The Grey Tier

by Michele Scott

  Chapter Thirteen

  ONCE HOME, I MADE a determined effort to go online. It took some time, but finally, the service provider came through and I was able to Google Nick’s name. Of course, there were articles about his murder. They all said the same thing: that the former child star had been killed in his bar on Monday morning.

  But eventually, I found what I was looking for. It was an archived article from the 1985 edition of The Los Angeles Times. It showed a photo of a much younger Nick with Roger Hawks, and a photo of Warren Verne, Bradley’s dad. The article read:

  Last night at the estate of producer/director Warren Verne, actor Roger Hawks was found drowned in the swimming pool, just after 3:00 a.m. The evening before, actor Nick Gordin hosted a party for Hawks to celebrate Hawks’ upcoming new role as the next James Bond. Verne, in Europe on location, was reported as saying, “I am devastated at the loss of such a talented young actor,” upon receiving the news of Hawks death.

  Sources say Hawks was inebriated and some speculate drugs may have been involved. So far, there has been no comment from Nick Gordin.

  As I delved deeper, the story got more interesting . . . and troubling. There had been an investigation, because, as it turned out, Nick and Hawks argued that night. No one ever claimed to know what the argument was about. But my eyes popped when I read, Nick Gordin’s fiancée, Barbara Dennison, claims Nick was with her when Hawks likely drowned.

  “Oh boy!” Nick had been engaged? Had he also been married? Then divorced? What if they were still married? Barbara Dennison. I looked back at the screen. There was a photo of Nick and a pretty blonde woman. Something about her eyes reminded me of . . .

  “No way! Candace!” Cass and Mac glanced over at me from the bed. I smacked my forehead lightly, “Of course! Candace told me her real name was Barbara.”

  “The plot thickens,” said a voice from behind me.

  Startled, I spun around in the desk chair. And there he was.

  “Lucas.” My voice cracked a little, not quite the come hither tone I was going for. Then again, how did one behave when a sexy ghost pops unannounced into your bedroom?

  He grinned, “Ah, you know my name.”

  I nodded. He was even more gorgeous than I recalled. Lucas placed his hands on either side of my chair and drifted an inch closer. I could feel my heart racing, and hear the blood rushing through my ears. “What . . .” I shook my head. “How . . .”

  He smiled. “You ask a lot of questions, Evie.”

  “You know my name.” He knew my name!

  “Yes, Cass told me.”

  “My dog spoke to you?” Curiouser and curiouser.

  He shrugged, tilting his head to the side. “Not usually. I’ve been able to communicate with animals before, but they typically don’t talk in words. Or at least, I haven’t found one yet, until I met her.” He pointed down at Cass. “She’s a smart cookie . . . she can carry on quite a conversation.”

  “Huh.” I glanced down at Cass who looked back up at me innocently. “Who knew?” I shook my head. This was sounding more and more ridiculous.

  He nodded, “But your cat, well . . . he’s no genius.”

  “He’s not technically my cat.”

  “Try and tell him that. He’s opinionated as hell.”

  “I think opinionated is a prerequisite for most felines. At least in my experience,” I replied. And then I remembered I was chatting with a ghost. “Um, what are you exactly?”

  “Exactly?” He gazed upwards and rubbed his chin. “Some would say I’m a ghost. Some might call me a soul, or a spirit, or even an energy or entity. I say I’m simply dead, but that’s not technically true either. You can just call me Lucas.” He grinned.

  “Yeah, okay . . . so what was up with Bob Marley in my kitchen yesterday? I mean, that was him, wasn’t it? Or . . . his spirit?”

  “Sure was.”

  “This is insane. I mean, I think I saw a ghost once before. A little girl. She didn’t look like you though, with the, the . . .” My hands fluttered in the air “The glow.”

  “The girl you saw was a ghost, but I’m not. Children don’t typically return as spirits. They don’t need to. A ghost is simply an energy imprint left behind . . . like an echo of the person who used to be there. The soul or spirit of the child moved on. But I bet you’ve spent a long time after pretending you never saw her in the first place.”

  I nodded, thinking about my uber-religious family. “My father would have been horrified if I said I’d seen a ghost.”

  “He would have said you were making up stories.”

  “Or worse.”

  “You weren’t. You saw what you saw. And then you closed yourself off to it. But looks like the timing is right for you to start seeing us again.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  He sat down at the edge of the bed. Cass wandered over and sat next to him. Mac followed Cass and soon they were both curled up next to Lucas. He frowned at Mac. “I’m not really a cat guy.”

  Um . . . okay. “You were going to tell me what you meant about timing . . .”

  “Right. You’ve heard of people who’ve seen spirits, right?” He patted the space next to him on the bed. “Come, sit.”

  I moved from the desk that also served as a vanity, and tentatively placed myself next to him on the bed.

  “I can assure you I am very real, and,” he flashed that sexy smile again, “I can teach you everything I know about being a spirit.” He winked, and my toes curled.

  Whoa, Nelly. Was I seriously lusting after a dead guy? My head was beginning to throb. Then I got a bright idea. “Can you tell me who murdered Nick?”

  He shook his head sadly, “No.”

  “But why not? You’re a spirit. You live on the other side. Don’t you know things?”

  “Yes and no, but we’ll get to that. One thing at a time.” He tilted his head and looked at me speculatively. “Aren’t you at all interested to know why you can see me and other spirits now?”

  “Wait, there are others?”

  “You saw Bob.”

  “Yeah, okay. So I can see ghosts now? All the time?” I immediately wondered if I would be able to see Nick at the bar.

  “Not all of us. Ghosts, as I said, are pure energy, an imprint that got left behind. They technically aren’t here with you. Just an image . . . like a photo or video. When someone is emotionally connected to a person or place, the imprint might remain, but the spirit moves on. A ghost can’t communicate with you or affect you in any way. A spirit can.”

  “I’m confused.”

  “Welcome to Spirit World 101, Beautiful.”

  I know I should have been weirded out by all of this, but the only thing I could focus on was that he’d called me beautiful. I seriously needed to get my priorities in order.

  “I’ve been watching you,” he said.

  “You have?” I guess I should have been mildly disturbed but instead, I felt warm all over.

  “Ever since you moved in. I’ve watched you play with Cass, scratch Mac behind the ears, make tuna sandwiches, watch old movies, cry . . . lately you have been doing that a lot.”

  I shrugged. “Given the circumstances.”

  “I know. My favorite is when you play your guitar and sing.”

  I felt heat rise to my cheeks. “You’ve listened to me? You’ve heard me sing?”

  “You’re very good. More than good.”

  I couldn’t respond for a few seconds. I have had people tell me I can sing and play guitar well, that I’m talented, but when Lucas said it . . . it really meant something to me. For the very first time in over sixteen years, I felt truly recognized by another, uh, being.

  “Thank you. That means a lot to me.” I reached out to pet Cass. “Are you always here, then?”

  “No. Not always.”

  “Where do you go?”

  “I can’t discuss that with you yet. Baby steps.”

  “Huh?”

  “Things are, well, kind of comp
lex on the other side. It can be a little overwhelming to people like you.”

  “People like me? You mean the living?”

  He nodded.

  “Jeez, I thought being alive was complicated enough. Now I get to look forward to a complicated afterlife too?”

  Lucas laughed. “Well, when you put it that way . . . but seriously, the reason you can see me and others like me is a part of you has opened up. It’s your music. You have finally been able to begin truly exploring who you are as an artist and a musician, and that creative aspect has allowed you to see things you normally wouldn’t.”

  “You’re saying because I am exploring and pursuing my music at a different level than before, like when I was home . . . which, by the way, were you watching me back at home, in Texas?”

  He laughed again. “No. I couldn’t have gone to you. You had to come to me. To be honest, I didn’t know you even existed until you walked through the front door. And I am so happy you did.”

  Well now, what did one say to that?

  “It’s the music, Evie.” He stood and came closer. His nearness put me on edge, in a good way.

  “My music . . .” I stared into his eyes, my brain completely unable to recall what we’d just been speaking about.

  “Earth to Evie . . .”

  Now there was some irony. He reached out and his hands skimmed my face, fingers tracing my cheeks and sending little darts of electricity through my body. The color in his eyes deepened and I began to get an “incoming kiss” vibe. I closed my eyes . . .

  And then, my stupid phone rang. I opened my eyes. Just me and two pairs of animal eyes staring at me. There wasn’t even a dent in the spot on the mattress next to me to show anyone had been sitting there.

  “Lucas?” I called out.

  The phone rang again.

  “Dammit.” I stood and grabbed it off of the desk. It was Simone. Of course.

  “Yes?!” I shouted into the phone, surprising even myself.

  Simone, oblivious as ever, didn’t miss a beat.

  “Evie, get your ass over to my house, pronto. Some fucking cop just came to talk to me

  about Nick Gordin again and I need you here! Now!”

  Chapter Fourteen

  I WAS NOT HAPPY about going over to Simone’s. Lucas and I had been on the verge of—of something. How much worse could Simone’s timing get? And why in the world did the cops want to talk to her again about Nick? It didn’t make any sense. Or maybe it did. An awful thought crossed my mind. What if the police thought I was somehow responsible for Nick’s murder? I had found Nick. He called me the morning he died. That had to be it. They were looking into timelines, talking to other people who knew me, and trying to see if it all added up. I didn’t like this one bit.

  Eventually I calmed myself down and my mind drifted back to Lucas and the improbability of my being in lust with a spirit who lived (existed?) with me in the house where he’d been murdered almost twenty years ago. And, I’d only met him twice and only really spoken with him once. What was wrong with me?

  On top of it all, thoughts of his murder suddenly brought my sister, Hannah, to mind. Thing is, I’d always suspected she’d been abducted and killed, even though her case was declared unsolved. I hated feeling that way, but I knew the only reason Hannah wouldn’t have come back to us is if she were dead. I couldn’t help but wonder, as I sped toward Simone’s house, if Lucas might be able to help me find the answers to Hannah’s disappearance. Then again, when I had asked him about Nick, he’d given me an emphatic “no.” So maybe it didn’t work that way on the other side. Damn.

  I also liked the fact that when he “touched” me I couldn’t see his traumas. I think the answer to that was two-fold. He wasn’t human, and I was certain his most traumatic experience was being shot to death. I didn’t think I could heal a spirit. I didn’t see how anyway. He was already dead.

  Finally, after mulling things over way too much, I pulled up in front of Simone’s mansion. I could hardly wait to see what she had in store for me this time.

  I walked through the ginormous front door and into her all-white living room. She was seated on a white leather sofa, legs kicked up on a white, marble coffee table, with a white, silk pillow under her feet, and what appeared to be a fluffy, white cat in her lap. Yes. I did say cat. All the white combined with her white dressing gown made her beautifully coiffed head look as if it were floating, disembodied, in mid-air.

  The thought of her floating head gave me a sudden fit of the giggles, which I quickly covered up with a fake coughing fit that rapidly turned into the real deal.

  Simone glared at me in irritation. “Jesus, Evie, breathe much?” She gestured to a pitcher of water on the end table next to her. “Have some water. You look ridiculous.”

  If by ridiculous, she meant pissed, then yes, she was correct. “Excuse me, but I broke several speed limits to get here because of an emergency and this is how I find you? With that . . .” I pointed to the cat, “. . . in your lap?”

  She smiled and made a kissy face at the contented looking pile of fluff. Her voice took on a tone usually reserved for babies and small children. “Look at Edie, little man. She’s growing a spine. And there is no way she could have broken any fucking speed limits in that piece of shit she drives.”

  I let out an aggrieved sigh.

  “This is Clooney, by the way.” Simone patted the spot next to her again, “Come say hello, Auntie Evie.”

  “I thought you were allergic to cats. Isn’t that why Mac now lives with me?”

  She shook her head. “Turns out I’m not allergic. I think that was a sinus infection. Anyway, I missed McConaughey, so I got Clooney here. He’s a Persian.”

  “Nice. But why didn’t you just ask for Mac back?”

  “Cuz he’s a fat slob and besides, I’m sure he likes you better. We sort of had this love- hate thing going on. But me and Clooney get along just perfectly.”

  I walked over and sat next to Simone and the new cat, who admittedly was cute. He stared up at me with sleepy blue eyes.

  “What’s the deal, Simone? I was in the middle of something.”

  She stopped petting the cat and her eyes widened. “Oh my God! You were having sex?!”

  “No!”

  “Evie! Who were you with? Wait. Let me guess. The photographer who was on the shoot the other day? He was eyeing you.”

  “He was gay, Simone.”

  “He was?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did I miss that?”

  “I don’t have a clue. Especially since he wore pink Vans and couldn’t stop talking about his new husband, Marcus.”

  “No shit?”

  “Yes.” That was Simone. Totally self-absorbed and in la-la land.

  “Okay, then was it the lighting guy? He was cute. Really cute.”

  “I was not having sex with anyone. And the lighting guy is married. His wife is due to have their first baby any day now.”

  “How do you know these things and I don’t?” Simone whined.

  “Because I listen. You should try it some time.”

  “Ouch. You on the rag or something?”

  I rolled my eyes. Seriously, I was not getting paid enough for this crap. “No. I just want to know what’s going on. You called me, remember? You said to come right now, that the police wanted to talk to you about Nick.”

  “Oh yeah. That. So, here’s the deal.” She scooted closer and lowered her voice conspiratorially. “The cops were apparently going over Nick’s phone records and my number showed up a few times.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. They wanted to know if you ever used my cell phone to call him.”

  “You told them no, right? I mean, I would never use your phone!”

  She picked up a flute of champagne on the table and took a sip. “Want some?”

  “No! I want to know you told the police I would never use your things without your explicit permission. Because it’s the truth.” I waited, expectant
ly.

  “Actually, I told them you borrowed my phone a few times. With my permission, of course. And who you called was none of my business.”

  I felt my blood pressure rise. “You did what?! Why?”

  She sighed heavily, suddenly unwilling to make eye contact with me. A hard knot began to form in my stomach. “Because I called him.”

  “You called Nick? Why?”

  “Listen, I like you. You’re the closest thing I’ve ever had to a friend. But you don’t know how people can be. I grew up here . . . and I have seen a lot of shit go down. I’ve seen a lot of people get strung along, ripped off, or beaten down by others. I know that guy, Nick, was giving you a line about his friend the music producer. I know he was stringing you along to get you to work late hours in that bar for no money, playing music to drunks and losers. I think you’re better than that, so I called him a few times to tell him to fire you.”

  The blood drained from my face. “You—you are unbelievable.”

  “I’m sorry. But I want the best for you.”

  I couldn’t even respond to that. I stood up from the couch and stared at her.

  “You are so selfish. I can’t always be at your beck and call. I am available to you most of the time. In fact, I even dropped everything to come and take care of you the night you supposedly overdosed on Sudafed. The night Nick’s producer friend was coming in.”

  “According to Nick. Oh, you are so naïve.”

  “Yeah? Well what about you?”

  She laughed bitterly. “Oh, I’m not naïve.”

  “I mean you promised me an audition at Sony. With a real producer.”

  She nodded. “I did. And I intend to make it happen. But first, I think you need to really understand what this life is like. Look, I can’t even go to Denny’s without dressing up like a washed-up Pat Benatar look-alike. The minute I take the wig off, there’d be a hundred tweens in my face wanting my autograph, and let’s not even talk about their fucking insane, forty-year old mothers. Then there’s the paparazzi—” She sighed loudly.