TUCKER DROPPED ME off at Greer’s guesthouse on his way back to Allison’s.
I tried not to think about what might happen when he got there, but I couldn’t help it. Earlier, in his bed and—gulp—the backseat of his car, I’d been fiercely, ferociously female, queen of the Amazon warriors, engaged on every level of my being, not just the physical. Giving as good as I got. (And believe me, it was good.) Now I felt subdued, even a little shy. Intellectually, I understood that Tucker was protecting his children, and even that I wouldn’t have wanted him at all if he’d been willing to turn his back on them. It was a primal responsibility, and I knew that.
I had a solid Dr. Phil take on the whole situation.
My heart, however, was 180 out from sensible. Being intimate with Tucker invariably opened a vast vacuum inside me, an emotional black hole, powerful enough to suck in entire star systems, swallow them whole, without so much as a burp. And that terrified me.
It was fine to want another person.
It wasn’t fine to need them the way I was starting to need Tucker. I’d been in less danger looking down the barrel of a killer’s gun.
“I think we should see other people,” I told him after he’d checked under the bed and behind the shower door for the kind of psychos I’d recently begun to attract.
Tucker had been about to kiss me good-night when I said those fateful words. I’d felt so raw, so exposed, that I threw out the announcement as a defensive barrier. A bunker I could duck behind, however after the fact.
He stopped in mid head tilt and his eyes searched my face, grave and wary. “Coward,” he said, being nothing if not direct.
I entered a forlorn guilty plea.
Tucker rested his hands lightly on the sides of my waist. The awareness of my missing panties reasserted itself. “You’re a big girl, Moje,” he said quietly. “If you want to play the dating game, that’s your choice.”
I swallowed. “I can’t afford to need you, Tuck,” I said. I was being truthful that night. Maybe it was the sex. I didn’t have the energy for the usual diversion tactics and camouflage techniques.
“Why not?” he asked, though not unkindly. As I said, Tucker was the direct type. In or out of bed, he didn’t take prisoners. He came, he saw, he conquered—not necessarily in that order.
“You know why not,” I answered. “You have kids. You’re still entangled with Allison, sex or no sex. Getting involved with you is the same as spilling my guts on the 101 and letting cars run over them.”
Tucker winced at the image. Being a cop, he’d probably seen things like that in real life. “Too late,” he said. “You’re already involved, Moje.”
I gnawed at my lower lip.
He caught it gently between his thumb and forefinger. “Stop it,” he said. I wasn’t sure if he was talking about my bad habit of chewing on myself or the sudden angst over our nonrelationship. Probably it was both.
“Go home, Tucker,” I said, putting a slight emphasis on the word home.
“Give this a chance,” he argued. “Don’t wimp out on me. Something big is happening here.”
“Exactly my point,” I answered, but I didn’t bite my lip. Sometimes you have to be content with the tiniest bit of progress. “It’s too big.”
“And you’d rather find a safe guy? One who didn’t make you feel too much? Care too much? Want too much?” The challenge was softly spoken, but there was steel behind it.
“Right now,” I said, because it was apparently my night for involuntary candor, “I’m leaning toward no guy at all. It doesn’t get any safer than that.”
“Give it a shot,” Tucker answered, stroking my cheek lightly with the backs of his knuckles. With some men the gesture might have had an element of threat. With Tucker it was tender enough to pick at the tight stitches in my soul. “Try another guy. Try No Guy. It won’t be enough. And when you realize that, I’ll be waiting.”
I trembled, closed my eyes. There were so many things I wanted to say, but they wouldn’t coalesce into words.
Tucker touched his mouth to mine, breath-light. “I’ll be waiting,” he repeated hoarsely.
I didn’t open my eyes again until I heard the door close behind him.
“He’s seriously into you,” a voice said. “What I don’t get is why you won’t go for it.”
I started a little and turned my head. Justin Braydaven stood practically at my elbow, looking confused and sympathetic. “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” I said, peeved.
“Do what?” Justin asked innocently.
“Just appear like that,” I snapped. “Out of nowhere!”
“I can’t help it,” Justin said, shrugging a little. “I think ‘Mojo Sheepshanks,’ and picture you in my mind, and zap, here I am. It’s sort of like on the Star Trek reruns, when Captain Kirk or Mork or somebody steps into that big cylinder thing and teleports.”
“The character’s name,” I said, irritated, “was Spock, not Mork. Doesn’t anybody have a firm grasp on TV trivia anymore?”
Justin grinned. “I don’t think it’s much of an issue here in the great In-Between,” he said. “Chill out, will you? You’re just pissed off because you want the cop like crazy and you’re scared to take what he’s offering.”
“Have you been spying on me?”
“Oops,” Justin said with an insouciant grin.
I wanted to slap him, but one, he was a kid, two, he was dead and three, he was right. That’s what really chapped my hide—he was right. I did want what Tucker was offering, and supersized. “You’d better not have been watching us,” I said. As if there was a thing I could do about it either way, but when you live by your wits the way I do, you have to bluff a lot.
“Relax,” Justin replied. “I’m not into peep shows. Way uncool. I just got here a couple of minutes ago. I’ve been hanging out with Pepper all evening.” A shadow of sadness crossed his face, and I realized that, as young as Justin had been when he died, he must have been a heartbreaker. And bright, too. It made me wonder yet again about the general management of the universe. Why did good kids like Justin die, while their killers survived? “My mom has this little shrine on the mantel in the living room,” he went on. “Pictures of me. The badges I earned in Scouts. Votive candles. It’s kind of creepy.”
I softened. Completely forgot about the Tucker drama, at least for the time being. “She misses you, Justin. Losing a child has to be the worst thing that can happen to a person.” Oh, Gillian, I thought. Danny and Daisy came to mind then, which inevitably looped the mental tape right back to Tucker.
“Pepper doesn’t want to leave my mom alone. That’s why he won’t come with me.”
Everything inside me ached and tears filled my eyes.
Justin went on glumly, “He’s in a lot of pain. Arthritis. Hip dis—dis—”
“Dysplasia?” My heart crept out from behind the barrier I’d erected earlier to protect myself from Tucker, and rushed to the dog. They’re loyal in ways a human being could never understand, dogs are. They’ll hold on literally until their last breath, no matter how much they’re suffering, caught in the twisting vines of somebody’s love.
“You’ve got to talk to her,” Justin said, his eyes pleading. “I’ve tried, but she can’t hear me.”
Paying a visit to Justin’s mother was on the long list of last things I wanted to do. I was up to my butt in hassles—Greer had just lost her husband, she was being blackmailed and she was a semisuspect in a murder.
For all I know, he’s lying dead in the desert somewhere...
And then there was Gillian. I had to help her—the knowledge grew more urgent with every breath I drew—and I didn’t have the first idea how to go about it. Why had she come to me, of all people, and not to our famous local psychic, the one who inspired Medium?
All that was missing in my current life scenario was somebody who wanted to kill me, in the most painful way possible, and I figured they’d be along anytime now.
I pulled in some air, let it out in a noisy gust. “Justin,” I said evenly, “have you seen the Light? Is that what this is about?”
“Sort of,” he answered, looking understandably confused. “There’s this...space. Sometimes it’s up ahead. Sometimes it’s to the side, or I can feel the heat of it behind me. It’s like a doorway or something and I’m supposed to go through it, I know that. And I’m strong enough to do it now. But I can’t leave Pepper. I can’t.” His eyes said a lot more. They begged me to help. “When I was fourteen I had mono. I was in bed for six weeks. Pepper didn’t leave me, except when he needed to go outside. Mom had to bring his food and water to my room.”
I laid a hand on his shoulder. He felt warm; if I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn he was alive. “I’ll stop by your mother’s place tomorrow,” I promised, resigned.
The tension in the boy’s face eased a little. “Thanks,” he said. And then he blipped out—most likely because he’d thought of Pepper and been teleported.
I locked up, brushed my teeth, washed my face and swapped out my sundress and bra for a T-shirt Tucker had forgotten at my apartment, back when we first met and things weren’t so complicated. I lugged it everywhere I went, because it smelled like him.
I got into bed, waited a few minutes for Gillian to show up and switched out the lamp when she didn’t.
I closed my eyes, not expecting to sleep, praying not to dream if I did, and when I opened them again, it was morning.
There were no dead people in the room, and no psychos.
So far, so good.
I showered, put on a tailored black pantsuit and subtle makeup and corralled my hair into something resembling a French twist. When I went to see Mrs. Braydaven, I wanted to look businesslike. Practical.
Sane.
I was off to a good start, until I got to the kitchen and found Alex Pennington sitting at the table, reading yesterday’s copy of the Arizona Republic.
I suppose he was good-looking—salt-and-pepper hair, nice physique, square jaw—but I was distracted by the bullet holes strafed across his chest. So far, the ghosts of my acquaintance—Nick, my childhood cat, Chester, Gillian and Justin—hadn’t sported the wounds of their demise.
I stopped, staring.
Calmly Alex closed the newspaper and laid it aside. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I could have been that casual, with blood and powder burns staining my clothes.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. It was becoming a routine question with me. I probably sounded cool and collected, even reasonable, but inside I was squealing like a little girl caught in a lawn sprinkler in her favorite party dress, and I had to clutch the door frame on both sides just to stay upright.
“My name’s on the deed, after all,” he said mildly, but the old dislike was there, in his eyes.
“It was,” I answered, wondering even as I spoke where I got the moxie, “but now you’re dead. D-e-a-d, dead.”
“I can spell,” he informed me, shifting a little in his chair as though he might get up and come toward me.
I knew I’d lose it if he did.
I tried again. “Why are you here?” I asked, terrified of the answer.
“Because of Greer. They’re going to blame her for killing me. She didn’t do it.”
I gave a deep sigh, and it felt a lot like relief. Had I thought, on some level, all my protests to Jolie aside, that Greer had been the one to shoot her husband?
“Who did?” I managed, that being the obvious next step.
Alex studied me, long and hard. We’d never been buddies, and I suppose he was reluctant to trust me. “That doesn’t matter.”
“It will to the police,” I replied.
“Suppose I’d rather keep my suspicions to myself?”
“Then they’ll probably find a way to hang it on Greer. Or maybe Beverly.” My eyes went so wide, so suddenly, that they hurt. “Was it Beverly?”
Alex chuckled, and the sound was bitter, unkind. Even scornful. “As much as Bev would have loved to reduce me to a chunk of Swiss cheese, she hasn’t been sober enough to draw a bead on a boxcar in over twenty years.”
“You have to give me a name, Alex.”
His straight shoulders slumped a little, and he stared down at the floor for several pulsing seconds. When he looked at me again, the expression in his eyes was bleak. “I can’t be sure—all I have is a suspicion or two. I was abducted in the underground garage at my office—I do remember that—knocked over the head from behind. Probably thrown into the trunk of a car. When I woke up, my hands were taped behind my back and there was a bag or something over my head, so I couldn’t see. Somebody dragged me to my feet, and the next thing I knew, I was shot. Unless I miss my guess, the ballistics people will trace the slugs they dug out of my chest to a gun registered to Greer.”
Greer had owned a gun? Add that to the growing list of things I didn’t know about my foster sister.
Alex must have read the question in my face, because he answered as surely as if I’d asked it out loud. With a rueful little smile and a shake of his head, he said, “Yes—45 caliber automatic, hollow-point bullets. If you think the entrance wounds are bad, you should see my back.”
“Spare me,” I said. It wasn’t that I wasn’t sympathetic—Alex’s story was horrible, and it chilled me to the marrow. I just wasn’t up for gore, especially before breakfast. I hoped he wouldn’t leave stains—or worse—on the back of the chair he was sitting in.
“Greer was always paranoid,” Alex said. “She’s being blackmailed, you know.”
“I know,” I said with a partial nod. “She won’t tell me who’s putting the squeeze on her, or what she did to put herself in this position.”
Alex arched an eyebrow. “And you call yourself a detective? She’s from a little town in Montana—a place called Shiloh. Start there.”
“Can’t you just tell me, since you’re obviously a few steps ahead?”
“Honey, I’m miles ahead. Aeons. Light-years. Six months after Greer and I were married, my accountant clued me in that she was taking out credit cards in my name and maxing them out with cash advances. Obviously she was paying somebody off.”
“Why didn’t you stop her? Put your foot down? Go to the police?”
Another bitter smile. “I loved her,” he said. “I didn’t want her arrested—or killed. I made discreet arrangements—money wired offshore, and all that—to pay the blackmailer off permanently. Half a million in cash. For a long time nothing happened. I thought it was over. Then Greer started acting out again—hocking jewelry, running up credit cards, even hitting up friends of mine for loans. The bastards tried to abduct her just last week, if you’ll remember, and broke her arm in the process. If Jolie hadn’t rescued her, she’d be six feet under by now.”
I didn’t miss the derision couched in the phrase “if you’ll remember,” but I didn’t comment on it, either. I was sick to my stomach, and not just because there was a dead man in my kitchen. I’d known Greer was in mortal danger, but Alex’s words had driven the fact home in a new way.
“You never found out who the blackmailer was?”
Alex shook his head. “Somebody in Shiloh, and more than one person, I think, unless they hired a thug to do their dirty work and muscle Greer into that van. I went to Montana a couple of times—trust me, that place is strange—trying to find out, and I’ve had some of the highest-priced private security firms in the business on the case. Nothing. Whoever this is, they’re pretty professional.”
Bile scalded the back of my throat. “If you dealt with all these security firms, why didn’t you hire bodyguards for Greer?” I made myself glance at the bullet holes. “Or for yourself?”
“I did. Until the money ran out.”
“You’re broke?”
“I’ve wired something like three million dollars into various numbered accounts in the Cayman Islands. By the time my estate is settled, Greer will have to move in over Bad-Ass Bert’s, with you. She could earn her keep as a cocktail waitress, if you ever decide to open the bar for business. And Bev isn’t going to be in much better financial straits.”
I stared at him, speechless. I could deal with a lot of things—I’d proven that. Much as I loved her, rooming with Greer on a long-term basis didn’t happen to be one of them.
“I hope I don’t sound cold,” Alex said coldly.
I wanted to shut my eyes, but I was afraid to. Afraid Alex would be standing directly in front of me when I opened them. “Are you going to haunt me until all this is over?” I asked, my voice a lot smaller than I would have liked.
Alex grinned. “I wish I could. I think it would be entertaining, if a bit tiresome at times.” He glanced at his Rolex. “Alas, I’m due back at the train station in less than half an hour. Now that I’ve done the right thing, they’ll punch my ticket and I can catch the midnight express to glory.”
I gulped. Nick, my dead ex-husband, had mentioned a train station, too, while he was haunting me. “No shit?” I murmured. In moments like that one, it’s hard to be eloquent. “There’s really a depot?”
“Yeah,” Alex said. “By the way, your ex figuratively wrote your name on the men’s-room wall. ‘If you need help, haunt Mojo.’ You can pretty much expect a steady stream of ghosts and ghoulies from now on.”
“Great,” I said. “I need the numbers for those Cayman Island accounts, if you have them.”
“On my computer,” he said. “In a file marked ‘Tropical Vacation.’ The password is Surgeon-Guy.” With that, Alex stood, and I was no longer afraid he was going to touch me. Much as I wanted him to leave, I needed to know who’d killed him, for Greer’s sake. I had to have a name—something—to give Tucker. It was his case, and I was more than willing to hand over the information and stay out of it.
I’d get into Alex’s computer first chance I got.
“Tell me,” I insisted. “Who did it, Alex? Who murdered you? You said it yourself—there’s someone you suspect.”
Alex gave the dearly departed equivalent of a sigh, all motion and no breath. He shoved a hand through his expensively trimmed hair. “My son, Jack,” he said after a long time. If a ghost can be haunted, Alex Pennington surely was. His eyes were shadowed with despair, and seemed to sink deeper into his head. “We ran a real estate development firm together—it was just a tax shelter to me, but to Jack it was everything. He was unhappy, to say the least, when he found out the current cash flow problem was likely to be permanent.”
“So he shot you? Your own son?”
“I’m not sure—it’s only a theory. Jack was angry. There was life insurance. He needs the money to sustain his lifestyle.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and I meant it. It’s bad enough to die violently, obviously, but when the killer might be someone you love and trust, it has to be—well—murder. “But if Jack killed you, then he should be the one to take the fall for it, not Greer.”
“Jack’s never taken responsibility for anything in his life. That’s the problem.” Alex chuckled, and like the grins that had gone before it, the sound was sour as vomit. “I actually thought he loved me, though. Somewhere, deep down inside. I was wrong.” He paused, looked me squarely in the eye. “Jack’s dangerous, Mojo. And he’s smart. Do a little digging, though, and you’ll get the goods on him.”
“You loved her,” I said, marveling. “Greer, I mean. But there’s one thing I don’t understand. If you cared enough to bankrupt yourself trying to keep her safe, why did you cheat on her?”
Alex was beginning to fade, cell by cell. I knew when he vanished, it would be permanent. “Because I was starved,” he said quietly. “I gave until I literally bled. I needed something—anything—back. And Greer didn’t have it to give. I’m—I was—a surgeon, not a shrink, but if I had to hazard a diagnosis, I’d say she’s a borderline sociopath.”
More fading.
“She can’t be.” Was I in denial? My analysis of Alex Pennington’s character had been off the mark; maybe I was wrong about Greer, too.
No.
“I know you want to help her, Mojo. I do, too, obviously. But she’s damaged, and if I were you, I’d watch my back. Greer talks a good game, but if it’s her or you, she’ll throw you to the wolves. Remember that.”
I took a step toward him. “Alex, don’t—”
He was gone. Fade-out complete.
“Shit,” I said, rubbing my eyes so hard that my mascara probably smeared. I was going to have to do a touch-up job before I went to see Justin’s mother.
I stood there for a long time, hating my life. Then I went to the phone. My palm made the receiver slippery. I thumbed in the speed-dial number for Tucker’s cell phone.
“Darroch,” he said. His voice was clipped, and I knew he was into something heavy, and not alone. If that hadn’t been the case, he’d have seen my number on his caller ID panel and probably made some comment about my missing panties.
“I think I know who killed Alex,” I blurted.
“Whoa,” Tucker rasped. “How?”
“Never mind how. ‘Who?’ is the pertinent question.”
“Oh, I’ve got about a hundred of those. Who, then?”
“Jack Pennington. Alex’s son. He probably used a .45 registered to Greer, but that part’s conjecture.”
“And you came by this information how, as if I didn’t know?” He definitely didn’t sound like the Tucker who’d gone down on me in the backseat of an SUV in the shadowy privacy of his garage and subsequently brought me to one soul-shattering orgasm after another. Just one more reason for keeping the black hole buttoned up tight.
Tucker could compartmentalize; I couldn’t.
“Alex told me,” I said miserably. I would share what I’d learned about Greer later, when he was more receptive. As in that night, after the headboard of my bed had pounded through the stucco on the wall behind it.
“Well, hell,” Tucker retorted dryly, “how could the D.A. ask for anything more?”
“Look,” I said, “I don’t know what your problem is, but take it out on somebody else, okay?” I was about to hang up when he sighed.
“Moje, wait,” he said.
“You’re with Allison,” I said.
“I’m at work,” he answered. “Some of us have jobs, you know.”
I broke the connection with a jab of my thumb.
The phone rang almost immediately.
I looked at the ID panel, on the off chance the caller was somebody I wanted to talk to.
Nope. Tucker Darroch.
I marched into the bathroom and reapplied my mascara.
I knew he’d try my cell phone next, but it was still charging. He’d get my voice mail, and be frustrated.
Modern technology, annoying as it was, was not without its compensations.
After leaving the guesthouse, I debated stopping by the mansion on the other side of the pool to look in on Greer. Nothing Alex had said had changed the fact that she was my sister, but when I saw Jolie’s Pathfinder parked out front, I used that as an excuse to skip the visit.
At the moment I needed to focus on one problem at a time.
I drove to Justin’s house, after swinging by McDonald’s for a sausage biscuit, consumed en route.
I probably should have called first—after all, I was a stranger to Mrs. Braydaven, and she worked out of her house. She would have pegged me for a crazy if I had, though, and told me to take a flying leap. Since she was probably going to do that anyway, I figured it might as well be in person instead of over the phone.
I climbed the front steps, drew a deep breath and pressed the doorbell.
The door creaked open, but the glass security door remained fastened. Mrs. Braydaven peered at me, Pepper at her side. It was the grizzled old dog that gave me the courage to stand my ground, instead of murmuring some excuse about having the wrong address and bolting for the Volvo.
“Mrs. Braydaven,” I began bravely, trying to look as if I wasn’t selling anything, taking a survey, stumping for votes or trying to convert the heathen, “my name is Mojo Sheepshanks, and I’m—”
I’m what?
A ghost whisperer?
A detective?
A concerned bystander?
“I’m here about Justin,” I finished lamely.
She’d been a pretty woman once, I saw, through the thick glass of the security door. The deep lines in her face testified to years of grief, and considerable anger. Her hair was gray, and the cut was so bad, I figured she must have done it herself. Blindfolded.
“Justin is dead,” she said after a long silence, during which I fully expected her to slam the door in my face. “Are you a social worker? A cop? Some kind of church lady?”
“None of the above,” I said gently. “Let me come in. Please.”
She didn’t open the door. The dog looked up at her and whimpered.
“What do you want?” she demanded after another extended silence.
“Do you believe in an afterlife, Mrs. Braydaven?”
Definite mistake. Such questions are usually followed by a religious tract and a hasty spiel about the Last Days, complete with lakes of fire and rivers of blood. Her face hardened, and she started to shut the door.
“The dog’s name is Pepper,” I said quickly. “Justin had a bad case of mono when he was fourteen, Pepper stayed with him night and day. You had to bring kibble and water to Justin’s room.”
Mrs. Braydaven’s eyes widened slightly. She stopped closing the door. Stared at me in furious confusion. I could almost read her thoughts.
I couldn’t have gotten that information off the internet; it hadn’t been made public. While she was probably about a furlong short of convinced, I’d caught her interest.
She let me in without a word. Turned and led the way into the living room. The shrine Justin had mentioned flickered eerily on the mantel over the fireplace, and the tabletops gleamed. The tile floor was spotless, and there was no clutter, anywhere. Obviously, when Mrs. Braydaven wasn’t mourning or doing credit card billings in her home office, she cleaned. Frenetically.
“I saw you on TV,” she said. “You’re that little girl who was kidnapped down in Cactus Bend, after your parents were murdered.”
I wasn’t a little girl by anybody’s standards, of course. Semantics. I merely nodded.
“It must have been awful,” Mrs. Braydaven said.
Our separate tragedies gave us common ground. “It was,” I agreed softly. My gaze drifted to the candlelight dancing on the mantel, amid framed photographs of Justin, taken at various stages of his boyhood. The Scout badges were displayed on a velvet backing, protected by glass. “But no worse than losing your only child.”
Tears filled Mrs. Braydaven’s eyes. “Sit down,” she said.
I sat. Pepper laid his muzzle on my lap, and I stroked his graying head with a light hand.
“Would you like some bottled water, or maybe a cup of coffee?” Mrs. Braydaven asked. I knew she needed a moment alone, out of sight in her kitchen, maybe to force back the tears, maybe just to catch her breath.
“Water would be nice, thanks,” I replied. When she was gone, I looked down into Pepper’s limpid brown eyes. “I’ll do my best,” I whispered.