Topaz Dreams

by Patricia Rice

  Of course, she was happily repairing the building he meant to tear down.

  Teddy met his gaze defiantly when he stepped up on the boardwalk. “I think it’s a rather dashing periwinkle blue, don’t you?”

  Like he was going to tell her she was wrong when he wanted in her bed? Right. He might lack social finesse, but he wasn’t stupid. A coat of paint wouldn’t stop a bulldozer. The door looked purple to him, but what did he know? “Did you sand the door first? The sun will peel the paint right off.”

  He removed his old Nikes from her reach when she feigned painting them in retaliation.

  “I am not a complete idiot. I used a heavy-duty primer.” She nodded at the window frame. “Like over there.”

  He examined the aging wood she’d coated in thick gray primer and nodded. “That will hold for a few months. These old windows are miserable in winter though. I trust you’ll be moving on before then?”

  Okay, so he was stupid. She glared and moved over to the window with her brush.

  “I hadn’t planned on staying for the winter with the kids, no, but if you’re working on a ski resort, I’ll have to think about replacing the old windows. I’ve set my parents’ lawyer on the fraudulent deed and e-mailed them about their cousin. I don’t expect an immediate reply. My parents have no internet until they go into town for supplies. But I will get this house back.”

  He’d damned well personally checked on the deed to this building. It was his, along with most of the rest of the town. This building was the cornerstone to the new construction that would create the prosperous town he envisioned in his dreams—and get him the hell out of the resort.

  Kurt picked up a smaller brush she’d left lying on the porch and started the tricky job of painting along the window glass she’d taped. “Walker couldn’t find a match for your Thompson cousin or her spouse in Lance’s portrait gallery. Lance says they’re probably in Daisy’s stash of evil. Do you have any idea what he’s talking about?”

  “Why didn’t you ask Lance? I haven’t even met Daisy.” She started on the wider part of the frame.

  Kurt could hear the kids shouting and the dog barking in the newly re-fenced backyard. If he allowed her to keep this up, she’d turn the place into a decent rental—if the ghost was gone. He ought to smack himself in the face with the paintbrush to think like that.

  “My uncle is vague on a good day. It’s something to do with red eyes and crystal paint. The evil part is never clear, and anything to do with Crazy Daisy is a mystery.” His frustration began to fade as he worked beside Teddy, actually performing a task with visible results. He missed the days he’d worked on construction to learn the business from the inside out. Paperwork and glad-handing simply weren’t the same.

  “Sam will know. You could ask her. Apparently, all I do is feel angry entities. I don’t even rate a magic wand.” She didn’t sound too concerned.

  “You claimed you hexed your jewelry,” he reminded her. The Lucys’ claim to weirdness didn’t faze him. He’d grown up in San Francisco in the center of weird. He just didn’t want their fantasies inflicted on him or his goals. He drew the line at ghosts in the attic however. The structure wasn’t stable and needed to be dismantled before it fell down of its own accord.

  She shrugged and climbed on a stepladder to reach the top part of the frame, giving him an eye-level view of her well-rounded posterior in worn denim. His brain quit functioning.

  “I don’t do anything in particular,” she asserted. “I choose crystals that fit the image in my head, carve them to fit the design, put the piece together, and sell it. I don’t have Samantha’s scientific background and haven’t tested for cause and effect. I’m just working from verbal reports of what happens when its worn.” She smacked the paint a little harder than necessary. “Gossip has spread that the bracelets are jinxed, so business is down. A stone that produces honesty isn’t exactly a popular gift.”

  “Ouch. That’s a marketing nightmare. Any plans on how to deal with it?” He knew about marketing nightmares. The blackened hillside had reduced his getaway vacationers to a trickle. Everything he wanted to do up here required huge loans, which meant showing a steadily increasing profit. He’d been gnashing his teeth this past week since the fire, looking for ways to compensate. Even an art gallery sounded good at this point.

  Having mutual interests made it difficult to keep seeing Teddy as his opponent. He’d simply have to wear her down and sway her to his way of thinking.

  “Online sales are strong outside of the city,” she said. “Rumor hasn’t spread too far. I’m thinking of developing a crystal-based business where people actually want stones with power.”

  “And how will you convince them your stones have power?” he asked skeptically.

  “That’s for marketing,” she said in amusement. “Vegas is built on people who believe in the magic of luck. If you’ll agree to an art gallery theme in town, I’ll happily stock up on basic crystals as well as my jewelry—which are considered art pieces, mind you. And I’ll send someone to sort through my parents’ pottery. I can’t sell their things unless they give me permission, but they’ll be a nice display of local artistry.”

  Kurt slapped paint on the frame. “You want to support a town that will blow away in the next strong wind. We need earthquake-proof buildings, structures with decent heat and air conditioning, places where modern consumers will feel comfortable. This heap of junk and logs isn’t worth marketing.”

  “Try it, what have you got to lose? If we fail, we fail, and you get what you want. Are you planning on razing the town in the middle of tourist season?”

  “Of course not, but agreeing to a marketing campaign raises hopes and will cause hard feelings when we’re ready to rebuild. You have no idea of the battles we’ve fought with locals before. They’re likely to torch the lodge and not just the hillside next time.” As Teddy climbed down to paint the lower portion of the frame under him, he inhaled her floral soap. Why in hell was he arguing with her? She’d be gone by summer’s end. He should just agree with everything she said.

  “The locals set fire to the mountain?” she asked in incredulity.

  “Magic,” he said grimly. “These things happen here. Don’t ask me to explain. No one meant to set the fire, except the villain who was robbing us all, and he didn’t actually light the match. If I were arguing with logical people, I might make my case, but no one here wants rational. They want what they want and aren’t interested in changing their minds.”

  She laughed. “You say that as if you’re any different.”

  He wasn’t explaining life-long dreams and payroll expenses to a laughing pixie with bad hair color. “We’ll agree to disagree. Set up your art galleries. Pretend I don’t exist and keep me out of it. I think art would fare far better if it were displayed in a picturesque setting like Santa Fe, but if you want the work with little return, go for it. I just wanted to ask if you’d like to bring the kids up to the lodge this evening where Serena can babysit them while we have dinner together.”

  Her look of excitement over the art galleries faded to one of disappointment at his dinner offer. “I hate to say no after your generous offer, if you really mean you’ll support art galleries, but I’m hoping my sister will arrive this evening. I need to be here if she does.”

  “I don’t say things I don’t mean. Gather your Lucys and paint the town red if it makes you happy. Your sister is coming to pick up her children?” That would be a bonus—if Teddy remained behind.

  “No, she’s coming to stay. She has boyfriend troubles.” Teddy stopped painting to study him. “I wish I knew how much to trust you.”

  “That’s a rotten thing to say!” Kurt flung his brush at the bucket and glared at her. “Have I done anything to make you mistrust me?”

  “You’re male,” she said with a shrug. “We haven’t had a lot of positive reinforcement with the gender. Although Syd’s first husband was decent, I suppose. But he was husband material, ready for commitment,
so reasonably trustworthy. Most men aren’t.”

  Sid. Her sister, not a significant other. He ought to practice remembering names if he meant to establish any kind of working relationship with the town. Kurt shoved his hair out of his face and tried to figure out how to respond to her bluntness. “I was ready for commitment until your jewelry got in the way,” he retorted.

  “Yeah, so you say, but I’m guessing she wouldn’t have left if you’d been really committed. You just wanted a convenience, and she suited your image. But this isn’t about sex. This is about trust. Men tend to believe each other more than they believe women, and in Syd’s case, that’s lethal.”

  “Around here, it’s easier to believe men because they don’t talk about negative energy and the lodge being evil,” he countered. “If you’re saying your sister is breaking the law, then I probably can’t help, and we should stop talking right now. Is that honest enough for you?” Kurt was already rethinking his offer. This woman could potentially be more trouble than an entire town of Lucys.

  But the mind-bending sex had been more than worth it. He needed to be convinced that one episode wasn’t a result of purple dust.

  “Syd’s not breaking any laws. Her ex is, but he’s a cop and the cops don’t believe her. So if he shows up here—and we hope he won’t know about Hillvale—chances are good you’ll believe the cop and not us. So you may as well go away now, sorry.”

  Crap on a stick, that wasn’t what he wanted. “Walker is the man who will handle that, not me. If your sister isn’t charged with any crime, then I don’t see the problem.”

  “You will,” she said with a sigh. “C’mon in. I need to make sure the kids haven’t pushed Prince Hairy over the fence so he can chase squirrels. I’ll fix coffee.”

  Kurt applied the last touch of paint and left his brush in the cleaner she provided. He stepped back to examine the effect of periwinkle purple against fading gray. Cheerful but eccentric, he decided, before following Teddy inside, hoping this meant she trusted him.

  Walker

  June 28: afternoon

  * * *

  Walker finally saw Crazy Daisy’s golf cart putt up the trail to the Ingersson Farm. The lawyers might still be wrangling over the deeds to the farm, but as far as he was concerned, that land belonged to a trust which had appointed Samantha and her Aunt Valerie as executors. Daisy didn’t own it. She simply acted as guardian to what Sam claimed was a stash of artwork from the original commune.

  His business partners would roll on the floor laughing if they knew he was up here looking for a painting that predicted the future. Walker justified it in his own head by considering the value of priceless art. Well, and curiosity—he’d seen the stash briefly and really wanted to investigate more.

  He climbed out of the sheriff’s official car—the mayor was still dickering with the county over its purchase—and jogged down the dusty dirt trail to Daisy’s hiding place. The old farmhouse had burned long ago. An aging manzanita hedge hid the foundations. Daisy’s foot-high row of rock and stick mannequins guarded her territory.

  “Hey, Daisy, got a minute?” he called, to give her warning that he approached. She’d left the golf cart in a thicket of weeds but the sun glinted off the metal, so he knew she was here. “I’d like to talk with you.”

  Her wrinkled arm waved her walking stick from above the hedge—her usual signal that she was available. She didn’t waste words unless she was time-traveling, as the Lucys called it. A psychiatrist would call it a manic episode or schizophrenia, but Daisy had never been dangerous. In any other community, she would have been homeless, but the Lucys took care of her.

  Walker climbed through the scrub and found Daisy perched on her usual stone, wrapping wire around her stone sculptures. Today, she was wearing her bright red western shirt and denims, covered in her feathered cloak. The wind was chilly, he supposed. He didn’t know how old Daisy was, but she apparently felt the chill more than most. As usual, her graying hair flew in a crinkled nimbus around her head.

  “Are there some rules about who can see your stash of artwork?” he asked bluntly. “I’m trying to track down evidence of a murder from ten years ago, and several people think the pieces might be up here.”

  “Thalia,” she replied enigmatically. “Not Gifted. She should have left him.”

  Walker had checked census records and knew the people who had lived in Teddy’s house for ten years were named Thalia and Lonnie Thompson. He had one of his men hunting for the original deed and any other transfer before the one between the Kennedy Corporation and the Thompsons, but so far, they’d located nothing. Since this wasn’t billable time, his people weren’t devoting a lot of effort to it.

  “Do you have any examples of Thalia’s work in your stash?” he asked. “Portraits of the Thompsons? Any large plywood pieces?”

  Daisy wrapped a small crystal stone onto the figurine she was creating. “Best to keep evil underground, where it belongs.”

  “Thalia’s work is evil?” he asked, trying to make sense of insanity.

  She shadowed her eyes with her hand as she looked up at him. “Not the work. The people. The evil is in their eyes. That’s how she knew about his girlfriend.”

  He should have brought Sam with him to translate. Damn. He tried to think like Sam when he worded his reply. “So, when Thalia’s spirit says to look at the artwork for evidence that she was murdered, we should look at what you stored away—because it shows evil?”

  She nodded in satisfaction and returned to wrapping wire.

  “If I could see the pieces, I might be able to determine how or why she was killed.” He really didn’t want to get a warrant to search for magical artwork. He’d be laughed out of the state. Maybe he could persuade Sam to talk to Val, and between them, they could persuade Daisy to let him in.

  She narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “No one knows it’s there. Better that way.”

  She could be right about that. A treasure trove depicting every criminal who ever walked through Hillvale could be highly entertaining—and totally useless. Most of the work had been painted fifty years ago, he figured. The subjects would be in retirement homes or dead by now.

  Alan Gump—killer, thief, and arsonist—hadn’t been. Could Lonnie Thompson have been one of Gump’s fraudulent real estate pals?

  “Thalia’s spirit wants us to uncover it,” he said, trying not to feel like an idiot. “Could I just see her work?”

  “She fixed the mural,” Daisy said, picking up another rock. “Lucinda gave her the secret. Tell Thalia I’ll look.”

  Figuring that was the best he could hope for, Walker thanked her and jogged back to his SUV. It might be easier to see what name Lonnie Thompson was living under now than to wait for Daisy to produce magic. He sure as hell couldn’t get a search warrant to open an invisible cave in search of haunted evidence.

  Fifteen

  June 28: evening

  * * *

  Teddy had given the kids baths in their new temporary home and sent them to bed. Mia claimed she didn’t hear the ghost, and Teddy didn’t feel any attitude smacking her sensitivity, so she guessed the ghost had downtimes. It might be interesting to converse about the hereafter, but from what she’d sensed so far, she didn’t think ectoplasm worked on more than an emotional storm.

  Anxious about Syd, she had to keep occupied. It wouldn’t hurt to trim the interior frames of the display window with the leftover periwinkle. She would paint the walls a silvery-gray next, then paint the shelving white. The floors. . . she looked at the scuffed, worn oak. It needed sanding and refinishing, maybe in a dark stain?

  Adding the finishing touches to the window frame, she noted headlights passing on the road to the parking lot. It was dark and had to be past ten. She crossed her fingers and sent a prayer to the universe.

  The car let someone out. The driver unloaded the trunk. Cash was exchanged. . . It had to be Syd.

  She wished she had a welcoming light to flip on outside. The overheads would glare an
d wake half the town. Inspired, she grabbed the candle left from one of the séances, lit it, and held it in the window. The new arrival instantly turned in her direction.

  Teddy felt relief flow through her as she recognized Syd’s determined stride. She hadn’t realized how tense she’d been until this moment, when her sister appeared alive and unharmed. These past months had been hell.

  Teddy held the door open and blew out the candle when Syd reached the shop. Setting the wax aside, she hugged her sister the instant the door closed.

  “Thank goodness, let me look at you! I’ve been so worried!” Teddy pushed her older sister back a bit so she could run her fingers over Syd’s once-battered face.

  “It would be easier to see with a light,” Syd said with a laugh. “Are we reduced to living with candles?”

  “Only when the ghost is mad. But I didn’t want to alert the town that you were here by turning on the circus lights. Let’s take your stuff upstairs. We’re sharing a bedroom. I’ve squeezed in another bed, but it doesn’t leave much dresser space.” Teddy grabbed the large suitcase and Syd carried up a box.

  “We’ll manage,” Syd said confidently. “I want to see my babies. I’ll get my strength back once I have them in my arms again.”

  While Syd carried the box to the children’s room, Teddy got the suitcase into her small bedroom and turned on the bedside lamp. Syd was a fantastic mother and had probably filled the box with things the kids missed. She just prayed her sister hadn’t been crazy enough to go back to their home to fetch them.

  Syd hugged her again when she returned. Teddy could feel the tears running down her cheeks.

  “Thank you so much for looking after them,” she whispered. “But their hair looks awful! And so does yours. Do you think it’s safe to let it grow out again?”

  “It should wash out pretty quickly,” Teddy said. “I have no idea about safety though. So I guess it depends on what Asshat is doing now.”