Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.
—Edgar Allan Poe
UPSTAIRS, THE CHILL of the night got to me, and I practically dived under the covers. The warmth of my thick comforter brought me no comfort, however, and no rest.
Maybe I can help, the ghost whispered.
“Finally!” I told the ghost. “I’ve been waiting for answers from you. I’ve got two mysterious women downstairs, one haunting Seymour and the other me—”
Hold your horses, honey. The answers I’ve got don’t start with Ruby Tyler.
“But when I close my eyes, her image is all I see.”
Oh, Ruby’s a feature player in this drama, but the case didn’t begin with her. It started with a dame who showed up at my office one morning wrapped in misery, cigarette smoke, and an oversize raincoat.
“And she was?”
A classy brunette named Shirley Powell.
My eyelids felt heavy. “Go on, Jack. Tell me about her.”
You know I can do better than that.
“Another dream?”
A memory, but I’ll tuck you into it real nice. Now, close those peepers, and I’ll take you back to a day when I was dead tired but still very much alive, you get me?
“I get you . . .”
Once upon a time, I’d been pounding the pavement for a couple of worried parents on a missing kid case—their teenage daughter, Millicent. I’d been at it for forty-eight hours straight, following leads, staking out joints.
“Did you find her?”
Yeah, a little worse for the wear, but I got Millie home safe and sound. Her parents were thrilled enough to line my pockets. I shook their hands, hit the street, and was more than ready to pass out on some bedsheets. But my secretary was out, sunning herself in Myrtle Beach, so I swung by my office to check the mail.
“And Miss Shirley Powell was waiting for you?”
Found her leaning against my locked door.
“I’m all caught up, Jack,” I murmured, drifting off. “Go on with your story. What happened next?”
THE DREAM JUMP (for lack of a better term) was abrupt. One moment I was under my bedcovers in a flannel nightgown, barely awake. A split second later I was smartly dressed in low heels and a fitted brown suit with one white-gloved hand on a grimy brass doorknob. In front of me was a door with four words on its beveled glass window—
JACK SHEPARD, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR
I turned the knob and pushed. A secretary’s battered wooden desk stood empty beside a wall of ancient metal file cabinets, the morning light barely slanting in through the window’s half-closed venetian blinds. Beyond another door marked private, I heard a woman’s voice—
“You’re a hard man, aren’t you, Mr. Shepard?”
The answer came in a deep, gruff voice, the one I usually heard in my head—
“I’ve taken a few punches. Generally I roll with them.”
“You don’t talk much, either.”
“I’m not here to talk, miss, and I can’t promise I’ll take your case. Have you hired a lawyer?”
“Yes, over the phone. He’s the one who told me to see you.”
Jack sighed. “Okay, then. Since you’re here, I’ll explain the rules to this game. It’s simple. You spill. I’ll listen—”
That spurred me forward. (If a client was about to “spill” for Jack Shepard, I wanted to hear it.) Without bothering to knock, I barged into the inner sanctum. And there he stood, in the flesh.
It was always a bit jarring to see Jack alive. He stood like a steel tower in the little room, tall and imposing and impossible to ignore. Though he was aloof, almost indolent in the way he spoke and moved, energy seemed to be simmering perpetually beneath his surface.
On this particular morning, however, that pulsing vitality was subdued. He looked tired, dead tired, just as he’d said. His suit’s gray jacket was tossed haphazardly over a chair; his pants looked wrinkled; his white dress shirt bunched like an accordion beneath the leather straps of his shoulder holster. His eyes were bloodshot, and the five-o’clock shadow on his iron jaw had sprouted into cactus needles.
When I entered the room, he’d been in the middle of a chat with an attractive brunette who’d wrapped herself in an oversize raincoat. The young woman stared up at me with big, expectant eyes, mascara slightly running, as if she’d been crying. My tongue suddenly froze. I wasn’t sure what to say.
Jack took care of it.
“Here’s my secretary now. You’re just in time to take notes, Penny. Meet Miss Shirley Powell.”
“Please call me Shirley,” she said. “When anyone calls me ‘Miss Powell,’ I feel like I’m back at boarding school.”
She looked like she’d gone to boarding school, an elite one; sounded that way, too. The quasi-English accent reminded me of Katharine Hepburn or Lauren Bacall—which meant it was either an organic affectation of the upper crust or a studious attempt to mimic it. She did display poise and a touch of haughtiness, which I’d seen often among my McClure in-laws, though it was clear she’d fallen on hard times.
When she loosened her raincoat, she revealed a dress of faded yellow, with a big pink bow.
I took a seat in the empty chair after moving Jack’s abandoned suit jacket—first I draped it neatly across the chair’s back; then I carefully smoothed the shoulders and lapels. Jack’s eyes were on me as I did this. Then his gaze slipped over my fitted suit and lingered on my upswept auburn hair.
Was something out of place? Why was he staring?
I met his eyes with a questioning expression. Jack said nothing, just slipped me a wink as he folded his tall frame into the creaky desk chair. Then he slid me a notepad and yellow pencil before prompting his client—
“You say your boyfriend’s in a bind?”
“My fiancé,” Shirley corrected, flashing the pinprick of a diamond on a wire-thin ring. “And yes, Mr. Shepard, if you call being arrested on suspicion of homicide a ‘bind,’ then I guess Nathan is in one.”
“I’d say he was in deep. Who’s the victim?”
“One of his female models. A woman named Ruby Tyler.”
Hearing Ruby’s name as the victim knocked the wisecracks out of Jack. I understood why. He’d known Ruby and clearly thought she was a swell gal.
For a moment he fell into a long silence, his expression grim.
I made eye contact with Shirley. I spotted a flicker of pain and maybe betrayal, but she looked down at her coffee cup before I could glean more.
Finally, Jack spoke.
“I’ll take the case. Go on with your story.”