‘So your ashes aren’t here, so what?’
Not to worry, I wasn’t talking to myself as I sat behind the wheel of my Mustang and drove toward the Garden View administration building. Ness was there. Or at least those sparkly, dusty bits of him were. ‘Here I am, talking to you, so ashes or no ashes, it obviously hasn’t made a whole lot of difference.’
‘Do you think so?’
He gave me time to mull this over, but I guess he knew it would get me nowhere fast because Ness harrumphed his opinion long before I worked out what he was getting at. ‘After my cremation, my ashes were kept by a relative and stored in her garage. Someone must have known they were there because, one night, someone broke in and stole—’
‘Ashes? Really?’ I slanted a look toward my passenger seat where the G-man didn’t so much ride along as he hovered over the seat in a poofy little cloud. ‘Why would anyone want to steal some old ashes?’
‘There are people who collect—’
‘Other peoples’ ashes?’ I’m pretty sure the twist in my voice reflected the ick factor that made my stomach jump. ‘Who would want old ashes?’
‘They weren’t just old ashes. They were my ashes. And there are collectors—’
‘Collectors of ashes.’
He breathed out a puff of annoyance. Or at least that’s how it sounded. ‘Collectors of everything! In this case, I’m sure the ashes were stolen by someone who collects Prohibition and gangster memorabilia. Someone who’s read the stories written about me and seen the TV show and the movies and considers me something of a … well, something of a hero.’
It wasn’t my imagination. He really did sound as if that last word actually made him blush.
‘So that someone … that collector … he took your ashes.’
‘Exactly. He emptied the box in which my ashes were stored and replaced them with ashes from an outdoor fire pit, and no one ever knew the real ashes were gone. But obviously … well, ashes are not easy to transfer from one box to another, not without some mess. A few of my ashes were mixed in with the others and, like those others, they were scattered over the lake in that formal ceremony here at the cemetery. No one ever suspected that the bulk of the ashes were nothing more than the remains of someone’s weenie roast. No one but me, that is. Then, just recently, a man visited my memorial – that marker over there across the road from the lake. At the time, I had no idea who he was or what he was doing there, but it isn’t unusual, is it? A lot of people stop by to pay their respects.’
He was right. So many Garden View visitors asked about the Ness grave, Ella had been urging me (in her fluffy middle-aged lady, kind and gentle but persistent way) to put together a tour that focused on the life and times of the famous Prohibition agent. As I usually did when she came up with ideas that involved research/work/effort, I’d been sidestepping the subject every chance I got.
‘Maybe the person there at the memorial that day was feeling remorseful,’ Ness said, drawing me out of my thoughts. ‘Or maybe he had a guilty conscience. Whatever the reason, he brought a small packet of ashes – my ashes – with him, and he sprinkled them around the memorial stone when no one was around. So you see, it’s simple detective work. That’s how I know the real ashes exist. That’s how I know who has them. I followed the man home. I know where he lives.’
It all made sense in the weird sort of way that my crazy, ghost-ridden life did. ‘So is that why I can’t see you?’ I asked him. ‘Because all your ashes—’
‘Aren’t in one place. Yes, exactly. That’s why I’m not whole, why I never can be.’
I knew this was important, especially to Ness, but thinking about it, I couldn’t help myself, I laughed. ‘Hey, I guess you really are untouchable, huh? Untouchable, get it?’
I guess he did. That would explain the grumble.
When we rounded a corner and closed in on a section of the cemetery studded with standing stones and grave sites topped with draped urns and angels, there was a funeral going on nearby and cars parked along the roadway, and I slowed down to get past them. I wondered how many funerals Eliot Ness had watched over the years.
Just like I wondered what he really wanted from me.
‘So …’ I turned into the administration building parking lot just as that big, black Buick pulled out, and I craned my neck for a better look at the classic car. Something told me Ness did the same, because we were both quiet until it wheeled out of the main entrance and disappeared down Euclid Avenue. ‘Why are you telling me all this?’ I asked Ness.
‘I told you I had a detective’s job for you. Maybe that wasn’t exactly precise. It’s more of a …’ It wasn’t like I knew a whole lot about the guy. After all, I had been pretty much tuning out Ella every time she talked about him. But let’s face it, what I did know was pretty impressive in a tough guy, knock the socks off the bad guys way. He didn’t strike me as the type who would be indecisive and yet he paused, searching for the right word. ‘It’s more of a recovery operation,’ he finally said.
What had he called it? Simple detective work? It was simple, all right, so simple I didn’t like the truth when it was finally staring me in the face.
‘Oh, no!’ I slapped the steering wheel to emphasize my point. ‘You’re telling me you want me to find this guy, this guy who sprinkled your ashes at the memorial? You want me to find him and, what, offer to buy the ashes from him? That’s way creepy!’
‘Buying and selling human remains. Yes, you’re absolutely correct. That would be altogether and wholly wrong. It would be immoral and debase. I would never ask you to do anything like that. No. I simply want you to go to this man’s home and steal the ashes.’
It took a few moments to come to my senses. While I was at it, I pushed open my car door and got out. ‘I’m not in the burglary business,’ I told him and slammed my door to emphasize my point.
‘It isn’t burglary, it’s justice. The ashes belong to me. I simply want them back.’
‘You simply want me to break into the house of some person I don’t know, find the box of ashes, and grab it before I sneak back out again. Sounds like burglary to me.’
‘Well, maybe yes. Technically. But you’re the only one who can do it, Pepper.’
‘But why do I need to do it at all?’ I’d already raised my voice and thrown my hands in the air when I realized that anyone who happened to be looking out of one of the windows of the administration building might see me and wonder why I was talking to thin air, and with so much gusto, too. I muffled the words I was tempted to screech and stuffed my hands in my pockets.
‘Why do I need to do it at all?’ I said, and even though my lips were pressed together, I turned my back on the building just to be sure no one could see me and decide that I was acting strange. ‘You seem to be doing all right for yourself. You’re here, aren’t you? Even if you’re not all here. And it doesn’t really matter if you were all here because I’d be the only one who could see you, anyway. And I can see you.’ I squinted. ‘At least I can see bits and pieces of you.’
‘That’s true.’ It hardly ever happens, so I really appreciate it when ghosts admit I’m right. I guess that’s why Ness saw some of the stiffness go out of my shoulders, read it as weakness, and pounced. ‘But don’t you see, without those ashes, without all of them together, all at the same time, I can never be whole. Not in this world, not in the next. And until I am, I can never rest in peace.’
It was an argument I’d heard before from murder victims, from a former prison warden who’d been wrongly convicted of a crime, even from a long-dead Native American who was doomed to prowl the world until his earthly remains were buried in the land of his people out in New Mexico. I was used to hearing the words rest in peace tossed around like some people say have a nice day.
I was not used to the sadness that touched Ness’s words, the way his voice broke as if the grief was too much for him to bear. The emotion was real and solid, even if this particular ghost wasn’t. It slammed into me and tugged at heartstrings most people who knew me would never guess I had.
‘I’ll think about it,’ I said, and just so he didn’t get the wrong idea, I quickly added, ‘but that doesn’t mean I’ll do it.’
Fortunately, we were at the door of the administration building by this time, and I had to cut off my conversation with Ness.
‘Oh, there you are!’ Jennine was the lady who answered our phones and took care of a lot of the administrative work that goes along with keeping a place the size of Garden View running smoothly. She was older than me, and though Ella praised her work and her work ethic, she always seemed a little scattered. Dark haired, dark eyed, and wearing the maroon sweater she kept draped over the back of her desk chair for times when it was chilly, she glanced up from her computer keyboard. ‘Someone just left a package for you. You might have seen him.’ She craned her neck to look out of the window of the front door even though from where she was seated, there was no way she could see much of anything. ‘I think he just pulled out of the parking lot.’
‘The guy in the big old car?’ I looked toward the window, too, even though I knew the Buick was long gone. ‘Who was he?’
Jennine shrugged. ‘Said the package was for you. I told him to leave it here, but he insisted on taking it to your office. I walked him back there and he left it on your desk. Cool car, huh? I caught a glimpse of it just as he was leaving. It’s great how some buffs really work hard to restore those vintage cars.’
Curious, I mumbled some appropriate response and headed for my office, sidestepping our building maintenance guy, Wally Birch, as I did. Wally was a wiry guy in his sixties with big ears, bad teeth, and that leathery sort of skin that is the curse of smokers. He had half the hallway floor mopped in his usual half-hearted manner. There were dry patches here and there, places he’d completely missed, and puddles in other places where he’d no doubt stopped working so he could lean on his mop and check his phone messages.
‘Hi, Wally!’ I am not usually Mary Sunshine, but for Wally I made an exception. Wally is a known crabby-pants, see, and I got a perverse sort of pleasure in trying to coax a smile out of him. ‘How are you today?’
Wally grumbled sounds that weren’t quite words and, knowing a losing cause when I saw it, I kept walking.
Though Garden View is grand, our administration building is anything but. The floors are ancient linoleum, the walls are decorated with framed photographs that highlight Garden View history: Memorial Day programs, choral concerts, the grand funeral procession of a governor who is buried not too far away from the main entrance. I passed the three offices occupied by the folks who made recommendations to the bereaved about funeral arrangements and cemetery plots. Ella’s office was next, and the door was closed – thank goodness. Before she could realize I was around and step out to chat the way she always did, I hurried into the office across from hers.
Now that I’d been officially promoted from Garden View’s one and only tour guide to its community relations manager, I’d moved out of my tiny, windowless office at the far end of the hallway to the office that had once been Ella’s before she was promoted and I took her job. It wasn’t much bigger than my old office, but there was a window, a desk with two guest chairs in front of it, and bookshelves that lined the wall opposite the desk. There was a time, a time Ella never fails to remind me about, when my office was pristine, organized, and so much in order that I had every fact and file folder at my fingertips. What Ella didn’t know – and what she probably wouldn’t have believed if she did – was that all that organization was due to Jean Tanneman, a ghost I’d had the good fortune to meet very soon after she died.
See, according to the rules of how things work over there on the Other Side, ghosts can touch things until the first full moon after their deaths. Lucky for me, Jean died just after a full moon, and that meant she could touch things and move things to her non-beating heart’s content for nearly thirty days. She was Little Miss Efficient, the former secretary to some bank president, and she had a mind like a steel trap and way too much energy for a dead person. Jean couldn’t stand the thought of being bored for eternity, and she pitched right in to get my life – well, my work life, anyway – in order. For one full month, I had the benefit of Jean’s organizational skills.
Unfortunately, that month had long passed, and these days, there were files piled on my desk and more of them on the bookshelves. There was a stack of unanswered phone messages next to my computer along with a thicker pile of letters that needed to be read and responded to.
And there was Jean.
Like always, she was waiting just inside my office door, ready for anything and eager for orders. Jean was neat, petite, and as prim as any dead person could be in a gray business suit, a crisp white blouse, and sensible shoes. Every hair of her beehive ’do was exactly in place.
But then, ghosts have the advantage when it comes to things like that. It’s not like they ever get mussed.
‘Your files are deplorable,’ Jean snapped. ‘You’ll never get them organized if you don’t hop to it, young lady.’
I tossed my car keys and my phone on my desk next to a box wrapped in brown paper – the package delivered by the man in the Buick – and managed a tight smile. ‘Hey, I might get lucky and another dead secretary will show up.’
She pursed her thin lips. ‘No other secretary would be as efficient as me. I’m not bragging, just stating facts.’
‘You got that right,’ I conceded. ‘But maybe she wouldn’t be as annoying.’
Jean clutched her hands at her waist. ‘I’m not trying to be difficult. You know I’d never do that. I’m only making suggestions. For the good of the organization. We are not employed so that we can run off, willy-nilly, and do as we like.’
‘Speak for yourself, sister.’ Just like that, Chet Houston popped into the chair behind my desk. Yeah, popped. But then, he was a ghost, too, just like Jean. Popping in and out is what they do. Chet puffed on a fat cigar and, when he tapped the end of it against the corner of my desk, the ash that flew off it fizzed and disappeared. It reminded me of Eliot Ness.
‘As far as I’m concerned,’ Chet said, ‘going off and doing our own things, that’s what it’s all about. That’s how you get the real good stories.’
Did I mention that Chet had once been a newspaper reporter? Lucky for me, the afterlife bored him to death, too (no pun intended, but it is actually a good one and I’d have to remember it). Always eager to chase the facts, Chet dictated my quarterly newsletter into a voice-activated tape recorder, and I entered his stories into my computer and took credit for writing them. It wasn’t a bad gig.
‘Who’s the new stiff?’
Chet peered to my left, and when I looked that way, I realized that bits and pieces of my newest ghostly acquaintance whirlpooled in the air next to me. I motioned that way. ‘Chet Houston, Eliot Ness.’
‘Ness, huh?’ Houston leaped out of my desk chair, his teeth clenched so tight around his cigar I thought it would snap in half. ‘Never had a chance to interview you back in the day. How’s about you give me a few minutes? You know, to talk about the old days? I’d love to get the scoop on what you did here in Cleveland. You know, how you tackled corruption in the police department and instituted all them reforms. Oh, and the Torso Murders. If you could give me the dope on the Torso Murders—’
The sound that came out of the Ness cloud reminded me of thunder, and I thought I knew why. According to Ella, the Torso Murders (a string of killings that rivaled Jack the Ripper’s) was the one case Ness had never been able to solve.
‘We can talk about Prohibition,’ Ness said. ‘We can talk about Capone. We can talk about anything you want except the Torso Murders.’
I guess Chet knew it was as good an offer as he was likely to get because he checked to make sure he had a pencil behind his ear and quicker than anybody can say ‘deader than a doornail,’ he was around to the other side of the desk, a notebook in one hand. The last I saw of him and that swirl that was Ness, they were headed out of the office together, talking up a storm.
But then, according to Ella, Ness had always been a sucker for headlines.
‘Well, now that the distractions are over …’ Jean gave me a tight smile. ‘Perhaps we can get down to business. We can start with the file cabinet.’ She floated that way. ‘And then there are the magazines.’ She clicked her tongue by way of telling me what she thought of the latest issues of Vogue and Elle and Marie Claire that I’d had no choice but to buy. Hey, I worked at a place where dead people were our main concern. How else was I going to find out what the living considered hip and cool?
Lucky for me, a knock on my open office door interrupted Jean’s crusade. Even luckier, my visitor was none other than Quinn Harrison.
What can I say about Quinn? He’s dark-haired, tall, gorgeous, and as pig-headed as any man I’d ever met. It was a good thing he had wide shoulders, because he carried around a chip that just about filled them. He was a great cop and an even better lover. He has fabulous taste in clothes and always looks like a million bucks, and that day was no exception: dark suit, white shirt, a tie with dashes of green in it that perfectly matched his incredible eyes. Quinn and I had known each other for a few years, and I’ll be the first to admit that for some of that time, our relationship had been more than a little rocky. These days we were lucky enough to enjoy each other’s company, and most of the time we did it without arguing.
We watched a lot of movies and loved discussing the ones I loved and he hated (or he loved and I hated). He liked to cook, I liked to eat, and it never took us long to decide on which bottle of wine would make the perfect pairing. He put up with my parents, and believe me, that was not always an easy thing to do. Sometimes he was so annoying, I couldn’t stand being in the same room with him, but most of the time, I couldn’t imagine my world if it didn’t include Quinn.
Yeah, I was nuts about him and, as always, thrilled that he’d made time in his busy schedule to drop by.
He leaned into the office, then carefully stepped around the puddle Wally had left on the floor outside my door. ‘You free for lunch?’
‘Are you?’ Quinn was working a big case, and it had been a few days since I’d seen him. That gave me extra incentive to give him a kiss when he finally came over to where I was standing.
He didn’t argue. In fact, Quinn made a noise from deep in his throat and kissed me back.
‘Maybe not lunch.’ His words brushed my lips. ‘Maybe we should head over to your apartment for a while.’ He hooked his arms around my waist and inched me back so that I was perched on my desk and, when he kissed me again, I leaned back, savoring the taste of his mouth and the heady scent of his aftershave. I wrapped my arms around his neck and—
‘Ouch!’ The corner of the box that had been left on my desk poked me, and I sat up and glanced over my shoulder. ‘Forgot that was there,’ I grumbled, rubbing a hand to my back.
Quinn looked where I was looking. ‘And what exactly is it?’
I slid off the desk and turned around to take stock of the package. It was about a foot long and maybe four inches wide, the size of a shoebox. It was wrapped in brown paper and my name and the address of the cemetery were written on it in black Sharpie.
‘Came for me a little while ago,’ I told Quinn. ‘I have no idea what it is.’ I thought about the Buick, the one Eliot Ness told me reminded him of the car that had brought his ashes (well, his supposed ashes) to Garden View. ‘Jennine said the guy who brought it insisted on leaving it here in the office for me.’
‘And you haven’t opened it yet?’
‘I haven’t had a chance. I’ve been dealing with …’ Quinn knew about the ghosts. I mean, how could he not? We’d known each other long enough for him to realize my life was not normal, that I got pulled into cases that were colder than most for clients who were as cold as cold could get. And if that wasn’t enough, Quinn had been dead himself once. Just thinking about it made my heart start thumping a crazy beat. He’d been dead for a few minutes following a shooting, and while he was, he’d visited me and given me a vital clue that led to finding the man who’d tried to kill him.
It should have been enough to prove to him once and for all that I was not as crazy as I was gifted, and I think sometimes – most times – he really did believe it was true. But there were those other times when logic crept in and reasoning overshadowed even the irrefutable evidence I always presented as proof that the Other Side and I were on talking terms.
‘Eliot Ness showed up this morning,’ I told him.
His dark eyebrows did a slow rise up his forehead. ‘Eliot Ness, the Untouchables Eliot Ness?’
‘One and the same.’
Quinn had the nerve to grin. ‘Does he look like Kevin Costner?’
My smile was tighter than his, but then my jaw was clenched. ‘He doesn’t look like anything. I can’t see him. Not exactly. I can only hear his voice.’
‘Hearing voices.’ He nodded and barely controlled a smile. ‘That’s not a good thing.’
I boffed him on the arm to let him know what I thought of his diagnosis.
‘I’m not kidding,’ I said, picking up the package and giving it a shake. ‘He’s worried about his ashes. He wants—’ I weighed the wisdom of letting a member of Cleveland’s Finest know that Ness wanted me to engage in a little breaking and entering. ‘Well, you know ghosts.’ I added an elaborate shrug. ‘They always want something.’
‘As long as the something this one wants doesn’t involve you putting yourself in any danger.’ He gave me a quick smooch. ‘Now let’s see what this mysterious package is all about.’
Fine by me. Not talking about Ness meant I wouldn’t have to take the chance of lying to Quinn. I mean about the burglary and all. Not that I’d decided to give in to Ness’s request, but in case I did, I thought it best if Mr Tall, Dark, and By-the-Book didn’t know the details.
I gave the package another little shake.
‘It would be easier just to open it,’ Quinn said.
The look I slid him told him I knew that.
I ripped the brown paper off the package and saw that I was right; inside was a Nike box, and inside the box …
I lifted the lid.
Inside the box was a whole lot of bubble wrap.
I slowly dug through it, but let’s face it, shoeboxes aren’t all that big, and it didn’t take very long.
I leaned closer and peered at what I had uncovered.
‘It’s a bottle,’ I said. There was nothing else. No note, nothing to say where the bottle had come from or why it had been delivered.
Quinn lifted the brown glass bottle from its wrappings and looked at the label. ‘It’s a beer bottle. Sieben’s Beer. I’ve never heard of them. Why would anybody—’
Exactly what I was asking myself, but before either of us could come up with an answer, my phone rang. I had a bad feeling I knew who it was, but Quinn is nothing if not quick. Before I had a chance to warn him, he grabbed the phone. ‘It’s your mom,’ he said, checking the caller ID, and while I was still cringing, he answered the call.
‘Hey, Barb!’ Quinn switched the phone to speaker. ‘I’m at the office with Pepper. She’s right here.’
‘Hi, Quinn. Hi, honey.’ The perkiness of my mother’s voice did not bode well. ‘I’ve been doing some poking around online. I know you said earlier that you weren’t interested, but—’
But nothing.
I made a grab for the phone, but again, Quinn was too quick for me. Obviously, the look of horror on my face was enough to tell him that something was up between me and Mom. The gleam in his eyes told me he couldn’t wait to find out what it was.
‘You were saying, Barb,’ he said.
‘Well, I just want Penelope to know, about what we were talking about this morning. I can get discount tickets, honey, but I’ve got to act fast. The deal is online and it’s only good for the next couple of hours. I’m thinking it’s an opportunity that’s too good to pass up. So I just wanted you to know, keep the date open. I’m going to pick up a couple tickets to that bridal fair.’
I swear, after that everything happened in slow motion. I saw Quinn wince, and I saw that old beer bottle jump in his hand. The sunlight streaming through my office window glinted on the brown glass when the bottle slipped from his hand. The bottle arced through the air and long before I made a move to try and catch it, hit the floor and smashed to smithereens.