They swayed in the darkness, the music lifting them out of the dirty club and the crooked city that trapped them. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, felt her hand clench around his.
“In another life,” she whispered. “I bet we’d be all right, handsome.”
Frank said nothing. The lump in his throat hurt too damn much.
11
Cigarettes Stink and Bogie Lies.
I lit another cigarette as we looked over the hills, the Hollywood sign and the sunrise at our back. I blew the smoke in Frank’s direction as he watched the morning light start to illuminate the city.
“You can see everything from up here,” I said.
Frank leaned against a rock and appeared to take a deep breath. “Everything that matters, kid.”
The tobacco coated my tongue, but I figured if anyone had earned a few puffs of nasty, cancer-inducing smoke in their direction, it was Frank. The city stretched before us, downtown to the beach. The lights were flickering off and a new day was coming.
“So you’re buried up here, huh?”
He nodded toward a rise just above Mount Lee Drive that was well away from any of the gullies that regularly swept rainwater down the hills and into Griffith Park.
“Not bad, Detective Bogle. If your bones need to rest somewhere, the hill under the Hollywood sign is pretty cool.”
“Yeah, I’m not complaining.”
“We could get you down from here,” I said. “You want me to send an anonymous tip?”
“Why bother?” He shrugged. “I got a better view than any of the guys who made it to retirement.”
“Good point.” I glanced at him from the corner of my eye. “No family?”
He shook his head. “Only child.”
“We let it lie, then.”
“Let it lie.” He took another breath of the smoke I blew his direction. “It’s good to know. Thanks.”
“About Nina?”
He nodded.
“She wasn’t a victim.”
The corner of his mouth turned up. “No, she wasn’t. Mintz must have found her. Buried her in the park to cover his ass. He wouldn’t want it getting out his girl killed herself.”
“I know what she was trying to do, but I don’t get how.” I’d been thinking about it since we found Nina’s last note to Frank. “Even if she committed suicide and tried to frame Mintz for it, she’d have a hard time leaving her body somewhere his people weren’t going to find it.”
“True,” Frank said. “But I think she must have done it at home. The guards Mintz had on her covered the house, but they didn’t go inside. Her neighbors knew her. Liked her. I think most of them knew what was going on.”
“So if one of them heard the shot and called the police, they would have pointed at Mintz. And Mintz’s guards would be expected to lie about him not being there.”
“They’d have been unreliable witnesses,” Frank said. “Every one of them had arrest records.”
“So according to her plan, she’d take her own life. One of her neighbors would call the police. They’d probably call you, in fact. The note would be found in her purse.”
“The dress she mentioned might have been the one she was wearing.”
“Which would have had someone else’s blood on it.” I glanced at Bogie. “She knew she could count on you to find it.”
“It was a good plan,” he said quietly. “Good plan, doll.”
He wasn’t talking to me anymore.
“What went wrong?” I asked.
“Nobody heard her.” He looked at me. Shrugged. “Nobody heard her.”
“Yeah.”
What else was there to say?
Nina King was a victim. And then she wasn’t. I hated the way she’d died, but I had to respect her for it. Had to respect the woman who’d wanted to make something of her death even if she’d felt like a failure in life. I watched the sun touch the top of the skyscrapers downtown and realized I agreed with Frank.
I hoped Nina had found peace. And I really hoped she wasn’t a ghost.
“So why’d you lie to me, Bogie?”
He frowned. “I never lied to you.”
“You told me you and Nina weren’t in love.”
His face was carefully blank. “I wasn’t lying.”
I didn’t say anything, but I did light another cigarette and blow the smoke toward him.
“She didn’t love me, Linx. Like I said, Nina didn’t even know who she was anymore.”
“If you say so.”
A wry chuckle came from Frank’s throat. “Kid, what you don’t know about love… is a lot.”
“Whatever you say, Bogie.”
I carefully stubbed out the last of the cigarette and put the butt in the trash bag I’d brought. Cigarettes were gross, and I wasn’t going to leave any behind in the park even if other people did. Besides, they were a fire hazard. I stood up, dusted off the back of my ruined dress, and stood just as the sun was breaking over the horizon.
“We solved your mystery, Detective. I found your grave—”
“I showed you my grave.” Frank stood at my side, watching the sun rise. “There wasn’t much detecting in that one.”
“We solved the mystery of who killed you.”
He stuck his hands in his pockets. “Which I already knew.”
“And we solved the case you were working on when you were killed.”
Frank nodded. “We did do that.”
“The million-dollar question is: Are you still stuck to me?”
He started to fade in the morning light, tipping his fedora as he dissolved. “I guess we’ll find out. See ya, Linx.”
“Bye, Bogie.”
I slept most of that day. Woke in the afternoon, texted Jackson to apologize for ditching early the night before, then I went back to bed. I kept the door open.
I didn’t sense Frank.
I woke up the following morning to the smell of cigarette smoke in my bedroom. I didn’t know if that was from the reeking dress in the hamper or—
“Morning, cupcake.”
I groaned and rolled over to face the corner where Frank usually hung out. Sure enough, there he was, sitting in the lime-green chair I’d painted the summer before. I blinked when I realized he was wearing a new suit. Navy blue instead of grey pinstripe.
Dammit, I was actually glad to see him.
“You know what?” I rubbed my eyes. “I’m the one who found Nina’s second note. I think you could at least call me partner.”
“You want me to call you Partner Cupcake?”
“I take it someone is feeling sassy this morning.”
“And someone is still in bed.”
“Shut up, Frank.”
“Can I point out that if you’d looked at the bones that very first night at the morgue when I told you to, we would have figured this out days ago?”
Shit.
“No.” I rolled over and gave him my back. “You cannot point that out.”
“Pretty sure I just did.”
“Hey, Frank.”
“What?”
I stuck my nose up and sniffed the air. “Smell that?”
“You trying to be cute?”
“Mmmmm. Coffee.” I sat up and swung my legs out of bed. “Smells like Nan’s already got coffee made. Want a cup? Oh wait…” I stood and walked toward the door. “You can’t have a cup of coffee because you’re dead.”
“I should have walked toward the light.” He followed me out of the bedroom and down the stairs. “I felt the pull. Heard the angels singing. Should have walked toward the light.”
“You know you’d miss me, Bogie.”
I turned at the base of the stairs and looked up. Frank stood a few steps above me, fighting a smile.
“Whatever you say, kid.”
Afterword
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r copy. Thank you for taking the time to let others know what you thought.
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Acknowledgments
For those of you who have already signed up for my monthly newsletter, you’ve met Linx & Bogie already. To those of you who are new to these characters, Welcome! I hope you’ve enjoyed this peek into my newest series.
Ghost stories are a new direction for me, but when the idea for an old school noir-style detective came to me, I knew I wanted to spice it up for a modern audience. Luckily, my readers are already accustomed to the paranormal. Writing Bogie as a ghost attached to a modern artist wasn’t a big leap to make. I’m thrilled with the reader response to this series so far, and I hope to continue to broaden it with more short fiction and maybe some full-length novels, too.
Many thanks to my wonderful reader group, All Books Elizabeth Hunter, for the wonderful ideas to add short stories to this collection. I wrote this novella last year and hung onto it a little bit until I could expand it into a bigger collection. I hope you’ve enjoyed it.
Thanks for reading,
Elizabeth
About the Author
ELIZABETH HUNTER is a contemporary fantasy, paranormal romance, and paranormal mystery writer. She is a graduate of the University of Houston Honors College and a former English teacher. She once substitute taught a kindergarten class but decided that middle school was far less frightening. Thankfully, people now pay her to write books and eighth graders everywhere rejoice.
She currently lives in Central California with her son, two dogs, many plants, and a sadly empty fish tank. She is the author of the Elemental Mysteries and Elemental World series, the Cambio Springs series, the Irin Chronicles, and other works of fiction.
For more information:
ElizabethHunterWrites.com
[email protected]
Also by Elizabeth Hunter
The Elemental Mysteries Series
A Hidden Fire
This Same Earth
The Force of Wind
A Fall of Water
All the Stars Look Down (short story)
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The Elemental World Series
Building From Ashes
Waterlocked
Blood and Sand
The Bronze Blade
The Scarlet Deep
Beneath a Waning Moon
A Stone-Kissed Sea
* * *
The Elemental Legacy Series
Shadows and Gold
Imitation and Alchemy
Omens and Artifacts
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The Irin Chronicles
The Scribe
The Singer
The Secret
On a Clear Winter Night (short story)
The Staff and the Blade
The Silent
* * *
The Cambio Springs Series
Shifting Dreams
Long Ride Home (short story)
Desert Bound
Five Mornings (short story)
Waking Hearts
* * *
Contemporary Romance
The Genius and the Muse
The Ghost in the Glamour
Copyright © 2016
Elizabeth Hunter
ISBN: 9781941674147
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
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