Arizona Heat
Linda Lael Miller
Some secrets are too hot to handle – trust me, this is one of them!After years spent trying to remember her past, Mojo Sheepshanks just wants to put it behind her. She’s finally got the life she always wanted—sisters she loves, a career that keeps her on her toes and Tucker Darroch, the handsome cop who’s stuck by her against all odds. But for the people around her, moving on is hard to do. Tucker can’t seem to let go of his past, while Mojo’s sister Greer is being blackmailed for secrets in hers. And Mojo’s stuck in the middle again.Meanwhile, danger is stalking the citizens of Cave Creek, Arizona, Mojo’s adopted home. And even as she and Tucker work to keep everyone safe, Mojo will discover that there are mysteries in Cave Creek that someone is willing to protect at any cost.
Some secrets are too hot to handle
After years spent trying to remember her past, Mojo Sheepshanks just wants to put it behind her. She’s finally got the life she always wanted—sisters she loves, a career that keeps her on her toes and Tucker Darroch, the handsome cop who’s stuck by her against all odds. But for the people around her, moving on is hard to do. Tucker can’t seem to let go of his past, while Mojo’s sister Greer is being blackmailed for secrets in hers. And Mojo’s stuck in the middle again.
Meanwhile, danger is stalking the citizens of Cave Creek, Arizona, Mojo’s adopted home. And even as she and Tucker work to keep everyone safe, Mojo will discover that there are mysteries in Cave Creek that someone is willing to protect at any cost.
Previously published as Deadly Deceptions
Praise for #1 New York Times bestselling author Linda Lael Miller (#u26084e15-9a68-545e-bc3a-3751375fa0a1)
“Readers will be entranced by Mojo... The star of Miller’s series debut possesses the appeal of both Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum and Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse rolled up in one.”
—Booklist
“The versatile and surprising Miller is back dishing up romantic suspense liberally laced with humor and the offbeat... Mojo Sheepshanks’ extraordinary adventures brim with sassy wit, emotional complications and dangerous thrills. It doesn’t get any better than this.”
—RT Book Reviews
“[A] marvelous contemporary western trilogy launch...fraught with amazing chemistry.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review, on Once a Rancher
“All three titles should appeal to readers who like their contemporary romances Western, slightly dangerous and graced with enlightened (more or less) bad-boy heroes.”
—Library Journal on the Montana Creeds series
“Miller’s prose is smart and her tough Eastwoodian cowboy cuts a sharp, unexpectedly funny figure in a classroom full of rambunctious frontier kids.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Man from Stone Creek
Arizona Heat
Linda Lael Miller
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Josanne Lovick, with love and appreciation
Contents
Cover (#ub3daddc3-611e-53b8-9bc6-c8bbf1f0c6d2)
Back Cover Text (#u23f66327-513e-574c-8049-e091f366375e)
Praise (#u37ed1962-7524-580c-ac73-c8fad4f7b5df)
Title Page (#uf7778cc9-6b1d-5662-99d6-6fea58759fb2)
Dedication (#ufd0d852f-c357-54ed-b82d-6fcacb2b6658)
Chapter One (#u0ad3f88f-ff6e-5520-a378-39078cb59777)
Chapter Two (#u564df760-ccfc-526a-aedf-e93efe915069)
Chapter Three (#ud9aa567f-5d16-5199-bf9a-045add37d9a3)
Chapter Four (#ue4edf332-e9c7-5c46-8c09-aa0109ef682b)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#u26084e15-9a68-545e-bc3a-3751375fa0a1)
I WAS SO INNOCENT THEN.
Don’t get me wrong—I’d been through a lot, starting with the savage murders of both my parents, when I was only five years old. I’d been kidnapped and raised mostly on the road, by the late, great Lillian Travers, living under an alias that has since become more representative of who I really am than my given name—Mary Josephine Mayhugh—could ever be.
I’m Mojo Sheepshanks now, and as far as I can tell, I always will be.
Then again, you never know.
That’s what I’ve learned since the day I sat in the back of an overcrowded church in Cave Creek, Arizona, on a hot day in early May, too shaken to cry. You just never know—about anything, or anybody.
The casket in front of the altar was painfully small, made of gleaming black wood, and it was open. The body of seven-year-old Gillian Pellway lay inside, nestled on cushions of white silk, clad in a blue ruffled dress, her small hands folded across her chest. I know it’s what people always say, but she really did look peaceful, lying there. She might have been asleep.
She wasn’t at peace. If she had been, her ghost wouldn’t have been sitting in the folding chair next to mine, still clad in the single ballet slipper, pink leotard, tights and tutu she’d been wearing when she was murdered a week before, sometime after a rehearsal for an upcoming dance recital ended.
It wasn’t as if I’d had a lot of experience dealing with dead people. Early trauma and the years on the road with Lillian notwithstanding, I’d led a pretty ordinary life. I wasn’t psychic. I didn’t have visions.
Then, one night in April, I’d awakened to find my ex-husband, Nick DeLuca, in bed with me. Not too weird—divorced people sleep together all the time. Except that Nick had been killed in a car crash two years before. I saw him often, over a period of a few weeks, and I probably owe him my life.
But that’s another story.
Nick opened some kind of door, and I’ve been seeing ghosts ever since.
They’re easy enough to spot, once you know what to look for. Their clothes are usually outdated, and they often seem lost, as though they want to ask directions but can’t get anybody’s attention. I encounter them all the time now—in supermarkets, busy restaurants, even in dog parks.
I wish I didn’t, but I do.
I try hard not to make eye contact, but it doesn’t always work. Once they realize I can see them, they tend to get in my face.
That day, sitting through Gillian’s funeral, I had mixed feelings. Of course it was a tragedy—the apparently random slaughter of a little girl. That goes without saying. But most of the people weeping in that church were crying more for themselves than for Gillian—because they’d miss her, because it might just as easily have been their own child lying in that coffin, because they thought death was an ending.
It might be simpler if it were.
As I said, I was innocent then. I’d figured out that death wasn’t the final curtain, but the beginning of a whole new act in some complicated cosmic play. The proof was sitting right beside me, leaning against my arm. But the transition is rocky for some people, especially when it happens suddenly, or violently. Back then, I had no idea how many ghosts get caught in the thin, shifting, invisible web that separates this life from the next. A surprising number of them think they’re dreaming, and wander around waiting to wake up.
Helen Erland, Gillian’s mother, sat stiff-spined in a front pew, occasionally shuddering with the effort to hold in a sob. Her husband, Vince, wasn’t there to share in her grief and lend support—he was in jail pending a murder charge. Though Mrs. Erland apparently had no family to lean on, the place was packed—many of the mourners, I suspected, were the parents of Gillian’s classmates at school.
I wished I could tell Helen that Gillian wasn’t really gone, but how exactly does one go about that? By tugging at the sleeve of the bereaved mother’s cheap but tasteful black suit and saying, Excuse me, but your daughter is more alive than you are?
I don’t think so.
So I sat there, and I watched and listened, and I wondered if the real murderer was present, gloating or guilt ridden. Although Gillian had yet to speak a word to me since she’d appeared in the backseat of my sister’s Pathfinder soon after her death, she had indicated that Vince Erland hadn’t killed her. It seemed more a matter of instinct than certainty.
Conundrum number two. How to explain to the police that they were probably holding the wrong man, and you knew this because the victim had shaken her head when you asked if he’d been the one, but either couldn’t or wouldn’t tell you who had ended her life. All without winding up in some psych ward yourself.
My gaze wandered to Tucker Darroch. He was sitting up near the front, with one strong arm around his ex-wife, Allison, her head resting on his shoulder. Their seven-year-old twins, Daniel and Daisy, friends of Gillian’s, weren’t present.
I knew what was going to happen, of course.
Allison would need Tucker.
And he would move back in with her, if he hadn’t already.
Whatever had been starting between Tucker and me would be over.
I tried not to care. I wasn’t in love with the man, after all. But we were definitely...involved.
The service was ending.
I squeezed Gillian’s small hand, cold but substantial, and then Helen Erland rose shakily from her seat and walked to the coffin. With a soft wail of sorrow that pierced the lining of my soul, she laid a single white rose inside.
I felt Gillian pull away, and I tried to hold on, but it was no use. One moment the child was sitting beside me, the next she was standing at her shattered mother’s side, her little face upturned, her whole being crying out in a silent plea. I’m here, see me!
What could I do?
Rush up there and gather a child no one else could see into my arms? Drag her back to the rows of folding chairs that had been set up in the rear of the church to accommodate the overflow?
There was nothing I could do. So I sat still, clenching my hands together, my face wet with tears.
Helen Erland, understandably focused on the body in the coffin, was oblivious to her real daughter, standing right beside her.
Gillian, I called, without speaking. Come back.
She turned a defiant glance on me, shook her head and grabbed ineffectually at her mother’s hand. I was vaguely aware of a young woman at the periphery of my vision, a video camera raised to her face, and a slight shudder went through me.
Enduring the actual funeral was hard enough. Who would want to replay it?
Let this be over, I prayed distractedly. Please let this be over.
Gillian vanished, and did not return to her chair beside mine.
Tucker left Allison long enough to go to Helen, help her back to her place.
I couldn’t stand any more.
I got up and slipped out through the open doors of the church, doing my best not to hyperventilate. I would have given just about anything to have one or both of my sisters there, but Jolie, recently hired as a crime-scene tech by Phoenix PD, was going through an orientation program, and Greer was caught in the throes of a rapidly disintegrating marriage.
So I was on my own. Nothing new there.
I took refuge under a leafy ficus tree, grateful for the shade, one hand pressed against the trunk so I wouldn’t drop into a sobbing heap on the ground. I was dazed by the intensity of my mourning, and I didn’t trust myself to drive. Not right away, anyhow.
The service ended.
People flowed past, murmuring, the men looking stalwart and grim, the women dabbing at puffy eyes with crumpled handkerchiefs.
The pallbearers, Tucker among them, carried Gillian’s casket to the hearse, waiting in the dusty street with its rear doors open like the black wings of some bird of doom, ready to enfold the child and carry her away into the unknown. The minister helped Mrs. Erland into the back of a limousine; I looked for Gillian, but she was nowhere around.
When a hand gripped my upper arm, I was beyond startled. I could no longer assume I’d been approached by another human being—not the flesh-and-blood variety, that is.
I turned and saw Allison Darroch standing just behind me, her eyes red rimmed from crying, her flawless skin alabaster pale. She had lush brown hair, pulled into a severe French twist for the occasion, and she wore a black sheath that accented her slender curves.
“What,” she demanded in a furious undertone, “are you doing here?”
I swallowed, stuck for an immediate answer. I couldn’t say I’d come to Gillian Pellway’s funeral because the dead child had practically herded me there. Especially not to Allison, who clearly saw me as the Other Woman, even though she and Tucker had been legally divorced for over a year before I even met him.
Allison leaned in. “It’s sick—this is a little girl’s funeral—but you’ll do anything to get close to Tucker, won’t you?”
I’d never labored under the delusion that Allison and I would ever be friends, but I did respect her. She was a good, if overprotective, mother to the twins, and in her capacity as a veterinarian she’d recently saved Russell, a canine friend of mine, from certain death.
“I know Helen Erland slightly,” I said, with what dignity I could muster, considering I still felt as though I might faint, throw up, or both. It was true, too, which admittedly isn’t the case with everything I say. Helen clerked in a convenience store in Cave Creek, and I occasionally stopped in to buy lottery tickets or gas up my Volvo. “My coming here has nothing to do with Tucker.”
“I don’t believe you,” Allison said.
“Back off,” I replied, after reassembling my backbone vertebra by vertebra. “I have as much right to be here as you do.”
Tucker appeared in the corner of my eye, handsome and anxious in his dark suit. His hair was butternut-blond and a little too long, like before, but he didn’t look like the undercover DEA agent I knew him to be. His normal uniform was jeans, a muscle shirt and biker boots.
“Get in the car, Allison,” he said.
She stiffened, gave me one more poisonous glare and walked away. Got into the big SUV parked at the curb.
For a long moment Tucker and I just stared at each other.
I figured it was his place to speak first, because he’d been the one to stumble into the hornet’s nest. On the other hand, there was a lot I wanted to tell him, because he was, after all, the only person in the world who knew I could see Gillian Pellway.
I bit my lower lip and stood my ground.
Tucker shoved a hand through his hair. Sighed. His green eyes were haunted, and I wondered how long it had been since he’d slept through a night. Certainly not since Gillian’s body had been found, if appearances were anything to go by.
“Allison’s pretty torn up,” he said. “So are the kids.”
I merely nodded.
“She asked me to move back in. Just for a while.”
Tucker had a condo in Scottsdale, but he wasn’t there much; when he was working, he tended to disappear into some mysterious underworld, one I knew little about.
My stomach pitched, and bile scalded the back of my throat. I swallowed and nodded again.
He moved as though he might take a gentle hold on my shoulders, or even pull me into his arms. Then, after glancing toward the SUV with its tinted windows, he looked at me again, his eyes begging me to understand. I figured his Harley, his usual favorite mode of transportation, was probably gathering dust in some garage.
“You’re going to do it,” I said.
Tucker thrust out a breath. “Moje, this isn’t a reconciliation. Nothing like that. It’s temporary—just until Allison gets over this. Daisy’s having bad dreams, and Danny freaks if every light in the house isn’t on all night long.”
I thought of Gillian’s silent insistence that Vince Erland wasn’t her killer, and gulped back another throatful of bile. I believed her, and that meant the real murderer was still out there, perhaps already stalking another child. I shivered.
“Do you think the twins are in danger?” I asked when I could summon up enough breath. I cared about Tucker Darroch big-time, and I wasn’t planning on sharing a bed with him as long as he was bunking in with the wife and kids, but Daisy attended the same dance school Gillian had, wore the same tiny-ballerina getup. Just thinking of that made me cold to the core.
“I don’t know,” Tucker said.
I took a step toward him, touched his hand. “See you,” I told him.
He caught hold of my arm when I would have gone past him, climbed into my car and motored for Greer’s place, on the chic fringes of Scottsdale. Until a week before, I’d lived in an apartment over Bad-Ass Bert’s Biker Saloon, but following an unfortunate incident with a psychotic killer, I’d moved into my sister’s guesthouse.
“What do you mean, ‘see you’?” Tucker demanded.
I pulled my arm free, though I didn’t make a show of it. I knew Allison was watching from the SUV, and I didn’t want to spike her drama meter, which was already bobbing in the red zone. “I mean,” I said evenly, “that while I certainly understand that you have to be there for your family, I don’t intend to sleep with you in the meantime.”
A muscle bunched in Tucker’s fine, square jaw, and he nodded once, sharply. I thought he’d turn and walk away, but he didn’t. His eyes searched mine, probing and solemn. “Have you seen Gillian again—since the day we talked on the phone?”
She’d been haunting me pretty much nonstop, but that was neither the time nor place to go into details. The way things were going, there might never be a time or place. “Yes” was all I said.
He absorbed that. Nodded again. “We have to talk.”
“Not today,” I answered.
“You’re still living at your sister’s place?”
The SUV’s horn sounded an impatient, wifely little toot.
“Until further notice,” I said, and this time when I started for my car, Tucker didn’t try to stop me.
* * *
I WOULD HAVE liked nothing better than to go back to Greer’s, strip to the skin and swim off some of my angst in her backyard pool, but I knew with my light, redhead’s skin, I’d freckle and fry if I did. So I settled myself in the front seat of my Volvo, switched on the ignition and turned the air-conditioning up as high as it would go.
I sat, watching other people drive off in their cars.
The young woman with the video camera passed by, accompanied by another teenage girl with a mascara-streaked face.
The crowd consisted mostly of couples, though, going home to commiserate together.
Tucker and Allison among them.
I closed my eyes for a moment. They had each other. I had two distracted sisters and a very small ghost. Not much comfort there.
I rallied.
Told myself to get a grip.
Okay, so Tucker and I were on hiatus. Maybe we were even over, as I’d thought earlier. It wasn’t as if I didn’t have a life, after all. I’d recently started my own one-woman, kitchen-table detective agency, which I’d dubbed Sheepshanks, Sheepshanks and Sheepshanks, to give it some substance, and I’d inherited a biker bar. I had friends—so what if they were in Witness Protection and I was never going to see them again?
I sighed. My palms felt damp where I gripped the steering wheel.
Was there a Damn Fool’s Guide to Making New Friends? I made a mental note to scour the bookstores and the internet for a copy.
I shifted into Drive and pulled away from the curb, made a wide U-turn and headed for Bad-Ass Bert’s.
Cave Creek isn’t exactly a metropolis, so I was braking in the gravel parking lot the next thing I knew. Staring at the weathered walls of my saloon, cluttered with rusted-out beer signs. My old apartment was upstairs, and the last time I’d been in residence, I’d nearly been murdered myself.
Still, I missed the place, and it bugged me that I was afraid to stay there. I wasn’t comfortable at Greer’s, luxurious as it was. For one thing, I was worried that her husband, Alex Pennington, M.D., not exactly my greatest fan, might turn up beside my bed in a ski mask some dark night, and for another, Greer was really getting on my nerves. She had plenty of problems, including a cast on her left arm—some guy had tried to wrestle her into the back of a van in broad daylight just a few days back, and if Jolie hadn’t been there to scald the perp with hot coffee, Greer would have been toast.
It wasn’t as if she was out of danger, either.
One thing at a time, I thought. As if there was some universal crisis monitor out there someplace with a clipboard, making sure I didn’t get overloaded.
Yeah. Right.
On an impulse, I pulled the keys from the ignition and got out of the car. Locked up and headed for the outside stairway leading to my second-floor apartment. Okay, I definitely wasn’t ready to move back in, but I was up for a little immersion therapy. I was a grown woman, twenty-eight years old and self-supporting, and I’d survived some pretty hairy situations in my time.
I could stand walking through my empty apartment.
Sooner or later, I’d have to come to terms with the things that had happened there—some of them bad, some of them very, very good.
All the very, very good stuff involved Tucker, unfortunately. And it wasn’t just the sex, either. We’d shared a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches in that apartment, swapped a few confidences, laughed and argued, too.
I climbed the stairs, and my hand shook only a little as I jammed the key into the lock and turned it. The door creaked on its hinges as I pushed it open, and I forced myself to step over the threshold.
Dark memories rushed me, left me breathless.
I switched on the light in the short hallway, even though it was three o’clock in the afternoon and the sun was blazing through every window.
My heart began to hammer as I moved into the living room. The atmosphere felt thick, smothering.
I half expected my dead ex-husband to appear, but he didn’t.
Even he would have been some consolation that day.
I stayed close to the walls as I did reconnaissance, as cautious as if I were a member of some crack SWAT team staking out dangerous territory.
I sidestepped around the edges of the living room, the kitchen and finally the place I was most afraid to go—the bedroom. There was a peculiar humming thud in my ears, and my stomach kept bouncing up into the back of my throat.
I got down on my hands and knees, snagging my panty hose in the process, and peered under the bed. No monsters lurking there.
A tap on my shoulder nearly launched me through the ceiling.
I smacked my head on the bed frame and whirled on my knees, stoked on adrenaline, prepared to fight for my life.
It was only Gillian.
Her blue eyes glistened with tears. I wondered if she’d gone to the cemetery, seen her coffin lowered into the ground.
But no, there hadn’t been time for that. And I knew there was no graveside service planned. Her mother and a few friends would be there, no one else.
I straightened and pulled her into my arms. I didn’t even try not to cry.
She clung to me, shivering. She felt so small, so fragile. Ethereal, but solid, too.
“Talk to me, sweetheart,” I whispered when I’d recovered enough to speak. “Tell me who—who did this to you.”
She shook her head. Was she refusing to tell me, or was it that she didn’t know who her murderer was? Yes, she’d denied her stepfather’s guilt with a shake of her head, but that didn’t mean she’d recognized her killer. He or she might have been a stranger. Or perhaps she hadn’t actually seen the person at all; I wasn’t even sure how or where she’d been killed. The police weren’t releasing that information and there was no visible indication of trauma in her appearance, either.
Still, I had a strong intuitive sense that she was keeping a secret.
I got up off my knees, sat on the edge of the bed I was still too afraid to sleep in. Gillian perched beside me, looking up into my face with enormous, imploring eyes.
“Honey,” I said carefully, “did you see the person who hurt you?”
Again, she shook her head, another clear no. There had been a slight hesitation, though.
I let out a breath. “But you’re sure it wasn’t your stepfather?”
She nodded vigorously.
I was about to ask how she could be so certain when the phone on my bedside table rang, a shrill jangling that made my nerves jump.
Gillian instantly evaporated.
I picked up the receiver more out of reflex than any desire to talk to anyone. “Hello?”
“It’s Tucker.”
I closed my eyes. Opened them again right away, in case some psycho was about to spring out of the woodwork and pounce. “What?” I asked, none too graciously.
He let out a sigh. “Look, I don’t blame you for being upset,” he said after an interval of brief, throbbing silence. “But we still need to talk.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“I guessed.”
“Liar.”
“All right, I drove by after I dropped Allison off at home, and I saw your car in the parking lot at Bert’s.”
“Where are you?”
“Standing at the bottom of the stairway, trying to work up the nerve to come up and knock on your door.”
“Don’t,” I said.
“Moje, we need to talk—about us, about lots of stuff. But today it’s all about Gillian. I’m not planning to jump your bones, I promise.”
“Okay,” I heard myself say, taking him at his word. In fact, Tucker was about as easy to resist as a tsunami. “Come up, then. The door’s open.”
Tucker rang off, and I heard him double-timing it up the outside stairs.
I replaced the cordless phone on its base, stood, straightened the black dress I’d borrowed from Greer—it was the same one I’d worn to Lillian’s funeral, not that long ago—and smoothed my wild red hair, which was trying to escape from the clip holding it captive at the back of my head.
“You should have locked the door,” Tucker said, standing just inside my door in the tiny entry hall. He’d shed his suit coat, but he was still wearing the dark slacks, a crisp white shirt and a tie, the knot loosened. He looked like some next-dimension version of himself, just slightly off.
“As far as I know,” I replied circumspectly, keeping my distance, “nobody is trying to kill me.”
“Hey,” he said with a bleak attempt at a grin, “given your history, that could change at any moment.”
“Let’s have coffee,” I said, turning toward the kitchen. I needed a table between us if we were going to talk about Gillian, and something to do with my hands. “With luck, it hasn’t been poisoned since I was here last.”
Tucker followed me through the living room.
I felt a pang, missing Russell, a very alive basset hound, and my equally dead cat, Chester. Russell was in Witness Protection with his people, and Chester, after haunting me for a while, had gone on to the great beyond. Now he only haunted my memory.
My throat tightened as I grabbed the carafe off the coffeemaker, rinsed it at the sink and began the brewing process. I heard Tucker drag back a chair at the table behind me and sink into it.
“You’ve seen her again,” he said. “Gillian, I mean.”
I nodded without looking back at him. I couldn’t, just then, because my eyes were burning with tears. “She was at the funeral.”
Tucker didn’t throw a net over me, for my own safety and that of others, or anything like that. He was the most rational man I’d ever known, and his brain was heavily weighted to the left, but as a child, he’d had an experience with a ghost himself. He’d believed me when I told him about seeing Nick, and Gillian, too.
I don’t know what I would have done if he hadn’t.
“She doesn’t talk, Tuck,” I said, groping to assemble the coffee. Open the can, spoon in ground java beans.
“She wouldn’t,” Tucker answered. “She was a deaf-mute.”
I turned, staring at him, forgetting all about my wet eyes. He got up, took the carafe from my hands, poured the water into the top of the coffeemaker and pushed the button.
“I guess that shoots the theory that people leave their disabilities behind when they die,” he said when I couldn’t get a word out of my mouth.
“There’s apparently some kind of transition phase for some people,” I replied when I was sure my voice box hadn’t seized and rusted. “In between death and whatever comes next, that is.” I paused, moved away from him to get two mugs down off a cupboard shelf and rinse them out with hot water. “Why didn’t you tell me Gillian couldn’t hear or speak?”
Tucker leaned against the counter, his arms folded, the ancient coffeemaker chortling and surging behind him, like a rocket trying to take off but not quite having the momentum. Tilting his head slightly to one side, he answered, “It didn’t come up, Moje. We haven’t talked that much lately.”
“She didn’t see who killed her,” I told him. “God, I hope it was quick—that she didn’t suffer, or have time to be scared.” I finally faced him. “Tucker, was she—was she—she wasn’t—”
“She wasn’t molested,” Tucker said.
Relief swept through me with such force that my knees threatened to give out, and Tucker crossed the room in a couple of strides, took me by the shoulders and lowered me gently into a chair.
“How did she die?” I asked very softly. I didn’t want to know, but at the same time I had to, or I was going to go crazy speculating.
Tucker crouched in front of my chair, holding both my hands in his. The pads of his thumbs felt only too good, chafing the centers of my palms. “You can’t tell anybody, Moje,” he said. “That’s really important.”
I knew that. I’d read The Damn Fool’s Guide to Criminal Investigation. The police always keep certain pertinent details of any crime under wraps, for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the danger of compromising the case if word gets out before the trial.
“Tell me,” I said.
“Gillian was strangled,” he told me. “With a piece of thin wire.”
I swayed in my chair. “Oh, my God—”
“According to the ME, it happened quickly,” Tucker said, but he looked as though he was thinking the same thing I was.
Not quickly enough.
“You’re sure she ruled out the stepfather?” he asked when I didn’t say anything.
I nodded. “I asked her twice.”
“Moje,” Tucker told me after rising from his haunches and taking a chair near mine, “he has an arrest record. Vince Erland, I mean. Solicitation of a minor—sexual context.”
My stomach roiled. I slapped a hand over my mouth.
Tucker waited.
The coffee perked.
“He’s a pedophile?” I asked, my voice coming out as a croak.
“We’re not sure. The alleged victim was seventeen, and there was some evidence that she encouraged his advances. The charges were dismissed.”
“But still...”
Tucker nodded grimly. “Still,” he agreed.
“Gillian might have been mistaken,” I murmured, “or maybe she simply didn’t want to believe her stepfather, someone she trusted, would hurt her.”
“Nine times out of ten,” Tucker said, “the perp is somebody the victim trusts. Lousy, but true.”
“But it could have been a random attack, right?”
“It could have been, but it probably wasn’t.”
“How can you be so sure?”
Tucker closed his eyes, opened them again. “Vince Erland picked Gillian up after the dance rehearsal. According to him, they stopped off at a supermarket on the way home and Gillian vanished. The report’s on file—but he didn’t call it in until he got back to the trailer. Most people would have been on the horn to 911 the second they realized their child was missing. Why did he wait?”
“I don’t know,” I said, pondering. “I didn’t see this on the news, Tuck. That Mr. Erland was the last person to see Gillian—”
“It’ll be out there soon enough,” Tucker said. “His story is that he’d promised her a dog, and then had to go back on his word because he didn’t have the money. He broke the news at the supermarket. She got mad and took off, and he thought she went home—it’s a hike, but she probably could have done it.”
“But the police don’t believe it. That’s why they’re holding Erland.”
Tucker looked conflicted. He probably knew a lot more about the case than he would admit, and he was deciding how much to tell me. “Partly,” he said. “They’re concerned for his safety, too. When it comes out that he was with Gillian just before she died, especially with his background, a lot of people aren’t going to presume he’s innocent until he’s proven guilty. I don’t need to tell you that emotions run high in situations like this. Some of the vigilante types might not be able to resist the temptation to take the law into their own hands.”
I was still thinking about Gillian. She was a deaf-mute; she couldn’t have cried out for help when she realized she was in trouble. Still, small as she was, she was determined, too. I believed she would have put up a struggle, however futile.
My heart ached, imagining that.
“Where was Mrs. Erland during all this?”
“Working,” Tucker said with a shake of his head.
“No one saw anything? There must have been other shoppers in the store—clerks, passersby on the road...”
Tucker didn’t answer.
“You’re a DEA agent,” I prodded. “How come you know so much about this investigation? Surely it isn’t under federal jurisdiction.”
“I resigned,” he answered. “I’m with the sheriff’s department now—homicide division.”
“And right off the bat you were assigned to this particular case? Isn’t that a conflict of interest, considering that Gillian and Daisy were friends?”
“Cave Creek is a small town,” he reasoned quietly. “Helen Erland grew up here. Anybody who caught the case would have at least a passing acquaintance with the family.”
I got up, because the coffee had finally stopped brewing, and poured a cup for Tucker and one for myself.
“I could help, Tucker,” I said. “With the investigation.”
Tucker’s jawline immediately tightened. “No way,” he replied tersely. “This is serious police work, Mojo. There’s no place in a murder investigation for an amateur with a mail-order P.I. license and a stack of Damn Fool’s Guides on procedure.”
“Gillian came to me,” I pointed out, generously letting the gibe about my credentials pass. “There must be a reason.”
Tucker, about to take a sip of his coffee, set the cup down with a thunk. A muscle bunched in his cheek. “I mean it, Mojo,” he warned. “Stay out of this case.”
“Too late,” I answered. “I’m already in.”
“How do you figure that?”
“You’re the one with the badge,” I admitted, “but I’m the one being haunted by a seven-year-old in a ballerina costume. I think Gillian’s trying to help me figure out who killed her, and I wouldn’t turn my back on her even if I could.”
“Can’t you just tell her to go into the Light, or something? Like that woman on TV?”
I sighed. “I wish it were that easy. Do you think I like having a little girl’s ghost pop up every time I turn around? Gillian’s not going anywhere, including into the Light, until she’s ready.”
Tucker paled under his biker’s tan. Rubbed his palms together and stared as though he could see through my kitchen floor and into the closed bar beneath it.
“It’s okay,” I said.
I wanted to reach out, touch his cheek or his shoulder, but I didn’t dare, because I knew where it would lead. We both needed comfort, and I was pretty sure any physical contact between us would be supercharged by grief and frustration. As much as I would have liked to lose myself in Tucker’s lovemaking for a little while, if I did, I wouldn’t be able to stand it when he went back to Allison.
“What’s okay?” he rasped, understandably convinced that nothing ever could be “okay,” in a world where children are murdered.
“Being relieved that this didn’t happen to Daisy or Danny. It’s a normal human reaction—and it doesn’t mean you don’t care about Gillian.”
He glared at me. “Where did that come from? The Damn Fool’s Guide to Bullshit Psychology?”
I sighed. “Go home, Tucker.”
He did. He got up out of his chair and walked out, without another word or even a backward glance.
I should have been relieved, but I wasn’t.
Chapter Two (#u26084e15-9a68-545e-bc3a-3751375fa0a1)
EVEN BEFORE TUCKER’S arrival I hadn’t wanted to be alone in the apartment. After he was gone, the place seemed to yawn like some dark, uncharted cavern.
I emptied our cups, poured out the fresh coffee and shut off the machine. Then I snatched up my key ring, grabbed a couple of Damn Fool’s Guides off the bookshelves in my living room and boogied for the car.
When I arrived at Greer’s fifteen minutes later, I parked in her brick driveway and, once I’d punched in the combination on the keypad by the back gate, skirted the main house. I simply wasn’t up to seeing my sister just then.
The pool looked inviting as I passed, but the sun was still blazing, even though it was definitely headed west. Later, I promised myself.
The guesthouse, euphemistically called a “casita,” was a three-bedroom, one-story territorial with all the conveniences—including a plasma TV that could be lowered out of the ceiling, a sunken bathtub with jets and a wet bar.
It was also blessedly cool.
I tossed my keys, purse and the stack of Damn Fool’s Guides onto the granite-topped counter separating the kitchen and combination living and dining room, and kicked off my high heels. Like the dress, they were Greer’s, and they pinched my toes.
“Gillian?” I called.
Nothing.
I think I can be forgiven for being a little relieved that she wasn’t around. And of course I knew she’d be back.
I proceeded to the master bath, stripped off the dress, chucked the ruined panty hose, started a lukewarm shower going and stepped naked under the spray. After I’d scrubbed and shampooed, I felt a little better. Wrapped in a towel, I padded back into the bedroom, lay down in the middle of the bed and allowed myself to air-dry.
I must have fallen asleep right away.
When I stirred to semiconsciousness, the room was nearly dark and my right big toe was clamped between two strong, cold fingers.
I choked out a strangled little shriek, wrenched free and shinnied to a sitting position with my back against the intricately carved headboard of the bed. Peering at the shadowy, adult-sized form—this was definitely not Gillian—I scrambled to cover myself with the towel.
“Alex?” I gasped, groping for the lamp on the bedside table. Nick?
I’d been meaning to shop for a gun—Jolie had promised to teach me how to shoot it—but there hadn’t been time. Now I wished I’d bought one.
I flipped the switch, and light spilled into the room.
Greer was standing at the foot of my bed, wearing an oversize terry-cloth bathrobe, her cast bulging beneath one side. “You were expecting my husband?” my sister asked archly, raising one eyebrow.
I swore colorfully, finishing with a more moderate “Damn it, Greer, you scared me half to death!”
“I knocked,” Greer said. “You didn’t answer the door, so I came in. I do own the place, you know.”
“As if you’d ever let me forget it,” I snapped, getting off the bed in my towel toga and stomping into the bathroom to snatch my robe off the hook on the back of the door and yank it on. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that, Greer,” I ranted when I came out again. “If I’d gotten around to buying my Glock, you’d be perforated by now. And how come your fingers are so damn cold?”
Greer hadn’t moved. Her blond hair was pulled into a ponytail, askew because she’d done it with one hand—on Greer, even that looked elegant—and her expression was stone serious. “I was digging through the freezer, looking for the tamale pie Carmen made before she left on vacation. When it wasn’t there, I decided you might have nabbed it, so I came out here to find out.”
“You could have just looked in my refrigerator,” I pointed out, feeling only mildly guilty for stealing the tamale pie and dining on it, breakfast, lunch and dinner, until it was nearly gone.
“Why did you think it might be Alex who’d grabbed your toe?” Greer demanded suspiciously. Once she latched on to a subject, she was as tenacious as a pit bull with lockjaw.
“I’m not fooling around with your husband, Greer,” I said. “If you won’t credit me with any more honor than that, at least give me a few points for taste.” I stomped out of the bedroom and through to the kitchen, where I opened the refrigerator door, yanked out the casserole dish with about three bites of tamale pie left in it, congealing under a curling crust of cornmeal topping, and slammed it down on the table.
“You never liked Alex,” Greer accused.
“You’re just figuring that out?” I countered. I took a half-empty bottle of white wine from the fridge next, uncorked it and poured two glasses—one for me and one for Greer. Mine was slightly fuller than hers. Okay, I was guilty of pie-napping, but I’d had a harder day than she had, so I figured it was fair.
Greer poked at the remains of the purloined pie with a beautifully manicured fingertip and made a face. “Yuck,” she said, accepting the wineglass I offered.
I softened a little. “I could send out for a pizza,” I suggested.
Greer took a sip of wine and made another face. “At least you didn’t steal this from me,” she said. “My God, Mojo, how can you drink this stuff? It could double as nail polish remover.”
I was used to my sister’s wine snobbery. Her fruit-of-the-vine arrived in fancy crates, the elegant bottles artfully labeled and cosseted in wood shavings. Mine came from convenience stores and, if I was really feeling swank, supermarket closeout shelves. I usually got the boxed kind, in fact, with the handy-dandy little spigot built right in.
I didn’t stoop to answer Greer’s gibe. I simply opened the freezer compartment on my refrigerator, took out a frozen lasagna, single serving, low cal, low carb and low flavor, and handed it to Greer.
“Am I supposed to eat this?” she asked, raising both her perfectly plucked eyebrows this time.
“Since I only have one other option to suggest,” I replied, “I’d go with eating, yes.”
She blinked. “Do you have to be so nasty?” she asked.
I sighed. Shoved a hand through my hair, which was standing out around my head like the mane of some deranged lion because I’d fallen asleep while it was still wet from my shower. I’d probably need a whip and a chair to tame it. Maybe even a Weed Eater.
“Sorry,” I said. “Bad day.”
Greer slapped the frozen dinner down beside the casserole dish. “I suppose you think mine was wonderful? My life is a mess. Just last week I was accosted by an unknown assailant. My arm was broken. I haven’t heard from my husband—for all I know, he’s lying dead in the desert somewhere—”
“I went to a seven-year-old girl’s funeral today, Greer,” I said. Definitely trump card, but of course I didn’t take any satisfaction in the victory.
“I forgot,” Greer said, deflating. She pulled back a chair and sank into it.
“I wish I could,” I answered.
Greer downed another slug of wine. Squeezed her eyes shut, and shuddered.
A little background on Greer. For one thing, she wasn’t Greer Pennington any more than I was Mary Josephine Mayhugh. My abductor/mother, Lillian, had rescued her from a bus station in Boise when she was thirteen—more like sixteen, though she never admitted it—and unofficially adopted the runaway into our unconventional little family. I’d never known what or whom she’d run away from, but Lillian probably had. She’d have sent Greer back to her folks right away if home had been a good place to be.
Recently Greer had admitted she was being blackmailed, at least to Jolie and me, and she’d hired me to find out if her doctor husband was cheating on her. I’d followed up on a few leads, but with all that had been going on, I definitely hadn’t earned my retainer.
I suspected, of course, that the broken-arm attack was connected to the blackmail, but I couldn’t prove it.
I opened the freezer box, popped the contents into the microwave and pushed the appropriate buttons. While Greer’s supper nuked, I drew back another chair and sat down across from her.
Her eyes swam with tears as she gazed into her wineglass.
“Sooner or later,” I said as gently as I could, given that my nerves were still quivering from the jolt she’d given me by gripping my big toe while I was sound asleep, “you’re going to have to tell me the truth about who you are, Greer.”
She gave an odd little giggle, followed by a hiccup. “Greer,” she repeated. “Do you know where I got that name? Off a late-night movie on TV, starring Greer Garson. It was called Julia Misbehaves, and I almost went with ‘Julia,’ but ‘Greer’ had more pizzazz. I wanted to use Garson, too, but Lillian said that probably wouldn’t fly. So I settled for Greer Stewart.”
Considering how little Greer had told me about herself in all the years I’d known her, this was a revelation. I shouldn’t have felt hurt because she’d obviously confided in Lillian, though probably not to any great extent and with a generous peppering of lies, but I did. Once, Greer and I had been close. Then I’d married Nick and she’d married Alex, and things had changed between us.
I had no clue why.
We’d both been playing parts, of course. And somewhere along the way we’d forgotten our lines.
“Who were you before you were Greer?” I persisted very quietly.
For a moment I actually thought she was going to tell me. Then she shook her head. “I know it sounds corny—like something from the late show—but that person doesn’t exist anymore.”
“Anything more from the blackmailer?” Talk about something from the late show. How often does a question like that come up in normal conversation?
Not that I’d know a normal conversation if I fell over it.
Greer bit her lower lip.
The timer on the microwave dinged.
I got up, pulled out the rubber lasagna and set it down in front of the woman I still thought of as my sister, for all the strange distance that stretched between us. I gave her some silverware and refilled her wineglass.
Tentatively she picked up a fork and jabbed it at the lasagna. I knew she was avoiding my eyes, and I was prepared to wait her out. I’ve got staying power—I once camped in front of a furniture store for three days to get the free couch they were offering as a prize at their grand opening. I was on the news twice, and Lillian, alarmed by the publicity, came and dragged me away fifteen minutes before I would have become the proud owner of an orange velour sectional, complete with built-in plastic cup holders.
Just one of the many reasons I have to be grateful to her.
“Greer?” I prompted.
“Yes,” she said.
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, I’ve heard from the blackmailers—plural.”
“When? What did he—they—say? Was it a letter, a phone call, an email? Black-and-white eight-by-tens of you in some compromising position?”
Greer skewered me with a look. “This lasagna,” she said, “is worse than the wine.” But she kept eating. And she kept drinking, too, though I’d already lost interest in the vino. It did taste like vinegar.
“How am I supposed to help you if you won’t tell me what’s going on?”
“I didn’t hire you because I’m being blackmailed. I hired you to find out if Alex is cheating on me.”
“He is,” I said, silently saying goodbye to the five-thousand-dollar retainer she’d given me, not to mention the other five I would have gotten when I turned in a definitive report. Actually, I was in pretty good financial shape for the first time in my life, because my demon ex-mother-in-law, Margery DeLuca, had forked over the proceeds of a life insurance policy Nick had taken out, in a fit of fiscal responsibility, with me as beneficiary. Still, Greer’s payment represented my first earnings as a private investigator and for me that was meaningful.
Greer stiffened, peering at me over the lasagna and the cheap wine. “Do you have proof?”
“No,” I said.
“Then the case isn’t solved, is it? Maybe now that people aren’t trying to kill you, you can get back to work.” This was a reference to recent misadventures—so recent, in fact, that I still had little gummy bits of duct-tape residue on my wrists and ankles. I’d soaked and scoured, but they just kept appearing, as though they’d been hiding under my skin.
“Greer,” I said.
“What?” She sounded testy. Could have been the leather noodles and the rotgut, but I didn’t think so. Greer had been defensive, to say the least, since she’d stolen Alex Pennington from his first missus, closed down her hard-won interior design business and become the classic trophy wife.
“Talk to me. Who’s blackmailing you, and why? More important, have you changed your mind about telling the police?”
The last time we’d discussed the issue, Greer and Jolie and I, she’d refused to involve Scottsdale’s finest. Apparently whatever she’d done to get herself into this mess was bad enough that she was willing to risk her peace of mind, and maybe even her life, to keep it under wraps.
Suddenly Greer shivered, hugged herself. There was a distinct chill in the air, and I expected Gillian to appear, but she didn’t.
Inwardly, I sighed. If the child didn’t turn up soon, I was going to have to go out looking for her. Yes, she was a ghost—technically. But she was also a little kid, caught between two worlds, scared and alone. She’d witnessed her own funeral, too, and that must have been almost as traumatic as her murder.
“I did something terrible when I was young,” Greer said. “Someone knows.”
“What did you do, Greer?”
“I’m not going to tell you,” she said, pushing back her chair to stand. Turning to flee, she stumbled a little. “I can handle this on my own.”
I went after her. Caught hold of her good arm. “Greer,” I pleaded, “listen to me. Somebody tried to nab you—you’re obviously in real danger. What’s going to happen if Alex pulls the financial plug, and you can’t pay these people off any longer?”
She didn’t answer. Trembling, she shook her head, pulled free and fled.
Some P.I. I was. I had a real way with people.
Disconsolately, I finished Greer’s lasagna and what was left of the tamale pie. I’d barely touched my wine, so I poured it down the drain and went back to the bedroom to get dressed.
Five minutes later, sporting jeans, a tank top and a lightweight denim jacket, I fired up the Volvo and headed out to look for Gillian. It was after nine o’clock by then, and nearly dark.
I headed for the cemetery in north Scottsdale, where I knew Gillian had been buried. The place was fenced, but the gates stood open, so I drove in, considered the layout and parked. There were a few other people around—a couple of groundskeepers, a young man sitting cross-legged beside a tombstone and an old woman in a green polyester pantsuit and sensible shoes, arranging and rearranging flowers in an urn.
I didn’t have to ask directions. I spotted Gillian right away, standing next to a new grave mounded with raw dirt.
I got out of the car, shoved my hands into the hip pockets of my jeans and approached.
Gillian couldn’t have heard me, but she must have sensed that I was there, because she looked up and watched solemnly as I drew near.
I added another title to the growing list of Damn Fool’s Guides I needed to acquire—one on sign language. I thought of how I’d asked Gillian about her killer, and she’d answered. Maybe she could read my mind—she’d responded at the funeral, when I’d mentally asked her to come back to where I was sitting—but it was more likely that she’d simply read my lips.
Duh. Mojo Sheepshanks, supersleuth. Not much gets by me.
Aware that she didn’t want to be touched, and not too keen on being seen reaching out to empty air, should anyone happen to glance in our direction, I kept my hands in my pockets instead of cupping her face in them, as I wanted so much to do.
A single tear slid down her smudged cheek.
Because she’d lowered her head, maybe hoping to hide the fact that she was crying, I crouched on the other side of the mound so I could look up into her eyes. I steeled myself to see marks on her neck, left by the wire someone had used to strangle her, according to Tucker, but her flesh was unmarked.
“Hey,” I said gently.
“Hey,” Gillian mouthed silently.
It was a forlorn greeting, but at least she’d acknowledged my presence.
“Time to go home,” I told her, forming the words very slowly and carefully. “You can stay at my place.”
She stared at me, looking almost defiant. Her little hands were clenched into fists, and her stance told me she wasn’t going anywhere, and I couldn’t make her. True enough. She’d simply vanish if I made any sudden moves.
How do you bribe a ghost-child? Do you offer to buzz through the drive-in at McDonald’s for a happy meal?
“You could watch TV,” I said, after searching my brain for any scrap of kid lore. “I have a big one that comes down out of the ceiling when you push a button.”
She signed something, but I didn’t know what it was.
“She wants you to buy her a dog,” a voice said.
I almost fell over, I was so jolted. I got to my feet and turned to see the young guy I’d glimpsed earlier, meditating beside a grave.
Duh, again. He was dead. The old lady with the flowers probably was, too. I made a mental note to pay more attention to my surroundings and not assume everybody I saw was alive.
He smiled.
I hoped he wasn’t planning to follow me home. I had my hands full with one ghost—I didn’t need two.
I swallowed. Stood up straight. “You’re—”
“Dead,” he said cheerfully.
“And you understand sign language.”
He nodded. “I took a couple of special classes at the community college,” he said. “I needed a service project to make Eagle Scout.” He signed something to Gillian, and she eagerly signed back.
“Ask if she knows who killed her,” I said.
“Whoa,” he said, round eyed.
“Just do it, okay? It’s important.”
“I don’t think we covered that in class,” the boy replied. “But I’ll try.”
His hands moved.
Gillian’s hands moved.
“She doesn’t know,” he said. “It happened really fast.”
“Damn,” I muttered. Then I took a closer look at him. He was wearing jeans and a red T-shirt, and he was even younger than I’d first thought. He probably hadn’t even made it through high school before he passed away. “What’s your name and when did you die?” I asked.
“I’m not sure when I croaked,” he said. “I only figured it out the other day. Up till then, I just thought I was having a bad dream.”
I threw back my head, looked up at heaven. Why did God just allow these people to wander around, not knowing they were dead? Wasn’t there some kind of intake system? Where were the angels? Where were the loving relatives, come to lead the newly deceased into the Light?
“But my name is Justin Braydaven,” Justin went on. “I probably wouldn’t be able to tell you that much if I hadn’t read it off my headstone.” He shook his head. “I’ve really been spaced lately.”
“You didn’t remember your name—but you can still communicate in sign language?”
Justin shrugged. “Maybe it’s like riding a bike,” he said. “You never forget how to do it, even when you’re—” he stopped, swallowed “—dead.”
I felt sorry for him, for obvious reasons. There was so much he was never going to experience. “I guess your date of death is probably on that headstone, too. Under your name.”
“I was so glad to know who I was, I forgot to look for that.”
“Justin, do you see a big light? If you do, you should go into it.”
“No big lights,” Justin said, sounding good-naturedly resigned.
Gillian began to sign again.
“She’s back to the dog,” Justin told me. “It’s a big thing to her. Maybe there’s one at the pound.”
I thought about Vince Erland, promising his stepdaughter a pet and then reneging. It would be easy to judge him for that, but the fact is, dogs and cats need a lot of things—shots, food, spaying or neutering, sometimes ongoing veterinary care. Those things aren’t cheap.
The three of us started walking down a paved, sloping drive, in the general direction of my car. I was musing, Justin and Gillian were signing.
“Hey, lady!” one of the groundskeepers called to me, loading tools into the back of a battered pickup truck. “We’re closing up for the night!”
I nodded. “On my way,” I called back.
We passed the old lady, fussing happily with her bouquet. She didn’t seem to notice us.
“She’s been in a good mood since the flowers came,” Justin informed me.
I drew up at the headstone where I’d first seen him, peered at the lettering.
He’d been dead for six years.
Where had he been all that time?
“Can I drop you off somewhere?” I asked, because I couldn’t just leave him there.
After giving the matter some serious thought, Justin came up with an address, and we all piled into the Volvo—Justin, Gillian and me. I recall a few curious glances from the groundskeepers when I opened the passenger door, flipped the seat forward so Gillian could climb in back and waited until Justin was settled up front.
I smiled and waved to the spectators.
The smile faded as I drove out of the cemetery, though.
I was busy trying to solve the great cosmic mysteries—life, death, the time-space continuum.
No Damn Fool’s Guide on that.
As it turned out, Justin lived—or had lived—in a modest, one-story rancher in one of the city’s many housing developments. I swear, every time I leave town, another one springs up. There were lights in the windows of the stucco house with the requisite red tile roof, though the shades were drawn, and an old collie lay curled up on the small concrete porch.
When we came to a stop at the curb, the dog got up and gave a halfhearted woof.
“Justin?” I said.
“Yeah?”
“This is your folks’ place, right?”
“It’s home,” he answered affably. Instead of opening the car door and getting out, he’d simply teleported himself to the sidewalk, leaning to speak to me through the open window on my side. The collie tottered slowly down the front steps. Its coat was thinning, and I saw lots of gray in it. “My mom lives here. My dad left a long time ago.”
Hope stirred. If his dad was dead, he might come looking for Justin, show him the way to the other side. He was sure taking his sweet time doing it, though.
“Your dad passed away?”
Justin shook his head. “No. He just decided he didn’t want to support a family.”
My spirits, already low, plummeted. I blinked a couple of times.
“Your mom...” I paused, swallowed, wanting to cry. Was the kid expecting a welcome-home party? “She probably won’t be able to see you, Justin.”
Justin nodded. “I know,” he said. “I just want to be where she is. See my old room and stuff. I couldn’t figure out how to get back here, that’s all.”
The dog was near now, and it made a little whimpering sound that must have been recognition, then toddled over to nuzzle the back of Justin’s hand.
“Hey,” he said. “Pepper can see me.”
“Not uncommon,” I told him, drawing on my enormous store of knowledge about the ins and outs of the afterlife. “Animals have special sensitivities.” I paused, gulped. “You’ll be okay, then?”
Justin grinned, and I had a sudden, piercing awareness of just how much his mother probably missed him. If I’d had the guts, I’d have knocked on her front door and told her straight out that her son was still around. That he still cared, still wanted to be close to her.
But I didn’t.
“What’s your name?” Justin asked after leaning down to pet the dog. “In case I need to contact you, or something?”
“Mojo Sheepshanks,” I said after briefly considering, I’m ashamed to admit, making up an alias.
“No shit?” he marveled. He stooped again, signed what was most likely a goodbye to Gillian and turned to walk away.
I sat at the curb watching as he and the dog, Pepper, headed for the house.
The front door opened, and a woman appeared on the threshold. I couldn’t make out her features, but her voice was nice.
“There you are, Pepper,” she called. “Come on inside now. Time for supper.”
She obviously didn’t see Justin, but he slipped past her, with Pepper, before she shut the door.
A lump formed in my throat.
The living-room drapes parted, and Justin’s mother looked out at me.
Strange car in the neighborhood.
Not a good thing.
I shoved the car into gear and drove away.
Gillian, meanwhile, had moved to the front seat.
“I’m sorry, but I’m not getting a dog,” I told her in a rush of words, careful to turn my face in her direction. “I live in my sister’s guesthouse. She’d have a fit.”
In that moment I was filled with a sudden and fierce yearning for my apartment. All right, I’d almost been murdered there. But it was my place, just the same. I could have a dog if I wanted. I could eat tamale pie for three days without feeling guilty—though stealing it would be trickier.
Did I mention that I never deliberately cook?
We made a detour, Gillian and I, and I zipped into a megabookstore to look for a Damn Fool’s Guide to Sign Language. Sure enough, there was one, complete with the hand alphabet and lots of illustrations. Inspired, I grabbed a second volume from the series, this one on popularity.
I was only a little embarrassed to buy a book that had probably been written for grossly overweight computer nerds and aspiring middle-school cheerleaders, but, hell, there wasn’t anything else for the socially challenged.
Back at Greer’s place, I led Gillian to the guesthouse, and she immediately plunked down on the couch. No orange velour here—Greer’s furniture was all decorator approved. True to my word, I brought the TV down out of the ceiling and cruised the channels until I found a cartoon.
Gillian was instantly engrossed.
I studied her ballerina outfit. If I bought her some clothes at Walmart in the morning, I wondered, would she be able to wear them?
Nick, my ex-husband, had always shown up in the suit he was buried in. I had a feeling ghosts didn’t have extensive wardrobes. Still, it was worth a try.
Gillian’s leotard, tights and tutu were bedraggled, and she was still wearing just the one slipper. It haunted me, that missing slipper.
I wanted to cry every time I looked at her.
Which wasn’t about the outfit, I know, but I needed to do something.
While Gillian watched TV, I brewed a pot of tea and sat down at my kitchen table to study The Damn Fool’s Guide to Sign Language.
After two hours I knew how to say, “The cow is brown” and ask for directions to the nearest restroom.
Not very impressive, I know. But it was a start.
When I finally went to bed Gillian was still sitting on the couch, staring blindly at the TV screen.
Chapter Three (#u26084e15-9a68-545e-bc3a-3751375fa0a1)
GILLIAN WAS GONE when I got up the next morning, and the TV was still on. Closed-captioned dialogue streamed across the screen.
I sighed. Picked up the remote and switched to a news channel, clicking off the subtitle feature.
This was an act of courage. Because of my last excellent adventure, I’d been all over the media for days. That’s what happens, I guess, when you suddenly remember who killed your parents when you were five years old, and the guilty parties try to shut you up before you can spill the proverbial beans.
That was last week, I told myself, but it wasn’t much consolation.
The talking heads were prattling about obesity in children, and I regarded that as a positive sign. Nothing bombed, nothing hijacked. A slow news day is a good news day.
Trying to decide whether I ought to go to Walmart for ghost clothes or run down another lead on Greer’s cheating husband, I padded into the kitchen to start a pot of java. Greer’s coffeemaker was state of the art, unlike mine, and I had my choice of everything from cappuccinos and lattes to cocoa and hot cider.
All I wanted was coffee, damn it. Plain, ordinary, simple coffee.
Again I missed my apartment and the chortle-chug of my own humble brewing apparatus. Heebie-jeebies or not, I was going to have to bite the bullet and go back. All this luxury was getting to me in a big way.
I wrestled a single cup of caffeine from the sleek monster machine, with all its shining spouts and levers, and headed back to the living room, blinking blearily at the TV screen as the theme shifted from fat kids to Gillian Pellway’s murder investigation.
Tucker Darroch’s harried face appeared, close up, then the camera panned back. He was wearing a blue cotton work shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, along with jeans and Western boots, and he looked as though he’d like to be anywhere else but in front of the sheriff’s office with a microphone practically bumping his lower lip.
“An arrest has been made, and yet the investigation continues?” the reporter asked. “Does that mean you aren’t sure you have the right man in custody?”
“Mr. Erland hasn’t been formally charged,” Tucker answered, tersely patient. “He’s being held for questioning.”
“He’s been in the county jail for almost a week,” the reporter pointed out helpfully. She was ultra-skinny—obesity clearly wasn’t rampant among media types—and wore a pink suit with a pencil skirt and fashionably short jacket. Her hair was blond and big. “Doesn’t that indicate that Mr. Erland is a prime suspect?”
Personally, I thought she was standing a tad closer to Tucker than absolutely necessary. I get sidetracked by things like that.
I took another slurp of coffee and reminded myself that I had no claim on Tucker Darroch. Oh, no. He still belonged to Allison, the divorce notwithstanding. While I’d tossed and turned in my lonely bed the night before, dreaming about dead people, he’d probably been snuggled in his ex-wife’s arms.
I almost choked on the coffee.
“Mr. Erland,” Tucker said evenly, “is a person of interest, not a suspect.”
Copspeak, I thought. Tucker couldn’t make a definitive statement regarding Erland’s innocence or guilt—I knew it, Tucker knew it and so did the reporter, along with most of the viewing audience, a few flakes excepted. It was all rhetoric to fill airtime.
Translation: nobody knew jack-shit.
The interview ended.
The telephone rang.
A wild fantasy overwhelmed me. It was Tucker, I decided, calling to ask if I’d seen him on TV.
As if he’d ever do that.
“Hello?” I cried into the cordless receiver I’d snatched up from the coffee table.
“Who is this?” an unfamiliar female voice demanded.
I bristled, disappointed. “You first,” I said. “After all, you’re the one who placed the call.”
There was a short standoff, and I was about to break the connection when the caller relented.
“My name,” the woman said, “is Mrs. Alexander Pennington. And I’m looking for Mojo Sheepshanks.”
I hadn’t had all that much coffee. It took a moment for my brain to grope past Greer, the only “Mrs. Alexander Pennington” I knew, to the ex-wife with the drinking problem. I’d met her once at Fashion Square Mall, and her image assembled itself in my mind—overweight, expensively dressed, too-black hair worn Jackie O bouffant.
“This is Mojo,” I said, against my better judgment. “What do you want?”
All right, maybe that question was a little abrupt, but it was direct and to the point. The first Mrs. Pennington knew I was Greer’s sister, and that meant she’d probably called out of some codependent need to harangue the trophy wife in a flank attack. It’s always better to be direct with that kind of person.
“I understand you’re a private investigator now,” Mrs. Pennington #1 said with drunken dignity. I wondered if she was still under the influence of last night’s cocktail hour, or if she subscribed to the hair-of-the-dog-that-bit-you theory and had started the day with a Bloody Mary.
I closed my eyes. Damn all that TV coverage, anyway. Why had I touted myself as a P.I. every time I got in front of a camera? Now people actually expected me to solve things. “How did you get my number?” I asked.
“You’re in the book.”
Right. And I’d programmed my phone at the apartment to forward calls to Greer’s guesthouse. I needed more coffee.
“Yes,” I said, scrambling for a little dignity of my own.
“I’d like to hire you.”
“That would be a conflict of interest, Mrs. Pennington,” I said, intrigued in spite of myself. “As you know, your ex-husband is currently married to my sister.”
“I’m aware of that,” she replied moderately. “Believe me. This is a separate matter, and it’s delicate, which is why I would prefer not to discuss it over the telephone.”
It finally occurred to me that Mrs. Pennington-the-first might be one of Greer’s blackmailers. As I said, I hadn’t had enough coffee.
While it seemed like a stretch, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned and, besides, you can dig up dirt on just about anybody if you have the resources to hire enough muscle to do the shoveling.
Suffice it to say that an instinct kicked in. There was something important going on under the surface here, and I had to find out what it was.
“When did you want to meet?” I asked.
“Noon today,” Mrs. Pennington answered readily, reeling off a posh address not that far from Greer’s. “I’ll have Carlotta serve her special lobster salad, so don’t eat before you get here.”
I wasn’t sure eating anything prepared under the grande dame’s roof would be smart, but I liked lobster, and my budget didn’t allow for much of it. I had my stash in the bank, thanks to Margery DeLuca, but I didn’t plan on blowing it on seafood.
“Noon,” I repeated cautiously. I’d scrawled the address on the front of a TV Guide.
“I’d rather you didn’t tell your sister about this meeting, if you don’t mind,” Mrs. Pennington went on. “At least, not immediately.”
“I can’t promise that, Mrs. Pennington,” I said, frowning. Elsewhere on the TV Guide cover someone had written, in lopsided, childish letters, “DOG.”
Gillian, of course.
She could write? Not much, probably, since she was only seven. Still, the word opened up a whole new realm of possibilities. Mentally I added an item to the shopping list in my head.
“Call me Beverly,” Mrs. Pennington said.
I wasn’t planning an ongoing relationship with Beverly Pennington, but calling her by her first name would certainly be less awkward, given that on the rare occasions the words Mrs. Pennington came to my mind, it was always in reference to Greer.
“Beverly it is,” I agreed.
We said our goodbyes, and I hung up. After a glance at the clock I took a quick, cool shower, donned a blue-and-white-print sundress with spaghetti straps and a pair of sandals and subdued my hair with a pinch clip. Tufts stuck up on my crown, giving the do a decidedly undone look, but hey, it wasn’t as if I was a TV reporter or anything. I was a detective, Tucker’s snide remarks about my mail-order license aside.
I was sort of expecting Gillian to materialize in the front seat of the Volvo as I backed out of the driveway, but it didn’t happen. I hoped she hadn’t returned to the graveyard to hang out. I was no expert on ghost behavior—maybe she’d gone home, the way Justin had, or to her school, or any one of a number of familiar places—but I’d found her at the cemetery once before.
All those possibilities stuck in the bruised places in my heart like slowly turning screws.
I couldn’t go to the school, or to the Erland home—at least, not without an excuse, and I hadn’t thought of one yet. I’d take a spin through the cemetery, though, I decided, on my way to Walmart.
My cell phone jingled inside my purse as I was pulling onto the 101, heading south. I upended the bag and fumbled for the phone, afraid to take my eyes off the road. Arizona drivers, I’ve gotta tell ya, are stone-crazy. Maybe it’s the serotonin, from all that sunlight. Seasonal affective disorder in reverse. Maybe it’s the flat, straight roads. Whatever it is, most of them drive like maniacs, and last time I checked Phoenix was the number one city in the country for red-light fatalities.
“Hello?” I said, swerving to avoid a white Expedition crossing in front of me to make a last-moment exit. “Tucker?”
I hadn’t dared to glance at the caller ID panel before I answered; even a split second could have meant months in traction, and I don’t have that kind of spare time.
“Sorry,” Jolie said. “It’s only your sister. You know, the black one?”
I was glad to hear her voice. “Yeah,” I replied, grinning. “I remember. What’s up?”
“I’m on the job,” Jolie answered, and from the change in her tone I figured she must have cupped the phone with one hand, hoping her voice wouldn’t carry. For Jolie, “on the job” probably meant she was standing over a body. “Moje, this is bad.”
“What?” I asked, navigating the road leading to the cemetery. If I wasn’t careful, I’d end up checking in for good, and the adrenaline rush brought on by Jolie’s words wasn’t helping.
“I can’t talk long,” Jolie said, hush-hush. “The short version is I’m standing in the desert about twenty yards from a corpse, and I’m ninety-nine percent sure it’s Alex Pennington’s.”
The Volvo’s tires squealed as I wrenched the car off the road, came to a stop in a restaurant parking lot. I was shaking. “No!”
“Yes,” Jolie replied with a sigh. “The uniforms are here, and homicide is on its way. But it’s Alex, all right. I’d know that asshole anywhere.”
“Who found him? How was he killed?”
“Gotta go,” Jolie chimed, and hung up.
Something Greer had said the night before stung my brain. For all I know, he’s lying dead in the desert somewhere.
“Shit,” I said to my empty car.
She couldn’t have done it. She couldn’t have killed Alex. The Greer I knew, while self-absorbed and famously high maintenance, simply wasn’t capable of that.
I shook off the agitation and switched the dial to damage control.
How was I going to break news like this to Greer? Even though she’d hired me to get the goods on Pennington, I knew she loved the guy, even hoped to have a family with him, which was why I didn’t seriously entertain the notion that she might have killed him. I also knew she was still hoping he’d come out pure on the other end of my investigation. Instead, he’d come out dead.
A new and even more alarming thought elbowed its way to the forefront of my mind. What if he haunted me?
Goose bumps sprouted on my forearms, and even though it was a hundred degrees outside, I felt as though I’d just stepped into a meat locker.
I did some deep breathing—Damn Fool’s Guide to Relieving Stress—and waited until the shaking subsided.
What to do?
Motor back to Greer’s and wait, pretending I didn’t know Alex was a goner, until the police called or dropped by to tell her what had happened?
For one thing, I couldn’t pretend that well. For another, Greer probably wasn’t home. Even though she had a cast on her left arm, she attended her yoga class faithfully every morning, had lunch out and then went shopping.
When I was steady enough, I drove back out onto the street and went on to the cemetery. I could call Greer on her cell phone, but what would I say? A body’s been found in the desert and Jolie is ninety-nine percent sure it’s Alex?
What if it wasn’t Alex? Okay, it was almost a sure thing, but there was that one-percent factor.
I bit my lip. Drove through the cemetery gates.
The old lady was there, still fiddling with her flowers.
But there was no sign of Gillian.
Half-relieved, I turned around and fixed my internal GPS on Wal-Mart.
Cell phones were a no-no in yoga class, which meant I wouldn’t be able to get through to Greer anyway, and I still didn’t know what I’d say if I did.
The parking lot at Wally World was crowded.
I wedged the Volvo in between a tangle of shopping carts and an old car with a Confederate-flag sunscreen, and sprinted for the entrance. I was in no particular hurry, though, since I had almost two hours before my lunch date with Beverly Pennington, and I was probably going to break that, anyway.
After all, she’d been married to Alex, and they had several grown children. However acrimonious the divorce had been, she was in for a shock. I didn’t want to be there when she got the news.
I took a cart, wheeled into the store. Two old guys in blue vests welcomed me to Walmart. One of them was dead, but he seemed happy enough.
I guess there are worse ways to spend eternity.
I headed for the children’s section, picked out two pairs of jean shorts and two T-shirts that looked as though they’d fit Gillian, along with some tiny white sneakers. Then it was on to the toy department, where I chose a blackboard and a box of colored chalk.
The whole thing took under fifteen minutes, which left me with a serious gap in my schedule. I paid and left the store with my purchases.
Gillian was sitting in the front seat of my car when I got back.
“Look,” I said, holding up a blue plastic bag. “I bought you a change of clothes.”
She gave me a piteous glance, turned in the seat and wrote “MOM” in the dust on my dashboard with the tip of one finger.
I got the blackboard out of its cardboard box and handed it to Gillian, along with the chalk.
She blinked, looked at me curiously, then extracted a pink stick of chalk from the box and wrote “MOM” again.
I sighed, got into the car and fastened my seat belt. Started the engine. Alarming thought number seventy-two struck in the next instant. I took Gillian’s chin in my hand, turned her to face me.
“Was your mom the one?” I asked slowly. “The one who hurt you, I mean?”
Gillian’s eyes widened, and she shook her head.
“Do you know where she is now?”
She rubbed out “MOM” and replaced it with “WURK.”
Work? Helen Erland was at work, the day after her child’s funeral, selling cigarettes and auto air fresheners and propane tanks for people’s barbecue grills? “Why didn’t you just pop in on her, the way you do with me?”
Gillian’s chest moved with a silent sigh.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll take you there. But she still won’t be able to see you, Gillian. Are you sure you want to do this?”
Gillian nodded. Erased “WURK” and wrote “DOG.”
“No dog,” I said without conviction.
Gillian underlined the word with a slashing motion of her hand and looked stubborn.
“We’ll see,” I told her.
We headed for Cave Creek, and sure enough, her mother was behind the counter at the convenience store, wearing a pink cotton smock with a company logo on the pocket. She looked wrecked—her eyes were puffy and swollen from crying, and she hadn’t bothered with the usual heavy makeup. She seemed younger without it. Her hair, blond like Gillian’s, was pulled back into a ponytail, and even though she was pale, there was a tragic prettiness about her.
I bought a forty-four-ounce diet cola, feeling nervous, while Gillian stared at her mother with a longing that made me ache at a cellular level.
“You were at Gillian’s funeral,” Helen said, blinking as though she was just coming out of a stupor. “I saw you.”
I nodded. Put out my free hand. “Mojo Sheepshanks,” I said. “I come into the store sometimes. I’m so sorry, Mrs. Erland—about Gillian.”
She blinked. Retreated into herself a little. I’d seen the expression before; any moment now, the blinds would be pulled and the lights would go out. “You’re the one who was on TV.”
“Yes,” I answered.
“You’re a detective,” she mused.
“A private investigator,” I clarified.
She leaned partway across the counter and spoke in a low voice. “My husband did not kill our daughter,” she said. “Vince would never have hurt Gillian.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything.
Fresh tears sprang to Helen Erland’s eyes. “The police think Vince is guilty,” she whispered desperately. “They’re not even looking for the real murderer!”
I thought of Tucker. Whatever our differences, I knew he was a good cop. He’d be looking for the killer, all right. I let the remark pass, since I wasn’t there to argue. “I know you must have been asked this question over and over again, until you wanted to scream,” I said gently. “But do you have any idea who might have done such a thing? Besides your husband, I mean.”
She sniffled, snatched a handful of tissues from a box behind the counter and swabbed her face. Her skin looked raw, as though she’d tried to scrub it away. “It must have been a drifter, someone like that,” she said. “Nobody who knew Gillian would want to hurt her.” There was a short pause. “She was such a brave little thing. She couldn’t hear, you know, or speak, except in sign language. But she did everything the other kids did—even ballet. She told me she could feel the music, coming up through the floor.”
I swallowed. I could have used a handful of tissues myself just about then.
“I’m so sorry,” I said again.
“Everybody’s ‘sorry,’” Helen Erland replied, almost scoffing. “That won’t bring her back.”
I nodded, looked away, blinked rapidly until my vision cleared. “I wish there was some way I could help,” I said, thinking aloud.
“I work in a cash-and-dash,” Mrs. Erland said, peering at me from beneath an overhead cigarette rack on my side of the counter. “I can’t pay you much, but if you want to help—if you weren’t just saying that—there is something you can do. You can find out who killed my baby girl.”
I felt Gillian’s hand creep into mine, and gave it a subtle squeeze.
I remembered Tucker’s warning the day before, in my apartment. I mean it, Mojo. Stay out of this case.
“This is a matter for the police, Mrs. Erland,” I said. “Not a private detective.”
“The police,” Helen mocked. “They think they’ve got the killer. They’re just going to pretend to investigate until all the media hype dies down. Then Vince will spend the rest of his life in prison—if he isn’t executed—and whoever did this will go free.”
I wondered how much of the conversation Gillian was taking in. She couldn’t hear, and being dead hadn’t changed that, but she’d probably learned to read her mother’s every expression, not just her lips.
Her fingers tightened around mine.
“I’ll look into it,” I heard myself say. It wasn’t the fee that prompted this decision—there wouldn’t be one. And it wasn’t the chance to learn by experience, so I’d be a better detective. Gillian wasn’t going to rest if the killer wasn’t found. That had to be the reason she was hanging around. “But I can’t promise anything, Mrs. Erland.”
A semblance of hope sparked in Helen’s sorrow-dimmed eyes. “Just do what they’re not doing,” she said.
I knew she was referring to the police again, and I nodded. “You’ll have to help me. Answer lots of questions. And if you can get me in to see Mr. Erland, I’d like to talk to him.” Read: size him up.
She nodded almost eagerly. “I get off at six,” she said. “Maybe you could come by my place, and we could talk. I’ll call Vince’s public defender and ask if he can arrange a visit.”
I nodded, but my mind had drifted to the body that was probably Alex’s. Greer’s world was about to collapse all around her, and I’d need to be there to help gather up the pieces. Not that she’d be grateful—comforting her would be like trying to bathe a porcupine.
“When’s your next day off?” I asked.
“I don’t have any days off,” Helen answered. “I took every shift I could get. Staying home makes me—well, I can’t stand it. There are too many reminders, and with Vince gone, it’s even worse.”
“I’ll stop by tonight, then,” I said. Jolie would be off work by then, if it didn’t take too long to process the crime scene. She’d have to be the one to bathe the porcupine. “Your place, around six-fifteen?”
Helen nodded and gave me directions.
I turned to leave, glancing at my watch, and I wasn’t surprised when Gillian didn’t follow. The poor kid wanted to be with her mother.
My throat knotted, and I wiped my eyes with the back of one hand.
I felt a little pang as I drove past Bad-Ass Bert’s, too. I’d finally worked up my courage to move back into my apartment, but it wasn’t going to happen any time soon. I’d have to stay at the guesthouse, in case Greer needed me.
Shit. I really wanted to go home.
It was still too early, but I headed for Beverly Pennington’s place anyway. It was an upscale condo in a gated community, and there were police cars clogging the entrance. The sheriff’s department, Phoenix and Scottsdale PD—the gang was all there.
I made an executive decision and canceled lunch.
No lobster for me. Maybe I’d spring for a box of fish sticks.
Jolie called again just as I was pulling into Greer’s driveway.
No squad cars in evidence there, anyway. And no sign of Greer’s pricey SUV.
Call me callous, but I was relieved.
“Was it Alex?” I asked, without a hello.
“Yes,” Jolie said.
I swore. There’d been, as they say, no love lost between Alex Pennington and me, but I wouldn’t have wished him dead. And Greer was going to come unglued when she found out. “What happened?”
“He must have pissed somebody off, big-time,” Jolie said. “The term ‘riddled with bullets’ has new meaning.”
“Where are you?” I whispered loudly, getting out of the Volvo.
“In my car, headed for Greer’s,” Jolie replied. “Where are you?”
“Waiting for you at Casa Pennington,” I said, punching in the security numbers on the back gate with a stabbing motion of one finger. “Are there any leads?”
“The suits don’t discuss things like that with lowly crime-scene techs,” Jolie answered. “Right off the top of my head, though, I’d say they haven’t got a clue.”
“If that was supposed to be a play on words, it bites,” I snapped.
“Moje?”
“What?”
“I’m on your side.”
“Greer is going to freak.”
“Maybe,” Jolie said.
“What do you mean, ‘maybe’?”
“She’s the wife, Moje. She and Alex haven’t been getting along lately. She’s automatically a suspect.”
I dealt with another jolt of adrenaline. Yanked open the front door of the guesthouse and went in. “You mean a person of interest.”
“That’s a bullshit, politically correct term for suspect,” Jolie told me.
“You don’t think she could actually have done this?” I challenged, furious because the possibility, so readily dismissed before, suddenly seemed more viable.
“What do we really know about Greer?” Jolie asked reasonably. “She’s a stranger, remember? And she’s being blackmailed—she told us that herself—so it’s safe to assume we might find some nasty surprises if we went poking around in her background.”
“She’s our sister,” I argued.
“That doesn’t mean she isn’t a killer,” Jolie pointed out.
“She wouldn’t!”
“Wouldn’t she?”
“Jolie, stop. You know better than to think Greer—Greer—is some kind of monster!”
“Chill, Moje. I’ll be there in half an hour. We can talk more then.”
She hung up.
I hung up.
I flung the phone onto the couch and nearly hit Justin Braydaven, who must have blipped in while I was pacing and ranting at Jolie.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I just thought about you, and here I was.”
I stopped. I’d meant to look Justin up on Google, find out how he’d died, but I’d been too busy. No time like the present, I thought. Greer wasn’t home, the police hadn’t arrived and Jolie was still thirty minutes out. I went to the computer, a laptop I’d borrowed from Jolie since my desktop was still at the apartment, and logged on. There was the daily threatening email from my ex-husband’s girlfriend, Tiffany, who had been riding with Nick the night he died. She’d been thrown through the windshield and permanently maimed, and for some mysterious Tiffany reason, she blamed me for her disfigurement.
I tucked the message into the Death Threat file and forgot about it.
“My mom isn’t doing too well,” Justin said.
I looked back at him over one shoulder. “Are there any other kids in the family?” I asked hopefully.
Justin shook his head. “Just me and old Pepper,” he said sadly, “and he’s about on his last legs. Poor old dog. If I died six years ago, that means he’s almost fourteen. When he goes, I don’t know what Mom will do.”
I went to the Google page and typed Justin’s full name into the search line. “Does she have a job? Hobbies?” The Damn Fool’s Guide to Insensitivity, page forty-three. But I was trying.
Justin didn’t seem offended. He simply sighed and said, “She works at home, doing billing for a credit card company in a back bedroom. And her hobby is ordering stuff off QVC.”
There were something like seven thousand references to Justin on the web, according to Google, but I wasn’t going to have to wade through them. The first one told the story.
“You were killed in a drive-by shooting,” I said.
There it was again, that ole sensitivity o’ mine.
Justin winced. “What was I doing at the time?”
“Waiting for a streetlight to change after a concert,” I answered, turning in my chair. “If it’s any comfort, they caught the perp. He’s doing life in the state pen.”
Justin absorbed the news with admirable ease. “Then I guess I’m not hanging around here waiting for my killer to be caught, like Gillian is.”
My heart seized. “Did she tell you that’s why she’s here? In sign language or something?”
“No,” Justin said. Then he reached for the TV remote, lowered the screen expertly and flipped to a rock-video channel. “You had me ask her if she knew who killed her. It was no great leap to guess why she’s still around. The question is, why am I still around?”
I thought I knew the answer to that one, though I wasn’t about to say so.
I do have some sensitivity, after all. There are moments when I positively exude it.
Justin hadn’t gone into the Light, if there was such a thing, because his mother couldn’t—or wouldn’t—let go.
Chapter Four (#u26084e15-9a68-545e-bc3a-3751375fa0a1)
MY CELL PHONE rang again. Justin picked it up off the couch cushion and tossed it to me. I checked the caller ID panel.
Tucker.
“Hello,” I said, trying not to sound breathless.
“There’s some bad news coming down, Moje,” he replied.
“I know,” I responded. “Alex Pennington was found dead in the desert today. Full of bullet holes.”
Too late, I realized I’d made a mistake. I wasn’t supposed to know Alex had been pumped full of lead. And Jolie would get in a lot of trouble, maybe even lose her job, if I answered Tucker’s inevitable question.
“How did you find out?” he asked.
I closed my eyes. Opened them again. Logged off the internet. “I’m a detective,” I said lamely. “I have my sources.”
Tucker thrust out an exasperated sigh. “Yeah,” he retorted. “Your sister, Jolie, the crime-scene tech. She’s so lucky you’re not talking to any other cop on the planet right now. Look it up in one of your Damn Fool’s Guides, Moje—this is a serious breach of ethics.”
“Got it,” I said. “But isn’t it a breach of ethics for you to call and tell me about Alex’s death before the next of kin has been notified?”
He laughed, but it was a raw, broken sound. “You have a point,” he said. “I hate it when you’re right.”
“Get used to it,” I replied. “It happens at least sixty-five percent of the time.”
“Damn Fool’s Guide to Stupid Statistics?”
“Very funny. Hilarious, in fact.”
“I’m going crazy, Moje. I need to see you.”
“Are you still living with Allison?”
“Yes.”
“Sorry,” I chimed, with a brightness I certainly didn’t feel. “All booked up.”
“Moje, be reasonable, will you? I’m not sleeping with her.”
“So you say.”
“You don’t believe me?”
My eyes started to burn. “I want to. I really do. But the map of that emotional territory is clearly marked ‘Here be dragons.’”
Tucker didn’t answer. What could he have said?
“How’s the investigation going?” I asked, to get things started again. I wanted to hold Tucker in my arms, get naked with him and lose myself in the wonderful world of multiple orgasms. I couldn’t, because even if he wasn’t having sex with Allison, he was in too deep. So I settled for stretching the conversation as far as I could, just so I could hear the sound of his voice.
Pitiful.
“It’s not,” Tucker said glumly.
I decided it might be in my best interests to be forthcoming about my plans to visit Helen Erland that evening, though I wasn’t about to let him know she was trying to arrange for me to see Vince in jail. He would have blocked that, on general principle. He’d hear about it after the fact, of course, but by then it would be too late.
I threw him a bone. Part of the truth. But, hey, that’s better than nothing, isn’t it?
“Mrs. Erland asked me to investigate Gillian’s murder,” I said, and braced myself for meteor impact. Oceans were going to overflow. Continents would shift. A new ice age would begin.
And here’s me, the flash-frozen mammoth with fresh grass in its mouth.
“When,” Tucker countered evenly, “did you speak with Helen?”
“Today at the convenience store where she works,” I answered after swallowing. “Gillian appeared in my car at Walmart, and she wanted to see her mother. So I took her there.”
“Mojo, if you compromise this case—”
“I might solve it, you know.”
“As far as the sheriff’s office is concerned, it is solved.”
“Not what you said on the news this morning, Detective Darroch.”
“Look, Mojo, there’s an official investigation going on here, and it’s delicate.”
I ignored that. I was in charge of the unofficial investigation. “Helen doesn’t think he did it. Vince, I mean. And neither does Gillian.”
“Helen is out of her head with grief, and she doesn’t want to believe Erland’s guilty. As for Gillian—well, I hate to tell you this, Sheepshanks, but ghost testimony doesn’t hold up in court.”
I glanced in Justin’s direction, hoping he’d left.
He was still sitting on the couch, and he was listening. For all I knew, he could hear Tucker’s side of the conversation as well as mine.
“It’s not easy being a ghost,” I said.
Tucker sighed again. He sighed a lot whenever we talked about my strange new talent for seeing dead people. I could only conclude that he wanted me for my body, not my mind.
It was a sure bet it wasn’t my detective skills.
“Moje,” Tucker said. “I’m not sleeping with Allison.”
I would have replied, “And I’m not sleeping with you,” if Justin hadn’t been there, taking it all in.
“Whatever,” I answered.
“Stay away from Helen Erland.”
“No. But thanks for the input.”
“Mojo—”
I hung up.
“I could find out if he’s sleeping with her,” Justin said.
“Justin,” I answered, “don’t help.”
He grinned. “It’s not like I don’t have time on my hands,” he reasoned. “I could help you solve the case, too.”
“How?”
“By spying on people. I’m invisible to most of them, remember. That could come in very handy.”
“I’ve got a better idea, Justin,” I said. “Go home.”
“I can’t. My mom’s too sad. It’s a bummer.”
“That isn’t the home I was talking about.”
“I have to wait for Pepper,” he told me decisively. “He’s old and he might get lost or something. It won’t be long, and I might as well make myself useful in the meantime.”
My throat closed and my sinuses clogged up instantly.
“Do you think they let dogs into heaven?” Justin asked. “Because I’m not going if they don’t.”
I started to cry.
Justin blipped out.
Alive or dead, men can’t stand tears.
* * *
JOLIE ARRIVED WHILE I was rooting through the cupboards looking for something that could reasonably be expected to morph into lunch.
“You look terrible,” she said after letting herself in.
“Do you think dogs are allowed in heaven?” I asked.
“Sit down,” Jolie ordered. “You’re a train wreck.”
I slumped into a chair at the kitchen table.
Jolie washed her hands at the sink—a good thing, since she’d probably been dropping pieces of Alex Pennington into evidence bags all morning—and opened a can of soup. “Greer’s not back from shopping yet?” she asked, getting out a saucepan.
I shook my head.
“It will be interesting to see how she reacts to the news,” Jolie said, plopping the contents of the soup can into the saucepan. “Do you ever buy groceries?”
I ignored the grocery gibe. Jolie cooked. It made sense that she had a fixation with supermarkets. To me, they were just places where I ran into crazy stalkers and dead people. “Greer,” I said evenly, “did not riddle Alex with bullets and leave him to rot in the desert.”
“Don’t be so free with the gory details, okay? I could get fired if anybody finds out I called you from the crime scene.”
Guilt washed over me. I bit my lower lip. Who needs collagen when you can get the plump look by gnawing on yourself? “I might have let something slip to Tucker,” I confessed.
Jolie stared at me, her eyes going huge and round. She was beautiful, even clad in khaki shorts, a Phoenix PD T-shirt and hiking boots. Her long hair, done up in about a million skinny braids, was tied back with a twisted bandana. “Mojo Sheepshanks,” she said, “you didn’t tell him I told you about Alex?”
“He guessed,” I said.
“Right,” Jolie snapped, glaring.
“Not to worry,” I said, holding up two fingers pressed close together. “He and I are like that.”
Jolie swirled an index finger around one temple. “You and Tucker are like this. Both of you are crazy!”
“Tucker isn’t,” I said.
Jolie turned back to the soup, her spine rigid.
“You’re going to have to sit with Greer tonight,” I told her. “So I hope you don’t have any plans.”
Jolie didn’t look at me. “And where will you be?”
“I have some investigating to do.”
Jolie muttered something I didn’t quite catch, but I thought I heard the words real job in there somewhere.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I said. “And how hard can it be to hang out with Greer for a couple of hours?”
Jolie rounded her eyes at me.
Just then the front door crashed open, and Greer came in. She went immediately to the cupboards and started ripping through them, a one-armed marauder. She found a package of Oreos—Nick liked to smell them, and even though I seriously doubted he’d ever be back, I kept them around just in case—and started stuffing them into her mouth, two at a time.
I figured a size-twenty-two wardrobe might be one of the dark secrets hidden in my foster sister’s mysterious past.
“Alex is dead,” she said, spewing crumbs. “He’s dead!”
Jolie and I exchanged glances.
“Sit down, Greer,” I said as Jolie pulled back a chair and pushed her into it. Greer looked up at us, her mouth rimmed with cookie dust.
“What?” I threw in when nobody spoke, hoping it sounded as if the news had come as a shock.
“The bastard isn’t off boinking some floozy,” Greer informed us, wild-eyed. “He’s a cadaver!”
“Calm down,” I said, “and tell us what happened.”
Greer’s eyes filled with tears. She opened her mouth, shoved in three more Oreos and tried to talk around them. “I just got a call from the police,” she said, the words garbled. “Some hikers stumbled across Alex’s body in the desert this morning. He’d been shot.”
I tossed Jolie a See? She’s surprised kind of look.
Jolie took the soup off the burner and set the saucepan aside.
“What am I going to do?” Greer asked.
Jolie pulled up a third chair and sat down. “You can start by telling us whether or not you killed him,” she said.
Greer gasped, and then went into a choking fit. Obviously she still hadn’t swallowed all the Oreo residue.
I jumped up and pounded on her back, while Jolie got her some water.
“Killed him?” Greer gasped once she’d recovered the ability to breathe.
“The man was probably cheating on you,” Jolie said evenly after flinging a shut-up glance in my direction. “He’d moved out and you hired Sherlock here to get the proof. The police are going to want to know if you offed him, Greer, or paid somebody else to do it.”
Greer bolted for the bathroom.
Power vomiting ensued.
“Good work,” I told Jolie in a harsh whisper. “Why didn’t you just ask her how much she stood to inherit and when she plans to remarry?”
Jolie glowered me into silence.
We both got up and tracked Greer to the bathroom.
She was on her knees, with her head over the toilet bowl, dry heaving.
When she stopped, I soaked a washcloth in cool water and squatted to wipe off her face.
Jolie flushed the john and spritzed the air freshener.
“You can’t possibly think I would murder my own husband!” Greer sobbed as Jolie and I helped her to her feet. I looked at her cast, due to come off in a few weeks, and wished it had been on her right arm instead of her left. If it had been, she couldn’t have shot Alex.
“Look, Greer,” Jolie said fiercely, though she was stroking Greer’s back as she spoke, “the cops will give you a day or two to catch your breath, then they’re going to be in your face, wanting a lot of answers. Talk to us.”
“I didn’t kill Alex!”
We ushered her back to the living room and sat her down in a leather armchair, facing the empty fireplace.
“You can tell us if you did,” Jolie said. “We’ll help you.”
Greer shook her head. “It was probably that bitch Beverly,” she said. “I need wine.”
“No, you don’t,” Jolie argued quietly. “I know you’ve had a shock, and I’m sorry. But you can’t afford to crawl into a bottle and pretend none of this is happening, because it is. When did you see Alex last?”
Greer considered. “The day after Lillian’s funeral,” she replied. “He came by to pick up some of his things. He said he wasn’t really leaving—that we just needed some time apart to get perspective.”
Greer might have been getting perspective, I thought. Alex had probably been getting nooky instead.
“Where was he going?” I asked after a sour glance at Jolie, thinking hey, I’m the detective around here.
“He said he’d be staying at the Biltmore.”
That figured. The Biltmore is posh—nothing but the best for Alex Pennington, M.D., and the bimbo du jour.
“Did you check?” Jolie pressed. “Call the hotel to find out if he was really there alone and not staying with a girlfriend?”
Greer’s right hand knotted into a white-knuckled fist. “No,” she said, gazing up at me. “I paid Mojo to do that kind of dirty work.”
“I was a little busy,” I pointed out.
“I want my retainer back,” Greer said.
“Fine,” I told her.
“Stop bickering,” Jolie said. “Both of you!”
Greer and I both subsided.
“A man is dead,” Jolie informed us. “Let’s stay on the subject.”
Greer let out a wail.
A man is dead, I thought with a mental snort. Gee, maybe I ought to offer Jolie a partnership in Sheepshanks, Sheepshanks and Sheepshanks. She had such a keen eye for detail.
But then, she’d expect a paycheck.
Back to sole proprietorship.
“I think Beverly killed him in a drunken rage,” Greer said with frightening clarity. “Alex just spent a fortune to send her to some fancy rehab center, but I’ll bet she was swilling gin on the plane back. Are there any more cookies?”
The whole conversation went like that. I wondered why anybody would want to be a cop—or a private investigator, for that matter. And I seriously considered applying for a blue greeter’s vest at Walmart. The dead guy and I would probably get along fine.
* * *
AT SIX-FIFTEEN THAT evening I pulled into Helen Erland’s dirt driveway. She lived in a double-wide on one of those acre plots with “horse facilities,” meaning pipe fences, a rusted feeder and a beat-up tin roof the animals could stand under to get out of the merciless Arizona sun. When the place had been new, it was probably pretty remote; now it was surrounded by the ever-encroaching stucco houses people like Helen couldn’t afford.
There weren’t any horses.
Before I could knock, the inside door opened and Helen peered out at me through the screen. She was wearing baggy shorts and a short-sleeved plaid shirt, and her feet were bare, with blue foam cushions wedged between the toes. Not too grief stricken for a pedicure, then, I reflected, and instantly hated myself for thinking that way.
Lillian used to tell Greer, Jolie and me that you couldn’t help the thoughts that came into your head, but you didn’t have to let them stick around.
“Thanks for coming,” Helen said, stepping back so I could come inside.
Gillian was sitting in a little rocking chair over by the fake fireplace, the kind with light-up logs inside.
I didn’t acknowledge her, of course, until Helen turned away to clear some laundry off one end of the couch so I could sit down.
Gillian returned my thumbs-up signal—I guess it qualified as sign language—but she looked so sad and small sitting there.
I sized up the living room. Despite the laundry, it wasn’t messy. The carpet looked clean, and there was no dust on top of the TV, which was muted but on, or beer cans on the coffee table. An electric picture of Jesus and the apostles in a boat filled most of one wall, but the plug was pulled.
“That belonged to my mother,” Helen said fondly, having followed my gaze. “It’s awful, isn’t it?”
Before, I’d just felt sorry for Helen Erland. Now I began to like her. But I wasn’t stupid enough to dis a picture of Jesus, even if it did light up.
“Mom treasured it,” Helen went on when I didn’t comment. “I keep it around because it reminds me of her.”
I nodded. I barely remembered my own mother, since she’d died when I was small, but I’d just lost Lillian, and her ratty old chenille bathrobe was hanging in my closet at the apartment. I had her tarot cards, too.
I understood about keeping things.
“You want a beer or a soda or something?” Helen asked. She was a little nervous. Putting me on the trail of Gillian’s killer had probably seemed like a good idea at the time. Now I figured she was having second thoughts.
“Diet cola, if you have it,” I said.
Helen got up and pigeon-toed it into the kitchen. Her toenails glowed neon-pink.
Gillian and I exchanged looks again.
I signaled for her to leave the room.
She shook her head and sat tight in the little rocker.
“Tell me about your husband,” I said when Helen came back and handed me a cold can of soda. “I understand he was arrested for solicitation of a minor.”
“That was before I met him,” Helen said. “And he said she came on to him, that girl.”
I decided I’d never get the straight story on that from Helen, and made a mental note to look elsewhere. Like straight into Vince Erland’s eyes, when and if I got to speak to him. I did say, “Men sometimes lie about things like that.”
Helen flushed. “Vince didn’t do it,” she reiterated. “He didn’t proposition a teenage girl, and he sure as hell didn’t kill Gillian.”
“Let’s go back even further,” I said moderately, popping the top on the diet cola. Gillian’s last name was Pellway, not Erland, so there must have been an ex-husband or a boyfriend in the picture. “You were married before, right?”
Helen tested her toenails for dryness and pulled the blue foam cushions out. Set them carefully on the end table beside the old leather recliner and sat down. A dull flush rose under her ears. “Yes,” she said. “To Benny Pellway. He’s doing twenty to life in the state pen for armed robbery.”
I didn’t need to take notes. The Damn Fool’s Guide to a Photographic Memory. “He’s Gillian’s biological father?” I asked.
Helen lifted her ponytail off her neck and fixed it to the top of her head with a pink squeeze-clip. “Yes,” she said.
“Are there any other children in the family?”
Helen shook her head, and her eyes brimmed with tears. “No,” she replied. “Vince and I were talking about having a baby, though.”
“Where does Vince work?” I was miles behind the police, I knew, but I could still ask his fellow employees what kind of man he was. And it was always possible that Tucker and the others might have missed something.
“He was between jobs,” Helen said. Her chin jutted out a little way, as though she expected me to denounce Vince Erland as a bum, and she was prepared to defend him.
“How far between?” I asked.
“He worked for a furniture company, delivering couches and stuff, until about six months ago,” she said. “Then he got downsized.”
“Do you have any family pictures or albums or anything?” Except for Jesus and the disciples, the paneled walls were bare.
Helen sniffled, got up out of the chair and opened the cabinet under the TV. Brought out several framed school photos of Gillian, along with a couple of thick albums.
“I had to put them away,” she said, referring to the shots of a smiling Gillian, posing against a plain blue background.
“I understand,” I told her.
Gillian began to rock slowly in her little chair.
“It’s the oddest thing, the way that chair moves on its own sometimes,” Helen said.
“Probably a draft,” I answered, unable to look at her.
“Probably,” Helen agreed with a sigh.
I turned to the albums. There weren’t a lot of pictures, and most of them were old. In one, a couple in sixties garb stood beaming in front of what looked like the same double-wide we were sitting in.
“My mom and dad,” Helen explained, her face softening. “This was their place. It was new back then.”
I swallowed, thinking of my own dead parents. “They’re both gone?”
“Both gone,” Helen confirmed.
I flipped more pages. Helen, growing up. Helen, on horseback, then dressed for a dance, then graduating from high school. Helen, standing with a smarmy-looking guy in a wife-beater shirt and cutoff jeans, holding a baby in her arms.
Benny Pellway looked like the kind of guy who ought to be doing twenty to life in the state pen. I decided to make sure he hadn’t escaped. Shortcut: ask Tucker. The police would have checked that first thing.
After that, the snapshots were mostly of Gillian, usually sitting alone on a blanket, clutching a ragged stuffed dog.
“She always wanted a pet,” Helen said with painful regret. She’d been leaning in her recliner so she could see the pictures, too.
Gillian signed a word, and I was pretty sure it was dog.
My throat squeezed shut again. “She’s here,” I said. I hadn’t planned on saying that—it just came out of my mouth.
“What?” Helen asked, blinking.
I figured she was about to throw me out, but it was too late to backtrack. “I can see Gillian,” I said. “She’s sitting in the little rocking chair by the fireplace.”
Helen turned in that direction. Signed something.
Gillian duplicated the sign eagerly.
I love you.
I hadn’t gotten very far in my studies, but I knew that one.
My heart sort of caved in on itself.
Helen got up, walked toward the chair.
Gillian instantly vanished.
What did that mean? I wondered.
I knew Gillian wasn’t afraid of Helen Erland. She obviously liked to be with her, wanted very much to get her attention somehow. Maybe just to say goodbye.
“Is she still here?” Helen wondered softly.
“No,” I said.
Helen, standing in the middle of the living room now, turned to study me narrowly. “Are you some kind of psychic or something?”
“No.”
“But you saw my Gillian?”
I nodded. Looked up at the electric Jesus picture and had a sudden, strange urge to plug it in. “Yes.”
“Can you talk to her?”
“She doesn’t speak, but she reads my lips sometimes. And she wrote ‘Mom’ in the dust on the dashboard of my car yesterday. That’s why I came into the store. Because she wanted to see you.”
Helen’s legs buckled, and she dropped heavily to the floor, landing on her knees.
I knew she hadn’t fainted, so I stayed where I was. Waited.
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