Dying to Know (8 page)

at the pictures there. They were of our honeymoon—pictures

we’d both stopped noticing long ago.

Hercule bound to her, barked at her, and then bound back to

the bed. He scooped up his ball from the floor and jumped up,

landing just inches from me.

Hercule’s ball stole her heart.

He flipped his head and the ball popped from his mouth to

my lap—or the bedcovers from her view. He barked and pawed

at me, jabbing his snout at the ball demanding I take it and give it a toss. He’d done this a million times and demanded one more.

“Oh, Herc. Stop.”

“I’m here. Think, Angel, think about me. I’m right here. Herc,

tell her.”

Moan—he grabbed the bal , flipped it again, and resumed his

demand for a catch.

Angel’s face flushed with that evil smile that often emerged

just before our bedroom light turned off. She laughed and tears

glistened.

“Tuck, you jerk. You weren’t supposed to die. What am I to

do—talk to myself the rest of my life?”

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I leaned close, gently touching her cheek with a long, slow,

fingertip. Her eyes closed and she smiled. She reached for her

cheek but her cell phone rang and wrenched her back to reality.

I withdrew my hand and slid from the bed.

“No. Don’t go. Come back!”

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eleven

Angel lay on the bed, alternating between tears and laughter as

she spoke with some family friend on the phone. They’d been

chatting for ten minutes before I became bored and headed

downstairs. It was time to start investigating the most important

homicide ever—my own. It would begin with one of the first un-

usual things I could remember since rejoining the living.

The file.

Whatever it held, it was important enough for Bear to break

the law by tampering with my crime scene. That was going to be

a problem, though, because when I looked at the pages scattered

across my desk, nothing made sense. Pages of scribbled hand-

writing—mine—were as unintelligible as chicken chow mein,

without the fortune cookie. If this were a case file, there should be crime scene photographs and investigative notes. Instead, I

found a macramé of jumbled words and foggy images. It was al

unintelligent blurs as though my brain had Dyslexia and Al-

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zheimer’s all at once. Words were a clutter of meaningless

smudges and I couldn’t read anything or see the slightest coher-

ent image in the photographs. Nothing. My autofocus was

busted.

“So,” a familiar voice said, “are you figuring things out?”

A man was watching me from my doorway. He was dressed

in old, green surgical scrubs with a stethoscope wrapped around

his neck. He looked to be in his sixties with gray hair and deep,

blue eyes. His face was dark with stubble as though he’d just com-

pleted a double-shift of weary surgery.

“Are you getting settled, Oliver?”

Oliver again? His voice was … yes. He had called me earlier—

summoned me to go and help Angel. I didn’t know the voice

then, but it felt familiar now. His presence didn’t startle me or

concern me at al . He was no more physical than I was. That is to

say, he was dead, too. It was as though he’d been with me all

along and yet I’d never seen him before.

“Call me Doc—Doc Gilley.”

When he said “Doc,” the name flirted with memories too dis-

tant and unclear to retrieve. It was like déjà vu but without the

trepidation that often comes with it. I was nodding and wasn’t

sure if it was the ease to which I accepted him, or the strange

feeling I knew him.

“Okay, Doc. You sent me to Angel, right?”

“Yes, of course.” He came in and stood across the desk from

me. “I know you’re not sure of what to do or how to do it. You

have to come to terms and fast. There’s a lot at stake.”

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“Terrific.” I leaned back in the chair. “I’ve got a million ques-

tions. Let’s start with what happened to Angel. Then let’s talk

about the two guys digging holes in my foyer and why it wasn’t a

foyer at the time. Then …”

“No.”

“No?”

Doc shook his head. “I cannot give you those answers. It’s

better to learn for yourself.”

“Great.” I waved a hand over the file. “And this? How am I

supposed to learn for myself if I can’t read?”

“You can’t read?”

I shook my head.

“Hmmmm, interesting.” He grinned. “Give it time. You’ve

done okay so far. Be patient.”

“How am I going to find my killer if I can’t read or get

through doors? Aren’t I …”

“Maybe you’re not supposed to. Maybe this is about some-

thing else; something more important.”

“More important? Like what?”

“How do I know? This is your death, not mine. You figure it

out.”

Great. I get a guardian angel and he’s a smartass. “Come on,

Doc. Help me out.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not? Isn’t that why you’re here?”

He sighed. “Oliver, I didn’t just appear. You just noticed me.

You have to focus.”

“I’m trying to …”

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“No. By focus, I don’t mean thinking. I mean doing. Being

there. It’s connecting to where you need to be and what you want.

Just be there.”

Connecting? “I don’t get it, Doc.”

He shook his head like Angel’s done millions of times. Okay,

like everyone does. “Oliver, listen, you’re dead. You don’t have

thoughts. You have emotions, what you used to call your gut. You

have
being
.”

I thought about that and wasted my time doing that. “Yeah,

being there. Got it. And hey, who are you? How do you know

me? I think I should know, but I don’t.”

“In time.” He went to Hercule and the big Lab moaned and

went twenty-toes up. “I like Hercule. He looks like my old Jed.

He’s seen me for a while now.”

“Really?”

He nodded. Hercule moaned.

I went on. “None of this dead-stuff is right. Like the whole

light thing. When I first got back here, right here, I didn’t see any light or anything.”

“A light?”

“Don’t I get a light?”

He laughed. “I never got one. Be happy you’re here. There are

worse places. Wel , at least I think so. And if there are, you certainly would be a candidate.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Exactly.”

Yup, a smartass guardian angel. I watched Doc milling around

as though he were a guest admiring my etchings. He was a

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strange, yet familiar man. All I knew was that he belonged some-

where in my life, years before. Where and when, I had no clue. At

the moment, however, it was comforting having him to talk with.

“Are you an angel? You don’t act like one. And you sure as hel

don’t talk like one.”

“How does one talk?”

“Wel , you should be giving me sage advice and showing me

the way to my maker and all that. You know, be worldly or heav-

enly or something. For Christ’s sake, show me a light. At least I’d know I wasn’t going to hel .”

“Ah, I see.” Doc scratched Hercule’s neck. Herc wagged up a

storm. Obviously, they were old pals. “I’d love to help you out.

But, it doesn’t work like that. I’m no angel—at least not that I

know of. And you’re not going to hel .”

“If you’re not an angel, how do you know?”

“Because you’d be there by now.”

Wel , that was good news. “Okay, that works for me. So, why

are you here?”

“To help you get settled. There’s so much you have to do.”

“Like solving my murder?”

“Yes, that too.”

“No light?”

Doc laughed again. “Wil you forget the light? This isn’t tele-

vision or the drive-in flicks. You’re stil here, so there has to be a reason.”

Yeah, that’s right. I remembered a ghost movie I saw—actu-

al y, every ghost movie I ever saw—about spirits hanging around

because they had unfinished business.

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“Yeah, Doc. I have to find my killer. Then I’m gonna kill him.

So make them a reservation.”

“No, no killing.” He went over to my bookshelf and admired

my collections. “Not bad, Oliver. Nice collection—I approve.

Spil ane was my favorite. You remind me of Hammer.”

“Thanks, some were my grandfather’s—a few first editions.

It’s the only stuff from my family I got.”

“Yes, yes.” He turned and threw a lecturing finger at me. “Kil -

ing is not in the playbook. You don’t have the power to kill or

hurt or anything of the sort. You are a bystander, a witness, not a participant. In time maybe a little more. No killing. That I know.”

He put down a volume of Agatha Christie as his demeanor

changed from kindly spirit to divorce lawyer. “Are you sure about

Angela?”

What did he say? “No way, Doc. Not Angel. She loves me.”

“Good for you.” A thin smile etched his lips. “If you’re sure.”

“She didn’t kill me, right?”

“What about Bear?”

“What about him?”

He rolled his eyes—people do that a lot with me. “Do you

trust him?”

“He’s acting strange, I’ll give you that. But, he saved my life

three years ago. He took a bullet for me.”

“Yes, that was a mistake.”

“Are you saying …”

“No.” He turned around as his face began losing clarity. I

watched him become little more than a wisp of himself. “All I’m

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saying is this is entirely wrong. Nothing is as it should be. It

started with Bear. And it’s not over yet.”

“Wait, dammit.” I watched Doc vanish. “Did he change

things? Should I have died before?”

He was just a voice. “You have a lot to do. Remember … just

be there.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll just be there.”

“And you’ll have to come to terms with everyone you thought

you knew. You may find you don’t know them at al .”

“How am I gonna figure all this out?”

“I don’t know, Oliver, but things are going to get crazy.”

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t welve

“Going to get crazy?” I turned to Hercule. “So, Herc, you’ve

been holding out on me. Doc and you are old pals.”

Woof. A second later, his eyes closed and he was asleep.

“Thanks for the help, pal.”

Doc seemed surprised I couldn’t read the file, so I returned to

it on my desk. The pages were still spread about where Angel had

left them. On top were blurry photographs, and with them, my

yellow legal pad of notes. I concentrated on the top photograph.

The image looked like a man. The face was indiscernible and his

surroundings unclear. Sparks flickered in my head and the nag-

ging feeling of recognition struck me. This man was important.

Think, Tuck, think
…

Nothing. I touched the image. Sparks tickled my fingertips as

one-by-one they moved over the image.

Be there
.

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Like striking a match, the sparks ignited and flames singed

my fingers. An image swirled in the print as if developing before

me. A thin, shal ow face with haunting, powerful eyes emerged.

The face was aged and showed a man worn by more than years.

This face was no friend.

Poor Nicholas Bartalotta.

Poor Nic was not poor at al . In fact, he was one of the wealth-

iest people in Frederick County. He was also the county’s most

notorious, albeit only, gangster. Poor Nic was retired from the

New York City mob families. Newspapers, being as fond of noto-

rious mobsters as they are of bestowing silly names on them,

dubbed him “Poor Nic” from his lavish lifestyle. The
nom de

guerre
followed him to Winchester.

“Hi, Nic. I bet you thought you were rid of me.”

I laid my hand on the photograph and a manic episode ex-

ploded in my brain. My thoughts lost focus and melted. Needles

pricked me everywhere. I tried to get control but a jolt of elec-

tricity shot through me like a cattle prod to my brain. Lightning

burst through—synapse-by-synapse. My eyes shuttered closed

and the current swept through me.



When my eyes opened, I was standing in a luxuriously furnished,

two-story great room. There were antiques and expensive trap-

pings and I could have been in an English castle amongst lords

and ladies. There were paintings, sculptures, and fine art of every variety. The room exuded wealth and power. Across from me, in

front of the story-tall double oak doors, two muscular goons

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stood guard. But, they were not watching me, they were watch-

ing … the other me.

The other me?

Bear was there too, sitting in front of a battleship-sized ma-

hogany desk, right next to
the other me—
the me that had been alive, in this room, working a case with Bear. The details were as hazy as the file on my desk. Across from us was the now familiar

man in the photograph. In person, he was short and thin, with

silver hair recently trimmed and combed back. He looked sev-

enty despite his younger age. Wear and tear caused battle scars

but he held himself with starch and power.

This was Poor Nicholas Bartalotta.

Bear was questioning him. But I recalled it was more an inter-

rogation. “Listen, Nic, lawyer or no lawyer, I want those records.

If you’re innocent, show them to us.”

“I think not.” Poor Nic sat stone-faced and played with a

large, gold coin. He rolled it in his fingers and fondled it like a lover. A smile traced across his boney face and that unnerved