Wild Wild Death (5 page)

As if things could get any worse, the reporter’s eyes lit the moment he looked me over, and I knew what it meant. He recognized me from that wacky PBS cemetery renovation show I’d been involved in the year before. Sure, it was nice to know I was stil something of a cult celebrity. Not so nice when I realized I was about to be put on the spot.

Wearing a man’s blue windbreaker.

“Talk about luck! This is Pepper Martin.” The reporter’s smile was as bright as the lights of the TV

camera. “She works at Garden View Cemetery, where Goodshot is buried. Tel us, Pepper, what’s the cemetery going to do? Do you think Morning Dove here…” He glanced toward the Native American who I’d bet any money wasn’t a real Native American at al . “Do you think she can lift the curse?

Can you help us out, convince the people at the cemetery that we need her? You could be a hometown hero, Pepper.”

Did that pause mean I was supposed to say something?

I scrambled, thinking about how I could get out of this tight spot by tel ing the world how I was low man on the totem pole (no Indian puns intended) and how I’d been unceremoniously tossed out of my cemetery job on my blue windbreaker–covered butt in the name of profits. I would have done it, too, except that I knew the reporter was from the station El a watched every night. And I wouldn’t embarrass her for al the world.

“I can’t speak for the cemetery administrator,” I said, pul ing out that tour-guide voice again and giving the reporter a wide smile. Maybe if people concentrated on the seven thousand dol ars of teeth straightening in my mouth, they wouldn’t notice the fashion faux pas that was my attire. “And I certainly can’t speak for El a Silverman, the cemetery’s community relations manager, either. But I would like to remind your viewers that there’s no way to prove that there real y is a curse.”

“A curse? Sure there’s a curse. And somebody needs to do something about it.”

Saved by the guy behind me who piped right up, his voice so passionate, the reporter had no choice but to swing his way. Glad to be off the hook, I stepped back to Quinn’s side to watch.

The guy was in his twenties, short, round, and wearing an Indians T-shirt and flannel pants with Chief Wahoo, the team’s mascot, al over them.

“That curse is what’s keeping us from winning,” he said, his face as red as his shirt.

“No way we should have lost tonight,” the tal , thin kid next to him said. “We had our best pitcher on the mound. Winning should have been a sure bet.”

“There’s no such thing as a sure bet,” another guy with them grumbled. “Not when it comes to this team.”

The reporter signaled to his cameraman to stop filming. “That’s great,” he said to everyone, and no one in particular. “Thank you al . And Morning one in particular. “Thank you al . And Morning Dove”—he turned to her—“when Garden View lets you in, you’l let us know, won’t you? Hey, talk to Pepper here. I bet she can arrange…” By the time he got that far, I was already marching down the street for al I was worth.

It wasn’t until Quinn and I stopped at the next corner to wait for the light that I realized the guys who’d been on camera with us were right in front of us. And that I knew one of them.

“Brian?” I turned for a better look. The last time I’d seen him, Brian was decked out in one of those vests fishermen wear, the kind with about a hundred little pockets al over them. But then, he’d needed the flashlights, batteries, notebooks, and such he’d brought along because we were on a ghost hunt. I was trying to solve the forty-year-old murder of a rock star, and Brian and his merry little band of buttinsky ghost hunters had been invited along by Dan Cal ahan,

a

paranormal

investigator

friend/boyfriend/almost lover of mine. “Brian, it’s me, Pepper. We met—”

“Of course. I thought you looked familiar.” Brian stuck out his hand, I introduced him to Quinn, and he told us the guys who’d been on camera with him were John, the round guy in the flannel pants, and Gregory, tal er, thinner, and decked out in just as much Indians gear. There was a fourth man in the group, too, a quiet guy by the name of Arnie. Done with the introductions, Brian got right to the meat of the discussion.

“Maybe you can do something, Pepper. You know, about the curse. You work at that cemetery and…”

I might not want to admit my unemployment on the nightly news, but I knew I had to come clean with these guys. It was that, or they’d bug me forever about getting them into Goodshot’s mausoleum.

I told them the bad news—no job, no influence, no corn ceremony—and watched their expressions fal .

“We’re doomed.” Arnie shook his head. “If we can’t lift this curse, the team is never going to get any better.”

Quinn sized them al up in his usual eagle-eyed way. “You’re real y serious fans.”

“You got that right.” John stuck out his left arm, back-side up. His wrist was tattooed in red and blue.

the tribe wil rise again, it said in thick, block letters right above 1948.

“We’ve al got them,” Brian said, and he and Gregory and Arnie showed off their matching tattoos.

“We figured it was the least we could do to show our solidarity with the team.”

“Yeah, the team.” John’s shoulders drooped.

The light changed. We crossed the street and said good-bye to the guys outside the bar where they went to drown their basebal -induced sorrows.

Quinn drove me home, relatively silent. At least about what mattered.

He talked about the game. And about Brian and the guys and how refreshing it was to stil find fans who were committed to the team. He talked about going to rehab the next day and hinted that he could leave from my apartment—if I’d let him stay the night.

Two could play the same game, and besides, I wasn’t ready to hop back into bed with the man who’d smashed my heart into a mil ion pieces with his skepticism. We had a long way to go, Quinn and I, before we were back to where we’d once been.

When we pul ed up to my apartment building, I gave him one last chance to make a move. No, not that kind of move. A move in the right direction. “If you want to come in and talk about what happened to you outside that warehouse a couple months ago…”

My offer dangled in the air between us for a few seconds. “I think you’re right,” Quinn said and my spirits rose. He was final y going to open up about what it was like to be dead and how lousy he felt to have ever doubted me. “It’s getting late and I’d better get home.” He gave me a quick peck on the cheek.

“I’l cal you.”

“Sure.” My smile was brittle, but honestly, I got out of the car and he drove away so fast, I doubt Quinn noticed.

Grumbling, I unlocked the door and went into the building. What I needed was a little therapy in the way of Ben and Jerry’s Crème Brûlée.

That, and something that would distract me from the sad realities of unemployment, basebal , curses, and a TV appearance that would do nothing for my reputation—not to mention my image.

E

xactly one week to the day later, I got a kick-in-the-pants reminder about that ol’
be-careful-what-you-wish-for
saying.

I asked for a distraction?

Sure, the Universe responded. Here’s a doozy.

As these things so often do, it started out simply enough, with me heading down to the lobby of my apartment building that afternoon to pick up my mail.

My unemployment check was there, and for that, I was grateful. I set it on my dining room table, where I could admire it, and promised myself a trip to the bank first thing the next day. A couple other things arrived along with the check, including a box wrapped in brown paper, a couple advertising flyers, a card from my mom in Florida, and…

A postcard fluttered out of the pile and hit the floor and I bent to pick it up and froze, pikestaffed by the photograph that was looking up at me.

“Dan!” I scrambled for the postcard and the photo of Dan Cal ahan, brainiac scientist, paranormal investigator, husband of the late Madeline who, as it turned out, was a ghost who stole my body for a while and used it to get her jol ies with him when those jol ies should have been mine.

Shaggy-haired, cute-as-a-button Dan smiled back at me.

Let’s face it, I’m not usual y unhinged by cute.

After al , I’m used to Quinn, who’s got the whole gorgeous thing down pat, is as hot as freshly poured Boule espresso, and packs as much of a punch (both literal y and figuratively). Normal y, just looking at Dan wouldn’t have made my knees weak and my hands shake. Chalk it up to the stress of the last few months. And to surprise, of course. The last I’d heard from Dan, he was heading to England to delve into some woo-woo mystery or another and drown his sorrows about finding out his late wife was real y a scumbag murderer.

Knees shaking and hands trembling, I dropped down on the couch and flipped over the card, ful y expecting some foreign postmark. It looked like a lot had happened since that winter in Chicago a couple years earlier; the card came from New Mexico.

“Going to be in Cleveland in a few weeks.” Out loud, I read the message written in his loose, scrawling handwriting, and the prospect of seeing Dan again shivered in my words. “    ‘I’ve got some exciting news to share. Let’s plan to get together as soon as I arrive.’ ”

By the time I turned the card over again, I was smiling as broadly as Dan was in the photo. New Mexico? Maybe. I took a closer look at the photo and the sweeping panorama of mountains behind Dan, and al I could tel was that it had been taken in a place with a lot of rocks and dust. Dan, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt with a smudge of dirt across the front of it, was standing in front of some ruiny-looking thing, half building, half cave, that was total y nasty looking.

His right hand was raised in a friendly greeting, and on his wrist, he was wearing a watch with a wide silver band.

It was clearly Native American and not my style, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t intrigued as I always am by things that are pretty and valuable. I squinted for a better look at the band engraved with mysterious-looking symbols and studded with teardrop-shaped bits of turquoise.

Southwestern, certainly. New Mexico.

But coming to Cleveland.

Soon.

As distractions went, this was a pretty good one, and I thanked the Universe appropriately even as I set the postcard against the lamp on the table next to the couch, the better to see Dan and consider what his coming to town might mean. To me. To my future.

To my Gift.

It’s not like we’re a couple or anything. I need to make that perfectly clear.

Pepper Martin and Dan Cal ahan had never been anybody’s idea of a pair.

Not official y, anyway.

There was a time, and a place, and one brief shining moment when I think that was actual y meant to be, in spite of the fact that when we first met, al Dan wanted was the chance to study my brain and Dan wanted was the chance to study my brain and figure out how my Gift worked. But then Madeline swooped in and took over my body, and the golden opportunity for a Pepper and Dan hookup passed us by.

By that time, he’d figured out that it was actual y true—that I could communicate with the dead and that I had been in regular contact with Madeline—

and Dan was thril ed. It proved a theory he’d always believed: that there is life after death and that those on This Side and those on the Other are connected.

But things are never that simple. Not when it comes to living with the dead. Once the whole ugly truth came out about what a liar Madeline real y was, and how she’d played Dan for a sucker, and how I almost got poofed into permanent oblivion thanks to her, the way he handled things said a lot about Dan.

He didn’t try to pick my brain. Or use me as some sort of psychic guinea pig. In fact, he didn’t ask any questions or try to delve into the mystery of my Gift at al .

He left town.

To give me some space, he said.

And himself some time to recover from the trauma of it al .

Not bad, huh? I mean, in a knight-in-shining-armor sort of way.

See, Dan is one of the good guys. Even if he does have lousy taste in wives. And soon—I checked the postmark again; the card had been mailed four days earlier—soon, I’d have a chance to see him again.

Jazzed at the prospect, I opened and read Mom’s card (there was a kitten on it, designed to cheer me up), and finished with that, I turned my attention to the brown-paper-wrapped box.