Once Upon A Ghost: Murder By Design (Book 3)

by Erin McCarthy

  Guilty as charged. I’d just got out of bed. Not that it was any of his business. Yet I couldn’t prevent heat spreading across my cheeks. It wasn’t fair. My mother never blushed. She also didn’t have my transparent skin tone. So not only had she failed to pass on her steely nature, she hadn’t even given me the coloring to mask my moments of visually obvious embarrassment.

  “Nice distraction technique,” I told him. “But I’m not falling for it. Either give me more details about Cezar’s alleged lying and shadiness, or hit the road.” I realized I suddenly sounded like Cezar. I was spending far too much time with him. If I started calling Ryan “kid” I was going to worry about the whole demon thing for real.

  Ryan didn’t look concerned. He was still grinning. “Ooh, tough girl.”

  Marner was sliding my eggs onto a plate. I realized that he shouldn’t be subjected to me ranting at the air for longer than absolutely necessary. It was one thing to tentatively believe me—it was another thing to watch the crazy in action. So after giving Marner’s back a worried glance, I made a face at Ryan. I put my fingers to my lips and gestured to Marner.

  “I have no idea what that is supposed to mean.”

  I put my finger across my throat in a slicing motion. It was meant to indicate I wanted to end the conversation.

  But he just looked amused. “You want me to kill Marner? Not in my wheelhouse, sorry.”

  “No!” I blurted out before I could stop myself.

  Marner turned, two plates in his hands. “You okay?” He didn’t look anything other than mildly concerned.

  God, how was he so calm all the time? Was he on Valium? I envied his chill. I had no chill. Ever. I was the definition of Not Chill. That was the legacy I had inherited from my mother. Not her shrewdness, not her confidence, not her great skin. Just her high levels of agitation.

  “Yes, I’m fine. Ryan isn’t getting the message that he and I can talk later. It’s like two people speaking French in front of a friend who only speaks English. It’s rude because you can’t hear Ryan, so we can discuss Cezar’s alleged manipulation of me later.”

  Marner gave my temple a kiss and set the plates down on the kitchen table. “It’s okay, baby, don’t worry about me.”

  “I’m going to throw up,” Ryan said. “Just vomit all over this ugly-ass green kitchen. That was the most cheese-dick thing I’ve ever heard.”

  That was enough. He had no business insulting my boyfriend or my décor.

  “One, this is chartreuse. It’s a beautiful green. You don’t know green.” Don’t insult a designer. I may not have a degree, but I had turned a passion for fashion and color into a lucrative home staging career, thank you very much. I knew pops of color, damn it. “Two, I don’t even know what you’re talking about.” It wasn’t like Marner had said he loved the beauty of my sea-glass eyes. Or that he couldn’t imagine a world without the soft touch of my delicate kiss. He literally said don’t worry about me.

  Ryan laughed. “I don’t know green? That was a good one, Bai. All right. I’m out of here. I am not into group sex. Not with another guy, anyway.”

  “Ew. Bye.” I waved at him and sat down decisively at the table across from Marner. My appetite had soured. Ryan had agitated me with both warnings about Cezar and making me acutely aware of how insane it is to see dead people when no one else can.

  “Bye.” Ryan flipped me off and left, slamming the door behind him. Why was he suddenly slamming doors and copping attitude?

  Marner didn’t even jump when the door slammed. That was impressive. “We’re alone again?” he asked, glancing over at the door.

  “Yes, thank God. Ryan being kind of a jerk. He’s making fun of us dating.”

  “He’s just jealous.” Marner sipped his coffee.

  “Jealous of what, us being alive?” I could understand that. No one wants to be dead and stuck in stasis. But you don’t bite the hand that feeds you, so to speak.

  “No. Jealous of me having you.”

  That was ludicrous. Ryan had said about a million times I wasn’t his type. I was inclined to believe him. “You know what? I don’t want to talk about Ryan.”

  For months, Ryan had occupied my thoughts as I had grieved over his death. Ryan wasn’t exactly being endearing or charming right now. Where was his signature smoothness? Now he was just flat-out attitude and vague gloomy warnings. Death wasn’t wearing well on him, I had to say.

  “What do you want to talk about?” he asked, giving me a little sexy smile.

  “Whether we’re staying at my place tonight or yours.”

  * * *

  Marner agreed to hang back when we went to meet Cezar’s son. After getting the info from Cezar, I had called Slade Wozniak and arranged to meet him at a coffeeshop in Tremont, near where he lived. He had sounded impatient with me on the phone, like he didn’t understand why I didn’t just leave the key at the lake house, but I explained I hadn’t been able to get in touch with Cezar in three days. He grudgingly agreed to allow me to deliver it to him at the coffeeshop where his girlfriend worked. Which was interesting, because Cezar thought he was single.

  It became obvious why it was probably a secret when I saw a junior version of Cezar, sans the belly, leaning over the counter talking to a woman who was twice his age. She gave him a quick kiss and went back to work, giving a laugh that was throaty and mature and sexual. A laugh can sound that way, trust me. And only women over forty know how to do it. I wondered if at thirty-nine a switch would flip and I would magically understand how to be seductive, a genuine femme fatale.

  Then again, I had the infamous “bend and snap” a la Legally Blonde in my arsenal, which was more my style. It worked on Marner, so whatever.

  Damn it, I needed to focus. That was the problem with dating again. I felt like I was wandering around in a dreamlike state with a silly smile on my face. I needed to snap out of it. Marner sat down at an empty table and said, “This should be quick. He doesn’t look interested in chatting.”

  I had to agree. I headed to the counter. “Slade?” I asked as I approached him.

  He eyed me up and down, and seemed to find me lacking, especially in the chest area. “Yeah, I’m Slade. You Bailey?”

  He sounded like Cezar. It was bizarre. “Yes. Thanks for meeting me.”

  He grunted. He didn’t offer me a seat at the table he was standing next to, or a coffee. He didn’t even offer me a smile. I thought he was lacking in the charm that made Cezar amusing despite his irritating qualities. I had almost learned to like Cezar. I wasn’t going to warm to Slade any time soon.

  “So you got the key?” Slade asked.

  Right to the point. Okay then. I pulled it out of my purse and handed it to him. “It’s for a storage unit, like I said. I just thought it was really weird that it was in the middle of the living room floor when it wasn’t there last time I was in the house. Plus, your father isn’t returning any of my calls. Have you heard from him?”

  “Maybe he just doesn’t want to talk to you.”

  My jaw dropped. “Maybe. You’re welcome.” I turned on my heel and stomped off. “What a jerk,” I seethed to Marner as I plunked down across from him. “Nobody needs to be that self-important when they’re wearing a silk shirt at eleven in the morning.”

  Marner looked amused. “Want me to go tell him off?”

  “No. He’s not worth ten more seconds of my time.” I leaned forward and whispered, “He didn’t even care that his dad seems to be MIA.”

  “Maybe they’re not close. Maybe Cezar goes radio silent on a regular basis.”

  That was possible. Slade had just rubbed me wrong. “I guess.”

  Marner’s phone was chiming and he pulled it out of his pocket. “Ah, hell. I totally forgot I promised my dad I would help him fix his fence. It will only take a few hours. I can be done in time to cook you dinner. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s fine, no problem.” That meant I could go to Cezar’s house solo, which I really preferred. I didn’t want Marner to b
e connected in any way to shady doings. It would not look good. I feigned disappointment. “Tell your mom I said hi.” I had yet to meet his father, but his mother was nice.

  “Will do, but fair warning, if I say anything, it will mean that she’s going to push even harder for us to go over there for dinner. She’s been on that for weeks now.”

  “We can do dinner with them.” I didn’t see what the big deal was.

  “You are so cute when you’re being naïve,” he said. “She’s going to embarrass the hell out of both of us.”

  “No one beats my mother in that arena. I’ve got this,” I said with confidence.

  Thirty minutes later I was at home, changing into pants that would allow me to move up and down the steps of Cezar’s house quickly, searching for his body in closets and the basement. I initially thought black, but black shows dust, so I went for light-gray joggers and track shoes with a loose, boatneck T-shirt that stated, “I run on coffee and lipstick,” because duh, I do.

  Once I was dressed, I called out, “Yo, Cezar!” I figured he would like that.

  He walked through my bedroom door. “What’s up? How did it go with Slade?”

  “Well, I gave him the key, but I’m not convinced he’ll bother looking in that storage unit. He was kind of nonchalant about it. He seemed irritated that I was bothering him.”

  “He’ll go look. Slade is in the family business. He knows what that unit is for.”

  I started transferring important items from my handbag to a smaller, cherry-red, cross-body bag. “By the way, for a man who has such disdain for all things youthful and trendy, I find it ironic that you named your son Slade.”

  He shrugged. “That was my ex-wife’s idea.”

  I had assumed he was divorced, because a Mrs. Wozniak had never been mentioned, but I wasn’t surprised to hear that she had come up with the name for their son. “So you just went along with it?”

  “It wasn’t worth the fight. Besides, I named our oldest Daniel, so she got kid number two.”

  “Daniel is a nice name.” It was. Stable, yet interesting. Not as stuffy as William. Cooler than George.

  “He’s a good kid. Like I said, married, two kids, nice wife. He works in finance.”

  “Maybe I should have taken the key to him.”

  “No, definitely to Slade. Daniel wouldn’t know what to do with it, and he needs to keep his nose clean. Slade is always up to his ears in things an old man should never involve his kid in.” Cezar was getting morose again. He was a moody spirit, much like they all were.

  “Like what?”

  “He was the armored car driver. He’d been working there six months, giving me insider information so I could plan the heist. He pretended to get robbed by an unknown person when really it was me.”

  Oh my. “Wow.”

  “I know, kind of a lousy thing for a father to pressure his kid to do. I feel guilty about that. But Slade was always all in. He’s got the fire. And the high taste.”

  Slade was also a jerk, given what I had seen. A niggling suspicion started in the back of my mind and began to grow. What if Slade had killed his father for the money? Not just the three million, but whatever assets Cezar had, which included the lake house and a house in the city. I had no idea what else he possessed.

  “Hey, Cezar, do you have life insurance?” I asked.

  “Yeah, about two million.” Cezar’s head snapped up. “Oh no, don’t you go there, kid. I know what you’re thinking and that’s horseshit. Slade would never kill me.”

  “Of course not,” I agreed. But it didn’t mean he wouldn’t hire someone else to pull the trigger. It might be too much to kill his own father while looking him in the eye, but he might be capable of creating an alibi for himself while someone else did his dirty work.

  “Damn straight.” He pointed his finger at me. “Don’t even go there.”

  “I’m not.” I was, but I didn’t want to upset Cezar. “And if you start singing Wayne Newton, I will find a way to vaporize you.” It was an idle threat, but it made me wonder if I should start researching mediums. Relying on my motley crew of idiot spirits to guide me wasn’t getting me jack, and neither was my previous plan of attempting to ignore them.

  “I wouldn’t sully Wayne Newton that way,” he said solemnly. “A man knows where to draw the line.”

  With that bit of ridiculousness, I waved and left my house.

  Chapter Eight

  “Oh my god, this house is awful,” Alyssa said as we stepped into Cezar’s disco in the woods. “I mean, I’m a girl who likes color, but yikes. It’s like a seventies movie theater and Graceland had a love child.”

  “I know,” I lamented. “The view is amazing though.”

  “I can’t see anything but wall-to-wall carpet.”

  A little fearful that Cezar might pop up at any moment and find Alyssa offensive as she slammed his beloved décor, I tried to stay neutral. It was a large house and I was grateful not to be alone in it now that I knew Cezar had been shot in the backyard. Alyssa had called and asked if I wanted to go shopping and I suggested we go antiquing and stop at Cezar’s on the way, because I needed some measurements. It was a stretch of the truth, but I wanted to hang out with Alyssa and I needed to be back before dinner with Marner. If I skipped going to the house, Cezar would harass me during our date and we deserved some alone time.

  “I know. It’s a lot of carpet. Not my first choice for a lake house.” I started opening up doors to what I thought were closets and popping my head inside. I moved into the kitchen and opened the pantry and the broom closet.

  “Are you looking for a sense of style in there?” Alyssa asked, amused. “Also, why are you dressed like a basic bitch?”

  “What’s wrong with how I’m dressed? It’s Saturday. I’m casual.”

  “You look like a soccer mom. I have the world’s greatest respect for soccer moms, and I mean that totally sincerely, but a soccer mom you ain’t.” Alyssa looked like she had stepped off the catwalk for a fashion line called “Dirty Girl Retro.” She had a lot of cleavage going on for two in the afternoon.

  “I’m working. Bending over and stuff. I’m chilling.”

  “Ew.” Alyssa’s nose wrinkled and she bit her lip, which was sporting oxblood lipstick. “Just no. That is so not you to say something like chilling.”

  “You’re being kind of harsh. I’ve worn leggings before.”

  “Only to yoga class.”

  Not sure why Alyssa was so unnerved by my outfit choice, I decided to let it drop.

  Glancing around, nothing looked any different than it had the last time I was at Cezar’s. If anything, it felt even more…empty. I didn’t get the sense that anyone had been in the house since me, because the air felt still.

  But then a cellphone rang, causing me to jump. “Oh my God, what is that?” I asked, in a dumb rhetorical question.

  “It’s a phone ringing.”

  I meant more like where was it coming from and whose phone was it. I tried to pinpoint the origin of the sound. “I know that. I don’t remember seeing a phone laying around when I was here the other day.”

  Alyssa shrugged. “Bad Taste Guy must have forgot his phone.” It was a logical conclusion since she didn’t know Cezar was dead.

  “It sounds like it’s coming from a drawer.” I started yanking the kitchen drawers open one by one. I found silverware, spatulas, hand towels, and batteries. The fifth drawer was a hit. The second I pulled it open I could hear the ring grow louder and there it was. “It’s a burner phone.”

  “Like drug dealers use?”

  “Or people who are having extramarital affairs.” That seemed to be a common practice on crime shows I watched. They were always calling and texting on burner phones while they plotted the murder of one or both of their spouses.

  “Cezar has a secret, apparently.”

  “He’s not married though.” The phone stopped ringing. The number on the screen was blocked so I couldn’t call back. But immediately it st
arted ringing again. “I’m going to answer it.”

  “What? Why? Are you nuts, that’s private!” Alyssa looked horrified.

  I waved her off. “Something weird is going on. Cezar is MIA.” I picked up the phone and answered the call. “Hello?”

  There was a rustling, then a gruff male voice said, “I’m watching you.”

  Oh crap. The cold frisson of fear rolled up my spine. Goosebumps rose on my arms. I officially had the heebie-jeebies. “What do you mean?” I asked, my voice an octave higher than normal. “Who is this?”

  They couldn’t possibly know who I was. Right?

  “You know who I am, Miss Burke.”

  Nope, no clue. But he knew who I was, which was not cool. I had no response so I waited. The pause was only a heartbeat long before he continued in that gruff, raspy voice. I wasn’t sure if he was a lifelong smoker or was attempting to disguise his voice. I certainly didn’t recognize it.

  “You need to listen carefully. Stay the hell away from the money. You steal it, I’ll kill you. Got it?”

  That was pretty damn clear. I shivered. “What money?” If I played dumb, I could hopefully protect myself and get more information at the same time.

  “Don’t even try it. You may look cute and stupid but I know you’re not.”

  Excuse me? I would take cute but he thought I looked stupid? That was just rude. What does stupid even look like? “I must be stupider than you think, because I have no idea what you’re talking about.” That was a half-truth. I knew what money he was referring to, but I did not know why he seemed to think I was actually involved in shady business.

  “Cut the crap. And by the way, you’re a shitty waitress.”

  The line went dead. I pulled the phone away from my ear and frowned. So the caller was someone who had seen me at the Schvitz. That was obvious. How many men had seen me there? A dozen? Maybe slightly more? I wasn’t sure I would recognize any of them, to be honest. Except for the buff guy in the sauna. I might recognize him if he walked in shirtless. But even that was iffy.