First Grave on the Right (3 page)

I inched over and nudged the body with my foot. “Dude, what are you still doing in there?”

The dead guy looked at me with wide eyes. “I can’t move my legs.”

I snorted. “You can’t move your arms either, or your feet or your freaking eyelids. You’re dead.”

“Jesus H.,” Garrett said through clenched teeth.

“Look.” I turned to face him head-on. “You play on your side of the sandbox, and I’ll play on mine.
Comprende?
”

“I’m not dead.”

I turned back. “Hon, you’re as dead as my great-aunt Lillian, and trust me, that woman is now in a perpetual state of decomposition.”

“No, I’m not. I’m not dead. Why isn’t anyone trying to revive me?”

“Um, because you’re dead?”

I heard Garrett mutter something under his breath, then stalk off. Nonbelievers were such drama queens.

“Okay, fine, if I’m dead, how am I talking to you? And why are you so sparkly?”

“It’s a long story. Just trust me, mister, you’re dead.”

Just then, Sergeant Dwight walked up, all crisp and formal looking in his APD uniform and military buzz. “Ms. Davidson, did you just kick that dead body?”

“For heaven’s sake, I’m not dead!”

“No.”

Sergeant Dwight tried his hand at a death stare. I tried not to giggle.

“I got this, Sergeant,” Uncle Bob said.

The sarge turned to him, and they eyed each other a full minute before he spoke. “Would you mind not contaminating my crime scene with your relatives?”

“
Your
crime scene?” Uncle Bob asked. A vein in his temple started pulsing.

I considered popping the rubber band at his wrist, but I still had doubts as to its efficacy. “Hey, Uncle Bob,” I said, patting his arm, “let’s go over here and talk, shall we?”

I turned and left without waiting, hoping Uncle Bob would follow. He did. We strolled past the spotlights to a tree and assumed innocuous conversational positions. I tossed a smile to Sergeant Dwight Yokel that leaned heavily toward smart-ass. I think he growled. Good thing I wasn’t into people-pleasing.

“Well?” Uncle Bob asked as Garrett reluctantly rejoined us.

“I don’t know. He won’t get out of his body.”

“He what?” Garrett raked a hand through his hair. “This is classic.”

I ignored him and watched as Sussman walked over to a third dead person on the scene, a striking woman with blond hair and a fire engine red skirt suit. She screamed femininity and power. I liked her instantly. Sussman shook her hand. Then they both turned to look at the only dead person present lying in a pool of his own blood.

“I think they know each other,” I said.

“Who?” Uncle Bob asked, glancing around as if he could see them.

“You got an ID on this guy?”

“Yeah.” He fished out his notebook, reminding me I needed to dash into Staples. All my little notebooks were filled to maximum capacity. As a result, I kept writing pertinent information on my hand, then accidentally washing it off. “Jason Barber. A lawyer at—”

“Sussman, Ellery, and Barber,” Sussman said in unison with Uncle Bob.

“You’re a lawyer?” I asked him.

“Sure am. And this is my partner, Elizabeth Ellery.”

“Hey, Elizabeth,” I said, reaching out to shake her hand. Garrett pinched the rim of his nose.

“Ms. Davidson, Patrick told me you can see us.”

“Yep.”

“How—?”

“Long story. But first,” I said, heading off the barrage of questions, “let me get this straight: You are all three partners at the same law firm, and you all three died last night?”

“Who else died last night?” Uncle Bob asked, tearing through his notebook.

“We were all three
murdered
last night,” Sussman corrected. “All nine-millimeter double taps to the head.”

Elizabeth raised her perfectly arched brows at him. “Double taps?”

He smiled sheepishly and tried to kick the dirt at his feet. “I heard the cops talking.”

“I only got two homicides.”

I looked up at Uncle Bob. “You have only two homicides from last night? There were three.”

Garrett went still, probably wondering what I was up to, how I could know any such thing since I couldn’t possibly see dead people, so dead people couldn’t possibly tell me they were dead. It just wasn’t possible.

Uncle Bob studied his notebook. “We got a Patrick Sussman found outside his home in the Mountain Run area, and this guy, a Jason Barber.”

“Okay, here with us now is Patrick Sussman …
the Third,
” I said, tossing Sussman a grin, “and Jason Barber. But he’s in denial right now.” I looked over as the coroner zipped the body bag.

“Help!” Barber yelled, squirming like a worm in a frying pan, “I can’t breathe!”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I whispered loudly. “Would you just get up?”

“And?” Uncle Bob asked.

“Elizabeth Ellery was killed, too,” I said, hating to do it with her standing right there. It just felt awkward.

Garrett was now eyeing me with open hostility. Anger was a common emotion when faced with something impossible to believe. But quite honestly, fuck him.

“Elizabeth Ellery? We don’t have an Elizabeth Ellery.”

Elizabeth was studying Garrett. “This guy seems a little upset.”

I nodded my head. “He doesn’t believe I can see you guys. It’s upsetting him that I’m talking to you.”

“That’s too bad. He’s—” She inclined her head to study his backside. “—nice looking.”

I chuckled, and we did a discreet high five, making Garrett even more uncomfortable. “Do you know where your body is?” I asked her.

“Yes. I was going to visit my sister near Indian School and Chelwood. I had a present for my nephew. I missed his birthday party,” she added sadly, as if realizing at that moment that she would miss all the rest as well. “I heard the kids playing in the backyard and decided to sneak up to surprise them. That’s the last thing I remember.”

“So you didn’t see the shooter either?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“Did you hear anything? If you were shot, surely—”

“I don’t remember.”

“He used a silencer,” Sussman said. “It sounded weird, muffled, like a door slamming.”

“The shooter used a suppressor,” I relayed to Uncle Bob. “And neither of these two saw who did it. Where is your body, exactly?” I asked Elizabeth. As she told me, I repeated the address to Uncle Bob. “She’s around the side of the house. There are lots of bushes, which could explain why no one has found her.”

“What does she look like?” Uncle Bob asked.

“Um, Caucasian, about five-ten,” I said, calculating her height minus the three-inch heels.

“Hey, you’re good,” she said.

I grinned appreciatively. “Blond hair, blue eyes, a light birthmark on her right temple.”

She wiped at her temple self-consciously. “I think that’s blood.”

“Oh, sorry. The coloring is sometimes a bit hazy.” I pointed helpfully to Uncle Bob’s notebook. “Scratch that birthmark.” Then I looked up at him. “She should pretty much be the only dead person there in a red designer skirt suit and stilettos.”

Garrett almost snarled at me. “Get in my truck,” he ordered through his teeth, “and bring the dead chick with you.” He said the last bit sarcastically.

I turned back to Uncle Bob. “Are you going to let him talk to me that way?”

Uncle Bob shrugged. “He does have a mean apprehension record.”

“Fine,” I said in a huff. Not that I couldn’t handle Garrett. I just wanted to complain. Before leaving, however, I had to deal with Barber. Elizabeth, Sussman, and I strolled over to the ambulance as the coroner was talking to Sergeant Dwight. Barber’s nose was peeking out of the body bag. “Dude, I’m not kidding—you have to get out of your body. It’s freaking me out.”

He leaned up just enough for me to see his face. “It’s my body, dammit. I know the law, and possession is nine-tenths of it. And as for you,” he said, pointing a finger out of the bag, “aren’t you supposed to be here for us? To aid us in our time of need? Isn’t that what you do?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“Well, I have two words for you: compassion fatigue,” he said, his voice accusatory.

I turned to Sussman and sighed. “Nobody appreciates my inability to appreciate their situation. Could you please talk some sense into him?”

Garrett stood by his truck, stewing over the fact that I hadn’t followed him to it like a groveling puppy.

“Davidson!” he yelled over the hood.

“Swopes!” I volleyed, mocking the long-standing tradition of referring to comrades by their last names. I looked back at my lawyers. “Meet us at my office later.”

Sussman nodded, then glared at Mr. I’m Not Dead as a Doornail in August.

Elizabeth walked beside me to Garrett’s truck. “Can I sit beside the hunk?”

I graced her with the biggest smile I could conjure. “He’s all yours.”

Chapter Three

Never knock on death’s door.

Ring the doorbell then run. He totally hates that.

—T-SHIRT

Garrett broke a cold pack, shook it, then tossed it to me as he swerved onto Central. “Your face is lopsided.”

“I was hoping nobody would notice.” I winked at Elizabeth, who sat between us, a fact I neglected to mention to Garrett. Some things were better left unsaid.

Garrett turned an irritated gaze on me. “You thought nobody would notice? You pretty much live in your own little fucked-up reality, don’t you?”

“Damn,” Elizabeth said, “he doesn’t pull any punches.”

“You pretty much annoy me and thus can kiss my ass,” I said. To Garrett, not Elizabeth.

There’s a certain responsibility that comes with having a name like Charley Davidson. It brooks no opposition. It takes shit from no one. And it lends a sense of familiarity when I meet clients. They feel like they know me already. Sort of like if my name were Martha Washington or Ted Bundy.

I looked in the side mirror at the black-and-white following us to the address where Detective Robert Davidson, from an anonymous tip, believed there might be another victim. Uncle Bob got lots of anonymous tips. Garrett was starting to put it all together.

“So, you’re his omnipotent anonymous source?”

I gasped. “Do you kiss your mother with that mouth? Though I do like the
omnipotent
part.” When Garrett just glowered, I answered, “Yes. I’m his anonymous source. Have been since I was five.”

His expression turned incredulous. “Your uncle took you to crime scenes when you were five years old?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Uncle Bob would never have done that. He didn’t have to. My dad did.” When Garrett’s jaw fell open, I chuckled. “Just kidding. I didn’t have to go to crime scenes. The victims always found their way to me without my help. Apparently, I’m bright.”

He turned away and watched the pinks and oranges of the New Mexico sunrise ribbon across the horizon. “You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t fall for it.”

“Um, no, I don’t.”

“Okay,” he said in an exasperated voice, “if this is so real, tell me what my mom was wearing at her funeral.”

Great. One of those. “Look, most likely your mom went elsewhere. You know, into the light,” I said, wiggling my fingers to demonstrate. “Most everyone does. And I don’t have the secret decoder ring for that plane of existence. My all-access pass expired years ago.”

He snorted. “That’s convenient.”

“Swopes,” I said, finally gathering the courage to press the cold pack to my cheek. Pain shot through my jaw as I reclined my head against the rest and closed my eyes. “It’s okay. It’s not your fault you’re an asshole. I learned a long time ago not to tell people the truth. Uncle Bob shouldn’t have said anything.” I paused for a response. Receiving none, I continued. “We all have a certain knowledge about how the universe works. And when someone comes along and challenges that knowledge, we don’t know how to deal with it. We aren’t hardwired that way. It’s difficult to question everything you’ve ever thought to be true. So, like I said, it’s not your fault. You can believe me or not, but whichever you choose, you’re the one who has to deal with the consequences. So make your decision wisely, grasshopper,” I added, the nonswollen side of my mouth curving into a grin.

When I didn’t get one of his trademark comebacks, I opened my eyes to see him staring at me. It was through Elizabeth, but still … We sat idling at a stoplight, and he was using the time to analyze me with his super skiptracer senses. His gray eyes, striking against his dark skin, sparkled in curiosity.

“Green light,” I said to break his spell.

He blinked and pressed the gas pedal.

“I think he likes you,” Elizabeth said.

Since I hadn’t told Garrett she was sitting there, I tossed her an abbreviated version of my death stare. She chuckled.

We drove a few more blocks before Garrett asked the ten-thousand-dollar question: “So who hit you?”

“Told ya,” Elizabeth said.

I ground my teeth and winced as I maneuvered the cold pack lower. “I was working on a case.”

“A case hit you?”

I heard an inkling of the old, non-asshole Garrett. “No, the case’s husband hit me. I was keeping him busy while
the case
boarded a plane to Mexico City.”

“Don’t tell me you got involved in a domestic abuse situation.”

“Okay.”

“You did, didn’t you?”

“Yep.”

“Damn, Davidson, have you learned nothing from me?”

Now it was my turn to stare incredulously. “Dude, you’re the one who taught me what Frank Ahearn taught you on how to teach people how to disappear. Why did you think I needed that information?”

“Not for you to get involved in domestics.”

“My entire client base is domestics. What do you think private investigators do?”

Of course, he was a licensed PI as well and could private investigate circles around me, but he focused his business on skips. Bond recovery pays well when you’re as good as he is. And, actually, I had to agree with him on this one. I’d gotten in way over my head. But it all turned out okay in the end.

The case,
otherwise known as Rosie Herschel, got my number from a friend of a friend and called me up one night, asking me to come to a Sack-N-Save on the Westside. It was all fairly cloak-and-dagger. To get out of the house, she told her husband they needed milk, and we met in a dark corner of the Sack-N-Save parking lot. The fact that she had to make up an excuse just to leave the house set my nerves on edge. I should have turned tail then, but she was so desperate and so scared and so tired of her husband taking out the fact that he was a certifiable loser on her that I couldn’t turn her down. My jaw doesn’t compare to the horrific shiner she was sporting the first time I met her. She knew, and I believed it, too, that if she’d tried to leave her husband without help, she would never have seen another birthday.

Since she was originally from Mexico and had relatives there, we cooked up a plan for her to meet her aunt in Mexico City. The two of them would then travel south with a deed and just enough cash to open a small inn, or posada, on a beach not far from her grandparents’ village.

From what Rosie told me, her husband had never met any of her relatives from Mexico. The chances of him finding the right Gutierrez family in Mexico City were slim to none. But just in case, we had new identities drawn up for them both. An adventure in itself.

In the meantime, I sent an anonymous text to Mr. Herschel, pretending to be an admirer and inviting him for drinks at a bar on the Westside. Though I longed for the security of my dad’s bar, no way could I risk someone blurting out my real name. So I dropped Rosie at the airport and took off across the Rio Grande. Rosie would have to be there a few hours before her plane departed, but I had a plan to keep Herschel busy for the entire night. I goaded him into hitting me and pressed charges. Not that it was easy. Flirting like a vixen in heat then pulling the emergency brake in such a way that the mark felt like I’d just slapped him took skill. And naturally, a man like Herschel would take great offense to being led on. Throw in a few insults about small penises and a degrading giggle or two, and the fists start flying.

While I could have just gotten him drunk-off-his-ass wasted, then dumped him in an alley somewhere, I couldn’t risk him finding Rosie gone until the morning. One night in jail was all we needed. And now she was well on her way to an esteemed career as a
posadera
.

“This is it,” Elizabeth said.

“Oh, here,” I said, relaying the info to Garrett. “This house on the corner?”

She nodded.

And she was right where she said she’d be. I saw her shoes first, red and sharp and expensive; then I glanced at departed Elizabeth’s. Perfect match. That was good enough for me. I strolled back to the porch and plopped down while Garrett and the officer called it in.

While I was busy scolding myself for not examining the body and scouring the crime scene for clues like a real PI would, a blur in my peripheral vision captured my attention. It wasn’t like a normal blur, the kind that everyone sees. This was darker, more … solid.

I’d glanced to the side as fast as I could, but I’d missed it. Again. That’d been happening a lot lately. Dark blurs in my periphery. I figured either Superman died and was swooshing around the country at the speed of light—because dead people don’t move that fast; they appear out of nowhere and disappear the same way—or I was having lots of those little ministrokes that would someday lead to massive and devastating cerebral hemorrhaging.

I totally needed to have my cholesterol checked.

Of course, there was another possibility. One I hadn’t really wanted to consider. But it would explain a lot.

I’d never been afraid of the unknown, like other people. Things like the dark or monsters or the bogeyman. I suppose if I had been, I wouldn’t have made a proper grim reaper. But something or someone was stalking me. I’d tried for weeks to convince myself that I was imagining it. But I’ve seen only one thing in my life move that fast. And it was the only thing on Earth, or the hereafter, that terrified me.

I’d never quite worked out the reasoning behind my unnatural fear, because the being had never hurt me. Truth be known, it had saved my life on several occasions. When I was almost kidnapped as a child by a paroled sex offender, it saved me. When Owen Vaughn tried to run me down with his dad’s Suburban in high school, it saved me. When I was being stalked in college and eventually attacked, it saved me. At the time, I hadn’t taken the stalking thing that seriously until it showed up. Only then did I realize, almost too late, that my life had been in danger.

So, you’d think I’d be more grateful. But it wasn’t just that it had saved my life. It was the way it had saved my life. The ability to sever a man’s spinal cord in half without leaving any visible evidence as to what happened was a tad disconcerting.

And in high school, when other teens were trying desperately to figure out who they were, where they fit in the world, it told me what I was. It whispered the role I would play in life into my ear as I was applying lip gloss in the girls’ bathroom, words I never heard, words that lay thick in the air, waiting for me to breathe them in, to accept who I was, what I would become. As girls fluttered around me for glimpses in the mirror, I could see only him, standing over me, a huge cloaked figure bearing down on me like a suffocating vacuum.

I’d stood there for a solid fifteen minutes after the other girls left, after he left, barely breathing, unable to move until Mrs. Worthy busted me for skipping and sent me to the office.

He was basically dark and creepy and just sort of showed up in my life every so often to impart some juicy tidbit of afterlife wisdom—and scare the bejesus out of me—only to leave me quaking in the wake of his visit. At least I was a bright and shiny grim reaper. He was dark and dangerous, and death seemed to waft off him like smoke off dry ice. When I was a child, I decided to name him something ordinary, something nonthreatening, but Fluffy just didn’t fit. Eventually, he was christened the Big Bad.

“Ms. Davidson,” Elizabeth said, sitting beside me.

I blinked and glanced around. “Did you just see someone?”

She scanned the area as well. “I don’t think so.”

“A blur? Kind of dark and … blurry?”

“Um, nope.”

“Oh, okay, sorry. What’s up?”

“I can’t have my nieces and nephew wake up to my body. I’m right under their windows.”

I’d thought of that, too. “You’re right,” I said. “Maybe we should break the news to your sister.”

She nodded sadly. I called Garrett over, and we agreed for me and the cop to ring the doorbell and give Elizabeth’s sister the news. Maybe Elizabeth could help me with what to say. Her presence might make the whole thing easier on us all. At least I’d thought so.

An hour later, I was in my uncle’s SUV, breathing into a paper bag.

“You should have waited for me,” he said really helpfully.

Never again. Obviously there were siblings out there who actually liked each other. Who knew? The woman had an emotional breakdown in my arms. What seemed to upset her most was the fact that Elizabeth had been outside her house all night and she hadn’t known. I might should’ve left that part out. The woman grabbed my shoulders, her fingernails digging into my skin, her morning hair, a cross between disco and crack addict, shaking in denial; then she crumpled to the floor and sobbed. Most definitely an emotional breakdown.

The bad part came when I crumpled to the floor and sobbed with her. Dead people I could handle. They were usually beyond hysteria. This was the people-left-behind part. The hard part. We hugged each other a long time until Uncle Bob arrived on-scene and dragged me off her. Elizabeth’s brother-in-law got the kids ready, and they all went out a side door and loaded up the car for a trip to Grandma’s house. All in all, they were a very loving family.

“Slow down,” Uncle Bob said as I panted into the bag. “If you hyperventilate and pass out, I’m not catching you. I injured my shoulder playing golf the other day.”