whistles, with two whole sinks and a claw-footed tub that made me go, “Aw.”
If fake Dean were around, I’d actually have a body I could bathe.
Then I stopped my thoughts right quick. No baths around him. Bad, bad, bad idea.
After I’d seen the other two bedrooms plus the study, I bolted up the chimney, then paused in midair outside, looking down at the roof of my new digs.
Mine! Seriously.
As I wondered if any other spirits were privy to the fact that the owner was never going to be in that house again, I conjured my travel tunnel to zoom to the address Amanda Lee had given me for her PI friend. A couple of hours had surely passed, and she should be there.
I landed in a blocky set of apartments a few miles from the beach in Encinitas. Yellow plank wood and flower boxes prettied up the vague surroundings as I found his apartment, then discovered an open window that I could whisk through.
I heard Amanda Lee’s smooth-as-mint-juleps voice first. “Do you ever miss the excitement of getting a new case?”
It sounded like they’d wrapped up a conversation. I couldn’t imagine she would’ve started this meeting with anything other than her questions about Tim’s profile, so I’d missed all of that.
“I don’t recall what excitement feels like,” answered the PI, who had a very slight Spanish accent. He talked so slowly that it even made me bear down while I came around the corner, braking to a complete, shuddering stop in a family room.
I saw a withered man in a plaid recliner, brown-skinned with wisps of gray hair rebelling from his skull. Dressed in a faded striped button-down and khakis, his sock-covered feet were up on the raised footrest, his hand on his potbelly. Dude had to be at least sixty, but seemed much older. And weak in energy, too.
He coughed, or maybe I should say wheezed, into a fisted hand, and Amanda Lee rose from the couch, going to a table beside him, pouring him a new glass of ice water.
I hated to say it, but it smelled like a sick person in here, old skin and medicine. The air was also too warm and heavy, as if it’d taken a moody cue from all the dark-wooded furniture and faded family pictures.
I could tell that Amanda Lee knew I was here, but she hadn’t let Ruben in on the whole ghost secret. I could also tell that she was expecting me to be a bitch to her because of our spat.
It brought to mind that drawing Gavin had made of me. The hellbitch. And I didn’t like it one bit.
I rose to the ceiling, vibrating there, fidgeting while trying to blend.
Ruben’s breath was sliced with effort. “I could call in a few favors with some cop friends, just to check this Tim kid out, if you want. I did it with Elizabeth’s and all your other cases, and it’s no problem now.”
As I said, I hadn’t been the only dead person Amanda Lee had tried to revitalize in order to get paranormal help on Elizabeth’s murder. Someday, she wanted to solve their cases, too.
“That would be wonderful, Ruben, thank you. But you don’t have to extend yourself on my behalf.”
“Just because I’ve started looking like the walking dead since the last time you saw me, it doesn’t mean I’m at hell’s gate just yet.” He shivered in his chair. “Whoo. Cooled off, didn’t it? A stiff breeze is coming through the window.”
As he attempted to rise, Amanda Lee glanced up at me, and I shrugged from my nook in the ceiling corner. So I was too cool for the room. I was what I was.
She headed toward the window. “I’ve got it.”
After shutting it—although she did leave it open a crack, giving me an easy out—she grabbed a wool blanket from the back of a sofa, spreading it over him.
“Gracias. But don’t be looking at me like I’m getting sicker before your very eyes.”
“You have a rattle in your chest, Ruben. You should see a doctor.”
“It’s not serious enough to waylay me for good.”
She laughed. “You’ve been shot at, beaten to within an inch of your life, and in a car accident—and none of that even happened while you were a cop or PI. I don’t think this is what will end you.”
“Flattery. I like it.” He started laughing, too, then coughed again.
Amanda Lee lingered on my frown. Or maybe she was only checking out how I couldn’t stop being such a mild spaz in my corner or how high my color was. I got this rainbow-y only after seeing fake Dean, and even though I’d been killed while there was a ton of caffeine in me, I’d never put on a talent show quite like this.
Her frown trumped mine.
“Well, then,” Ruben said. “I know you came over here for more than just my opinion about a Philip K. Dick story.”
“Pardon?” she asked.
“You’ve never read his work?” He gestured toward his extensive bookcase, which was overflowing with hardboiled novels and sci-fi. “He wrote a short story about psychic mutants who predicted future crimes, and officers would apprehend the could-be perps.”
“‘The Minority Report,’” I blurted. So I liked my books.
Amanda Lee ignored me and said to Ruben, “That situation sounds ideal.”
“You would think. Did it keep society safe? Of course. But is it ethical to point the finger at a person when he has not yet committed a crime? You tell me.”
“You’re comparing this story to me and the visions I’ve been getting about Tim Knudson.”
Ah. So she hadn’t included me in her cover story. Fine by me.
She smoothed down her dark skirt. “I’m not saying this boy is going to be guilty, but what would you do if you saw the potential for a crime before it actually occurred?”
“I might try to stop it, if there was just cause.”
Neither of them talked for a moment. I, myself, was hoping Tim’s dreams would be full of unicorns and puppy dogs tonight. And not in a psychedelic messed-up Prince mus
ic video way, either.
Finally, Ruben muffled a cough and reached for his water, taking a sip. Then he said, “You’ve been eyeing those files near the kitchen for the last half hour, Amanda Lee. I think that’s where you want to be.”
I whipped my gaze to the left, where an open box waited on a dining table. My form sizzled. Were those notes about my case?
“You do have the ability to see the truth in people,” Amanda Lee said to Ruben as she made her way over to the box.
“Not like you do,” he said.
She began pulling out notebooks and manila folders. My energy nearly screamed, I was so excited.
“I dusted those things off after you said you wanted a second look at them,” he said. “Can I ask why?”
“There’s something that’s been bothering me about Jensen’s case. It’s as if I’m missing a detail I should’ve seen the first time around.”
In other words: I have a ghost bugging me about her murder, and she’s been at me to see you and her file notes.
“You getting one of your feelings about her disappearance again?” Ruben asked, sitting up a little more in his recliner.
“Perhaps. I’ll let you know after I’ve pawed through these.”
He reached over to grab a TV remote from his table. “All right. Then don’t mind me if I catch some Padres action while you work. Let me know if you have questions.”
“Thank you.”
The TV bloomed on, the mellow sounds of baseball in the background while Amanda Lee laid the files open like she was also inviting me over to survey their contents.
I knew she’d seen them before, when she’d hired Ruben all those months ago to look into my disappearance. I’d been the coldest that a case could be, but clearly Ruben had tried to unearth age-old clues to no avail. Even so, Amanda Lee had gleaned just enough information to be successful in pulling me from a residual haunting phase.
After I flew down to her, I didn’t bother to whisper, because Ruben obviously wasn’t a sensitive who could detect me.
“There’s a lot here,” I said.
“We’ll skim,” she whispered under the TV noise. “I remember quite a bit of it, anyway, since it wasn’t so long ago Ruben made his reports to me.”
I looked at a few typewritten pages as Amanda Lee turned them for me. They said that Ruben had combed the area near the party in the forest for any objects that might’ve been left years and years after my murder. He’d reinterviewed longtime residents of the area, as well as any surviving friends who’d attended our small party. He’d even talked with the lead investigator on my missing-persons case.
But there was nothing new here. Since there was no proof of a murder, there’d been only speculation anyway, and one of those theories had been that, if I’d been killed, my body might’ve been moved from the murder site and disposed of elsewhere.
Yet, again, if I’d been killed in my death spot, where had the blood from an ax attack gone?
That also got me to wondering . . . Why wasn’t I drawn to the place I was actually buried? Was I buried somewhere?
Ugh. It’d be great not to think about my scattered or burned bones.
Amanda Lee had graduated to laying her hands flat on the papers, closing her eyes, meditating and trying to catch psychic vibes from them. But from the frustrated lines etched near her mouth, I could tell she was getting nothing.
Yet she kept going.
And going.
I just kept watching her, my energy leveling out for the time being.
Wow. She did sincerely care about me.
“Thank you, Amanda Lee,” I said simply.
She opened her eyes but didn’t make eye contact with me. “You’re very welcome, Jensen.”
I didn’t have to say more. I wasn’t sure she wanted me to, anyway, because she diligently went back to vibing the pages, like she didn’t want to talk about our latest quarrel.
I half smiled to myself, knowing she’d never change. But my smile faded when I realized that I wished I could trust her, even more than I wanted to trust fake Dean. . . .
When she accessed a new folder, I began to read it. Then we went through a few of them, finding nothing earth-shattering.
But then . . .
My energy motored up again as I came to something I’d never known about my murder before.
“Holy crap,” I whispered, my voice seeming to rip through me. “There was a main suspect in my disappearance?”
6
Amanda Lee glanced at the page I was reading, then whispered, “I wouldn’t call him a main suspect. Person of interest is more accurate.”
She touched the man’s copied picture, which showed a whiskered, bulky, sixtyish guy with a lazy eye and a thing for plaid. “Milo Guttenburg was interviewed right after the disappearance, but I never mentioned him because he didn’t pan out as a suspect. Since he passed away nearly thirteen years ago, there won’t be any empathy readings or dream-digging from him.”
“Maybe he’s available in my dimension.”
Ruben lowered the TV volume. “What did you say, Amanda Lee?”
She glanced at him. “Just talking to myself. I often do that to sort out my thoughts. It’s one of a psychic’s prerogatives.”
“You know I had a couple of you come to my desk back when I was a cop,” he said with a wheezy chuckle. “You’re definitely a rare breed.” Then he wrapped his blanket tighter around him. “Don’t know what it is, but I’m sure feeling jumpy today. And still cold.”
Amanda Lee looked at me vibrating with soda-pop caffeinated spark next to her. I smiled back innocently.
“It’ll pass, Ruben,” she said. “Maybe it’s something in the air.”
He shrugged and turned up the volume again.
I signaled for Amanda Lee to turn the page so I could read more. After I did, I said, “Okay, so Milo was a loner who lived in a cabin near the spot where we held our party. A woodworker who sold his stuff to a boutique in town. A nature man who chopped his own wood, right?”
“At first the investigators thought he’d gotten fed up with all the kids who came to the woods to legend trip,” Amanda Lee mumbled, like she was still talking to herself.
“So they theorized that he took an ax out one night and came after the stupid one who had to go and take a pee by herself?” Hi, me. “Knowing what I know about my murder, the bastard who came after me had on a scary mask, like he wanted to get his jollies out of frightening me. He was sadistic. I wasn’t a crime of opportunity for a crab who flew off the handle and wanted to take care of some bothersome kids who were making too much noise.”
“Unless Milo, at first, wanted to scare you off, then took the ax to you.”
“You’re still self-whispering,” Ruben said, shutting off the TV altogether.
Amanda Lee turned around in her chair, facing him. “What if I were to tell you that, after I had you look into Jensen Murphy’s case, I received some pivotal information about what happened that night?”
She was going for it.
“You received information?” Ruben was holding back that smile. It must’ve cost some effort, because he coughed, his chest rattling. “As in, psychically?”
“Exactly,” Amanda Lee said, pointing to Ruben’s water, telling him to drink it. He followed orders.
She added, “I’m going back to Jensen’s case because I felt for certain that she was killed, and her murderer was wearing a mask. Wouldn’t that indicate a planned crime?”
Ruben put down the water. “It could. But we’re not sure that was the reality.”
“You doubt me, do you?”
“Amanda Lee, when you deal in evidence your whole life, you take nebulous guesses with a grain of salt.” Another cough. “I’ll tell you, though—I was never sold on Milo Guttenburg as a solid suspect in Jensen’s disappearance, either, and the investigators made the right choice in dropping him. They said he’d been agitated by Jensen’s group being there, but his usual MO was to pull a shotgun on other tr
espassers. Plus, he told the sheriff to come inside his home and take a look around to see if he had any missing girls inside. There was no indication that he’d even come within a few feet of Jensen Murphy, much less abducted her.”
Hmm. I started thinking about what Milo might have to tell me if I ever found him in Boo World. Had he seen something odd in the forest that night? Something that didn’t mean much at the time but could be important, based on what I now knew about my murder?
“I’d think,” Amanda Lee said, “that there was a big difference between a man who’d kill with a shotgun and one who’d put on a mask and use an ax.”
“Again, going with your view of what you think happened in Jensen’s case, yes. An ax is more personal, sadistic.”
“Told you,” I whispered.
Amanda Lee lifted one eyebrow, giving me credit.
Ruben added, “If what you say about the killing is true, then what we’ve got is someone who gets off on fear. He’d have a deep-seated need to dominate, to have total control over his victim. This person had probably committed a crime before, based on how clean the scene was. The cop’s dogs didn’t even lead them to any evidence, because the killer had already gotten good at this, had some practice and refined his technique.”
She shuffled through a few folders. “Somewhere in here, I remember you saying that there’d been other disappearances in Southern California during the previous year. Girls in their early twenties, blondes.”
“There’s always someone missing,” he said softly. “And for different reasons.”
I shuddered, my electric pulse flaring. I didn’t want to say serial killer, but . . . Right?
I didn’t know if ghosts could get sick, but I was halfway there.
“Some of those missing women,” Ruben said, “had bodies that were eventually found. But it turned out that a couple had run away on their own, so they wouldn’t relate to Jensen’s case.”
“Did any of those bodies show signs of being axed?” Amanda Lee asked.
“No.”
Well, there went that theory.
But I could tell Amanda Lee had already sunk her teeth into the possibilities, and when that woman bit into something, she didn’t let go.
Another One Bites the Dust Page 7
