Sloan pulled out his penlight to examine the man and try to determine who he might be and how he’d died. He didn’t want to disturb the corpse any more than he needed to, until the medical examiner arrived.
The corpse was dressed in dirty denim jeans and a cotton shirt. He was wearing work boots, and Sloan noted that his hands and nails were dirty, as if he’d been doing manual labor. He judged him to be about forty years of age, but he’d never seen him before. At first, the cause of death wasn’t apparent. Then Sloan noted that the red on the blanket was deeper because of the blood that had escaped from a bullet hole in the back of the man’s head. He dug into his pocket for the gloves he hadn’t needed yet in Lily but carried anyway because of his days in Houston. He checked the man’s pockets, but he wasn’t carrying a wallet or any form of identification.
“You know him?” Jane asked.
“No.”
Heidi was standing there, hyperventilating.
“Heidi, you don’t need to be here. Gavin, can you and Joe take the old corpse back to town and over to the county morgue and then get a medical examiner out here for me—and a crime-scene unit? Jane, can you get Heidi back to the stables? You can use the patrol car to return to the office. Looks like I’ll be out here for a few more hours.”
Jane nodded. “Sure,” she said. “Heidi?”
But Heidi didn’t seem to hear.
“I knew him! I knew him. I knew him, oh, God, I knew him!” Heidi cried.
Sloan rose and took her by the shoulders. “Heidi, calm down.” He led her out of the tepee. “Who is it?”
“Um, um...his name was Jay. Jay something. He stayed at the Old Jail the other night. He was alone. He came and took the trail ride. Alone. His name’ll be on a form back at the stables. Everybody has to sign a form before they get on one of the horses. He was just a tourist, I’m pretty sure.”
Gavin and Joe walked behind Sloan. “We’ll get the old corpse back and send out the investigators,” Joe said dully.
Sloan nodded. He was still looking at Heidi. “So you took him on a trail ride. The usual?”
“Um, it was three days ago. I took him on a night ride. No, wait. He went on two trail rides. He went during the day and then again at night. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God...”
“Heidi, let’s go back to the stables,” Jane said. She glanced at Sloan, evidently realizing that the biggest help she could offer was taking Heidi off his hands. She put an arm around her. “Come on now. Are you going to be able to ride?”
“Her horse knows this trail and the way back to the stables better than I know my way around my own house,” Sloan said.
“Call if you need me,” Jane told him. “Heidi, come on.”
Sloan watched her go, berating himself. He’d actually wanted her to be an incompetent rider; he guessed that for some reason he’d wanted her to do badly at something.
Now he was grateful. She was a well-trained federal agent. She also happened to be a beautiful one.
He walked over to where Gavin and Joe had managed to slide a board beneath their century-old mummified corpse and lift it into the wagon, apparently causing no harm to the remains.
“We’ll get crews out here as fast as we can,” Joe promised.
“I’ll be here,” Sloan said.
He watched as they crawled in the wagon and Joe picked up the reins. Jane helped Heidi onto her bay, mounted Kanga smoothly and turned to wave to him.
He lifted his hand. “Thank you,” he said, though he doubted she could hear him.
But she nodded. He didn’t hear her, either, but he thought she said, “See you tonight.”
When they were gone, he returned to the area of the tepee. Unfortunately, they’d all done a lot of tracking around before they’d realized they had a current murder on their hands.
Sloan inspected the area carefully. In the end, he decided they hadn’t messed up any tracks or caused the crime scene any real harm.
The dead man—Jay, whatever his last name might be—had been forced to his knees, Sloan surmised. He’d been shot, execution-style, right where he’d knelt. The blanket had soaked up most of the blood.
Why the hell would anyone take a casual tourist out to the desert and execute him?
“Because, son, he wasn’t a casual tourist,” he heard.
He turned around. Longman was with him. He seldom saw Longman except in his own house.
Sloan nodded.
“I will wait with you,” Longman told him.
He smiled, glad that Longman hadn’t decided to reveal himself to Heidi. Poor Heidi would’ve had a heart attack and he might have had another corpse on his hands.
“Thank you,” he said. He pulled out his phone and called the office, telling Chet to get down to the stables and the Old Jail and find out everything he could about the dead man they knew only as Jay.
And then he waited.
Soon enough, he heard the whir of a copter.
He closed his eyes and remembered the strange feeling he’d had the day he’d gone to the Old Jail over the stolen wallets.
He remembered the change in the air.
The skull in the theater basement.
And he remembered his dream.
The dark cloud of evil wasn’t coming his way.
It was already here.
* * *
Heidi might have been in shock for a few minutes, but riding back to the stables, she talked nonstop. “It’s horrible. Just horrible. That poor man! Shot dead. He was nice—and he actually tipped after the ride. So he comes here on vacation and he winds up dead in the desert. That’s so horrible. Oh, Lord, I thought an old corpse was horrible. A new one is so much worse. I wonder who the old corpse is? You know, not much happens in Lily. Seriously, thank God we’re not that far from Tucson in one direction and Phoenix in the other, because we’re pretty dead these days. Oh, God, not dead! That’s not what I meant. I mean...there were all kinds of murders way back in the day. Right after the Civil War and into the era of all the cowboys and miners. Back then, I think it was a couple of killings a week. But that was the wild, wild west, you know?”
Jane knew. It was just that her own mind was racing and she was only half paying attention to Heidi, which didn’t seem to matter.
“We had our famous outlaws—sheriffs, deputies and outlaws. Trey Hardy was the big one around here. He robbed banks after the Civil War. He was a Reb and when the war was over, his family had nothing, but he was like a Robin Hood—giving money and food to everyone around him. Except, of course, robbing banks is illegal. He was finally taken into custody by Sheriff Brendan Fogerty. Problem was, his deputy, Aaron Munson, hated Hardy—although I don’t think he really knew him—and he murdered Hardy in his cell. But people loved Hardy, and they were furious, so they wound up lynching Aaron Munson right in front of the jail on Main Street. So Hardy’s supposed to haunt his old jail cell, just like Munson’s supposed to haunt the street. Oh! Wow! What if we found Trey Hardy’s body? Or Munson’s? No, wait, that can’t be. They’re buried up on Dead Horse Hill, in the graveyard there. Unless someone dug them up. But Hardy supposedly wore parts of an old Rebel cavalry lieutenant’s uniform. And Munson...he’d probably be in a deputy’s uniform. No, wait, maybe they didn’t have them back then....”
Jane could have turned to Heidi and said that, yes, ghosts seemed to be teeming in Lily, Arizona. And that was probably true, but what could the ghosts have to do with a man being shot in the desert? And what was the point of scaring Heidi even more than she already was?
“You’re so calm!” Heidi said, admiration brimming in her eyes.
“Sad to say, I’ve seen a few corpses,” Jane told her. And sadder to say, I’ve had conversations with some.
“Nothing happens here—nothing! And now a skull, an old corpse and a new corpse!” Heidi marveled.
Thankfully, they reached the stables soon after that. And with almost perfect timing, her phone rang. It was Sloan; he’d called to make sure they’d gotten back without incident.
She assured him that they had. “Is there anything I can do?” she asked.
“A crime-scene unit is out here, and I have Betty and Chet on finding out who our dead man is, where he came from and how he might’ve gotten himself shot in the desert,” Sloan explained. “Our old corpse, as Heidi calls him, is on his way to the county morgue. If you’re up to it, take the patrol car back to the station and work on the skull.”
She smiled at that.
If she was up to it.
“I’m in town. I’ll clean up, grab something to eat, then head over to your place to get the car and go back to the office. It’s still early.”
“Sure. Like I said, I have a car for you. It’s at the office, so once you’re there, you can leave whenever you want. I’ll give Johnny Bearclaw a call and tell him you’ll need my backup keys. Oh, and thank you for dealing with Heidi.”
“No problem. She was traumatized. I can well imagine. I remember the first time I saw a corpse. Don’t you remember what it was like?”
He was quiet a minute. “There’ve been so many now. Anyway, thanks.”
His voice seemed to wrap around her. Impatiently she gritted her teeth as they ended the call. It was better to think of him as a jerk. She didn’t need a one-night affair with cowboy.
Or maybe she did. Work had consumed her since the Krewe had come together. She’d had a life. Once.
She shook her head. They were dealing with the dead—not just the “old” dead, but the “new” dead.
And she was daydreaming about sex....
She walked toward Heidi, who was watering her bay. “Heidi, can I leave Kanga here? I’ll be back in an hour or so, then I’ll ride her over to Sloan’s.”
“Sure. She’ll be fine here,” Heidi said.
“Thanks.”
She left Heidi and walked across the street. The door to the theater was open, although it was still early. When she went in, she found Valerie Mystro behind the bar making herself a cup of coffee at the espresso machine.
“Hey!” Valerie said, turning around and hurrying to the bar when she saw Jane. “I heard someone was murdered out in the desert. How horrible! I don’t think I ever met the man, but I heard that he was here in town. That’s so scary—almost as scary as finding the skull.”
“How do you know all of this already? I just got back with Heidi.”
“Oh, well, this is a small town, remember? I was across the street at the saloon earlier, having lunch with Alice and Brian. And the people who’d been on the ride came in and told us about the weird mummified man they’d seen. And then Terence came in because they were closing the stables for the rest of the day. And Chet—Sloan’s deputy—had just been at the stables to get the information on the dead man. Seriously, Jane, this is a small town. If you sneeze, everyone knows about it.”
“I see.”
“It’s so strange! I’m from Philadelphia. There’s something going on there all the time. But when you’re in a small place like this, well—it’s different. And this is scary. Of course, in a way, the whole place is scary.” She glanced around and lowered her voice. “I don’t know how you can stay in that room upstairs!”
“It’s a nice room.” She smiled. “I like staying there. In fact, I want to.”
“But it’s haunted. I know that for a fact.”
“Oh?”
Valerie nodded with assurance. “I actually think Henri put you in there on purpose.”
“Because he hoped he’d scare me?”
“I guess you don’t scare easily, do you?” Valerie asked her. “But you should be scared.”
“Why? What has this ghost done?”
Valerie was shocked. Her pretty face wrinkled in confusion. “Done? Well, it’s a ghost, for one. But I tell you, people have run out of that room. They say Sage McCormick shows up in the middle of the night, looking at them. They wake up—and there she is, watching them sleep.”
“She’s never hurt anyone, has she?”
“Well...I’m sure she has. Indirectly. She makes them nervous wrecks and then they trip and fall and... People are weird! Some come here because they want to see her, but she scared the producer of a ghost show right out of here. And over at the Old Jail, Trey Hardy is still there, you know. He moves people’s things around. And he just plain scares them, too!”
“But you’re not afraid to stay at the theater?”
“No one died in my room or became overly attached to it.” Valerie’s eyes widened. “This is horrible timing. Silverfest is next weekend. The money it brings in helps keep the town going for the whole year.”
“What happens at Silverfest?”
“Everyone dresses up in old frontier wear. We have a horse parade down Main Street, we perform all day and night as our characters. All the kids in town and half the adults dress up, too. And down by Sloan’s property there’s a rodeo. Oh, and we have a shoot-out on Main Street. It’s fun, and brings in a ton of money.” She paused. “Too bad it isn’t Goldfest, but it’s not, it’s Silverfest. They found way more silver than they did gold. And there was the gold heist, so I guess we don’t celebrate gold.”
She suddenly seemed to remember her coffee. “Want some coffee? This machine is great. American, caffe latte, cappuccino and mochaccino!”
“Sure. Actually, I could use something to eat.”
“Oh, that’s right. Sloan came for you so early. We have a refrigerator with sandwich meat, if you want, or I’ll run across the street with you. There’s pizza, there’s the saloon—”
“A sandwich will be fine. I’m going to have to get back to work,” Jane said.
“Let me make it for you. Salami, ham or turkey? And do you like cheese?”
While Valerie rummaged around under the bar, Alice joined them and then so did Brian and Ty, all talking about the two corpses.
A minute later, Henri Coque joined them, as well.
He didn’t want a sandwich; he walked around the bar and poured himself a large Scotch.
“What the hell?” he said, gulping down the shot. “Who’s digging up old corpses—and why? And why shoot a tourist?” He shook his head with disgust, then sighed. “I guess people can be ghoulish. Maybe these corpses will make us more popular this Silverfest. Let us pray!” He lifted his glass to the beautiful nineteenth-century, oval-framed portrait of a woman over the bar. “To you, my love! May we prosper, despite chaos! What is the world coming to here in Lily?”
“Or going back to?” Valerie asked, shivering.
Jane frowned and studied the painting. There was a sharp similarity between it and the sketch she’d drawn.
She frowned, looking at Henri.
“That’s Sage McCormick?” she asked, but she already knew the answer.
“Our beautiful ghost!” he said reverently. “Yes, indeed, that is Sage McCormick!”
Jane studied the old painting. It portrayed the woman she’d seen on the landing. Sage McCormick had rich dark curls that surrounded her face. Her eyes were large and gray, framed by rich lashes. Her lips were generous and curled into a secretive smile. She did, indeed, have the look of a queen—a sweeping, emoting drama queen. And yet...there was something about her eyes. She would have done well in their modern world, Jane thought. She was a bit of a wild child, a rebel. A woman before her time.
“Ah, Sage! Bless this place!” Henri said, overemoting himself. “May you help us prosper, indeed, because we cannot let this theater fail, can we?”
* * *
“At least it’s a slow week,” Dr. Arthur Cuthbert, one of the county medical examiners, told Sloan. “I have a died-at-home-alone octogenarian on my schedule and that’s it. I can keep the old fellow on ice awhile longer. My diener—assistant—is just cleaning up our tourist, Mr.—” he paused, checking his notes “—Mr. Jay Berman. However, I’m willing to bet he died from a .45 caliber to the back of the head.”
“Looks likely,” Sloan said. He hadn’t worked with Cuthbert before, and he wasn’t sure of a medical examiner who made quick suppositions. What seemed obvious... Well, things weren’t always what they seemed. He might be judging too hastily, though, he told himself.
Whoa, there, Sloan. Getting testy these days.
However, Detective Liam Newsome with the county joined him at the autopsy. He’d arrived at the crime scene when the forensic units were finishing up. Newsome was a decent cop, an oddly thin little man with sharp eyes and a sharper mind. They’d worked a hit-and-run on the town line when Sloan had first returned to Lily.
When the three of them headed into the autopsy, Sloan’s opinion of Cuthbert began to change. Cuthbert was precise, speaking to him and Detective Newsome and into a recorder all the while. Their dead man, Berman, had been approximately five-eleven and two hundred pounds. He had suffered no defensive wounds, which seemed consistent with the fact that he’d probably been kneeling. His attacker had likely walked behind him and pulled the trigger almost point-blank, judging by the powder burns. When he was done with the initial work, Cuthbert told Sloan he’d have the stomach contents analyzed, which would help narrow down the time of death. His informed guess was between two and four in the morning. When the lab reports came back, he’d send all the information to both Sloan and Liam at their respective departments.
“So, our tourist came to Lily and was shot execution-style,” Newsome said as they exited the morgue together. “You ever seen anything like that before?”
“Not in Lily.” Sloan had seen the style of killing, but that had been when he was dealing with known drug lords and their minions and in a big city rather than a little town where it seemed everyone knew everyone. Even the tourists. He pulled out his phone, looking at the information Betty had sent. “My deputies traced his identity—he’d given the management his credit card at the Old Jail and at the stables—and they’ve been checking his movements since he got to town. He’s from New York. Flew out to Tucson and drove to Lily late last week after picking up a rental car at the airport. He said he was on his own and just loved all the stories he’d heard about the Old West. He went to the show one night and took a couple tours with the stables. That’s all I’ve got at the moment. Appears he was friendly with everyone he met and seemed like a regular guy on vacation. I’ll start making further inquiries, try to find out if anyone got anything more from him.”
Newsome nodded. “I’ll work on the home angle. Maybe he was running from New York. Maybe his killer was never in Lily. Any word on the rental car?”
“No. Betty called the rental agency. No tracking device on his car. It was a new Nissan XTerra. Silver-gray.” Sloan looked down at the page and gave Newsome the license number.
“I’ll get a trace on it,” Newsome said.
Sloan nodded. “I’ll start with our locals.”
“We’ll see if he had family or friends—acquaintances—in New York who might’ve known if he had a different reason for coming out here. You had any trouble with drugs lately?”
“No more than the usual. Kids, mostly,” Sloan told him.
The two parted ways at the morgue. Sloan headed back to his office, stopping at Old Town first.
Mike Addison was at the desk in the Old Jail. He already knew about everything that had happened in the desert.
The fact that news traveled like wildfire in a small town had its good points; he didn’t have to explain what he needed to know.
“Sloan, don’t it just beat all?” Mike asked him. “I’m so sorry to hear about this. That Jay seemed like an all-right guy.”
“Tell me about him, Mike. Tell me everything he said and did while he was here.”
“Hell, I don’t room with my guests!” Mike said. “He checked in, and he talked to me about things to do in town. I told him to see the show and take tours from the stables. If he didn’t ride, he could do the haunted hayride at night. He was really a nice guy.”
“Why was he out here on his own?”
“Said he was a history buff, that he’d read all about Arizona and Lily.”
“Where did he stay?” Sloan asked. “Which room?”
“Well, you can imagine. A guy like that.”
Sloan prayed for patience. “Mike, I don’t want to imagine. Just tell me which room he stayed in.”
“The Trey Hardy cell. He was the guest in that cell right before the young couple who lost their wallets.”
“And he checked out?”
Mike nodded. “Let’s see. It’s Tuesday now.... He came in last Tuesday night, checked out Thursday morning. Our young couple got here Friday afternoon—and, well, you know about Saturday. Their wallets disappeared, they freaked out and left that day after you found the wallets. No one stayed there on Saturday night. They were supposed to be there another few days. I have it booked again starting Thursday night. Everything in and near town is booked as of Thursday. The Silverfest activities start on Friday, so folks will be coming in big numbers.”
“Let me have the key, Mike. I want to take another look in there.”
“Here you go!” Mike handed him the key.
Sloan went to the Trey Hardy cell. Nothing looked any different than it had when he’d been in there a few days ago to search for the wallets that had “disappeared.”
He sat on the bed. Mike’s housekeeping staff was good; the cell was immaculate. He wasn’t sure what he thought he’d find in the cell but he began to go through the drawers. They were empty—except for a King James version of the Bible.
He sat back down on the bed, wondering what Jay Berman could have been up to that had gotten him executed out in the desert.
It was while he was sitting there that the door to the tiny bathroom suddenly flew open. “So, Hardy, there is something I’m missing, huh?” he asked.
He figured that one day the ghost would actually make an appearance. He never knew if he imagined the vague image he sometimes saw or if it was real. Longman always appeared as a solid entity to him. He’d never been sure if he was crazy or not; he’d decided he’d consider himself functional, if crazy, and learn to live with what he either did or didn’t see.
But now, it seemed that whether a ghost or his mind was suggesting it, he needed to investigate the small bathroom that had been built into the cell.
Shower, sink and toilet were almost on top of one another. The tile floor was clean and the wastebasket under the sink had been emptied. A mirror hung over the sink and a small cabinet, which had been nailed over the toilet, held the usual tiny containers of lotion, shampoo, conditioner and soap.
And a tissue box.
Sloan picked up the box. There were remnants of a piece of paper beneath it. Apparently, someone had set a note there to keep it from falling into the sink. Somehow, it had gotten damp and ripped, leaving behind the little corner of paper.
All that remained were a few blurred words. He frowned as he studied them.
DES DIA
It could only mean one place. Desert Diamonds. And it might not mean anything at all; Mike might have told Jay Berman that Desert Diamonds was where he could go to have pizza, coffee or buy souvenirs.
He looked into the mirror and froze. To his astonishment, he saw more than his own reflection there. For a moment, it was as if someone stood behind him, looking into the mirror, as well, meeting his eyes.
It was Trey Hardy, his plumed hat set jauntily on his head. He looked at Sloan grimly and nodded.
He didn’t speak.
He disappeared, fading away until he was nothing but a memory.
Or a sure sign of insanity.
* * *
It was late in the day when Jane finally returned Kanga to Sloan’s stable and took the patrol car back to the station. Betty was just about to leave.
“Jane!” she said, pausing to greet her before walking out. “How’s the work going?”
“The work—oh, it’s going very well.”
“I wish I knew more about what you do!” Betty said enthusiastically. “It’s science and it’s art!”
Jane smiled. “I’m lucky. I love my job. The form of the human skull shapes the face, but it’s the soft tissue that really creates the unique appearance of each human being.”
“How accurate can you be? When did people learn how to do this?” Betty asked.
“Pretty accurate. A lot is in the hands of the artist, especially where coloring comes into play, though nationality or ethnic background can often be determined by the skull. There was a French anatomist named Paul Broca who was the first to use scientific methods to create images of the living from the dead, showing the relationship between the bone and the soft parts. That was in the late 1800s,” Jane told Betty. “This is probably more than you wanted to know, so stop me if I’m boring you.”
“No, I’m fascinated. I didn’t know any of this.”
“Okay, you asked for it! Anyway, Broca defined the differences between different ethnic groups. Then there was a German anatomist, Hermann Welcker, who went on to measure the soft tissue in male cadavers and found nine ‘median points’ from which to work. All this was then enhanced by a Swiss anatomist, Wilhelm His, who worked with cadavers and used the nine median points and six lateral points to further the ability to re-create the appearance of life when nothing’s left but bone. As you can tell, I love it. And thanks to technology, what we can do grows all the time. Scientists and artists have worked together through the years to identify remains when all other hope of identification is gone.”
“That’s really important,” Betty said. She cocked her head to one side. “So, you’re an artist. Are you an agent, too?”
“Yes, I’m an agent. Anyone in a Krewe—part of the FBI’s behavioral sciences group—has to go through the academy.”
“Good!” Betty said. “I love to see other women in law enforcement. Can you shoot?”
“Fairly decently, yes,” Jane said.
That made Betty smile. “Well, you’re a wonderful asset to have here. I’m sorry. We’re usually a great place. And you got here for one of our very rare episodes of violence. Murder,” she added softly.
“Bad things can happen anywhere. But that doesn’t make the town bad.”
Betty smiled again, obviously pleased at the compliment. “Yeah, you’re right. Bad things—that’s just life, huh? I’m so glad that you’re enjoying your time here.” She gave an easy shrug. “Well, I’m off. The night crew is on.” She winked. “Not as good as the day crew, but they’re okay.”
Jane laughed, waving as Betty went to her car.
Jane put Sloan’s keys in his desk, got the keys to the little Kia that had been rented for her use and then spent a few hours working with the soft-tissue markers on the skull. After about two hours, however, she felt she’d have to pick up again the next day. She was just too tired to concentrate and she didn’t want to read a measurement wrong. True, the measurements were averages that had been determined through the years by many different anatomists and scientists. But every face was unique, something artists needed to remember as they worked, always letting the skull itself be the guide.
The problem now, of course, was that she was pretty sure she was looking at the earthly remains of Sage McCormick. Or part of them, at any rate. She’d seen the painting, and she’d seen her sketch. That was definitely going to influence her. But did that really matter? She’d done the two-dimensional drawing before she’d seen the painting above the bar and learned it was Sage McCormick.
She surveyed her work so far. Not much. The skull and markers by themselves did very little to form a human face.
Before leaving, she paused to look at the sketch she’d created the day before. The woman she’d depicted based on the skull had been beautiful. Of course, she’d given her the sparkle in her eyes and the look of friendly mischief that seemed to radiate from her smile.
Sage McCormick. It was the same expression she had in the painting. Maybe, Jane told herself, she’d been subconsciously aware of the painting when she’d checked in. But she didn’t think so; she hadn’t really seen it until she was sitting there today with Valerie and Henri.
Sloan Trent had seemed startled by the image—disturbed by it, even. But then, he’d seemed disturbed by Jane herself at the time, so she hadn’t gotten an explanation from him.
She covered her work with a muslin cloth. She was almost done with it and would start the buildup with clay to produce muscle structure the following day. She left the interrogation room and walked to the front. Now that the sheriff’s office had a murder to deal with, she doubted there’d be much interest in what she was doing.
Tired, Jane glanced at her watch and saw that it was past nine. When she reached the front office, she was pleasantly greeted by Scotty Carter, who was at the desk. He was the youngest of the crew here, she thought; he appeared to be about twenty-five, with a facial structure that suggested a Native American background.
“How are you doing, Agent Everett? If you need anything, you let us know, okay? We try not to interrupt you when we know you’re working,” he told her.
“I’ve been fine, thank you,” she said, equally polite. “Did you hear from the sheriff?” she asked.
The deputy nodded. “He’s in town now. Sloan won’t be taking any time off now that we’ve had a murder here. Things like that don’t happen in Lily very often. Well, I mean, it used to—the streets ran red with blood, as they say—but that was more than a century ago.”
“Have you learned anything about the dead man?” she asked.
Scotty hesitated, looking up at her with dark brown eyes. “It’s an ongoing murder investigation, you know. Although,” he added, frowning, “you are a federal agent....”
Jane smiled. “Don’t worry. You don’t need to tell me anything. I’ll just ask how things are going when I see the sheriff.”
“You got your car keys, right? You going to be okay getting around?”
“I’ll be fine,” she assured him.
Outside, the town seemed exceptionally quiet. The stars overhead had never looked brighter, but she realized that was partly because there was little air pollution. As she pulled onto the road to town, she thought that just as the stars had never looked brighter, the road had never seemed as dark. It wasn’t a long drive, and as she neared town, the darkness seemed to break in a pool of misty light—all the light shimmering from the theater and the saloon and the curio store, Desert Diamonds. She parked behind the theater in the paved lot.
As she walked around to the dirt road in front, she heard laughter and conversation. Murder in Lily or not, the show, as shows traditionally must, had gone on.
It had apparently concluded, since there were people spilling out onto the street, on their way to the saloon or to Desert Diamonds for pizza. That afternoon she’d learned that the saloon stayed open until 1:00 a.m., while Desert Diamonds closed at eleven, staying open to catch the late-night snackers and souvenir-shoppers who might be leaving the theater.
Coming around the Old Jail, Jane paused. A man was standing in the road as people walked past and around him; he was staring at her. He wore a Confederate jacket, old-fashioned cotton trousers and a plumed cavalry hat. He had long curling hair beneath the hat, and she thought he might be an actor who’d come in to work with the theater ensemble.
But even as she returned his stare, she saw someone brush by without noticing him. Someone else passed by—walking right through him.
He wasn’t real. Or he was real, just not really there.
She hurried toward him, sensing that he was curious about her—or curious about the fact that she’d seen him. But when she reached the street, he was gone, as if he’d been absorbed into the crowd.
Then she saw him enter Desert Diamonds. She followed.
That afternoon she’d grabbed a cold drink at the little pizza parlor in the front corner of the establishment but she hadn’t taken time to explore because she’d wanted to bring Sloan’s horse back to his stable and get to the sheriff’s office.
Now she looked around. The coffee shop was to the right, the pizza parlor to the left. The ice cream parlor was in back, and in between, she saw every kind of souvenir that could be imagined in an old frontier town. Kids’ bow-and-arrow sets, badges, tour books, maps, stuffed toy horses, cows, bulls, buffalo, armadillos, snakes and more—filled the many shelves and covered the tables.
Jane started walking up and down the aisles, trying to figure out where her ghost had gone, but she didn’t see him—just the endless supply of souvenirs. Shot glasses, mugs, cactus juice, hot sauce and kitchen utensils crowded one aisle. T-shirts, towels and spaghetti-strap dresses another. She’d gone down three rows when she was startled to run straight into Sloan.
He instinctively set his hands on her shoulders to steady her.
“Looking for a killer in the T-shirt section?” she asked, surprised that she felt a little awkward.
He raised his eyebrows. “You’re shopping for shot glasses that say ‘Lily, Arizona’?”
No, I followed a ghost, she thought.
Jane shook her head. “It’s a curio shop. I was curious. And excuse me, but I was there when you found a corpse this morning. Sorry, two corpses. So, yes—I’m really curious. What are you doing here?”
“Exploring the possibilities,” he told her.
“Oh?”
He studied her face, then shrugged. “Look, it’s late. I haven’t eaten in a while—”
“Neither have I,” she said flatly.
He had the grace to smile. “Well, ma’am,” he said, exaggerating his drawl, “I just gotta get outta town for a while. I’m heading to my place. Come on out if you wish and I’ll fill you in.”
“Sure. I remember how to get there. It’s pretty easy around here with only one road.”
“I’ll drive,” he insisted.
“That’s ridiculous! You’d have to come back here to drop me off.”
“There has been a murder, you know,” he reminded her.
“I’m a federal agent,” she reminded him.
“You want to talk?” he asked. “If so, I drive.”
She sighed. “Fine. Stay up all night driving me around.”
He shrugged again. She saw that he had two books in his hands and he stopped by the clerk to pay for them before they left, assuring the clerk—who, of course, knew about the desert corpses—that they were on it, and he didn’t believe anyone else was in danger, but that, of course, they should all be careful and stay in groups to be safe.
“Seriously,” he said when they were in his patrol car, “why were you prowling around the shop at this time of night?”
“I just finished work for the day.”
He paused, frowning. “You went in to work on the skull after getting Heidi home, getting Kanga back to the stables and...and after this morning?”
“That’s what I’m here for,” she said lightly.
“Oh, yeah. I guess I forgot,” he murmured.
“Out of sight, out of mind.”
Gazing ahead at the road, he smiled at that.
“So why were you shopping for tourist books in your own town?” she asked him.
“Our victim.”
“Oh?”
“Yep. I came in to see Grant Winston—the old guy who owns Desert Diamonds. Jay Berman, the victim in the desert, bought the same two books I’ve just purchased. Seems he was big on Lily’s history. All he talked to anyone about was the old legends. Apparently, a few locals, including Caleb Hough, have been in buying the same books. Anyway, right now, I’m trying to learn whether Jay Berman was looking for something out here. Something the history or the old legends might help me figure out.”
“I’m sure there are lots of legends—and a lot of pretty violent history,” Jane said. “So far, I’ve heard about Sage McCormick. Who disappeared.” She turned to face him. “And I’m also sure you think the sketch I did of our skull suggests it belonged to Sage McCormick.”
His jaw tensed.
“Yes,” he said after a moment.
“I don’t understand. Why does that bother you so much?”
He let out a sigh. “I guess it shouldn’t.”
“But it does.”
He glanced over at her. “Remember, Agent Everett, I’m a man from these here parts,” he said, exaggerating his accent once again. “Sage McCormick was my great-great grandmother. Not that I knew her, or that my parents did. Call me sentimental, but I still don’t like to think she might have been viciously murdered—and that her body is scattered all over the place!”
He swung his eyes back to the empty road, but he was aware of her shocked reaction. Which quickly turned into a nod of understanding.
“That explains a great deal,” she murmured.
He didn’t ask what.