Down

by Kirsten Weiss

  He threw back his head. His jaw hinged open, and he screamed that terrible scream of despair, horror, outrage. The sound was a rusted blade, cutting through me, driving me to my knees.

  I pressed my palms to my ears. “Mike!”

  And then he was gone, and Jayce was kneeling at my side.

  “What happened? What is it?” she asked. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.” But I’d never be all right again. Any doubts I’d had had been banished. I’d seen ghosts like this before. I knew what it meant. “Mike was murdered.” I knew it, marrow deep. His spirit hadn’t needed to speak the words. The injustice had been coiled in his dreadful shriek.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The CLOSED sign in the bookstore window wrung my insides for too many reasons. I drove past slowly, the warm breeze through my window fluttering my loose, white cotton tank. With an effort, I wrenched my gaze to the road, its sidewalks thronged with pedestrians in shorts and t-shirts.

  Mike had never missed a sunny Saturday in the bookstore. It was one of the best times for book sales. People traveling up to the lakes stopped into our small mining town to sample wines. Once they realized an evening in the mountains without cell service might not be so entertaining, they found the bookstore.

  My hands grew clammy. I’d dealt with distressed spirits before, but none that I’d loved. Mike’s spirit in pain was unbearable.

  Mike needed justice.

  I needed justice.

  I clenched my hands on the wheel and drove through the town and onto the main highway. This time I wouldn’t look for my father’s ghost. But hope and dread spiraled inside me every time a pine branch bent in the wind, or a mushroom forager appeared along the roadside. I couldn’t not look, and I despised myself for it.

  The sheriff’s station was a three-story building of aqua-tinted windows and rounded corners. In its parking lot, I stepped from the Volvo, unstuck my white, not-quite-linen slacks from my thighs and grabbed my purse off the seat.

  The macadam was deep black and smelled of a recent re-tarring. I imagined my heels sinking into the asphalt and through the earth. The impression was so vivid, I glanced behind me to check for footprints I’d left in the pavement. There were none.

  I had no standing to be here, but I hurried up the low concrete steps and inside. As far as the sheriff was concerned, I was only Mike’s friend and employee. But the memory of his tortured spirit drove me onward.

  Sheriff McCourt stood in the high atrium beside a potted palm and a cluster of chairs. Her short, curly blond hair was as rumpled as her white blouse. Her khaki slacks hung loosely on her, and her cheeks were hollow.

  She spoke to a man and woman in business suits and sensible shoes, and I immediately recognized them as FBI agents. Agents had flooded Doyle after the disappearance of the Bell and Thistle. None of them looked or talked like Mulder or Scully. The man was weather-beaten and woebegone, with graying hair and lines around his hazel eyes. The female agent was tall – nearly six feet – and slim with dark skin and cropped, black hair. I guessed she was of Indian or Pakistani descent.

  I straightened. She was the woman I’d seen at the site of the missing Bell and Thistle.

  The sheriff shook their hands and tucked her broad-brimmed hat beneath one arm. They nodded at each other, and the agents walked toward the glass front doors. The woman glanced at me, her brown eyes appraising.

  Sheriff McCourt spotted me and looked away. Then she met my gaze, and her mouth crinkled downward. In a resigned sort of way, she angled her head, as if to say, what are you waiting for?

  I forced myself to hurry to her. “Sheriff McCourt, hello.” I didn’t like having to talk to her. I didn’t know her well, and her encounters with my sisters had never been good. But there were things I needed to know.

  “Lenore. What brings you to my station?”

  I swallowed. “I wanted to ask if there was any indication that Mike’s death might have not been natural.”

  “What?” Her expression pinched. “Speak up. I can barely hear you.”

  I repeated myself, more loudly.

  The automatic doors slid open for the agents. The woman stopped in the doorway and rummaged in her brown leather purse. Heat from outside flowed into the atrium.

  One of the sheriff’s brows shot upward. “Not natural?”

  I glanced at the agent, certain she was eavesdropping. “Could there have been foul play involved?”

  “You think there was foul play?” the sheriff asked.

  The male agent said something to his partner. She shook her head and followed him outdoors, stepping aside for a young blond man in jeans and a worn t-shirt. A manila envelope was tucked beneath one tanned arm.

  “I do,” I said.

  “What evidence do you have?”

  If only I couldn’t claim a tormented ghost as proof. “Mike wasn’t wobbly on his feet. He ran up and down that ladder every day.”

  “Even young people fall and break their necks.”

  “Is that how he died? A broken neck?”

  Her mouth compressed. “We don’t have the coroner’s report yet.”

  “When do you think you will?”

  The young man strode to us. “Sheriff McCourt?”

  “Yes?” she asked, wary.

  “You’ve been served.” He handed her the thick envelope and strode away.

  “Thanks,” she said without irony and looked to me. “What were we saying?”

  “Do you need to…check that?” Cheeks warming on her behalf, I motioned to the envelope.

  “Divorce papers,” she said, and her expression shifted – a quick tightening and release. “You were asking about the autopsy.”

  “Um, yes.” McCourt’s husband had recently been released from jail. Word was, he’d moved to the nearby town of Angels Camp. I couldn’t even imagine what that must be like for her. “When do you think you’ll get the results?”

  “A week or two, most likely.”

  “But what if he was murdered? Won’t that be too late?”

  “Is there any reason to think he was murdered? Do you know someone who’d want him dead?”

  I drew away slightly. “No.” Peter and his wife were hungry for the inheritance, but it didn’t feel right to throw them under the bus. “Something just seemed... wrong, about the scene.”

  A trio of uniformed deputies walked past us. One laughed, his voice echoing off the white tile floor.

  “Wrong,” she echoed, her voice flat and dry as the high desert.

  “I know that isn’t much, but–”

  Her brows drew downward. “When someone dies suddenly, it can be difficult for us to process. We go into denial.”

  “I don’t deny he’s dead, just the way he supposedly died.”

  “Until we get a coroner’s report, there’s nothing to warrant further investigation.”

  “But... he’s dead!”

  “And I’ve got twenty-two people missing who may still be alive,” she snapped. “You get any feelings about them, let me know. Otherwise, I need to go find them.” A vein throbbed in her temple.

  “What if...?”

  She glared.

  “What if they’re connected?” I asked in a small voice.

  The sheriff’s eyes narrowed, and she closed the distance between us. “Connected?”

  “It’s a small town. A disappearance, a suspicious death–”

  “For the last time, there’s nothing suspicious about an old man falling off a ladder. Now stop trying to make this into something it isn’t, and get out of here before I detain you.”

  “But–”

  “Lenore?” A uniformed Connor strode toward us, his handsome face drawn. He had the beginnings of a five-o-clock shadow. “What are you doing here?”

  “Wasting my time,” the sheriff said. She turned on her heel and stalked toward an elevator. It swished open at her approach, and the two deputies emerging leapt aside to make way. She didn’t acknowledge them.

  “What
’s going on?” His olive-black eyes tracked the sheriff’s departure, his expression unfathomable.

  “I came to ask about the status of the investigation into Mike’s death.” I drew a deep breath to calm myself, and inhaled Connor’s aftershave – woodsy and spicy, warm and sensual. My heart fluttered like a caged sparrow. This was silly. Connor was one of my kind, a book lover. I’d always found it easy to speak to him, so there was no reason for palpitations now.

  He scrubbed a broad hand across his face. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  My belly knotted. “Why not?”

  “Look, I just got off duty, and I need coffee. Come with me to the cafeteria?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  I followed him through the atrium and into a small cafeteria. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the nearby woods. The pines pressed close, as if trying to crowd the station out.

  We approached the register.

  “What’ll it be?” he asked, his smile returned. “I’m buying.”

  “Coffee,” I said. “Black.” The skin sagged beneath his deep-set eyes, lines carved into the corners and around his mouth. He must have worked a night shift, and I fought a sudden urge to reach out, squeeze his rough hand. I didn’t know much about the deputy aside from his reading material. But what a man reads can speak volumes, pun intended.

  He ordered for us both, and soon we were seated at a round, formica table by the window.

  I dropped my paper napkin on a suspicious-looking brown stain and sipped the coffee. It scalded my tongue, and I drew a quick breath of annoyance.

  “It’s not Ground,” he said, smiling wryly, “but it’s got enough caffeine to wake an elephant. When’s your sister’s coffee shop reopening, by the way?” He watched me intently.

  A burst of insecurity washed through me, and I adjusted the collar of my white, cotton tank. “In three months, if all goes well.”

  “So.” He turned his paper coffee cup on the table. “Mike. How are things going?”

  “He left his book business to me, which is amazing. But now Peter and his wife are furious. His wife accused me of... I’m not sure what she accused me of. She seemed to think I’d tricked Mike into naming me in the will.”

  “That’s bull. Mike wasn’t senile. And you took as much interest in that store and those books as he did. He wanted his business to go to someone who cared about it, who’d carry it on.”

  “He told you that?”

  He smiled, lopsided. “He didn’t have to. I’m surprised you learned about his will so fast.”

  “His executor wants to keep the business going while we sort out his estate. I guess he felt it would be easiest to just tell me everything right away. Apparently, Mike did some rare book trading on the side from his home.” And the more I thought about that, the weirder it seemed. I rubbed my forearms. Even if rare books and trade paperbacks were two wildly different markets, why not display some of the rare books at the store? Why not share his finds with me?

  “Do you know anything about rare books?”

  “No. But I’m supposed to meet the lawyer tomorrow at Mike’s house to go over the inventory.” I drummed my fingers on the table. “And you have successfully changed the subject. What have you heard about the investigation?”

  “I can’t discuss an ongoing investigation.”

  “So there is an investigation at least? Because it doesn’t sound like the sheriff cares.”

  “Sheriff McCourt has a lot on her mind since the Bell and Thistle.” He gazed out the window. The pine branches shifted in the breeze.

  He brightened. “Hey, Owen and I might have figured out that bell business. You know that old abandoned farm south of town?”

  I nodded.

  “There was some scrap metal banging together. I think that’s what we’ve been hearing.”

  “That’s great,” I said, unenthusiastic. The bell we’d all been hearing wasn’t scrap metal, and he knew it.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Mike was murdered.”

  His head jerked toward me, and his coffee-colored eyes widened, startled. “McCourt told you that?”

  “No, I’m telling you.”

  “What do you know?”

  “Would you believe it came to me in a dream?” I asked, bitter.

  “I might,” he said, surprising me. “The subconscious can be a powerful tool.”

  “Please don’t try to rationalize this.” Rationality only went so far when your family was under the thumb of an unseelie curse.

  “I’m not discounting what you’re saying, but you can’t take dreams to a jury.”

  “Do you think I don’t know that?” My hands bunched in frustration. “I need proof.”

  “The police need proof.”

  I crossed my legs, uncrossed them. “Proof which they’re not bothering to find, because McCourt thinks there’s nothing there. That Mike was a doddering old man who fell off a ladder.”

  “When the coroner’s report comes in–”

  “It will be weeks before that happens, and if any evidence exists, by that time it will have disappeared,” I said. His calm, cool, rational demeanor was really irritating. But it wasn’t his fault I lived my life in the irrational between of ghosts and animal spirits and dark fairies.

  “You don’t know that. So far, there’s no evidence of any wrongdoing.”

  I rose. “Then if you won’t find anything, I will.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, curt.

  I grabbed my cooling coffee. “It means I’m going to be taking over Mike’s business, and going through his papers, and talking to his friends. I may as well keep my eyes open for evidence while I’m at it.”

  “No, Lenore. You need to stay out of this and let the police do their job.”

  Through the windows, beneath the pines, Mike’s ghost stood, his shoulders slumped. A breeze tossed the branches, but his short sleeves didn’t flutter. His thinning, gray hair remained unruffled. I felt his desperation, a jagged, metallic vibration in the air that tore at my heart.

  The ghost shook its head, an expression of sorrow etched in the lines of his face, and I had to look away.

  “If I find anything,” I said, “I’ll turn it over to you.”

  “No. Look at all the trouble your sisters got into last year. I thought you were smarter than them.”

  My neck stiffened. “Right. Thanks for the coffee.” I strode from the cafeteria.

  “Lenore!” he called after me.

  Ignoring him, I walked on. The station’s glass doors slid silently open. The mid-Sierra summer sun slammed into me, and I slowed, shielding my eyes with one hand. Waves of heat writhed above the macadam.

  Connor didn’t follow, and I felt an odd disappointment. But what had I expected? I’d pretty much insulted his profession, or at least his department. Not my finest hour, but Mike’s need was greater than sheriff’s deputy egos.

  I wrenched open the door of my Volvo and sticky heat flowed from the car. Someone had killed Mike. Someone clever and quick. But I had resources and abilities the police didn’t. It was time I used them.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I parked in front of Mike’s gray and white Victorian. He’d often threatened to repaint it in true, garish Victorian colors. Fortunately for his neighbors, he’d never carried out his threats, because the ivy was too thick. The greenery clutched the house, as if it would drag it down the steep, straight road that tumbled into Doyle.

  It had stormed last night, thunder booming against the granite mountains and rattling windows. Thin wraiths of steam rose from the puddles dotting the street, the morning sun warming the town. The Sunday tourist flood would arrive in the afternoon – people returning to the Bay Area from their weekend in the mountains. They’d stop in Doyle for a quick bite or to stretch their legs. And the bookstore was closed, missing all those potential sales.

  I stepped from the car and walked to the picket fence, placed my hand on the gate.
/>   A woman shouted. “Get away from there!”

  My hand jerked away, and something sharp scraped my palm. I hissed from the pain and glanced at my hand, but there was no mark.

  Dragging her sandwich board behind her, Alba Pollard stalked up the sidewalk. The tendons in her scrawny neck bulged. Her eyes blazed with rage. The sandwich board bumped over a crack in the sidewalk, and the two pieces of plywood clattered. The air seemed to vibrate red and black around her quivering form. “I said, get away from there! Corporate stooge! That isn’t your house.”

  Since it really wasn’t my house, I couldn’t argue. “I’m meeting someone,” I said, edging away.

  “All you thieves sniffing around here now that he’s dead. I know what you want! Drugs!” The collar of her ragged gray tee slipped sideways, exposing her bony shoulder.

  “No, I honestly don’t.” Drugs? WTF?

  “You’ve been touched by darkness.” She drew closer. Her breath stank of rotting food, and I fought to keep a smile on my face. “You’re like the rest of them. A puppet.”

  “Ms. Bonheim?” A tall, elderly man in a tan, three-piece suit walked down the porch steps. The front door stood open.

  Relieved, I whipped inside the garden, shutting the low gate behind me. “Yes. And you must be Mr. Pivens.”

  “Thief! Puppet!” Alba paced the sidewalk, the sandwich board scraping the concrete.

  He frowned at her. “Why don’t we go inside?”

  I followed him into the high-ceilinged foyer. Sunlight streamed through the stained glass window above the door and painted the oriental rug in geometric yellows and greens and blues.

  He shut the door, dampening Alba’s shrieks. “Mike was a patient man when it came to Alba. More patient than I would have been. But I’m afraid her presence next door will lower the value of this property.” His hands were white and papery, and something about them made me shudder.

  “It’s a beautiful house.”

  A grand staircase, its wooden steps polished, wound up to the second floor. White, crown molding framed high gray walls.

  Alba’s shouts drifted through the paneled walls.

  “The library is this way,” he said.