The Night Is Watching (23 page)

“I have to ask, Henri. You know that,” Sloan said.

“Well, you’ve asked.” Henri was evidently angry. “We’re theater people. We entertain—we don’t hurt others. We sure as hell don’t kill them!” he ended indignantly.

“Let’s get our costumes, shall we?” Alice suggested. “There’s way too much testosterone flying around this room!”

Better testosterone than bullets,
Jane thought.

She wasn’t sure what else Sloan had planned for the day, but at the moment, it was time for costumes.

“Yep, let’s do that,” Sloan said. But he looked sternly around the group. “Don’t be anywhere alone. Make sure you’re on the street in a crowd or with someone else at all times. I’m not making accusations—I’m just trying to get answers. And I don’t want to find any more bodies.”

Silence followed his words.

Those in the room exchanged glances.

“Don’t!” Henri warned. “Don’t go getting suspicious of one another, please! An ensemble cast must work together. Sloan, see what you’ve done?”

“They have to be careful, Henri. This group may be entirely innocent—but this group is in danger. Someone put Sage McCormick’s skull on that wig stand, and someone got into the basement and struck Jennie and Jane. And someone shot a stranger in the desert and slit Caleb Hough’s throat and tried to kill his family. Everyone needs to be watchful. Someone in this town is a murderer.”

They all looked at Sloan in silence as he spoke.

“We’ll be careful, Sloan,” Valerie said in a small voice. “Honestly.”

He nodded. “It’s your lives,” he reminded them. “Take that very seriously.”

Jane set her hand on his arm; he had gotten his point across.

Henri didn’t seem happy. “Come on, then. If you’re going to be breathing down my neck, get into costume.” He paused, glancing around. “Has anybody seen our housekeeper, Elsie, come in?”

“Yes, she’s upstairs cleaning the rooms with one of the local girls,” Valerie said.

“Valerie, run up and ask her to make sure Jennie’s room is clean so the other agents can stay there,” Henri told her. “Alice, you come with me and Jane and the sheriff.”

“What do you want Brian and me doing?” Cy asked.

“Go ahead and start entertaining the tourists as they show up on the streets.” Henri looked over at Sloan. “They’re allowed to do a little trick-riding, right?”

“Trick-riding is great.”

“Good. I’m glad you don’t think the horses are in on it!” Henri said with a sniff.

That, at least, made them all smile—even Sloan.

“No, Henri, I don’t think the horses are in on it,” he responded drily.

They rose to do as asked. Behind the stage in the dressing rooms, Henri selected clothing for Jane and Sloan to wear. Sloan just had to change into a period cotton shirt, jacket and plumed hat. Jane told them she’d change into her new costume upstairs.

She ran ahead before any of them could protest. Up in her room—or Sage’s room—she spoke out loud while she changed. “We could really use some more help here, Sage. Something was going on—and you knew about it, didn’t you? I wish there was a way you could tell me what you found out. Because people are dying again, Sage.”

If Sage was there, she wasn’t speaking at the moment.

Jane walked into the bathroom. As she brushed her hair and arranged it into a loose chignon, she wished she had time to take a shower; Sage seemed to like writing on the mirror.

She bent down as she dropped a bobby pin. When she looked into the mirror again, she seemed to have double vision—and then realized that the ghost was standing right behind her.

Jane spun around. The apparition didn’t disappear. Instead, she reached out as if she could touch Jane, and then her hand fell.

“I know it can be hard, very hard, to appear and communicate. I also know you’ve been here many years, and I’m not sure why. Do you watch over your family or have you been waiting for this all these years—someone killing people because of the past? I realize you’d never hurt anyone, that you want to help people, but we need to know what you know,” Jane said.

She thought of the different apparitions she’d encountered, and she knew that some were present and never appeared, some were like mist...and some had become so experienced at showing themselves that they could cause a great deal more than cold drafts or whispers in the night.

“Sage, we really need your help,” she said again.

The ghost seemed to step through her. Sage touched the mirror, but of course there was no steam. Jane quickly closed the door and ran the hot water in the sink, creating a vapor.

The ghost wrote, “Trey Hardy.”

It seemed to take all her effort. She wrote the name and faded away.

Trey Hardy, gunned down in his cell.
Jane had to get to the Old Jail and into that cell.

* * *

Chet Morgan and Lamont Atkins were in town, in uniform, patrolling the streets on foot, making their presence known.

Sloan spoke with them both. They were worried, aware that Lily needed Silverfest even though the town had been plagued by murder.

“Bad days, Sloan, bad days,” Lamont told him. “But we’re watching everyone. And Newsome over at county has done his part. There are three officers, two men and a woman, keeping up with everything. So far, I’m feeling like a tour director, but that’s all right. No trouble happening here as I can see.”

Sloan started into Desert Diamonds next, but the place was overflowing with people and every step he took drew another question from a tourist or someone wanting to pose with him. He went back to the street and called Grant Winston, asking him to come out for a chat.

Sloan leaned against the post by the Old Jail Bed and Breakfast, playing his part as Trey Hardy. He didn’t mind being Hardy—he actually felt a certain kinship with the man. But his main goal that day was to interview everyone in town about Caleb Hough.

His call to Grant Winston had ruffled the man. He was extremely busy and delighted to be; these days let him stay open for the rest of the year. But Sloan was insistent, and Grant promised he’d go over to the Old Jail as soon as he could get his staff functioning smoothly.

As he waited, Sloan watched people move along the street and he listened to their conversations.

Some talked about leaving Lily then and there, despite all the festivities planned for the day; the news services had carried information about the murders that had occurred in the desert. But someone in the party would usually argue that the murders had taken place out in the desert and in a mine shaft, and had nothing to do with anyone in Lily.

“Drug-related, obviously!” one person said.

“We’re not that far from the border! It’s all about human trafficking!” another woman suggested.

Then they would stop to chat with him.

People asked him about the outlaw Trey Hardy, and he played his part whenever they did, telling them he wasn’t a bad sort at all. There were those who’d profited by war and those who’d been impoverished by it, and he just didn’t think it was right for people to make money on war.

“Still happening. It will always happen,” a man said.

He posed for pictures with kids, with young women and even the men—many of whom were walking around with the replica Western gunslinger pistols they’d bought at Desert Diamonds.

He studied every gun he saw that day.

As he’d promised, Grant Winston came out of Desert Diamonds, wearing the kind of apron an old-fashioned shopkeeper would wear.

“Sloan, what the hell? It’s the busiest day of the year!” Grant was obviously flustered and annoyed.

“I would have come to you,” Sloan said.

“I don’t want to talk in the store!” Grant protested.

“Because I want to ask you about a dead man?”

Grant’s ruddy face grew even redder. “Caleb Hough got himself murdered. I’m surprised his wife didn’t kill him long ago.”

That was a common assertion. “I heard you and Caleb had a big argument. Want to tell me about it?”

Grant Winston frowned and seemed truly perplexed. “First off, the guy never came to my shop. The wife and kid did—Zoe loves a cappuccino, and the kid came with all the other kids, bought pizza, looked through the magazines and books—but Caleb Hough never darkened my door. Then all of a sudden about a month ago he comes in and asks about my history books. I showed him where they all were, although a numbskull could’ve found them on his own. Then, about two weeks ago, he’s back, telling me I’m holding out, that I’ve got books I’m not selling. I told him I owned collectible books that no, I didn’t sell. He wanted to see them. I said no. Then I come in one day and he’s just let himself into my office in back and he’s going through my private collection! I told him to get the hell out—that everything I have has been republished over the years. He told me he’d pay me some ridiculous sum of money for my collection and I said, ‘No!’ I collect books because I love them. He told me that if I had any sense, I’d accept his offer or he’d see that I wound up being closed down. I said he could take his money and stuff it where the sun don’t shine and that I’d take my chances. That was the last time I saw him. And if you think I’d go crawl into a mine and kill someone because he was an idiot, you’re crazy!”

“What books did he buy?” Sloan asked.

“The same books that stupid tourist did—and that you took the other day. You had a worse argument with the bastard than I did, Sloan. You told your deputy to keep his kid in jail overnight. He exploded over that!”

“How did you know?” Sloan asked. “Thought you hadn’t seen him.”

“I
haven’t
seen him,” Grant said, exasperated. “This is Lily—you sneeze and everyone knows it!”

“All right, Grant, thanks.” Sloan paused. “But I’m going to need to see your collectible books sometime soon.”

“Sloan, you can read through the night if you want. I have the original of the book Fogerty wrote after it all happened and he’d retired, and I have some of the newspapers from the day, but I don’t know what you’re going to get out of them.”

“I don’t, either. But I appreciate the opportunity to go through them.”

“You got it, Sloan. Whenever you want. Just so long as you don’t stop me from working today. The place is hopping!”

As Sloan let him get back to work, Mike Addison came outside, grinning.

It was bizarre that a local had been killed—viciously murdered, his throat slashed—and that no one in town seemed to mourn him.

But then, neither did his wife.

“What’s the smile for, Mike?” he asked.

“I just had some people check out of the B and B,” Mike told him.

“And that’s a good thing?”

“The wife was all freaked out. She said she saw the ghost of Trey Hardy sitting in the chair by the bed when she woke up. She made her husband get them a room at the chain hotel down the highway.”

“But don’t you
want
people staying in Trey Hardy’s cell?”

“Sure, but the more haunted the cell gets, the more I’ll have people clamoring to stay there. The wife is some kind of big blogger. Now I’ll have reservations for every night of the year!” Mike said happily.

It was while he was talking to Mike that Sloan saw Jane walking on the raised sidewalk from the theater to the Old Jail. Her costume today was crimson, and the color of her hair and eyes seemed to be enhanced by the color. She looked more beautiful than ever; he wondered if the ghost of Sage was pleased. She waved and made her way over.

“Wow,” Mike murmured. “Wow. You know her?”

“That’s Agent Jane Everett,” Sloan said, realizing that Mike and Jane hadn’t met.

“She’s a fed?” he asked incredulously. “Oh, but she’s an artist. She doesn’t...I mean, she doesn’t have a gun or anything like that, right?”

“She has a very big gun,” Sloan assured him.

“Hi,” Jane said to them.

Sloan performed the introductions. Jane was pleasant as she met Mike, but then she glanced at Sloan, a silent question in her eyes. He shook his head slightly, letting her know he hadn’t learned anything new.

“Mike is all excited. His guests ran out of the Trey Hardy room,” Sloan said.

“Oh?” Jane asked.

“Double income!” Mike said happily. “As soon as people hear, I’ll have someone else in. Double income—oh, yeah!”

“Hey, don’t rent it out for tonight,” Jane told him.

“Are you kidding me?” Mike asked. “Don’t you understand? This is a great thing for me. I can make double! The couple who left had paid ahead for the next few nights. I’ll rent the room out again, and I’ll be in good shape. That’s a rule when renting here—if you leave early, I keep the money!”

“I’ll take it for the night,” Jane said.

Mike looked at her in surprise. “You like ghosts, huh?”

“I love them.”

“I heard you were staying at the theater.”

“Oh, I am, but I’m here for a bit longer. I’d love to have the haunted Trey Hardy cell for a night.”

“Um, sure, but...” He glanced at Sloan and then asked her, “You, uh, wouldn’t shoot up the place or anything if you freaked out?”

“Believe me, Mike. I don’t freak out,” Jane assured him sweetly. “And I’ve almost never had to shoot anyone.”

“I’d feel kind of badly taking your money,” he said next.

“Oh, I’m here working. You’ll be paying for it in a way, too. Your federal dollars at work.”

“Well, then, what the hell! The room is yours,” Mike said.

“May I see it now?” Jane asked.

“Sure. Come on in!”

Sloan looked at her curiously, and she smiled. “I’d love to get to know Trey Hardy,” she said lightly.

Mike opened the door. The three of them passed the old sheriff’s desk—the check-in area—and the deputy’s desk, where the concierge sat; it was empty at the moment. Sloan saw that the “concierge” was busy serving breakfast to a number of guests in the old gun room. He watched the way Jane studied the place as they entered. She commented to Mike on what a great job he’d done turning it from an old jail into a bed-and-breakfast, while keeping its historic integrity.

“It wasn’t me, really. I mean, I’ve made some improvements, but the guy I bought it from had all the ideas. I’ve made a point of improving the bathrooms, though!” Mike said. “Guests these days expect that.”