“All right, coming up on the left,” Zach said aloud to Clare, then said mentally to Enzo, We are driving by. It will be easy to see me, harder to see Clare. But tell Caden we’re on his side. Always.
I WILL! Oooooh, here you come. I SEE you. Zach got the image of Enzo panting, his tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth.
“The playground for the younger kids is before the larger building.”
“I see it.” She leaned forward. Caden pressed against the chain link fence, small fingers curling around the diamonds. She put her hand on Zach’s thigh and the ghost Labrador coalesced from shades of gray to a doglike critter to Zach’s eyes. Caden waved.
Zach waved, then muttered, “Dammit.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Don’t look now but that beat-up old truck just beyond the walkway belongs to Pais the elder.”
She sniffed. “We’re tourists, just seeing the town. And there aren’t that many streets to drive up and down.” She lifted a hand.
“Don’t wave at Caden or Enzo.”
“Oh, all right,” she grumbled, smoothing her hair. A futile gesture, but Zach loved her curls.
They crept by at the slowest pace Zach could do, which was pretty damn slow because there wasn’t any other traffic.
Thank you, Clare! Thank you, Zach. Caden FEELS better! He is happier, Enzo projected.
That’s good, Clare said.
Zach looked at her; she was smiling. A tiny, gut-deep feeling grew. He was good for her. Better than some ghost dog that she couldn’t fully relate to. He was better for her than Enzo.
Surprise trailed along with the realization. He hadn’t known that he really had to be needed by someone. Or someone had to be better because he was in their life. Not a codependency thing, but a simple happiness that he was there. He could feel that from Clare and wouldn’t like it if anything happened to that feeling.
At the next through street he turned right and just a block away was Pico’s Patio. The silver BMW hadn’t moved.
“Good, she’s still here.”
“How do you know?”
“That’s her car.”
Clare gasped. “Good grief. It must have cost a fortune. And so inappropriate for a mountain town.”
“Definite status symbol,” Zach agreed, taking the first parking place he could. Pico’s Patio appeared busy today, too.
Hand in hand they ambled down the street.
“It really is a pretty little town,” Clare said.
“No ghosts to bother you.”
“No, and I should not be glad about that,”—her fingers flexed in his—“because the evil one probably ate them all and it’s a part of him—”
Zach halted, turned, and put a hand over her lips. “Stop. Breathe.”
Her full breasts lifted with a big breath, her shoulders shifted to relieve stress, and she smiled at him and said, “Live in the moment. Enjoy the moment.”
“That’s right.”
She squeezed his fingers tightly with her own. “And in this moment the ghost is not near.” Her gaze shifted, went distant, the gold flecks in her eyes brightening. “No, it’s far up the canyons, a little scared maybe.” An edge came to her smile as it broadened. “Scared of me.”
“That’s right.” He returned the pressure of her hand in his.
“In this moment, we investigate.”
More like she watched and learned as he investigated, but he wasn’t gonna quibble, stop her when she was on a roll.
With a decisive nod, she strode toward Pico’s Patio. A few diners sat outside at a couple of tables. Clare hesitated. “Is she—”
“No.” He let go of Clare’s hand to touch her back, guide her through the door.
One glance at the bar showed him that Linda sat there, a little hunched over her food. The server behind the bar, an older guy and not one of the college students Pico hired for the summer season, had his gaze glued to a golf game.
Other people sat at the short bar, but none of them next to Linda. They were dressed like town residents in faded, well-worn everyday clothes.
The L-shaped bar took up most of the front room, with space for tables in front of the window that faced the street, and a small aisle lined with two-tops on the way to the back room. Zach drew Clare to the far corner table near the end of the short side of the L and watched.
Linda sniffed wetly. She appeared worse than when Zach had seen her no more than an hour past. Close to a breaking point, though knowing despair from the inside out, he figured she’d broken a few times already and glued herself back together.
He recalled Pais the elder’s disapproval of her. Looked like others disapproved, too. Maybe she’d been hungry. Tired of her own company. Maybe she’d planned on testing the waters to see the emotional reaction of people to her. Bad idea, and Zach bet she regretted that now . . . and a suspicion he knew who, or rather what, she might be settled into his brain from the cues Pais and the others around her gave him.
In 1892, in a wild mining camp that had experienced flood and fire, the event that stood out for the town was the murder of Robert Ford.
This year, another event must have dominated the gossip of the locals, been the most important happening of the year, and he knew what that was.
The waiter who served them last night, a college kid from back east who worked summers here with his girlfriend, moved toward Clare and Zach. “Hey, welcome back!” he said heartily. Too loudly. Or the quiet was unusual and he’d pitched his voice to talk over the usual buzz of the lunch crowd.
His smile strained as he handed them the menus.
“Thank you,” Clare said and smiled in return. Without looking at the menu, she asked, “I know you have some salads, what do you recommend?”
“The one with steak strips. Or the taco salad. But my girlfriend likes the Pico’s Fiesta Salad, with a lot of fresh veggies.”
“Sounds good.” She handed him back the menu.
“I’ll have the chicken tacos with the special picante salsa,” Zach said.
“Drinks?”
“Water and iced tea,” Clare said.
“Just water,” Zach said.
“Gotcha!” With a lope, the young man was gone.
Clare stared at Zach across the table.
“What?”
She held out her hand and he took it.
“This just reminds me of the time we met.”
Didn’t remind Zach of that, except it was lunch. He glanced outside. Okay, it was sunny. Well she looked better and smiled and he wouldn’t contradict her.
“Such an interesting man you were, and are. You attracted me, and you still do.”
He grinned. “Oh, yeah. Interesting, intriguing, that’s what I first thought. Now you’re just plain fascinating.”
She appeared surprised, and he thought she blushed for the first time since they’d met.
Leaning forward and keeping her voice to a murmur, she said, “You’re looking at the lady at the bar in designer jeans and shirt?”
He nodded.
Clare’s shoulders loosened in a sigh. “If there’s a human component in this case, it could be so much easier.” She turned her head and stared at Linda sideways. Clare’s mouth pursed. “I can’t see her being the kind of person who’s interested in history, in Poker Alice or Robert Ford or Soapy Smith or Bat Masterson. In the Old West ghosts, my specialty.”
Linda stood up, threw paper napkins on her mostly untouched burger, and announced into the quiet, “It wasn’t my fault! None of it was my fault!” She stormed from the restaurant.
Those townspeople who remained seemed to sigh in unison. Ten seconds of full silence ticked by, then voices rose in a buzz of gossip. Zach could tell the tourists because they frowned like Clare. Everyone else knew what Linda
referred to.
“What was that all about?” Clare asked.
“I think I know.” His lips curved in a smile. “I think I know and I think I’ve got the motive for our ghost.”
Her mouth dropped open a little and her eyes widened, then sparkled, and she looked at him with such admiration that he thought he could beat that damned ghost single-handed.
“One of the puzzle-parts,” she breathed.
“Yes.”
Looking uncomfortable, their waiter came up with their food. A screech of tires on asphalt sounded and the fishtailing BMW zoomed past the window.
“Good grief,” Clare said. “I can’t imagine being in a hurry here.”
Slipping the plates in front of them, the waiter didn’t answer.
Zach shook his head. “Grief takes all forms, you know that, Clare.”
“Yes,” she said quietly, focusing on her salad now.
Glancing up at the young man, Zach said, “She’s the sister of Mrs. Treedy, the woman who killed her husband and committed suicide, isn’t she?”
Their waiter nodded. “Yes, that’s Linda Boucher. The murder-suicide was in June. My girlfriend and I had just arrived a couple of days before.”
Zach frowned. “June sounds a little late for you to get here.”
“We’re both in the drama department, and Creede has a well-known repertory theater. We got to work with some people there for the season. They do community outreach. There’s this one little kid who’s awesome, though he tends to talk to himself.”
Zach and Clare shared a look. Clare picked up her fork and fiddled with it. “I have a young friend in town. Caden LuCette?”
“Yes. That’s him. Good little actor.”
“Hasn’t your school started by now?”
The waiter shrugged. “Not quite, and our mentors at college know what we’re doing. We’re cutting it close, but we love it here.” He looked around, took a deep breath of the air that held smells of cooking, and the fresh scent of the mountains when anyone went in or out. “We’re leaving on Sunday, only a few days more.”
“I see,” Clare said. She’d tightened up.
“You staying for the Cruisin’ the Canyon?”
“Probably,” Zach said.
“Then you’ll also probably be eating here, so I’ll see you later. Chrissy will, too.” He winked at them. “I told her of the tip you left me last night and she’s looking forward to serving you.” He strolled off.
Now Clare glared at Zach. She had accountant rules about tipping, and, yeah, he’d left more cash on the table after she’d turned to leave. Busted.
Brows down, Clare glanced away from him to the waiter and back. “I’m feeling played.”
SIXTEEN
ZACH JERKED HIS chin at the waiter. “By him or everyone else?”
“Yes. No one told us Caden acted.”
“Mrs. Flinton might not know, or it didn’t mean anything to her. Think about the video we first saw and that child. Did it look like he was acting?”
A pause while Clare stabbed into her salad, chewed crispy vegetables.
“No,” she said. “Except maybe a little today, woebegone behind that schoolyard fence.”
“He wanted Enzo to stay with him. I believe a ghost seer boy would think a ghost dog companion was really cool.”
“Yes.”
“And this can explain why people don’t believe him as much.”
Clare’s frown remained when she looked at him straight again. “People don’t believe he sees ghosts because it is not rational that people see ghosts.”
“Still struggling with the disrespect thing,” Zach murmured.
She ate some more before answering. “It will take time for me to accept people don’t believe me, don’t respect what I do, what I can do.”
“You’ll always be considered a fake or a con by most people upon first meeting you, before they know what you can do.”
“That’s right. And it will take time to become accustomed to that.” She appeared to consider the matter while she ate more of her salad and Zach crunched through a great tasting taco.
“It’s been three weeks and two days since I saw my first ghost.” A lost note in her voice had Zach reaching for her hand again. Lost. Her former life, her former self.
She swallowed, didn’t look at him. From the way she held her face he thought she might be beating back tears. Her voice was thick when she said, “I think I’m allowed to mourn a career of a decade, a career I’d planned and studied for, for at least . . . two months?”
The words flicked like a whip on his own raw spot, reminding him of the dark, dark days when he’d awakened in the hospital knowing his foot would never work right again. Knowing his own career as a field law enforcement officer was kaput. And he’d mourned that for a lot longer than Clare had.
It had taken meeting her, learning of her similar shadows, and some harsh words for him to yank himself into a new reality.
Better that he changed the subject. Making his tone as light as possible under the circumstances, he said, “You’ve gotta hand it to the kid.”
She looked up at him with tears filmed over her pretty hazel eyes, and a distant look in them.
“Caden, you’ve got to hand it to Caden. Going the artistic route, the actor route.” Zach managed not to wince. He didn’t know actors. They were probably okay guys. Zach coughed. “Anyway, if Caden is an actor, maybe folks will cut him a break when he’s found ‘talking to himself.’”
“Talking to ghosts,” Clare said.
Zach nodded. “Easier to explain. People expect stuff like that from actors and other folks in the arts.” He smiled, squeezed her fingers, then withdrew his hand. Eating the tacos was a two-handed activity. “Though I suppose, as an accountant, you could be considered to be mumbling numbers.”
She bristled as he’d hoped. “A good accountant doesn’t have to mutter figures aloud.”
He grinned. “Of course not.”
Clare sighed, then went back to her salad. “Yes, for Caden, it could mask his gift.”
She said gift as if she meant curse, and Zach didn’t blame her. He didn’t like his own “gift.” Which reminded him that there was an outstanding Counting-Crows-Rhyme-prediction of another death, and that ruined the taste of his food.
“Yes.” Clare nodded. “That scenario would work in a small town where everyone knew everyone and found you talking to yourself. It would be harder to pull off in a big city like Denver, I think, if you didn’t stick to your own neighborhood for shopping, for instance.”
“Uh-huh,” Zach said, and wondered if that had happened to her. He’d been gone a little while after she’d come into her psychic power—between her first and second cases.
“In any event. I shall just have to become accustomed to my new . . . vocation.”
And those were words he’d heard before and knew she said nearly as a mantra.
Her phone beeped and he smiled.
“What?” she asked.
“That first day we met. At lunch. We both got calls.”
Her face softened. “Yes.”
He waved a hand. “Go ahead, take it.”
She took it from the special pocket on her purse. “It’s a text. The best time to meet anyone at the archives is tomorrow afternoon.”
“So it goes,” Zach said, but his optimism began to wane. “At least we have a good lead, the motive of the perp.”
“Perp.”
“Perpetrator. So much easier to say than damned big and evil ghost.”
“Yes. About that woman who just stormed out of here. What do you know?”
“What do I guess? We’ll talk about it . . . somewhere else. After lunch.”
“All right.” She paused, licked som
e salad dressing from her lower lip that had Zach thinking about bed and sex again. Something that happened with amazing frequency with Clare. He remained glad she’d come along and proved his ankle might be bad but his dick worked just fine.
Meeting his eyes, her lips firmed, then she said, “I’d like to go up the canyon, all the way around Bachelor Loop, and see the mines.”
Unlike their previous talk, people would have heard words like that from everyone who passed through.
“Is that where the perp lurks?” Zach asked.
“I think I need to get a feeling for the atmosphere,” she said.
“Examine the scene.”
“Yes.”
“Sure. We’ll head up there after lunch.”
* * *
“This is more than scenic,” Clare said. “It’s gorgeous.”
“Yeah, mountains of golden aspen look good, especially against the evergreens. Colorado autumn putting on a show.” Zach nodded. “It’s real nice. Something wrong?” he asked. She had the shadows in the eyes look again. “The mines are interesting, too. From a distance.” He’d be iffy climbing rocks and messing around in mines. Hardly anything more dangerous than abandoned mines.
“It’s . . . it’s a little different. More . . . sterile.”
Looked the same to Zach as trips into the mountains as a kid. Mostly his mother managed to nag the General into putting in for leave so they could have a fall Colorado vacation.
“Huh.” Zach scanned the area, and saw no crows, so he didn’t have to try and figure out his own gift. But something in the silence or whatever reminded him of when he’d looked at the shadowy street early that morning and thought that he’d seen layers set down by the ghost.
He glanced at Clare. She’d take what he’d say seriously. Well, she usually took what people said seriously, but her mind had sure gotten blown open to “irrationality” in the last three weeks and two days, so she’d listen.
“Um,” he said.
She looked at him instead of out the window, focusing that sharp attention. Yeah, he liked that.
“Maybe because all the ghosts are missing, it doesn’t seem right to you. Maybe you sensed ghosts all your life, even if you didn’t see them.”
Ghost Killer Page 15
