Tombs of Endearments (9 page)

By the time I got home, I’d had it. With my investigation. With my failure to get any useful information out of Vinnie Pal. And with men.

Especially with men.

I kicked off my shoes just inside the front door, flicked on the living room light, and wished I’d finished the rest of that sour apple martini. Maybe it would have helped drown the niggling voices in my head. The ones that reminded me I was too chicken to call Quinn. And too confused by Dan and his messages of doom. And way too grossed out to try and contact Vinnie any time soon.

And then, of course, there was Joel.

It wasn’t like I cared, I told myself, but that didn’t keep me from sighing. Or from heading into my bedroom. I didn’t like to mire myself in the
past, but there were some nights just made for a little self-pity.

This was one of them.

I turned on the light and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of my dresser to open the bottom drawer. Under my wool sweaters and a pair of silk long underwear my mother insisted I’d be happy to have once the icy winds of a Cleveland winter started to blow, was a wooden box decorated with a smiling, yellow sun. I pulled out the box, opened it up, and reached inside.

I sat back and stared at the object in my hand.

The light of my lamp glinted against Grandma Panhorst’s three-carat, Nazi-defying diamond. That’s right, my engagement ring.

“You told him you sold that ring.”

You’d think by now I’d be used to people (or at least people who used to be people) popping in and out of my life. And I was. Mostly.

Unless they happened to pop up in my bedroom.

At the sound of the voice, I leaped to my feet and spun around. My mouth dropped open and I stared at the woman who was standing near my bedroom door.

I’d know that pink housecoat anywhere, the cigarette dangling from between two fingers, and the nails that were polished a shade of red that rivaled the color of a city fire truck. There was no mistaking the steel gray hair that had been rolled and teased and sprayed into submission, the face, as wrinkled as an old blanket, or the vivid red lipstick applied, as always, with an expert hand and a dare-to-tell-me-this-doesn’t-look-good attitude. The color was as thick as clotted cream and shaped into an impossible point where her top lip bowed.

She was the last person anyone would have suspected had millions, but I knew better. Her own
family had started in the grocery business selling vegetables out of handcarts and had ended up owning a mega-chain of stores on the East Coast. Her husband had made a killing going door to door back in the days when aluminum siding was synonymous with the American Dream. The frowsy housewife look was a cover-up for a razor-sharp mind, a determination that gave
iron-willed
a whole new meaning, and a personality that was as pragmatic as her taste in clothes was dubious.

“Grandma Panhorst?” My voice was sharp with disbelief. I blinked my eyes, but of course, that didn’t change anything. “Grandma, what the hell are you doing here? You’ve been dead for nearly a year!”

“As if that makes a difference?”

She was right. Which didn’t keep me from stammering, “You’re…you’re buried in New York.”

“New York, Schmoo York.” She waved away the info. Cigarette smoke tickled my nose. “I was bored.”

“So you came to Cleveland?”

“I stayed with my ring.”

It was the first I remembered that I still had the diamond ring clutched in my hand. I looked down at where it sparkled against my palm and immediately went on the defensive. “I meant to sell it,” I told her.

In typical Grandma Panhorst fashion, her only reply was a stare that had been known to cut folks down at twenty paces.

I had seen the look so many times, I was immune. Almost. “I did mean to sell it,” I insisted, and I lifted my chin in an attempt to convince her—and
myself—that there was at least a chance of standing up to her. “I would have done it, too, but I’ve been busy.”

“Too busy to make a fast buck? Even when you really needed it?” Grandma plunked down on my bed. She tapped the ash from her cigarette, and I saw it drop away, but instead of hitting the floor, it simply disappeared. “You should know better. You can’t bullshit me.”

“I’m not trying.” I was. She knew that. I knew she knew. It didn’t stop me from making one last valiant effort to cling to my dignity. “I would have sold it in a heartbeat, but—”

“But you didn’t.” There was that look again.

I could withstand it only so long. I flopped down on my bed, grabbed one of my pillows, and hugged it close, trying to figure out how to explain to Grandma what I couldn’t explain to myself.

She didn’t give me a chance. Grandma took a long drag on her cigarette and let the smoke out through her nose. “You’re better off without him, you know,” she said. “Joel, he was never good enough for you.”

“You couldn’t have told me that before you died?”

Just like when she was alive, her face was coated with foundation a couple of shades darker than her skin tone. When she grinned, the makeup left a fissure on each side of her mouth. “Even if I told you, you wouldn’t have listened. You had to find it out for yourself.”

“And I found out the hard way.”

A little pity would have been appreciated, but Grandma never expected any, and she sure never
doled out any. She chuckled. “You never would have believed me if I told you my only grandson was a son of a bitch.”

“You’re right.” I squeezed the pillow a little tighter, thinking of everything that had happened since Joel walked back into my life. “Do you think I should give the ring back to him?” I asked her.

She lifted one shoulder. Her version of a shrug. “Give it back. Sell it. Keep it tucked away and never wear it. Nobody can tell you what to do. This is another thing you have to figure out for yourself.”

“You came all the way back from the dead to tell me that?”

Grandma was indifferent. “I told you, I stayed with the ring. You never even would have known I was here if you left it alone and didn’t bring it out so you could feel a little sorry for yourself.”

When I didn’t dispute her take on the situation, she breezed right on. “And by the way, just for the record, I never kept the ring anyplace so conspicuous. A pretty little box hidden under your sweaters? It’s the first place a burglar would look. Me?” Grandma lifted one leg. She was wearing the pink, fuzzy slippers she used to slip on to shuffle around the house. “When I wasn’t wearing the ring, I kept it in the toe of my right slipper. When I was wearing my slippers, the ring went into the pocket of the robe I hung behind the bedroom door!” She laughed and coughed. “Good thing I gave the ring to Joel to give to you before I died. My slippers went to the Salvation Army with the rest of my things. The ring would have gone with them. So…” She sucked in the last drag from her cigarette
and flicked the butt away. I knew I wouldn’t find it lying around. “What are you going to do?”

“About the ring, you mean?”

Grandma raised brows that had been plucked into a thin line, then darkened with eyebrow pencil. “About the ring. About Joel. About that rock star you’ve been hanging around with.”

I didn’t ask if she was referring to Damon or Vinnie Pal. It didn’t much matter. My silence pretty much said it all.

“Listen…” Don’t ask me where they came from, but Grandma suddenly had a new cigarette in one hand and a green plastic Bic lighter in the other. She used the cigarette to point my way. “You’ve got to make some pretty important decisions, Pepper. Don’t rush into anything.”

I looked down at the ring. “You mean about this.”

“I mean about everything. Not just about the ring, about your life. You don’t think it’s going to get any easier, do you?”

This was not something I wanted to hear and I told her so, but instead of trying to bolster my spirits, Grandma just flicked her Bic and lit her cigarette. “Not up to you,” she said, dragging in a breath. “Never is. It’s the one thing I’ve learned since I passed. That and the fact that life is a messy business. A lot like love.”

“Love?” As far as I knew, that wasn’t something we were talking about. “You don’t think I’m still in love with Joel, do you?”

She smiled, and even as I watched, she shimmered, as if I was looking at her through the heated
air around a fire. “I told you, he was never good enough for you.”

“Then if not Joel, who? Quinn? Dan?” Confused, I plunked my head down into my pillow. As far as I knew, Grandma Panhorst couldn’t have had the inside track on my relationship with either Quinn or Dan. Even I didn’t have the inside track. Quinn was impossible to read. Dan was a complete mystery. And she couldn’t have been talking about—

“Damon?” My head came up.

I looked over to where Grandma had been sitting.

Had been
being the operative words.

Didn’t it figure? Just when I needed answers, she was gone in a
pouf
! I pounded my pillow and grumbled my opinion of my Gift.

Because of the first ghost in my life, the mob had tried to kill me. Because of the second one, I almost got tossed off a bridge. The third one filled my head with song lyrics and fired my imagination, and my libido. A couple of others had just been pests.

And this one?

Shit, this one was bound and determined to make me think about my life, the choices I’d already made and the ones I still had in front of me.

You’d think talking to the dead would be good for something useful like getting the inside track on lottery numbers. Or advance notice of what was going to be on the sale rack at White House Black Market.

What did I get?

Advice that wasn’t exactly advice.

Oh yeah, and a bedroom that smelled like cigarette smoke.

“So, how was it?”

I had been thinking about my visit from Grandma Panhorst and the can of Oust I’d used to clear the air in my bedroom before I left my apartment for the office.

What Damon was talking about was anybody’s guess.

I tossed my purse down on my desk along with my lunch bag (today’s entrée was peanut butter and jelly, a cup of applesauce, and all the pretzels that remained in a bag I’d bought the weekend before), and turned to where he was sitting in my guest chair.

“How was what?”

“Very cute.” I had to agree with him there. In a red and white plaid skirt and a red sweater cropped just above my hips, I was not only cute, I was fashionable. And looked like a million bucks. But though Damon’s eyes lit when he looked me over, something told me my excellent taste wasn’t what he was referring to. He gave me a look nearly as penetrating as Grandma Panhorst’s. “Vinnie. How was Vinnie?”

“You mean in class? Boring as hell. You know that. You were there.”

“I’m not talking about how he was in class. I’m talking about how he was in bed.”

The face I made pretty much said it all, but in case he didn’t get it, I choked out a protest. “You’re kidding me, right? You think Vinnie and I—”

“Hey, I understand. He’s a star.”

“He’s an old, fat guy.”

“Who happens to be famous.”

“A famous, old, fat guy.”

“And has millions of dollars.”

“A rich, famous, old, fat guy.”

“So you’re telling me…” Damon cocked his head. I don’t think it was my imagination. He actually looked relieved. “You didn’t—”

I screeched my frustration. “This isn’t the Free Love generation,” I said. “And yes, that’s exactly what I’m telling you. I didn’t go home with Vinnie. I didn’t—” Too gross. I couldn’t even speak the words. Instead, I remembered my mission, and my shoulders drooped. “I didn’t talk to him about channeling your songs, either. I’m sorry.”

“Mellow out! It’s no big deal. You’ll get another chance.”

“I suppose. I could go to class next week and—”

What I was going to say was that I could try and talk to Vinnie again. But my words dissolved in a gurgle of surprise. Even as I watched, Damon flickered and got fuzzy, like the TV picture when the cable goes out.

I’d never seen anything like it, and when he flickered back a second later, I was already halfway over to where he was standing.

“Stay cool!” Damon’s breaths came in shallow gasps. He staggered back against my bookcase. “It’s nothing.”

“Nothing?” I dared a few steps closer just as he blinked out again. He blinked back in. “It’s something,” I said. “Vinnie? Is he—”

“Channeling me. Yeah.” Damon’s voice was
fuzzy. Just like his body. He winked in and out a couple of times before he winked out completely.

But not before I saw a flash of pain—and a look of stark terror—cross his face.

The doorman said Vinnie was expecting me.

Since I’d made the trip across town to the high-priced, high-rise condo complex on the lake called Winton Place for the sole purpose of talking to him, this should have cheered me right up.

Instead, it gave me the heebie-jeebies.

Less than twenty-four hours after we’d sat side by side, he guzzling scotch and me barely tasting my martini, and Vinnie was so sure I was a conquest, he’d already rolled out the red carpet. Literally.

The doorman ushered me to the elevator and assured me he’d call Mr. Pallucci so that he was ready for me when I arrived upstairs.

Oh joy.

I controlled the spurt of disgust that soured my stomach, ignored the wink the doorman gave me as the elevator door closed, and hit the button for the penthouse.

I am not a philistine. I had, after all, been raised in a family that valued material goods and had the wherewithal to afford the best. But when the elevator doors whooshed open, even I was impressed. And confused.

This was not at all what I expected from Vinnie Pal.

The hallway was sedate and sprawling. It was paneled in cherry and lit with spots recessed in the ceiling and trained on oil paintings of exotic flowers. Even if I don’t like to admit it, I do have a degree
in art history, and though I had never exactly set the academic world on fire, I know good when I see it. Just like I know expensive. These were both.

So was the huge Oriental rug on the floor, the round table in the center of it, and the humongous vase of lilies, roses, and tiny purple orchids arranged on top of it.

I sneezed, sniffed, and looked around some more. Through the veil of flowers, I saw a closed door to my right. I pressed the bell and waited.

Not for long.

The door opened, and when it did, a wave of music came crashing out at me. It was so loud, my bones vibrated.

“Vinnie! Hi!” I had to scream to be heard above the noise, and when Vinnie bowed and made a broad gesture, I stepped into the apartment. This, I realized, was more of what I’d been expecting.

In order to make the most of the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the lake to the north and downtown Cleveland to the east, the room was open, with clean lines, a freestanding fireplace where a small fire sparkled in the grate, and a black marble floor that glimmered in the morning light. There was a grand piano in one corner and a drum set along one wall, as well as three guitars (two electric and one acoustic) that had been tossed on a leather couch. There were also pizza boxes everywhere—along with a few empty coffee cups, a couple of bottles of Jack Daniel’s, a case of beer on ice in a decorative, claw-foot bathtub, and a pair of jeans draped over one shoulder of a life-size cardboard cutout of a naked woman.

“You want some?” Lucky for me, Vinnie was talking about the pizza. He grabbed a piece of pepperoni, double mushroom and olive, and offered it to me, and when I shook my head, he bit into it himself. “I figured you’d show up eventually.”