Linda Lael Miller
Deadly Gamble

For Joan Marlow Golan with love,

admiration and appreciation.

Thanks.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 1

Cave Creek, Arizona

At first, the chill was a drowsy nibble at the distant and ragged edges of my awareness, raising goosebumps on the parts of my flesh bared to that spring night. The sensation was vaguely disturbing, but not troublesome enough to stir me from the fitful shallows of sleep. I remember rolling onto my side, pulling the comforter up to my right earlobe and murmuring some insensible protest.

That was when I heard Nick’s voice. Or thought I heard it.

Impossible, I told myself, nestling groggily into my polyester burrow. He’s dead.

Just then, a hand came to rest on my hip, and the chill sprouted teeth and bit right through cotton nightshirt, skin and tissue to seize the marrow of my bones.

I choked out a hoarse cry, too raw and guttural to qualify as a scream, and shimmied off the mattress to land hard on both feet. In the space of an instant, my senses shifted from dial-up to broadband, and I pressed one hand to my chest, in case my heart tried to flail its way out of my chest. My brains pulsed, Cuisinart-style, then scrambled. I couldn’t seem to drag a breath past my esophagus, though my lungs clawed for air like a pair of miners trapped beneath tons of rubble.

I felt that way once on a stair-climber at the gym after sucking in a pack and a half of nicotine in a bar the night before, and subsequently swore off exercise forever. Hell, somebody has to serve as the bad example.

But I digress. Get used to it.

My eyes must have bugged out, cartoonlike. Nick—Nick—lay on top of the covers, dressed in his snappy gray burial suit, with his hands cupping the back of his head. Except for a peculiar greenish glimmer emanating from his skin, he looked pretty much the way he had before he collided with a semi on the 101 North and was thrown through the windshield of his BMW. Along with Tiffany, Nick’s lover du jour, who was scarred for life and for some insane reason blamed me for her Frankenstein face and deflated implants.

One of the many things I don’t like about dead people is that a lot of them glow in the dark. Not that I’d seen any before my late ex-husband turned up that momentous night, a full two years after his funeral. Since then, unfortunately, I’ve become something of an authority.

“Hey,” Nick said companionably, as though the situation were entirely normal, and not something out of an old segment of Unsolved Mysteries.

My stomach quivered. Like my heart, it was threatening to leap out of my throat and make a run for it.

“You’re dead,” I pointed out—quite reasonably, I thought, given the circumstances. I knew he’d croaked, but I wasn’t sure he’d been notified. He looked so calm and matter-of-fact, as though turning up in his ex-wife’s bed in the middle of the night was a perfectly ordinary thing to do.

Nick sighed, slipped his hands from behind his head and hoisted himself as far as his elbows. “Sort of,” he admitted, with a rueful note.

I managed a step backward, ready to hot-foot it out of there, jerk open the outside door, and dash down the fire escape–style stairway to Bad-Ass Bert’s Biker Saloon. Normally, I didn’t seek out the company of Bert’s clientele, especially when I was naked except for a slip of cotton jersey that barely covered my thighs, but given the situation, I was game for just about anything. Trouble was, once I’d retreated half a stride, I couldn’t seem to move again.

“How can you be ‘sort of’ dead?” I asked.

“It’s complicated,” Nick replied. “In some ways, I’m more alive than you are.” With that, he swung his legs over the side of the mattress and stood up, turning to face me across the expanse of tangled bedding. The glow surrounding his lean frame flickered a little, as if somebody had turned a celestial dimmer switch.

“Relax,” he said. “It’s okay.”

Sure. No problem. Pay no attention to the walking, talking corpse.

“You’re dead,” I repeated stubbornly.

“Yeah,” he agreed wryly. “I’ve noticed. So maybe we could get past that?”

“Don’t come near me,” I ordered. Pure bravado, of course. I’d read The Damn Fool’s Guide to Self-Defense for Women and practiced all the moves on Bert, who was a genuine bad-ass, but if there was a chapter on phosphorescent assailants, I must have missed it.

Nick tilted his dark head to one side and looked pathetic, though still damnably handsome. Apparently, being deceased was neither messy nor strenuous; his suit was wrinkle-free, if slightly out of fashion, his hair sleek, and there was no sign of his hallmark five o’clock shadow. No tire marks, either, thank God, and no blood, guts or jutting bone fragments.

He must have read my mind. With a sad grin, he looked down at himself, before meeting my gaze again. “Hell of a patch job, though. You should have seen me before the mortician did his thing.” He shuddered. “You haven’t lived—so to speak—until you’ve seen yourself lying in pieces on a slab. Definitely not a pretty sight.”

I winced. “Thanks for sharing,” I said. At least we were on the same page with the dead-thing. I had a lot of questions, naturally, but I couldn’t seem to articulate any of them. Shock does that to a person.

Another fetching grin. “You cried at my funeral,” he reminded me, with pleased modesty.

I stiffened. My heartbeat had slowed somewhat, and I was managing a full breath every few seconds, but my knees felt about as substantial as foam on a mug of draft beer. When the last few bubbles popped, I’d be on the floor in a quivering heap.

“So what?” I asked. “We were married once. You were only thirty-two, and you didn’t deserve to die like that, even if you were an asshole. Too bad about Tiffany, too. Did you know her boobs popped and she had to have three surgeries just to look human?”

He ignored the reference to girlfriend #62. At least she was post-divorce; the first thirty-seven could probably be slotted neatly between “I do” and “Go-to-hell-you-bastard-I’m-taking-back-my-maiden-name.”

“Black isn’t your color,” he observed gently, starting around the end of the bed, heading in my general direction.

I backpedaled. “Stay away from me.”

He stopped, and once again that slight, familiar grin hitched up one corner of his mouth. “You looked for all the world like the classic grieving widow that day,” he reiterated. “Divorce or no divorce, you weren’t over me.”

“The hell I wasn’t,” I shot back, and shoved a hand through my shoulder-length tangle of curly red hair. I did a quick mental review of The Damn Fool’s Guide to Lucid Dreaming and wondered if I was experiencing some random version of the phenomenon. I pinched myself, blinked a couple of times and sighed.

Nick remained still there, which meant I was awake. The jury was still out on whether or not I was lucid.

“I’m sorry about the other women,” he said sweetly.

“Too little, too late,” I answered, stunned by the sharp, sudden pang of sorrow at the verbal reminder. It was like a rubber band snapping around my soul. “What are you doing here?”

He cocked one perfectly shaped eyebrow. In life, Nick had been a real estate developer, eating up the Arizona desert with tract houses, convenience stores and strip malls. I half expected his cell phone to ring. He was one of those people who go around with an earphone plugged into their heads, apparently talking to themselves. “I wondered when you’d get to that question,” he said.

“Now you know.”

Nick fiddled with his tie again. His mother chose that tie—red, with tiny silver stripes. I hated it, and I hated her. More on that later. “It’s hard to get your attention,” he said. Then, with a wistful look, he added, “Some things never change.”

“Pul-eeze,” I said. “We’re not going to play the poor, misunderstood Nick game, okay?” I was so not in love with him, dead or alive, and I didn’t want him hanging around. How do you get a restraining order against a ghost?

He held up a hand, palm out. “All right, all right,” he said. “Let’s not go there.”

“Wise choice, Bucko. And you still haven’t told me what you’re doing in my bedroom in the middle of the night.”

“It’s a long story.” He looked around the bedroom, with its linoleum floor, fading wallpaper and garage-sale furniture. “Still living over the biker bar,” he observed. “When are you going to get a decent place?”

Thanks to Nick and his mother, Margery DeLuca, society scion and barracuda divorce lawyer, I’d gotten F-all in the settlement, except for a pile of credit card bills I was still paying off. I couldn’t afford anything but what I had, and sometimes even that much was a stretch, but there didn’t seem to be much point in going down that winding and treacherous road. “Did you come here to talk real estate? If so, kindly go haunt somebody else—your mother, for instance. I’m not in the market.”

Nick looked hurt. That was my second cue to feel guilty.

Not.

He sighed once more, philosophically this time, like some holy martyr, angling for his own prayer card. No sale there, either. Nick DeLuca was a lot of things, but a saint wasn’t one of them.

“Damn it,” he said, looking down at himself again. “I’m fading.”

Sure enough, the glow indicated low batteries, and I could see through his left shoulder and part of his mid-section.

“Wait,” I said. The word scraped my throat.

Nick’s brown eyes connected briefly with mine, then he vanished.

I blinked, hugging myself now, ready to collapse but afraid to go near the bed, where I could expect to make a soft landing. “Nick?” I whispered, gripping the dresser for support.

No answer.

He was really gone, except for a faint reverberation in the air.

If he’d been there in the first place.

I stood still for a long time, staring at the space where Nick had been standing, then groped my way out of the bedroom, along the dark hall and into the kitchen, flipping on the light switch with numb fingers as I passed it. I sank into a chair at the round oak table, laid my head down on my folded arms and sat out the rest of the night.

AT DAWN, I made a pot of coffee, and as soon as I heard Bert’s Harley roll up outside, I forced myself to go back into the haunted bedroom. There, I quickly pulled on a pair of jeans, stuffed my feet into the Sponge Bob slippers my foster sister, Greer, had given me for Christmas in one of her rare moments of whimsy, and finger-combed my hair. In the adjoining bathroom, I brushed my teeth and splashed my face with cold water. Gazing into the mirror over the cracked pedestal sink, I gave myself a brief lecture.

“Suck it up, Mojo Sheepshanks,” I said. “You’re probably not the first woman to wake up and find her dead husband in bed with her.”

Despite the speech, I wasn’t consoled. My face was so pale, my freckles looked three-dimensional, and my eyes, which vary from blue to green, depending on what I’m wearing, were colorless. I had the raccoon thing going, too—an effect that can usually only be achieved by cheap mascara and a crying jag.

Having made this grim but accurate assessment, I turned from the mirror, traversed the kitchen again and opened the door. I stood for a moment on the landing, looking down on the gravel parking lot. Bert, a brawny guy with a shaved head and both arms tattooed with road maps, bent over the sidecar attached to his bike, unbuckling Russell’s helmet. Russell was his basset hound, and the mutt gave a happy yip when he spotted me.

Bert Wenchal—Bert being short for Bertrand—turned and favored me with a broad smile. For all that he could have been an attraction in one of those road-side freak shows advertised on billboards—See the Amazing Human Map, 5 Miles Ahead—Bert had perfect teeth, never mind that they were the size of piano keys, and baby blue eyes.

“Hey, Mojo,” he called, setting the dog’s head gear on the seat of the Harley. Russell leaped out of the sidecar and trundled toward me as I descended the wooden stairs. Most days Russell sat on a stool at the end of the bar, and scored too many pepperoni sticks from the customers.

I bent to ruffle the dog’s floppy ears. “You’re too fat,” I told him affectionately.

He tried to lick my face.

Bert’s keys jingled as he shoved one into the lock on the service door. The bar wouldn’t open until ten, but he liked to come in early, put the coffee on to brew, fire up the hot dog roaster, rake the peanut shells, cigarette butts and spit-lumps out of the sawdust on the floor and balance the till. As landlords went, Bert was unconventional, but the rent was right and he had a great dog, so we got along okay.

“You look like hell this morning,” he told me brightly, washing his hands at the sink behind the bar. Bert was proud of his saloon, especially the bar. It was nothing but splintery boards, nailed across the top of six huge wooden barrels, bought at a junk sale in Tombstone, but according to Bert, the thing was a true historical artifact. Allegedly, in its heyday, the likes of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday had bellied up to it.

“Thanks,” I said bleakly. Russell climbed onto the old mounting block next to his bar stool, then made the leap to the vinyl seat. I perched on the next one over.

Bert started the coffee. Despite his size and the fact that Route 66 coursed in a green line up his left arm, presumably across his chest, and down his right, complete with side roads, highway numbers and place names beside little red circles, he was a sensitive guy.

“Something happen to Lillian?” he asked.

My eyes burned, and my throat tightened. I ran a hand down Russell’s broad back for a distraction. Lillian Travers was the closest thing I had to a mother, and she would have been my first choice to confide in, but she’d suffered a devastating stroke six months before. Now, she sat staring into space in a Phoenix nursing home, and I made the forty-five-minute trip to visit her three times a week.

Sometimes Lillian seemed to know me, sometimes she didn’t. Except for isolated, garbled words, she never spoke.

Bert paused in his coffee-making, waiting.

I finally shook my head. “She’s the same,” I got out.

“Then what?” Bert persisted, but gently. With the coffeemaker chortling and belching out fragrant steam, he flipped on the hot dog machine, opened the fridge tucked behind the bar and took out a package of frankfurters. I watched as he laid them carefully, one by one, on the gleaming steel bars rolling behind the glass.

“Something really weird happened last night,” I said, with understandable difficulty and no little reluctance. Russell laid his muzzle on my left forearm, mesmerized by the spinning wieners.

Bert arched his eyebrows, tossed the frankfurter package into the trash and washed his hands again. Time to rake the sawdust. I took comfort in Bert’s unvarying rituals, maybe because I had so few of my own. Most of the time, I felt as insubstantial as Nick’s ghost; I’d been living a lie for so long, I couldn’t recall the truth, if I’d ever known it in the first place. “Like what?” he prompted.

I turned on the bar stool as he reached for the rake leaning against the weathered board wall. “Like I saw my dead ex-husband last night,” I stumbled. There was no graceful way to say it.

Bert paused, rake in hand and gave a low whistle. “Dude,” he said.

Since some people would have tested my forehead for a fever, I was mildly encouraged. “Maybe I’m going crazy.” That was the thought that had kept me awake, too agitated to engage in my usual insomnia cure, which was to sit at my computer and work my way through one of the piles of medical billings that paid my bills. That and the fear that Nick would get a recharge and show up again if I lay down on the bed.

Bert began to rake noxious things into a pile between two massive pool tables. Anybody might think they were losing their mind if they’d seen what I had, but I had more reason than most. My parents were shot to death in our rented double-wide, down in Cactus Bend, when I was five years old. I knew I must have witnessed the murders, since I was found hiding in the clothes dryer off the kitchen, covered with their blood, but I had no memory of the incident, or of the next few months, for that matter. The first thing I could recall was waking up in a cheap motel, and Lillian dabbing at my face with a cold washcloth.

“I seen you do some strange things,” Bert said. “Like the way you can make a slot machine pay off pretty much whenever you want. You come by your name honestly, but you ain’t crazy, Mojo. Not you.”

My heart warmed. Actually, I didn’t come by my name honestly—or much of anything else, either. Like Lillian, I’d been using an alias for years—one I’d chosen myself, out of a library book—and some dead child’s social security number. As close as Bert and I were, though, I’d never told him the whole story. Even Nick hadn’t known, though maybe he did now. He’d seen his battered body after the accident, and he knew I’d cried at his funeral, so maybe being dead gave him a broader perspective.

Now there was a disturbing thought.

“He looked—real,” I went on. “Except that he glowed in the dark.”

Bert raked a little faster, and I hoped he wasn’t revising his opinion about my sanity. “Was there a reason for this visit?” he asked, without looking at me.

“We never got that far,” I said.

Bert glanced in my direction.

“Nothing happened,” I told him firmly, and without delay.

He grinned. “I never said it did,” he replied. “Give Russell one of them frankfurters, will you? He missed his breakfast.”

I slid off the stool and went around behind the bar, glad to have something physical to do, however mundane. “You shouldn’t let him eat stuff like that,” I said. “One of these days, he’s going to blow an artery.”

Bert got out the dustpan and leaned down to rake the pile into it. “Poor dog gets nothin’but diet kibble at home,” he said. Bert’s girlfriend, Sheila, ran a tight ship. “One sausage ain’t gonna hurt him.”

I opened the door, speared a frank and plopped it onto a paper plate.

Russell watched, salivating, as I cut it into bite-sized pieces with a plastic knife. “Like you don’t give him one every morning of his life,” I chided, but I set the plate down in front of Russell and smiled as he snarfed up the grub.

“My aunt Nellie saw a ghost once,” Bert ruminated, raking again. “It was her dog, Fleagel the beagle. He lived for seventeen years, and Nell swore she found crap on the same old place on the stairs for ten days after he croaked. She said that was how she knew she was going to die. When the beagle came back, I mean. Sure enough, a few weeks after the sighting, she bit the dirt, right in the middle of a game of blackout bingo.”

I gazed across the bar at him, hands resting on my hips. With anybody else, I would have felt self-conscious in my jeans, rumpled nightshirt and Sponge Bobs, but Bert was different. Like a brother. “That was a pretty insensitive remark,” I said.

“Aunt Nellie was a pretty insensitive woman,” Bert answered, without missing a beat. “If Uncle Dutch hadn’t been too embarrassed to call the cops on her, she’d have been run in on a domestic violence charge. The only thing she ever loved, far as I could tell, was that dog of hers.”

I returned to my stool but sat facing Bert, with my back to the bar. “We both come from dysfunctional families,” I reflected. “Maybe that’s why we get along so well.”

Bert chuckled, shook his bald head. “You know what worries me, Mojo? I can follow your logic, back-asswards as it is. Your brother went to prison for killing your folks. I was raised by two drunks and a pack of Labrador retrievers. We’re a pair to draw to, you and me.”

I nodded glumly. Bert’s knowledge of my background was limited to the bare facts, but I’d told him more than I’d told just about anybody else in my life, including Nick or the men I’d dated since the divorce. “By psychological standards, we ought to be in padded rooms by now.”

“If you mention seeing a ghost to the wrong person,” Bert mused, pausing to lean on the rake handle and regard me with concern, “you might end up in one anyhow.”

By then, my thoughts had shifted to Lillian. Maybe she was having one of her good days. Even if she was, she wouldn’t be able to carry on a coherent conversation, but she could listen, and she always seemed to enjoy a surprise visit. I decided to shower, dress and motor down the 101 to see her.

“You’re a real comfort, Bert,” I teased, already on my way to the side door, which stood propped open to the still cool mid-April air. In another month, it would be so hot the asphalt on the highways would buckle.

“You didn’t have your coffee,” Bert called after me.

I doubled back, filled a disposable cup, stirred in sugar and powdered creamer and raised the brew in a toast as I went by. “Put it on my tab,” I said.

Bert grinned and nodded, and I stepped out into the sunny parking lot just as another Harley roared up, flinging gravel, and came to a noisy stop beside Bert’s bike.

Tucker Darroch, my most recent bad romantic choice.

He shut off the bike and gave a salutelike wave. Clad in jeans, scuffed black boots and a blue muscle shirt, which showed off his biceps to distinct advantage, Tucker was the complete opposite of Nick, at least when it came to appearance. He was six feet tall, square jawed, and his honey-colored hair was too long, falling in his eyes and curling at the nape of his neck, while Nick was of average height, compactly built and born to the boardroom.

Tucker looked like a Hell’s Angel. In actuality, he was an undercover cop.

We’d done a little undercover work ourselves, Tucker and I. That was the best part of our relationship. The rest of it sucked, unfortunately, and we’d agreed, three and a half weeks before, to cool it for a while. Tucker was just wrapping up a nasty divorce, and he and the little woman were still duking it out over custody of their seven-year-old twins, Danny and Daisy.

Just watching Tucker swing a blue-jeaned leg over the seat of that bike made my nerves twitch. I wanted to nod a noncommittal greeting, climb the stairs to my apartment and go on about my business, but I might as well have been wearing cement shoes.

Tucker approached, his hips rolling in that easy, death-to-women walk of his. He shoved his hair back from his face and looked straight down into my eyes. “Nice getup,” he said, hooking his thumbs in the back pockets of his Levi’s.

It took me a moment to realize he was talking about my clothes. “It’s a fashion statement,” I heard myself say. “Care for a translation?”

He grinned. “I’ll pass,” he said lightly, but his green eyes were watchful, and slightly narrowed. “You okay? You’ve got dark circles under your eyes.”

Between Bert and Tucker, I was pretty clear that the current look wasn’t working for me. “I’m fine,” I said, a little too quickly.

Tucker pretended to dodge a blow. “Excuse me for asking,” he said.

I finally got my legs working again, and made for the stairs. “Things to do, people to see,” I explained airily over one shoulder, concentrating on 1—putting one foot in front of the other, then repeating the process, 2—not spilling my coffee, and 3—not running back to Tucker and jumping his bones in the parking lot. “Nice seeing you again.”

He didn’t answer, but I felt his gaze on me as I mounted the steps.

LILLIAN WAS NOT having one of her good days, as it turned out.

She sat in her wheelchair, in front of the one window in her fusty little room, a shrunken and fragile figure, arthritic hands knotted in her lap. A worn but colorful afghan covered her bony knees, and a lump rose in my throat as I remembered the woman she used to be. Her stepdaughter, Jolie, had crocheted that afghan for her long ago, as a Christmas present. Lillian had been luminous with delight that day, her laughter rich and vibrant, her brain and body in working order. Those painfully curled fingers had been busy, competent, glistening with shopping-channel rings.

Lillian was my babysitter, before my parents were murdered.

Shortly after the killings, she’d been my kidnapper.

I swallowed the lump, blinked back tears and crossed the room to stand next to her, bending to kiss her lightly on top of the head.

“Hello,” I said gently.

She looked up at me, and for a moment recognition sparked in her sunken eyes. She grasped my hand, squeezed it with a strange urgency and made a soft sound that I chose to interpret as a greeting.

I dragged up a chair to sit knee to knee with her, opened the bag of doughnuts I’d picked up on the way down from Cave Creek and offered her favorite, a double-frosted maple bar.

She shook her wobbly head, like one of those bobble-figures they give away at baseball games, but her watery eyes were full of longing. Lillian had been an off-the-rack size 16 ever since I could remember, but now she looked almost skeletal, with big dents at her temples and under her cheekbones. It was as though her skull were eating its way to the surface.

I broke off a piece of the maple bar and held it to her lips. She took a nibble, like a baby bird being fed in the nest. My heart twisted.

Laboriously, Lillian gummed the morsel and swallowed.

“You look good,” I lied.

“Cods,” Lillian said.

I frowned. “Cods?” She wanted fish?

“Cods,” Lillian insisted.

“She’s talking about these,” a female voice put in, nearly scaring me out of my skin.

I turned to see a pudgy nurse’s aide standing by Lillian’s neatly made bed, holding up a familiar deck of cards. Of course, I thought. The Tarot cards.

I didn’t recognize the aide. The turnover was huge at Sunset Villa.

Lillian began to squirm in her chair, reaching with what seemed a desperate eagerness. “Cods!” she croaked.

“They’re the devil’s work,” the nurse’s aide said, with a self-righteous little sniff. She was overweight and looked like she might attend one of those churches where they drink antifreeze and juggle snakes. “Only thing worse is them Ouija boards, if you ask me.”

“I didn’t ask you,” I pointed out, crisply polite as I dropped the maple bar back into the bakery bag and went to claim Lillian’s deck. They were her most treasured possession, those creased and battered cards. When we were on the run, after my folks were killed, she’d sometimes given readings to pay for a tank of gas or a meal in some diner. They’d warned us, those cards, Lillian claimed, when somebody recognized my picture from the back of a milk carton, and the Tarot had predicted disaster if I married Nick.

I should have listened.

I took the cards and stared at the nurse’s aide, bristling in her flowered scrubs, until, in a minor snit, she turned around and left the room.

“Give,” Lillian demanded.

I handed her the cards, bracing myself to watch the inevitable struggle. Once, Lillian had plied that deck with the skill of a riverboat poker sharp, but that was when her fingers were straight and strong, with a hotline to her brain.

She gripped the cards in both hands, and I saw a tremor pass through her as she closed her eyes to concentrate. I wondered, not for the first time, if large portions of her mind were dark and boarded up, as the doctors said, or if the old Lillian crouched in there someplace, smart as ever.

I didn’t know what to hope for. For a woman as bright and full of life as Lillian had been, it would be hell if the wires were down between her mind and her body. On the other hand, being a vegetable was no fun, either.

It tortured me, wondering how it was for her.

I watched bleakly as the woman who’d saved me from so many things fumbled with a pack of tattered playing cards.

She turned the deck over, thumbed them until she settled on one. The Queen of Pentacles, a colorful card, showing a medieval woman seated on a throne. That one dropped into her lap, followed, after more excruciating selection, by the Page of Cups. A young man in tights, holding up a chalice with a fish, presumably dead, flopping over the rim.

I waited tensely, resisting the urge to help her.

Lillian still had her pride. I had to believe that.

When it came to interpretation, I was useless. The deck was a familiar fixture, since Lillian had carried it in her pocket or purse for as long as I could remember, but I knew next to nothing about the images, even though I’d seen them many times.

It was almost an anticlimax when she settled on the third and apparently final card—Death. It showed a skeleton, wearing black armor and mounted on a fierce-looking horse, bodies littering the ground beneath. I drew in my breath.

Lillian’s hands relaxed suddenly, and she looked up at me, her contorted face imploring me to understand.

“Take,” she ground out.

I plucked the three cards from where they’d fallen onto the pilled afghan covering her thin legs. My palms sweated as I examined the pictures, one by one. I knew there was a message, but the circuits were blocked.

I tried to hand them back.

“Take,” Lillian repeated, and shrank back in her wheelchair, the remaining cards bending in her grasp.

I bit my lower lip, nodded and tucked the Queen, the Page and Death gently into the side-flap of my purse. I’d stop at a bookstore on the way back to Cave Creek, I decided. Pick up a Damn Fool’s Guide to Tarot. I wasn’t ready to leave Lillian, but she was clearly overwrought, and staying too long might plunge her into an even steeper decline.

“Want some more of the maple bar?” I asked, and practically choked on the words. If she’d been in her usual staring mode, I might have told her about last night’s visit from Nick, just to have a sounding board, but she was too agitated to listen to a ghost story. Besides, even if she understood, what could she do?

“No,” she said clearly, and at first I thought she was answering my question about the maple bar. Instead, her gaze was fixed on the doorway.

A tall man stood on the threshold, a finger hooked in the suit jacket hanging behind his right shoulder. He had a full head of gray hair and one of those benignly handsome faces that inspire instant confidence. I felt a spike of recognition and reached out to close my fingers over Lillian’s hands. They were clenched.

My uncle, Clive Larimer, smiled.

“Hello, Mary Josephine,” he greeted me. “Long time no see.”

Lillian began a soft, gurgling murmur.

Larimer stepped into the room, momentarily distracted when the nurse’s aide pushed past him and rushed over to Lillian.

“What’s the matter, Mrs. Travers?” she asked anxiously.

I peeped at her name tag. Felicia.

A tear slipped down Lillian’s right cheek.

“You’ll have to leave, both of you,” Felicia decreed.

Larimer backed into the corridor, out of sight. I forgot all about him, in my concern for Lillian.

“It’s those damn devil-cards,” Felicia declared, but she was patting Lillian’s shoulder, and Lillian seemed to be calming down a little. “Time for your medicine anyway, isn’t it, Mrs. Travers? And after that, you can take a nice nap.” Felicia paused to glare at me. “That’s what Mrs. Travers needs. Medicine and a nap. You’d better go now.”

I didn’t protest. I’d already made the decision to split, after all. Lillian had drifted back into herself, and the cards lay forgotten between her palms. I might have been transparent, the way she stared through me.

I nodded, certain I’d break down and cry if I tried to say anything. I picked up my purse, leaving the bakery bag on the window sill, where I’d set it earlier, and dashed for the door.

I ran smack into Uncle Clive in the corridor, and he steadied me by placing avuncular hands on my shoulders.

“Mary Josephine,” he said, as if he couldn’t believe it was really me.

I bit my lower lip, speechless. I hadn’t seen the man since I was five, and I probably wouldn’t have recognized him at all if he hadn’t been a state senator, making regular appearances on TV and in every major newspaper in Arizona. He looked harmless, even friendly, but he was one of the people Lillian had wanted to avoid, all those years ago. She’d been scared to death, for herself and me, which was why she’d snatched me from the front yard of my foster home. At least, that was her account of what happened—I didn’t remember any of it.

“Let’s have some coffee and talk,” Uncle Clive said quietly.

I was twenty-eight years old, a self-supporting adult, not a kid. I’d been married and divorced. I’d read The Damn Fool’s Guide to Self-Defense for Women.

There was nothing to be afraid of.

And, besides, I was curious as hell.

Uncle Clive was my mother’s older brother. He’d been around when the killings took place, and he could fill in a lot of gaps in my memory, bring me up to speed on my half brother, Geoff, who’d gone to prison at sixteen for second-degree murder.

“Okay,” I said.

CHAPTER 2

The cafeteria at Sunset Villa wasn’t much, so we walked, my long-lost uncle and I, to a nearby Starbucks, with outside tables and misters to cool the customers. Even in April, it’s warm in Phoenix.

I didn’t think I could choke down anything—the whole scenario was an excuse to talk, after all—but Clive bought us both a cup of classic roast. Except for a few university students bent over textbooks and one doughy guy with piercings and vampire teeth—a poet or a serial killer or both—we had the place to ourselves.

“I can’t believe it’s you,” Clive said, as he joined me under the shade of a green-and-white striped umbrella, setting down our cups. His black metal chair, which matched the black metal table, scraped on the patio stones as he drew it back to sit.

I didn’t answer. After twenty-three years, I didn’t know where to start.

It wasn’t that there was too much to say. It was that there wasn’t too much.

Tentatively, my mother’s big brother and only living sibling touched the back of my hand. “It’s okay,” he said, and his voice was so gentle that tears smarted, like acid, behind my eyeballs. “I used to carry you on my shoulders. Help you find Easter eggs. Do you remember?”

I shook my head. Nebulous memories were teasing the far borders of my mind, but I couldn’t seem to corner any of them long enough to take hold.

“We looked everywhere for you.” He spoke quietly, but a muscle bunched in his jaw as he took a sip of his coffee. “My God, it was bad enough, what happened to Evie and Ron, but when you went missing on top of it—”

Evie and Ron Mayhugh. My parents. My work-frazzled, distracted, waitress mother. My moody, chronically unemployed father. For a moment, I could see them clearly in my mind’s eye. It was an image I’d longed for, wracked my brains for, during many a sleepless night, and now, suddenly, there it was, a vivid little tableau branded on the inside of my forehead.

“How did you find Lillian?” I asked. The air seemed to pulse around both of us, as though charged, and there was a slow, dull thudding in my ears.

For a nanosecond, Clive looked confused. Of course, I thought. He’d known Lillian as Doris Blanchard. He made the leap quickly, though, and something eased in his face.

“By accident,” Clive Larimer answered. “Just a fluke, really.” He gave a sigh of benevolent resignation, and his eyes were warm and kind as he looked at me, studying my features, maybe searching for a resemblance to his murdered sister. “It’s ironic, really. The day you disappeared, the police put out an all-points bulletin. After a few weeks, the FBI got involved. The case was featured on 60 Minutes. Beyond an occasional sighting, nothing. And then a friend of mine happens to recognize Doris—Lillian—while visiting her sister at the nursing home. I walk in, thinking I’m crazy to still be hoping after all these years that I’ll find out anything, and there you are.”

“How did you know who I was?”

He smiled. “You look like your mother,” he said.

Well, that answered one question. I found it curiously comforting, even though I had no aspirations to be anything like the woman I barely remembered.

“What happened, Mary Jo?” he asked, after a long pause.

Mary Jo. It was odd, hearing the name. Familiar as it was, like the words of a ditty learned in childhood, it made me feel like an impostor, or maybe an eavesdropper. Anybody but Mary Jo.

“What happened?” I echoed. Was he asking about the murder or the years afterward, when Lillian and I and, later, Greer, lived like the proverbial gypsies?

“You were there, and then you were gone.”

I wondered how much to tell him. On the one hand, he was my uncle. He might have given me away at my wedding to Nick, ill-advised as it was to marry the jerk, if Lillian hadn’t snatched me. I might have had a father figure in my life. On the other hand, Lillian must not have trusted him, back in the day, or she wouldn’t have grabbed me up and hit the road. And she’d seemed startled, even scared, when he appeared in the doorway of her room at Sunset Villa.

I shrugged, picked up my coffee, set it down again, untasted. Some of it sloshed over the rim of the cup and burned my fingers. I almost welcomed the pain, because it jarred me out of the muddle of surprise that had fogged my thinking and limited my vocabulary from the moment the thought formed in my mind: This is my uncle.

“It wasn’t a bad life,” I said. “Lillian took good care of me. We…traveled a lot, but I thought it was fun.” Except, of course, for the times when I’d just settled into a new school, made some friends, gotten myself another library card and then had to go on the run again, usually in the middle of the night.

“Catch me up,” Clive urged, after another extended silence. “What do you do for a living? Are you married? Do you have kids?”

I bit my lower lip. Clive Larimer was a state senator, with a socially connected wife named Barbara and four big-toothed, impossibly blond, Harvard-educated children. I’d Googled him whenever I got into one of my Norman Rockwellian moods and turned nostalgic. I figured when I answered his questions, he’d think the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, that I was as shiftless as my dad and as co-dependent as my mom, and I wished I could whip out pictures of two-point-two munchkins, a dog and a successful husband, and refer circumspectly to my part-time job as a rocket scientist.

“I work at home,” I said instead. “Medical billing and coding. Doctors like to outsource that stuff these days.” Feeling stupid, I blushed, but then plunged on. Telling the truth is good for you, Tucker had taunted me, not so long ago, during one of our screaming fights. You ought to give it a try sometime. “No kids. I was married for a couple of years, then divorced.”

The truth, I told Tucker silently, is overrated.

My uncle’s face reflected a calm, intense interest as he listened.

I left out the part about seeing Nick’s ghost, of course, and I didn’t get around to mentioning that I lived in a rented apartment over a biker bar in Cave Creek, either. I’d save that for when I really wanted to make a major impression. Show him my stack of dog-eared, highlighted Damn Fool’s Guides, too, and tell him how I’d educated myself on every subject from psychic pet communication to private investigation. Who needed Harvard?

“So that’s about it,” I said, letting the words dwindle to a sigh.

Uncle Clive settled back in his chair, tented his fingers together over his chest. “You must have a few questions yourself,” he remarked.

Hell, yes, I had questions.

The first one, which I didn’t voice, was: What ever happened to that no-good, scum-sucking, parent-murdering brother of mine? Correction, Geoff was a half brother—but the whole topic congealed in my throat, like some gelatinous mass, and the words my brain framed were slithering along, flattened against the side walls, trying to squeeze past it.

I’d run a hundred Googles on Geoff if I’d run one, after finding his last name in the newspaper archives. I didn’t remember it, for reasons already stated, and Lillian had always clammed up whenever I raised the subject. Geoff Waters, born to my mother by her first husband, had gone to a juvenile detention facility in California after confessing to shooting Dad in the back of the head and Mom through the throat. At twenty-one, he’d been released and his record expunged. It galled me a little—and scared me a lot—to know that he was out there somewhere, lily-white as far as the law was concerned. Going on just as if nothing had happened.

“Geoff,” I finally managed. “Where do you suppose he is now?”

I hadn’t realized Clive was tense until he visibly relaxed. “Who knows?” he replied, followed by an unspoken, Who cares?

“He killed my cat,” I said. The words just came out, without my consciously forming them.

What cat?

Clive leaned forward slightly in his metal chair. His bushy brows lowered a little, and his eyes narrowed.

I blushed again, rubbed my right temple with my fingertips. “I don’t know why I said that,” I admitted, flustered. “I don’t remember owning a cat.”

My uncle bent a little farther at the waist and laid a hand on my shoulder. “This is too much, too fast,” he said. “I’m sorry for springing myself on you out of the blue, Mary Jo. It’s just that I’ve wondered for so long, what was happening to you—if you were all right. When I saw you, I…”

I wasn’t used to that kind of concern, and I’ve got to admit, it felt damn good. After I married Nick, Lillian and I weren’t exactly estranged, but we weren’t as close, either. She flat-out didn’t like him, and she didn’t mince words about it. Around the same time, Ham, Lillian’s husband and Jolie’s father, had been diagnosed with liver cancer, with all the attendant sorrows for all of them. And Greer had been too involved in stealing her rich doctor husband away from his former wife to care much what was going on in my life, so I’d coped as best I could.

I swiped away a tear with the back of one hand.

Clive took out his wallet, produced a card, and laid it beside my coffee cup. It was official, with raised print and the Arizona State Seal in the upper right-hand corner. “When you’re ready, Mary Jo,” he said, “give us a call.” He pushed back his chair, soundlessly this time, and stood. Collected his jacket from the armrest of the seat next to his. Waited.

I finally realized I was supposed to reciprocate with my own information. I took the pen he offered and wrote my cell number on one of the napkins that came with the coffee. I guess I should have added the address in Cave Creek, but I was afraid he’d MapQuest it when he got the chance, and find out I lived over Bad-Ass Bert’s. Maybe before the next mini family reunion, I could swing a decent place.

“Thanks,” my uncle said. He took the napkin, folded it carefully and tucked it into the pocket of his coat, now draped over one arm. “It’s so good to know you’re all right, Mary Jo,” he added gruffly. “I used to worry that Geoff might have found you…”

I swallowed, felt the soft fur of a cat brush against the underside of my chin. A cat I didn’t remember owning.

Chester, whispered one of innumerable wraiths haunting the depths of my subconscious mind.

Clive, who had been about to turn and walk away, paused and frowned. “Are you all right, Mary Jo?”

“Mojo,” I corrected. “Nobody calls me Mary Jo.”

He registered this information with a half nod, his eyes still narrowed with concern. “Just then, you looked—”

“I’m fine,” I insisted. Like I’d wanted to tell Tucker, the truth is not what it’s cracked up to be.

Still, he hesitated. “You’ve had quite a shock. Maybe I should walk you at least as far as your car.”

I shook my head. “I need a few moments to work through all this,” I said.

Score one for the truth.

“The memories must be tough to deal with,” Clive ventured.

I favored him with a thin, wobbly smile. “That’s the problem. There aren’t any memories.”

Uncle Clive looked taken aback, and sympathetic. “No memories?”

“Zip,” I said.

He surprised me then. He leaned down and kissed the top of my head, just lightly, the way I’d kissed Lillian at SunsetVilla. Something in my heart locked onto the feeling, like a heat-seeking missile, and launched itself into unknown territory.

WHEN I GOT HOME an hour later, still shaken, but with a copy of The Damn Fool’s Guide to Tarot under my arm and a spanking-new deck in my purse, the parking lot was full of Harleys and pickup trucks, and Bad-Ass Bert’s was jumping, even though it was still early afternoon. I probably should have rescued Russell from the steady flow of pepperoni and hot dog scraps, but I was already upstairs before I really focused on the idea.

I would take a shower, I decided, fall into bed—Nick or no Nick—and sleep until I could face the world again. After that, a couple of hours at the computer, coding and billing, and I could meet my quota, hold on to my various jobs and reasonably expect to pay next month’s rent when the first rolled around.

I fumbled for my keys, dropped one of the Tarot cards Lillian had pressed on me in the process, and watched as it slipped between the boards of the landing and fluttered to the ground beneath.

With a groan, I unlocked the door, tossed my purse and the book inside, and went back down the steps to retrieve the card.

The skeleton on horseback stared up at me.

Death. Of course it would be that card.

I picked it up, hiked back up the stairs and got a fresh shock.

No, Nick hadn’t come back.

But the cat had. He was fat and white and fluffy, with china-blue eyes, and he sat on the cheap rug just inside the door, switching his lush tail back and forth.

“Chester?”

“Meow,” he replied.

I dropped to my knees, reached for him, drew back my hand. If it went through him, I was going to lose it. I couldn’t deal with another ghost.

“Chester?” Okay, so I was repeating myself. I’d automatically called him by name, so I must have recognized him.

Another meow, this one a little less patient than the last.

Tentatively, I touched his head. Warm. Solid. Soft.

I saw a flash of crimson in my mind. The cat—this cat, lying on his side, dead, shot through with an arrow. I swallowed a rush of bile and sat back on my haunches, still on the landing, still clutching the Death card in my left hand. I had to take four or five deep breaths before I could be sure I wouldn’t either faint or vomit.

“How did you get in here?” I asked.

Like he was going to answer.

The way things had been going, he might have. I had definitely tumbled down the rabbit hole at some point. Let’s just say, if I saw a bottle marked Drink Me, I wasn’t planning to take a swig.

Chester gave his bushy tail another twitch, turned and strolled regally back into the apartment.

I heard the side door open downstairs and, afraid somebody would see me kneeling on the landing and ask a lot of questions I didn’t want to answer, I scrabbled inside, with considerably less grace than the cat had exhibited, and hoisted myself to my feet.

My mind was racing.

I remembered what Bert had said earlier, about how his aunt Nellie had seen her dog, gone to Bingo and died.

I peered at the Death card again, then made my way into the living room. Chester was perched on the back of the couch, delicately washing his right forepaw with a pink tongue.

“Nick?” I demanded. “Is this your idea of a joke?”

No answer, of course.

Chester paused in his ablutions and regarded me with pity.

“This is not funny,” I told him.

“Meow,” he agreed.

I looked around the apartment. No one had a key except Bert; I’d had the locks changed after Tucker and I called it quits—not because I was afraid of him, but as a statement, as much to myself as to him—and besides, he’d never have pulled a mean trick like this. Even if he’d been so inclined, he couldn’t have known about Chester.

“Get a hold of yourself, Sheepshanks,” I said aloud. “This can’t be the same cat.”

“Meow,” said Chester, sounding almost indignant.

I saw the blood again. The arrow sticking out of the animal’s side.

I ran into the bathroom and dry heaved until my empty stomach finally shriveled up into a tight little ball and stopped convulsing.

“I thought you’d like him,” a familiar voice said mildly, from the doorway.

I whirled from the sink, my face still dripping water from the frantic splashing, and there was Nick, in his funeral suit, leaning casually against the doorjamb.

“Y-you—”

Nick’s mouth quirked at one corner, and he nodded his head. “It’s me, all right.” He wasn’t glowing, I noticed fitfully. Must be a nighttime phenom.

“This cat—where—?”

“I found him wandering in the train station,” Nick said.

I stared at him, goggle-eyed. My stomach threatened more mayhem.

“What train station? What the hell are you talking about?”

Chester arrived on the scene, wound himself, purring, around Nick’s ankles.

“It’s a kind of cosmic clearinghouse,” Nick explained. “On the other side.”

“Right,” I agreed. “You just head for Platform 9 and ¾ and catch the Hogwarts Express.”

Nick looked blank. He’d never been much of a reader.

“Forget it,” I said. I pushed past Nick, noting that he was neither cold nor nebulous. Maybe the bone-freeze was a night thing, too.

Maybe I was out of my freaking mind.

“He was your cat when you were a little girl,” Nick wheedled, following me. “I thought—”

I made it to the kitchen, wrenched open a cupboard door and ferreted around until I found a can of tuna with a fairly recent expiration date. “Do dead cats eat?” I asked, furious with confusion.

“I don’t know,” Nick said uncertainly. I jumped when I realized he was standing directly behind me, peering over my shoulder into the cupboard. “Are those Oreos?”

I grabbed the package of cookies off the shelf and thrust them at him. “Yes. They’re old, but what the hell. It’s not like you could be poisoned.”

“You could be a little kinder,” Nick pointed out, affronted. But he took the cookies.

“Excuse me,” I snapped.

He stuck his nose into the Oreos, sniffed with decadent appreciation. His eyes rolled closed in ecstasy, the way they used to do when we had serious sex.

“Delicious,” he said.

The can opener whirred jarringly as I opened the tuna. I dumped the contents onto a saucer, crumbled them with a fork and set the whole shooting match down on the floor.

Chester nosed the food with interest, but didn’t eat.

I looked up at Nick.

He was holding a cookie in one hand and staring at it as though it had just tried to bite him.

“Damn,” he muttered.

I glanced at the cat again, partly to make sure he was still there and partly to see if he would eat.

“Problem?” I asked, shifting my attention back to Nick.

“I bit into the thing, and nothing happened.”

“I’d like to see that,” I said. “Do it again, while I’m watching.”

Nick did his ironic look. “This is not a performance designed for your amusement,” he told me.

“Duh,” I shot back. “I am definitely not amused.”

Just then, a familiar knock sounded at the outside door.

Nick arched an eyebrow. “Company?”

“Disappear or something,” I whispered. “It’s Tucker!”

Nick folded his arms. “Oh, well, if it’s Tucker—”

“I mean it, Nick. Go back to the train station or whatever it is.”

He didn’t move.

“Boogie!” I ordered, and made for the hallway.

Tucker let himself in, since I’d forgotten to lock the door when I encountered Chester on the mat, and we practically collided. By that time, I was wishing I hadn’t told Nick to get lost. I would feel a lot less crazy if somebody else witnessed the dead-husband demo.

“Come in,” I said cordially. “I was just about to whip up a grilled cheese sandwich.” The last thing I wanted to do was eat, but I knew if I didn’t, I’d get sick. My stomach needed something to digest besides its lining.

Tuck looked surprised by my reception. He’d clearly expected a rebuff, given our agreement to take a step back, not to mention the bristly meeting downstairs, and he’d probably had some speech all prepared, like Ten Reasons Why We Should Have Sex.

No way was I doing the deed with the Great Decease-o watching.

Sometimes I wish I were a little less principled.

The biker-cop followed me into the living room, and I waited for him to acknowledge Nick, who was standing in the middle of the room, his arms still folded, grinning like an idiot.

Tucker didn’t react. Not to Nick, not to the cat.

They might as well have been invisible.

“He can’t see us,” Nick said.

“Shit,” I said.

Tucker gave me a wounded look. “I didn’t expect you to be glad to see me,” he said, “but you don’t have to swear.”

This from a guy who hung out in a biker bar when he wasn’t on duty.

“He’s right,” Nick said smugly. “It’s very unladylike to curse.”

“Shut up!” I snapped.

Tucker squinted. “What?”

I felt heat sting my cheekbones. “Never mind.” I glanced at Chester, who was grooming himself again. I won’t go into the details. After all, I wouldn’t want to come off as unladylike or anything.

“Never mind?” Tucker retorted. “First you ask me in for a grilled cheese, then you—”

“Just never mind,” I said, rubbing my temples. “You didn’t drop off a cat earlier today, did you?”

“Drop off a cat?”

I was losing patience, and possibly hemorrhaging brain cells at the same time. “Can we just stop doing the echo thing?”

“It’s very annoying,” Nick submitted.

I bit back another “Shut up.” Said nothing, because that seemed safest.

“Mojo, what the hell are you talking about?” Tucker demanded.

“You haven’t—well—seen a cat around? A white one, with blue eyes and a fluffy tail?”

Tucker crossed to me, took me gently but resolutely by one arm and squired me to the couch. “Sit down,” he said, somewhat after the fact. “Put your head between your knees or something.”

Nick chuckled.

I glared at him. Tucker caught me and followed my gaze. And saw nothing, of course.

“What’s going on, Mojo?”

“It’s been a difficult day.” More truth. My God, I was getting good at it.

“I’ll get you some water,” Tucker decided. He looked pretty worried, and that pleased me. When he went into the kitchen, I waved at Nick to get out.

He must have been running on alkaloid. Not even a flicker.

I heard the refrigerator door open, close again.

A pause followed.

“Mojo?”

I tried to sound normal. “Yes?”

“How come there’s a plate of tuna on the floor?”

Nick gave me a pointed, how-will-you-get-out-of-this-one look.

“Go screw yourself,” I told him.

Tucker appeared in the kitchen doorway, with a bottle of water in one hand. “Did you say something?”

I smiled endearingly. “No,” I lied. Hell, it’s just easier to do what comes naturally.

“So what’s with the fish?” Tucker pressed.

“I was sort of hoping to get a cat,” I said.

Chester nestled against my side, purring. I just barely caught myself before I would have stroked his back.

“O—kay,” Tucker said.

I went for perky. “Do you still want that grilled cheese?”

Tucker looked around the room and, for a second or so, I thought he might have sensed something. “No,” he decided. “I think you need to get out for a while. How about a steak and some vino at my place?”

I wanted to go home with Tuck. I really wanted to go. He was a great cook and an even better lover, but there were solid reasons for the decision we’d made. He was still entangled with his ex-wife, and I didn’t want to be Transition Woman. Hot sex, easy promises, and then either back to the old setup or on to a new one. And here’s me, in the middle, trampled.

With most guys, that experience would have been a mere bummer. With Tucker, it might mean checking into Heartbreak Hotel and never checking out again.

“Bad idea,” I said. “Steak, vino and your place, I mean. For reasons previously stated.”

“Bad idea for a lot of reasons,” Nick interjected.

Shut the frick up, I thought fiercely, smiling tenderly at Tucker, and I think Decease-o picked up on the brain waves, because he looked insulted and tugged at his shirt cuffs, the way he always did when he was miffed.

Tucker sighed. His broad shoulders sloped slightly. “Listen, Mojo, I know we agreed—”

“To be friends,” I finished for him.

“Friends,” Nick scoffed.

I ignored him. I’d tell him off later, if his batteries didn’t run down before Tucker left.

Chester nudged me again. It was harder to ignore him.

“This is no good,” Tucker lamented quietly. “Our being apart, that is. And it’s not as if I’m married. Allison and I are legally divorced.”

“Go home, Tucker. Go catch a bad guy. I’ve got nothing to offer you but grilled cheese.”

Nick rolled his eyes.

Tucker brought me the water. He hesitated, then said, “You’re sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine, Tucker.”

I set the water bottle aside on the end table, stood, and sort of steered him to the door. There, he laid his hands on my shoulders and brushed a kiss across my forehead, beneath my bangs.

I hoped he didn’t feel the tremor that went through me.

“Call me if you need anything,” he said.

“‘Call me if you need anything,’” Nick mimicked, from about a foot behind me. “Gag me with a kickstand.” If he’d been breathing, I probably would have felt it on my nape.

Tucker left. Reluctantly.

I closed the door and turned on Nick, ready to rip a strip off him.

But he was gone.

I looked around. “Chester?”

My cat was gone, too.

For a long time, I just stood there, trying to make sense of it all. Then, disconsolately, I went into the kitchen, picked up the plate I’d put out for Chester and dumped the tuna down the disposal.

I didn’t miss Nick. If he never came back, it would be too soon.

But I sure as hell missed the cat.

CHAPTER 3

I slept in the living room, on the couch, figuring I’d be less likely to wake up and find Nick lying beside me, since he wouldn’t fit. I guess it worked, because he wasn’t there when I opened my eyes, but Chester was.

He sat on the coffee table next to Lillian’s three Tarot cards, which were standing in an ominous little row, propped against the big Mexican fruit bowl I’d bought at the flea market a couple of years before.

I swung my feet over the side of the couch, sat upright and rubbed my face with both hands. When I looked again, Chester was still there.

“Meow,” he said.

Okay, this was a major sign of my mental instability, but I was glad to see him just the same—sans the arrow from Geoff’s bow. I had mostly visceral memories of the cat, nothing very specific, but his bloody end was vivid in my mind. I knew I’d found him in the backyard of our place in Cactus Bend, behind the storage shed where my dad kept all the stuff he was constantly swapping. He’d called it “horse-trading.” I recalled that, too, all of a sudden, but there were never any horses.

That was Dad for you. All dreams and wishes, no substance.

“Hey, Buddy,” I said to the cat. After the briefest hesitation, I reached out to pat his head. Silky soft, solid and warm. No glow, either.

I was heartened. Glad I’d taken the risk of touching him.

He meowed again, and knocked down all three Tarot cards with one swipe of his tail.

I left the Queen, the Page and Death where they lay. I’d studied them half the night, along with their corresponding chapters in The Damn Fool’s Guide to the Tarot, with a sensation of dread in the pit of my stomach the whole time. I was still in the dark. I didn’t know much about the symbology, but I did know that Lillian always read them intuitively, without recourse to books. She’d told me once that Tarot cards were like little windows into the psyche; you just had to learn the language of the subconscious mind.

Since the day was already underway, whether I wanted to go along for the ride or not, I decided I’d better jump aboard. Do something constructive, like eat and make coffee.

The phone rang as I entered the kitchen, Chester prancing twitchy-tailed behind me, and I picked up the cordless receiver and opened the refrigerator door simultaneously. It’s a mobile age, all about multitasking.

“Yo,” I said.

“Yo,” Greer mocked, with a peaky smile in her voice. “That’s a fine way to answer the telephone. What if I’d been one of your doctor clients? You certainly would have made a businesslike impression.”

Greer cared a lot about impressions. Interesting, since Lillian and I had found her in a bus station in Boise, Idaho, when I was nine and Greer was barely thirteen, working the waiting room in an effort to cadge enough money to buy a meal at the seedy lunch counter. She’d been wearing tight hip-hugger jeans that cold winter day, I recalled, along with a fitted black leather jacket, a blue Mohawk, a fat lip and an attitude.

Now, she was married to a famous plastic surgeon; she’d become the classic Snottsdale wife, with a tasteful blond pageboy, winsomely brushing her gym-fit shoulders, an Escalade and enough jewelry to add ten pounds to her weight on any given day.

“Thanks for the timely vocational pointer,” I said, reaching for the milk carton standing lonely on the top shelf of the fridge and taking a cautious sniff. I flinched, dumped the stuff in giant curds into the sink and tossed the carton. The water made a decisive whooshing sound as I washed the works down the drain. “If Alex told you to call about his Medicare billings, you can tell him I already e-mailed them to the office. And I’m not altering the codes.”

Alexander Pennington, M.D., was Greer’s husband. He was twenty years older than she was, with a very bitter ex-wife and a creative bent for diagnosis. As in, if the medical facts didn’t jibe with Medicare’s payment schedules, he whittled them to fit.

A chill wafted into my sphere, coming from Greer’s direction. “Alex didn’t ask me to call,” she said stiffly. “Nor did he say anything about the billings. We’re trying to help you, Mojo. Throw a little business your way, since you seem determined never to get a real job.”

I could have pointed out that at least I worked for my money, instead of drawing an allowance from a rich husband, but I didn’t. Greer really pissed me off sometimes, but I considered her my sister, and I loved her. That day in the bus station, Lillian had bought her a meal and a seat next to us on the Greyhound to Las Vegas. Our latest car had just died alongside the highway, but not to worry. When we got to Vegas, Lillian put twenty dollars into a slot machine and won a spiffy subcompact. Greer was as much a part of our strange little family as if she’d been born into it.

I’d been too young to get the big picture, back then. Greer was a runaway and, thus, pimp bait. She’d already done some hooking by the time Lillian took her in, but afterward, she’d been a straight-A student and an all-around good kid.

“Are you still seeing that cop?” Greer asked, when I went too long without saying anything. Greer was uncomfortable with silence. If I didn’t chatter like a magpie, she thought I was mad at her.

“No,” I said, examining the fridge again. There was nothing for it. I was going to have to tap my bank account and spring for a few provisions.

“Good,” she answered. “He might as well still be married.”

No way was I walking into that one. Alex Pennington, M.D., had been married when Greer met him at a country club mixer, where she’d gone to network, hoping to line up some jobs for her interior design firm. Yes, Pennington’s wife had been a raging drunk, but that didn’t excuse the fact that he and Greer had started an affair the same night. Systematically, they’d eased the first Mrs. Pennington right out of the picture, and within a year, Greer took over the title.

“Tucker,” I said, “is not married. He’s divorced.”

“Emotionally, he’s married,” Greer insisted. She sounded so damn self-righteous that I had to bite my lip and remind myself that she’d taken to the big sister role like a pro from the moment we cruised away from that bus station in Idaho. She was devoted to Lillian, too. It was Greer’s signature on the checks covering the nursing home.

Yes, I had a problem with people who cheat on their spouses, obviously because of Nick, but it was my problem, not Greer’s.

“Okay, whatever,” I said, shutting the fridge with a little slam. I hate grocery shopping. Nothing ever looks good, and when I get it home, I have to cook it. “Is there a point to this call, Greer, or did you just want to needle me about my unconventional lifestyle?”

“‘Unconventional lifestyle,’” Greer repeated. “Now why would I suggest anything like that—just because you live over a bar with a nasty name, do only enough work to survive and play the slot machines every chance you get?”

“Greer,” I said patiently, “don’t make me fight back. It isn’t as if the arsenal’s empty, you know.”

She sighed. “I didn’t call to fight,” she said wistfully, and I wondered if she was really talking to me or to herself. “Alex is out of town for a medical convention. I would have gone along, but it’s always so boring, with him in meetings the whole time. Besides, I haven’t been feeling my best—if there’s a God, I’m pregnant—so I decided to stay home. I was hoping you might come over tonight, keep me company for a while. We could have dinner by the pool.”

I looked down at Chester. I liked him, and I was glad he was around, but, hey, he was a ghost, likely to fade away at any moment. Tucker and I were on the outs, so I couldn’t expect any companionship from that quarter. And maybe if Greer and I spent a little time together, we might get back some tiny part of the old sisterly camaraderie we’d lost since she moved uptown, metaphorically speaking.

“Sure,” I said. “I’d like that. What time, and what can I bring?”

We agreed on six o’clock, she pleaded with me not to attempt anything culinary and we hung up.

Chester made the leap to the countertop and sat next to the coffeemaker. I elbowed him gently aside to get a pot brewing.

“So,” I said, “do dead cats need litter boxes?”

JUST MY LUCK to run into Psycho Bitch in the supermarket.

I was minding my own business, making the Lean Cuisine selections for the week in the freezer aisle, when all of a sudden, she rams my cart with hers and practically sends me headfirst into the stacked boxes of Sesame Chicken, New England Pot Roast and French Bread Pizza.

I whirled on her. “God damn it, Heather,” I cried, “I’m about one inch off filing a restraining order against your crazy ass!”

Heather Dillard, ex-wife of a guy I dated precisely twice, three years ago, gripped the handle of her cart and prepared for another assault. I didn’t see her for long periods of time—then, with no warning, she’d pop up out of nowhere, bent on avenging a whole slew of imagined wrongs. I’d caught her letting the air out of my tires once, and another time she’d waltzed into the bar and told Bert she was an old friend of mine, planning a surprise birthday party, and would he please, pretty-please, give her the key to my apartment?

Fortunately, he’d refused, but here’s the creepy part. It was my birthday, so she’d taken the trouble to find that out, along with God knew what other personal details.

And she’d sent me a present, too.

Three dead birds in a shoebox, tied up with a bow.

“You’re seeing Brian again,” she accused, knuckles whitening on the cart handle. Her nostrils flared, and her spiky hair—blond that week—stuck out all over her head, as if she’d gotten drunk and cut it herself, with a dull razor blade. Her pupils had white all around, like that bride in the news a couple of years ago, the one who skipped out on her wedding, stirred up a media frenzy and had a conglomeration of local, state and federal agencies frantically searching for her.

I sighed. “I’m not seeing Brian,” I said. My dead ex-husband and my murdered cat, yes. Brian, no.

“Of course you’d deny it,” Heather challenged, but she looked uncertain, and that gave me a moment’s hope that she might actually be reasonable. Which begged the question—who was crazy here, her or me?

“When something isn’t true, I deny it. Go figure.” I threw a couple of Yankee Pot Roast dinners into my cart, just to let her know I wasn’t scared.

“We have four children,” she said.

Two old ladies shopping for Stouffer’s backed off, and a manager appeared at the far end of the aisle, looking worried. I might have been reassured, if he hadn’t been about sixteen and roughly the same weight as Chester.

“I’m happy for you,” I replied, “and sorry for them. You need help, Heather. And you need to get away from me—and stay away from me—before I have you arrested.”

Her lower lip wobbled. It looked cracked and dry, as though she’d bitten it a lot. I felt a twinge of pity, but it passed quickly when her cart clanged against mine and one of the wheels ran over my toe.

“Bitch!” she screeched. “Homewrecker! Tramp!”

That did it.

I went after her. Right for her throat. I probably would have strangled her if two box boys and one of the old ladies hadn’t intervened. She must have been up on her Fosomax, that ancient shopper, because she dived straight into the fray, with no evident concern for broken bones.

“Somebody get security!” one of the box boys yelled.

A rent-a-cop appeared, overweight, his uniform shirt speckled with white powder, most likely doughnut residue.

“Did anybody see what happened?” he huffed.

“I did,” said the old lady, stepping between Heather and me.

I shook free of box boy #1.

Heather struggled in the grasp of #2.

“What?” asked the security guard—Marvin, according to his name tag—dusting off his shirt with one hand.

“This one,” answered the geriatric she-hero, pointing to Heather, “was harassing that one.” The arthritic finger moved to me.

“You’ve got that right,” I said huffily, tugging at the hem of my Be a Bad-Ass at Bert’s T-shirt. “It’s a fine thing when a person can’t even shop for frozen dinners without being attacked by some maniac. I’ve got a good mind to take my business elsewhere after this.”

Marvin and the box boys looked hopeful.

Heather started to cry. “She stole my husband,” she said, with more lip wobbling.

Marvin, the box boys and the old lady studied me thoughtfully.

“She’s nuts,” I said. “Certifiable. Over the edge. And furthermore, her husband is a jerk.”

“One of these days,” Heather said, “I am going to kill you.”

Public opinion swung in my direction.

“I rest my case,” I said.

“Did you steal her husband?” the old lady wanted to know.

“No,” I replied, ready to wheel into the sunset with my frozen dinners and what was left of my dignity. “And if I had, I’d have given him back.”

With that, I pushed my shopping cart between them and headed for the checkout stand. I didn’t start shaking until I was safe in my secondhand Volvo, with the windows rolled up and the doors locked.

Back at Bad-Ass Bert’s, I carried my groceries inside. Eight frozen dinners, a litter box and a bag of absorbent pellets.

“I wasn’t sure,” I told Chester, who was waiting for me when I lugged the stuff through the door. “About the litter, I mean.”

Chester sniffed the bag curiously.

“Of course,” I reasoned, because I needed to hear a voice, even if it was my own, “if you don’t eat, it follows that you don’t poop, either.”

“Meow,” Chester said.

“Thanks for hanging out,” I answered.

“I wish you felt that way about me,” Nick said.

I swung around to see him standing next to my bookshelf, which was beside the computer, where I kept my sizeable collection of Damn Fool’s Guides. Unfortunately, there wasn’t one dealing with dead people—trust me, I’d looked the day before, when I stopped to get the Tarot tome, but Near Death Experiences was the closest thing—or crazy female stalkers, either.

“Now what?” I demanded, letting the kitty litter and the plastic box topple to the floor. I clutched the bag full of Lean Cuisines to my chest, like a shield.

Nick was perusing titles. “The Damn Fool’s Guide to Dating,” he mused, running a finger along the spines. “Tantric Sex. Raising Ferrets.” He paused, looked me over closely, and with compassionate concern. “Ferrets?”

“It was a passing fancy,” I said, and started for the kitchen.

He followed, of course, and so did the cat.

“Tantric Sex?” Nick pressed.

“I’m single and over twenty-one,” I reminded him, jerking open the freezer section of the refrigerator and tossing in the week’s meals, bag and all. “And what are you doing here, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Just a friendly visit,” he said. Then he opened the cupboard, took out the Oreos and sniffed them. A look of pathetic longing crossed his face.

“Here’s an idea,” I said, whacking the freezer door shut with the flat of one hand. “Go ‘visit’ your mother.”

“Your attitude is very unbecoming, you know,” Nick said. With a sigh, he put the Oreos back in the cupboard. “What did my mother ever do to deserve this…rancor?”

“Well, first of all,” I replied, ticking number one off on my finger, “she gave birth to you. Second, she stuck her nose into our business every chance she got. And third, she saw to it that I got bupkis in the divorce.” I paused. “Oh, and then there’s the way her head sprouts snakes at the most unexpected moments.”

“You don’t like her,” Nick said, sad and surprised.

“Don’t take it too hard, but I don’t like you very much, either.”

“If you knew the trouble I have to go to, to keep a charge,” he replied, quietly stricken, “you wouldn’t be so rude.”

I grabbed the coffee carafe, poured out the stale stuff I’d never gotten around to drinking earlier and cranked on the faucet. The pipes rattled. “If that little illusion gives you consolation, Nick,” I said, “you just go with it. And while you’re at it, why don’t you tell me what the hell you want? As long as it isn’t sex, I’ll give it to you, and you can move on to the next plane of existence, or whatever it is you dead people do.”

Any self-respecting spook would have been insulted enough to vanish, but not Nick. He grinned, pulled back a chair at the table and sat down. “No sex, huh?”

“Not on your—life,” I said.

“Bummer,” he sighed.

“Don’t you have something to do? In the train station or whatever it is?”

Another sigh. “I’m stuck in the depot until I deal with you,” Nick said, and he looked just earnest enough to be telling the truth.

A clear indication that he was lying through his perfect teeth.

“Are you sleeping with that biker?” he asked.

“That comes under the heading of None of Your Damn Business.” I sloshed the water into the top of the coffeemaker, spooned some Starbucks into the basket and jammed the carafe onto the burner.

“A biker, for Christ’s sake?”

“Tucker’s not a biker. He’s a cop. Narcotics division.”

“At least his name rhymes with my opinion of him.”

“Gee, and your opinion matters so much.”

“You didn’t used to be so hard.”

“Well, you haven’t changed at all.” I leaned against the counter, folding my arms. Chester wound his silky way around my ankles. “You’re still an arrogant, self-centered ass.”

“I have changed, Mojo.”

“Right,” I agreed tartly. “You’re dead.”

“That was a low blow.”

“It’s true, isn’t it?”

“I’m trying to help you.”

“How? By scaring me out of my wits? By undermining my sanity?”

“I brought back your cat.”

I looked down at Chester and, on impulse, scooped him up. He felt so real, and pretty chunky. Whatever they were feeding him on the other side, it was sticking to his ribs.

Suddenly, I wanted to cry. I knew I’d loved Chester once, and I was dangerously close to loving him again.

“You never got to say goodbye to him,” Nick said.

I buried my face in white, warm fur. “He can’t stay,” I mourned.

“No,” Nick agreed gently. “It’s a frequency thing. These appearances are pretty tough to sustain. But he’s not dead, Mojo. He’s alive, but in a whole different way. That’s the point.”

Chester’s fur was damp, where I’d cried on him. “It’s the same with you.” Statement, but it had the tone of a question.

Nick nodded. “The difference is, when he goes back, he’ll be able to get onto a train and go on to whatever his idea of heaven happens to be. I’ll still be stuck at the station.”

I was grudgingly intrigued, if not necessarily sympathetic. I’d loved Nick completely, and he might as well have torn my heart out of my body and backed over it with a UPS truck. “Why?”

“Unresolved issues,” he said, with yet another sigh.

I studied him, still holding Chester as close as I could without squashing him. “What kind of unresolved issues?” I asked suspiciously.

“You trusted me. You loved me. And I betrayed you. I have to earn your forgiveness.”

“Is that all?” I sniffed, reluctantly set Chester down on the floor, straightened again. “Okay. That’s easy. You’re forgiven. Now, kindly hop on the Starlight Express and stop showing up in my apartment.”

If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn Nick was being sincere. He actually looked remorseful. “Sorry,” he said. “It isn’t that easy. You can’t just toss off a platitude. You have to really mean it.”

“Shit,” I said.

He looked like a kicked puppy. “Was it that bad? I remember some really good times together.”

“Do you?” I grabbed a mug down off the shelf. No sense getting two; if Nick couldn’t eat Oreos, he probably couldn’t drink coffee, either. “Maybe you’re confusing me with your secretary—excuse me, executive assistant. I caught you boinking her in a construction trailer once, remember? Or maybe it’s that sweet young thing in the condo down the hall from ours. The one who always wanted you to fix something. Or—”

Nick put up a hand, rose wearily to his feet. “I’m sorry, Mojo. What else can I say? I can’t change the past.”

Tears stung my eyes. “Get out, Nick.”

He was gone in a blink.

And Chester went with him.

“YOU’VE BEEN CRYING,” Greer accused, when I showed up at her mansion outside of Scottsdale at five to six that night, bringing along a bottle of Chardonnay donated by Bert. A glorious Arizona sunset blazed crimson and pink and apricot on the western horizon.

“No, I haven’t,” I said. It was a partial truth, anyway. I’d spent the afternoon at my computer, coding and billing, and the May rent was a sure thing. I’d also gone through a whole box of tissues.

Greer looked rich—and skeptical—in her floaty flowered skirt and pink matching top. Her blond hair was in a French braid, and I wondered how she stood so straight, with Dr. Pennington’s diamond weighing down her left hand. I figure the jewelry alone keeps Scottsdale chiropractors operating in the black.

“Your eyes are red,” she said.

Once, I would have spilled it all. Told Greer about Nick and Chester. But Greer was different now that she was married. The change was subtle, but I wasn’t imagining it.

I had to tell her something, so I went with Lillian, the three Tarot cards, and my chat with Uncle Clive. Maybe, I thought, after a glass of wine I might even get as far as Crazy Heather and the supermarket caper.

Listening intently, Greer led the way across the brick-paved portico and through the open doors at the top of the steps. The house alone covered more than ten thousand square feet of prime desert, and the art inside was museum quality stuff. The furniture was tastefully expensive, and I could see the back patio in the distance, through a set of glass doors. Nothing but the best for Greer Pennington, world-class trophy wife.

Okay, so maybe I sound a little mean-spirited. I loved Greer, but she could have been a lot more than some old fart’s pampered wife, and that bugged the hell out of me. Before Alex, she’d put herself through art school, worked for other people for a while to learn the ropes, then gone on to start and run her own design firm. She’d been successful, too, after a rocky start.

When Alex snapped his fingers, though, she’d sold the company without even a mild protest. In fact, she’d seemed relieved. And that was what bothered me. Not that Greer was set for life, at least financially. I was happy for her. No, it was the way she’d given up on her own dreams. Put on a costume, learned the lines and played the second wife as if she’d never done all that hard work to make something of herself.

We settled ourselves in cushioned patio chairs, under a sloping tiled roof, near the sparkling pool. Greer checked out the wine label, smiled charitably and carried the bottle into the kitchen by way of yet another door.

When she returned with two crystal glasses, I figured she’d pulled a switcheroo, probably dumping Bert’s Chardonnay down the sink and filling the goblets with something French or Napa and ridiculously expensive.

“Should you be drinking if there’s a chance you might be pregnant?” I inquired.

Greer looked away for a moment, then looked back. “Not to worry,” she said, reaching for her glass. “I am definitely not pregnant.”

I knew she wanted a baby, to make her happy home with Dr. Pennington complete, and I felt a pinching sorrow behind my heart. “I’m sorry,” I said, and I meant it.

Greer downed a couple of sips—more like gulps—of her wine, and gave a gurgling, disjointed little laugh. Nothing was funny, and we both knew it, but Greer liked to pretend. Maybe it was a survival mechanism.

“You told me on the phone this morning that you didn’t feel well,” I said. “Have you been to a doctor?”

“I’m married to a doctor.”

Didn’t I know it? “You have shadows under your eyes, and I think you’ve lost weight. What’s going on, Greer?”

She sucked up some more wine before answering, and when she did, she ignored my question entirely and presented one of her own. “Do you think it’s because of—well—things I did when I was young?”

I scrambled to catch up. “You mean your not being pregnant?”

Greer looked around nervously, as though the editor of the country club newsletter might be crouching behind the cabana, taking notes, or lurking on the other side of the towering stucco wall enclosing at least an acre of backyard. The windows of the guesthouse, opposite the pool, caught the colors of the sunset and turned opaque. “Yes,” she said, and it seemed to me that she’d gone to a lot of trouble, scoping out the landscape, just to say one word.

“Lillian had you checked out at a free clinic in Vegas, remember? You were fine. No STD’s, no residual effects whatsoever. It wasn’t the hooking, Greer.”

She tensed, and what little color she’d had drained from her cheeks. “Keep your voice down!”

“Sorry,” I said, chagrined. I always felt out of place at Greer’s, and I tended to put my foot in my mouth. “You’re alone here, aren’t you? Carmen is gone for the day?”

Carmen was her housekeeper—a very nice woman, but not much for overtime.

Greer nodded miserably. “I didn’t mean to snap,” she said.

I patted her hand. “It’s okay.”

She fortified herself with more wine. I decided it was probably cramps that made her look so woebegone and beaten. “Nothing in my life,” she said, “is ‘okay.’”

CHAPTER 4

I’d love to report that Greer and I got right to the heart of things, over our dinner of thinly sliced smoked salmon, gourmet bagels and cream cheese with capers, and settled all our collective and individual problems, but we didn’t. Greer drank wine—first hers, then mine. She shook her head when I told her about Heather and the supermarket incident, and said I ought to move to a civilized neighborhood.

What one had to do with the other was beyond me then, and I still don’t exactly get it.

I tried to communicate. I really did. I told her about Lillian and the Tarot cards, and running into Uncle Clive at the nursing home.

She recalled that he was a state senator and wondered aloud if he and his wife would ever make the trip up from Cactus Bend to attend one of her gala parties. It wasn’t so much that Greer was uncaring; she just couldn’t seem to get any kind of grip on the conversational thread.

I would have been better off talking to Chester, and I don’t think the evening did much for Greer, either, except perhaps to provide some brief respite from whatever was weighing on her mind.

At eight-thirty, I thanked my sister for her hospitality, said my goodbyes and left. Greer was a lonely, shrinking figure in my rearview mirror, standing in her brick-paved driveway, watching me out of sight.

I was too restless to go straight home. I knew the cat was gone, and if he’d come back, the chances were all too good that Nick was with him. I wasn’t up to another dead-husband fest, so I headed for one of my favorite places—the casino at 101 and Indian Bend.

Talking Stick was doing a lively business that night, its domed, tent-shaped roofs giving it a circus-type appeal. I parked the Volvo at the far end of the eastern lot and trekked back to the nearest entrance, my ATM card already smoking in my wallet.

Inside, I pulled some money at the handy-dandy cash machine next to the guest services desk. A security guard gave me a welcoming wave; I won a lot, though I was usually careful to keep the jackpots small, so I wouldn’t attract too much notice, and it had gotten to the point where everybody knew my name.

“Cheers,” I told the guard as I breezed by, weaving my way between banks of whirring slot machines beckoning with bright, inviting lights. I passed the Wheel of Fortunes, with their colorful spinners up top, and the ever popular Double Diamonds, which were always occupied. I used to play them a lot, but then the powers-that-be cranked the progressive jackpot down by a thousand bucks, and it became a matter of principle.

I passed the gift shop and the bar and came to the black-jack tables, lining either side of the wide aisle. A shifting layer of cigarette smoke hung over everything like a cloud. I’m not a smoker, but hey, the poor bastards have to have somewhere to hang out.

Brian Dillard, one of the blackjack dealers, stood idle. My jerk-o-meter went off like a slot machine on tilt, but I stopped anyway. Discretion may be the better part of valor, but discretion, like truth, sometimes gets more hype than it really warrants.

Brian checked out my jean jacket and cotton sun-shift, as if there were a dress code and he got to decide whether I met it or not.

“I saw your ex-wife at the supermarket today,” I told him.

Brian made a visible shift from lascivious to nervous. “Heather?” he asked weakly, keeping his voice down lest a pit boss overhear. Personal exchanges are not encouraged in any casino I’ve ever been to, especially if they have dramatic potential. If you want to get the bum’s rush, just make a scene.

“Unless you’ve been married and divorced again since last time I saw you, yes. If she’s not on medication, you might suggest it.”

He looked anxiously around, then met my gaze again. “What happened?”

I don’t think Brian was concerned about my personal safety. He just wanted me to spit out whatever I was going to say and get away from his table.

I told him about the cart ramming, and the death threat.

He paled.

I wondered what I ever saw in the guy.

“You have four kids, Brian,” I said, bringing it on home. “They’re living with a crazy woman. You might want to revisit the custody agreement.”

The pallor gave way to a flush. “I can’t take care of four kids,” he shot back in a hissing whisper. “Hell, two of them aren’t even mine.”

Double what-did-I-see-in-this-guy. “Okay. Then maybe some concerned citizen—like me, for instance—ought to call CPS and get a social worker to look into the situation.” I got out my cell phone.

“Wait,” Brian rasped, as a pit boss glanced our way. I could have played a hand or two, for cover, but blackjack isn’t my game.

I raised an eyebrow. Didn’t put the cell phone away.

“I’ll talk to Heather, okay?” Brian blurted. “I’ll tell her to leave you alone.”

I must not have looked satisfied.

“And I’ll make sure the kids are all right.”

“You’re a shoo-in for Father of the Year,” I said dryly, but I dropped my weapon. I was by no means reassured that the innocent offspring were out of the parental woods, but I wasn’t Lillian, and I couldn’t snatch the mini-Dillards and take to the road. I had a life.

Well, a semblance of one, anyway. I hadn’t completely given up.

I left Brian to his dealing and headed for the “car bank,” a group of slot machines just inside the main entrance. There’s always a gleaming new vehicle parked on a high platform in the middle; you have to hit three of something, on the pay-line, to win it.

I’ve seen it happen, so it’s legit. Sometimes, the same rig sits there for weeks on end, and sometimes they give away two of them in a day. I’d have worked my mojo and snagged one for myself, but I liked my Volvo well enough and, besides, I didn’t want to pay the taxes and license fees.

I sat down at my favorite, a certain twenty-five-cent Ten Times Pay machine, shoved in my comps card—hey, I could eat free for months on the points I’ve racked up, and you never know when you’re going to get poor all of a sudden—fed a fifty dollar bill in to buy two hundred credits.

I drew a deep breath, let it out slowly, and tried to align myself with the Cosmic Flow. Even the best casinos are energetic garbage dumps, with all that greed and desperation floating around, and it’s important to get Zen. Lillian taught me the trick, and when I play, I usually win.

If I get the mindset right, that is. I had to shake off the Brian influence.

That night, I’d burned through seventy-five credits before I got a hit. Ten Times Triple Bar, nine hundred virtual quarters. I rubbed my hands together.

“Come to mama,” I said.

I didn’t focus on the guy who dropped into the seat at the machine next to mine right away, though I got a glimpse of him in my peripheral vision as soon as he sat down.

He was good-looking, probably in his late thirties, with a head of sleek, light brown hair and the kind of body you have to sweat for, often and hard. I wanted to ignore him, but I could tell by the way he kept shifting around and glancing my way that he wanted to talk.

Shit, I thought.

“I’m just waiting for a spot to open at one of the poker tables,” he said.

“Mmm-hmm,” I replied, hoping he’d take the hint and leave me alone. Watching the reels spin is a form of meditation for me, and I like to focus. It unscrambles my brain in a way nothing else does, except maybe really good sex, and even on a generous gambling budget, it’s a lot cheaper than therapy.

Come to think of it, it’s cheaper than really good sex, too, from an emotional standpoint.

“I think I’ve seen you somewhere before.” Mr. Smooth.

I suppressed an eye-roll and pushed the spin button with a little more force than necessary. He wasn’t even pretending to play his slot machine anymore; just leaning against the supporting woodwork, with his arms folded.

“I get that all the time,” I said tersely. “I must be a type.”

He chuckled. It was a rich, confident sound, low in timbre, and it struck some previously unknown chord deep inside me. It could have been fear, it could have been annoyance. All I knew was, it wasn’t anything sexual; I’m a one-man woman, even when the man in question is thoroughly unavailable. “And not a very friendly one, either,” he observed.

I gave him a brief look. Ever since the first Nick episode, I hadn’t trusted my own eyeballs. “You’re not dead, are you?”

He shrank back, but with a grin, and extended one hand. “What a question,” he said. “Do you run into a lot of dead people?”

I ignored the hand, took in his boyish face, his wide-set, earnest gray eyes, his strong jaw. In the next moment, I leaped out of my chair and backed up a couple of steps. I know my eyes were wide, and my voice came out as a squeak.

“Geoff!”

My parent-murdering, cat-killing half brother contrived to look affably mystified, and threw my own line back in my face. “I must be a type,” he said. “My name isn’t Geoff. It’s Steve. Steve Roberts.” He actually fished for his wallet then, as though prepared to show me his driver’s license or something, and prove his identity.

“Maybe now it is,” I retorted, snatching up my purse so I could get out of there. I didn’t even push the “cash out” button to get a ticket for my credits, that’s how rattled I was. Still, I couldn’t resist asking, “When did you get out of prison, Geoff?”

He sighed. He had one of those give-your-heart-to-Jesus faces, good skin, good teeth, neat hair. And there was a cold knowing in his eyes that bit into my entrails like a bear trap.

“You must be mistaking me for somebody else,” Geoff said sadly.

I turned on my heel and bolted.

Midway through the casino, I turned to see if he was following me, but the place was crowded, and even though I didn’t catch a glimpse of him, I couldn’t be sure. I found a security guard, told him I’d won a major cash jackpot, and asked him to walk me to my car.

Even then I didn’t feel safe.

I locked the doors as soon as I was in the Volvo, and my hand shook so hard as I tried to put the keys in the ignition that it took three tries before I got it right. I screeched out of the parking lot, checking my rearview for a tail every couple of seconds, and laid rubber for the 101, hauling north.

My heart felt as though it had swelled to fill my whole torso, and my blood thundered in my ears like a steady thump on some huge drum.

Geoff.

Parent killer.

Cat murderer.

He hadn’t turned up at the casino by accident, that was too great a coincidence, so he must have deliberately followed me there. How long had he been watching me, keeping track of my movements? Did he know where I lived?

Was I on his hit list? And if so, why? He’d already done his time. What did he have to fear from me?

He killed Chester. The reminder boiled up out of my subconscious mind. What other reason could he have had, except pure meanness?

My dinner scalded its way up into the back of my throat. I swallowed hard. I might have been scared shitless, but I wasn’t about to vomit in the Volvo. You can’t get the smell out.

I got back to Cave Creek without incident, and for once, I was glad to see Tucker’s distinctive bike parked in the lot. I sat there in my car, with the engine running and the doors locked, and felt frantically around in the depths of my purse for my cell phone.

It eluded me, so I upended the whole bag on the passenger seat, scrabbled through the usual purse detritus until I closed my hand over high-tech salvation, and speed-dialed Tucker’s number.

“Mojo?” he said, after three rings. I heard the sound of pool balls clicking, and the twang of some mournful tune playing on the jukebox.

Thank God, I thought.

I tilted my head back and closed my eyes, hyperventilating.

Tucker tried again, this time with a note of urgency in his voice. “Mojo? Is that you? Where—? Damn it, say something.”

“I saw him,” I ground out. Then I had to slap a hand over my mouth for a moment, because I was either going to puke or start screaming.

“You saw who?”

According to the Damn Fool’s Guide to English Grammar, he should have said “whom,” but this was no time to split hairs. The man was an ASU graduate, for God’s sake. If he hadn’t mastered the language by now, there was no point in correcting him.

I spoke through parted fingers. “My b-brother.”

“I didn’t know you had a brother,” Tucker mused. “Where are you?”

I uncovered my mouth, but screaming and puking were still viable options. “In the parking lot,” I squeaked.

“You’re calling from the parking lot?”

Screaming squeezed out puking and took a solid lead. “No, damn it! I’m calling from the freakin’ roof!”

“Chill,” Tucker said. “I’ll be right out.”

I watched, still clutching the phone to my ear, as the side door swung open and Tucker ambled out of Bad-Ass Bert’s. He scanned the lot, got a fix on the Volvo, and sprinted in my direction.

I rolled down the driver’s-side window about an inch.

“He might have followed me,” I whispered.

Tucker braced his hands on the side of the Volvo and peered in at me. “Open the door, Mojo,” he said.

“He killed my cat,” I said. Not to mention my parents.

“Christ,” Tucker snapped, and pulled at the door handle.

I popped the locks, and he almost fell on his very attractive ass in the gravel.

“I need help,” I told him.

“That’s for damn sure,” Tucker agreed. He sounded testy, but I could tell he was concerned by the way he kept sweeping the lot with his gaze. He reached into the car, unfastened the seat belt and tugged me out, onto my feet.

I landed hard against his chest, and I’ll admit it, I clung for a couple of seconds.

“I saw him,” I repeated.

Tucker held me up with one arm, reached inside for my purse and car keys with the other. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you upstairs. Can you make it on your own, or should I carry you?”

The offer was tempting, but I had a thing about standing on my own two feet whenever possible, literally and figuratively. Besides, Tucker and I were officially Not Dating, and I was just scared enough to go from being carried to being laid without passing Go and certainly without collecting $200.

I gave a moment’s forlorn thought to the credits I’d left in the Ten Times Pay machine when I fled the casino. I could have made my car payment with that money.

“I can walk,” I said, though it was still pretty much a theory.

Tuck squired me up the stairs, unlocked the door and swung it open.

Chester sat waiting in the hallway. There was a faint, greenish glow around him.

I burst into tears.

Tucker muttered something, steered me to the couch and bent over me to look deep into my weepy eyes.

“Booze,” I said.

“You’ve been drinking booze?”

“No. I want to drink booze. Now.”

Tucker nodded, probably relieved that he wouldn’t have to bust me for drinking and driving, went into the kitchen, rifled the cupboards and came back with a double shot of Christian Brothers in a jelly glass. I hadn’t touched that bottle since the last bad bout of cramps, but if things kept going the way they’d been going, I’d be hitting the sauce on an hourly basis.

I took a few sips, holding the jelly glass with both hands. Chester jumped onto the back of the couch and nestled behind my neck, purring. Tucker dragged over an ottoman and sat down, his knees touching mine.

“Start at the beginning and take it slow,” he said.

I knocked back the rest of the brandy and set the glass aside. My nerves, all trying to break through my skin only seconds before, collapsed with dizzying suddenness.

“When I was five years old,” I said shakily, “my half brother shot my mom and dad to death.”

Tucker’s face tightened. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered.

I drew another deep breath. Let it out.

“Go on,” Tucker urged.

“I was there, but if I saw what happened, I don’t remember. A neighbor found me hiding in the clothes dryer. I was d-drenched in blood. Their blood—”

I gagged a couple of times.

“Easy,” Tucker said, and took both my hands in his.

His strong grasp felt so treacherously good that I immediately pulled free.

“My half brother—his name is Geoff—was arrested that night, according to the newspaper accounts I read a lot later. He confessed, so there wasn’t a trial, and they sent him to a youthful offenders’ program in California.”

Tucker nodded in solemn encouragement when my voice faltered again, but he didn’t say anything. He might have looked like a biker, but he was in cop mode now.

“I saw him tonight, Tuck. At Talking Stick. He sat down at the slot machine next to mine—” I swallowed, pushed my hair back with the palm of my right hand. “It was the Sizzling Sevens.”

A faint grin flickered at one corner of Tucker’s mouth, gone as quickly as it appeared. His eyes were dead serious.

“Are you sure it was him? Not just somebody who looked like your brother?”

“My half brother,” I said. I didn’t want to claim even that much of Geoff, but we had the same mother. The thought made me want to check into a hospital, have all my blood drained out and replaced with somebody else’s. “And yes, Tucker, it was Geoff. He tried to pass himself off as Steve Roberts, but I know who he was.”

Tucker took a notepad from his hip pocket and scrawled the name on a page, but I knew what he was thinking. There were probably a dozen Steve Robertses in Phoenix alone, never mind all the once-separate cities butting up against its sprawling borders—Scottsdale, Mesa, Tempe, Chandler, Glendale.

“Google,” I said, catching sight of the computer across the room, and started to get off the couch.

Tucker pressed me gently back onto the cushion. “Take a few minutes to catch your breath,” he said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

An hysterical laugh bubbled out of my throat at the irony of that statement. Then I started to shiver.

Tucker got off the ottoman, disappeared into the bedroom and returned with an afghan, which he wrapped tightly around my shoulders. I snuggled in.

“Did he threaten you?” Tucker asked.

“Not exactly,” I answered, huddling inside a field of yarn daisies. Jolie had made the afghan for Nick and me, years before, as a wedding gift. God, I wished I could talk to Jolie, but she was a workaholic and probably busy in her Tucson lab, sorting bones.

“How come you never told me what happened to your parents?” Tucker asked. At the same time, he went to the computer, perched on the edge of the desk chair, and logged onto my Internet account. The password was stored, so there was no delay.

“The time never seemed right.”

“Uh-huh,” Tucker said tightly.

I bristled. “We were only together for six weeks,” I reminded him. “What was I supposed to say? ‘Oh, by the way, when I was five, my half brother slaughtered our parents, and a neighbor kidnapped me, and I’ve been living under an alias ever since’?”

Too late, I realized that I’d given away a lot more than I’d intended.

Tucker spun around in the desk chair. “What?”

“I don’t want to talk about this right now.”

“You’ve been living under an alias?”

“Not now, Tucker.”

He glared at me for a long moment, then spun back to the computer and started punching keys. On TV, cops usually use the hunt-and-peck method, but Tucker knew his keyboard, and all ten fingers tapped at a steady clip.

“Don’t think for one damn second,” he warned, without turning around, “that I’m going to pretend we didn’t have this conversation.”

He paused after a while, and peered at the screen.

“Is this him?”

I got off the couch, letting Chester roll unceremoniously to the cushions, and padded over to look at the monitor.

Sure enough, there was Geoff, smiling out of a Web page.

I sucked in a breath.

“I’ll take that for a yes,” Tucker said, and printed the page.

I leaned over his shoulder, studying the site.

“Steve Roberts” worked as a private nurse, an RN, no less. He sold vitamins for some network marketing outfit, too, and was available for consultations. Consultations! Have you been thinking of murdering your parents? I can tell you how to do it and get away with a slap on the wrist. Why, in no time at all, you’ll be back on the streets, looking for your next victim!

I shivered.

“I don’t think you should be alone tonight,” Tucker said.

“I’m not going to your place.”

“Then I’ll stay here.”

“On the couch.”

He sighed.

“On the couch,” he agreed, but belatedly, and with reluctance.

SOMETHING LANDED heavily on my chest. Sprawled in the middle of my bed, I opened one eye to sunlight and a purring white cat. I felt the familiar mingling of delight and sadness as I looked into Chester’s fuzzy face.

“I’m so sorry he killed you,” I whispered, stroking his back.

I heard the shower running and for a moment I was jarred, until I remembered that Tucker had spent the night. I’d no more than formed the thought when the pipes stopped rattling. I eased Chester off my breasts and rolled onto my side; I didn’t want to be caught petting empty air when Tucker put in an appearance.

He did just that, a minute or so later, standing naked in the doorway, except for a towel around his waist. I put down an unseemly urge to 1—summon Tucker to my bed and 2—lick the little droplets of standing water off every muscled inch of his flesh.

“Coffee’s on,” he said.

Chester hopped onto the broad window sill and sat looking down at the main street of Cave Creek, tail slowly sweeping the warm morning air.

I was grappling with my libido. In short, I wanted some nookie.

What harm would it do? said libido inquired.

I thought of Tucker’s kids. The custody battle. His beautiful ex-wife. Sure, they were divorced, but Allison still had a powerful hold on him. He visited regularly, despite their conflict; he’d been up front about that from the first. I couldn’t be sure all the emotional ties had been broken, and I knew it would kill me if they were still sleeping together.

The best orgasm I ever had with Nick happened an hour after we left the courtroom, with the ink still wet on our decree.

I don’t need another broken heart, I replied.

“I’ll be with you in a few minutes,” I said, quelling the need to stretch because it might be misinterpreted as a sensual invitation, and I was barely holding on to my resolve as it was.

Tucker looked disappointed but resigned. “I’ve got to get to work anyway,” he said. “You’ll be all right alone?”

For some reason, those innocuous words blew through my soul like an icy wind. You’ll be all right alone?

It wasn’t just Tucker talking. It was the whole universe.

I blinked a couple of times. “Sure. I was just a little freaked out last night, that’s all. Thanks for staying. I really appreciate it.”

After a beat, Tucker nodded. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to take that printout from your brother’s Web site. Do some follow-up.”

“I’d appreciate that,” I said.

Tucker made the slightest move, a sort of gathering of his forces, as though he might take a step toward me. Then he stopped himself, turned and went back into the bathroom to put on yesterday’s clothes. I wondered if a shower violated his job description, since he usually looked like he’d been living in a shelter for at least a week.

It occurred to me, as I was lying there feeling sorry for myself, that I didn’t know much more about Tucker than he did about me. I knew he was a detective with Scottsdale PD, and that he worked Narcotics. I knew he had an ex-wife and two beautiful kids.

Oh, yes. And I knew he could drive me crazy in bed.

That was about the sum of it, though.

I felt a little better, having thus justified keeping my own secrets, but not much.

When I heard the outside door close and Tucker’s boots on the stairs, I got out of bed. After nipping down the hall to turn the dead bolt, I wandered into the kitchen and poured myself a cup of coffee.

It was when I went to the refrigerator, hoping a carton of eggs might have materialized while I slept, that I saw the sticky note he’d left on the freezer door.

“We’ve got a lot more to talk about. Like why you own a litter box and no cat. See you tonight. Tucker.”

“That’s what I get,” I told Chester, now watching me with interest from the floor, “for getting involved with a detective.”

Chester wound himself around my ankles, his fur tickling my bare feet.

“Ree-ooow,” he said earnestly.

I bent, my eyes stinging, and gathered him in my arms. “How am I going to explain the cat litter?” I asked.

He snuggled close, humming like a lawn mower at full throttle.

“Don’t go,” I whispered. “Don’t leave me.”

He did.

It wasn’t a poof—nothing as dramatic as that.

He just dissolved in my arms, between one moment and the next.

One of these days, I knew, Chester was going to pull his vanishing act for good, and I would never see him again.

CHAPTER 5

I was standing there in my kitchen, wondering what to do with the rest of my life, never mind the remains of the day, when the telephone rang. It’s funny how fate answers questions like that, even when I don’t consciously ask them.

I checked the caller ID in the wild hope of heading off a conversation with either Heather the Stalker or Geoff the Parent/Cat Killer, and saw Clive Larimer’s name and number in the little window. With only slight trepidation, I pressed the talk button. “Mojo Sheepshanks,” I said.

My uncle responded with his name, in a businesslike tone, and then a smile sneaked into his voice. “Mojo Sheepshanks, is it? I guess I’ll have to get used to that, but you’ll always be Mary Jo to me.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything. If things fell out right, though, I decided I might get around to telling him about last night’s casino encounter with the mad killer. I was used to playing my cards close to my vest, and it would be a hard habit to break.

“We have a lot of catching up to do,” my uncle went on. I liked the warm, confident timbre of his voice. “Barbara—that’s my wife—and I are hoping you’ll drive down to Cactus Bend for a visit today or tomorrow, if it’s not too short notice. We have a guesthouse, so you’d have a little privacy. We don’t want this to be too much, all at once.”

I knew Larimer’s voting record in the state senate, and his surface stats—married to Barbara, four beautiful offspring, gracious mansion just outside of Cactus Bend. He was considered a contender in the upcoming governor’s race, too. Beyond those public-consumption details, though, he was merely a misty figure from a past plunged into oblivion one horrible night in 1983.

I hadn’t been back to Cactus Bend since the day Lillian and I went on the lam. I couldn’t help passing it whenever I went to see Jolie in Tucson, but I always whizzed by the freeway exit with my jaw clenched and my gaze fixed straight ahead.

An old, nameless fear gripped me, all of a sudden; Jolie and six or eight different therapists had suggested, more than once, that I had deliberately chosen not to remember the murders. Now, scared as I was, I was also curious, and I needed some answers. Maybe it was time to bite the bullet and wade in.

“Okay,” I heard myself say. It was Thursday; the weekend was coming up. I could check out Clive and Barbara, in their native habitat, ask a few questions and answer a few of theirs. In case of cataclysmic anxiety, I could always either speed back north to Cave Creek or pay Jolie a visit in Tucson. Come to think of it, the latter wasn’t a bad idea. I hadn’t seen my foster sister in two months.

“Will I be meeting the children?” I heard myself ask. I hadn’t given the Larimer sibs a conscious thought, but my shadow side wasn’t up for the inevitable comparisons between their lives and mine. They were professionals, no doubt. I, on the other hand, lived over a bar, read Damn Fool’s Guides, and did billing and coding for half a dozen doctors to scrape out a living.

Greer could be right, I conceded silently. There was a good chance that I needed to get a real job.

Hell, I needed to get a life.

Uncle Clive chuckled warmly. “The ‘children’ are thirty-two, twenty-nine, twenty-six and twenty-four respectively, and scattered all over the country. We’ll show you their pictures and tell you all about them—probably more than you want to know. Anyway, it’s better if you just have Barbara and me to contend with on this first trip.” He paused, waiting for me to agree.

“You’re right,” I said.

“You’ll join us, then?”

“Yes,” I decided, in that moment. It would be good to get out of town for a few days. I was caught up on my work, Tucker and I were on hold, and here was an opportunity to put some miles between myself and my half brother.

Unless, of course, he decided to follow me.

Don’t be paranoid, I told myself.

“When should we expect you?”

I glanced at the clock on the stove. It was barely eight-thirty, but I was running low on clean clothes, so a trip to the Laundromat was critical. I needed some cash, too, and I wanted to stop and look in on Lillian before I left the area. “Four o’clock?” I ventured.

“Just in time for cocktails,” Uncle Clive said, and gave me unnecessary directions. I hadn’t been to Cactus Bend in a lot of years, it was true, but I still knew the general layout of the town. Guess it was sort of like riding a bike—one of those things you don’t forget, no matter how traumatized you are.

After Clive and I hung up, I immediately put a call through to Jolie.

“Travers,” she answered. Evidently, her assistant, who usually screened calls, either hadn’t come in yet or was otherwise occupied.

Sweet memories washed over me at the sound of Jolie’s no-nonsense voice. My life changed for the better when I was thirteen, and Jolie was a major factor in the turnaround. Lillian met Jolie’s dad, Michael “Ham” Hamilton, a recently widowed security guard, in Ventura Beach, California. They’d fallen madly in love, and Lillian had finally settled down. There was never a wedding, as far as I know, but Lillian took Ham’s last name, and it was definitely a good match. Jolie hadn’t accepted Lillian, Greer and me right away, but in time we’d melded into a family.

Lillian had loved Ham so much that, when he’d decided to take a job in Phoenix, she’d willingly followed him. Jolie, Greer and I had all come along, of course, though Lillian had insisted on home schooling Greer and me. I don’t know if she ever told Ham the whole truth, or any part of it. I do know that she was happy with him, and when he died nearly a decade into their relationship, she went on the emotional skids.

“Hell-ooo,” Jolie prompted.

I laughed. “Don’t hang up,” I said. “It’s Mojo.”

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t slam this phone down in your ear,” Jolie shot back. “I haven’t had so much as an e-mail from you in three weeks.”

“I’m heading down that way, and I’d like to see you.”

“Really?” Jolie sounded pleased. “You wouldn’t jerk a girl around, would you?”

“It’s for real. I’m sorry about the e-mails—I’ve just been…well…distracted.”

“By what?” Jolie demanded suspiciously.

“Things,” I said evasively. “I’ll tell all when I get there, I promise.”

“Freakin’A,” said Jolie.

“I have some business to attend to tonight, and you’ve got work in the morning. How about tomorrow night?”

“I’ll even change the sheets on the hide-a-bed,” Jolie said, with one of her rich laughs. Jolie’s voice matched her dark-chocolate skin. She was smart as hell and beautiful enough to be a model or a TV star. If she hadn’t worked an average of eighteen hours a day, she’d have had men making pilgrimages to her door on their knees.

“Anybody sharing your bed these days?” I ventured hopefully.

Jolie’s sigh was telling. “No. How about you?”

“Tucker and I are on hiatus.”

“Mmm-hmm,” she agreed skeptically.

I let that one pass. “It’s really okay for me to crash at your place? I wouldn’t want to impose.”

Jolie gave a snort. “Just don’t sneak off in the middle of the night, like you did last time. I swear, Mojo, sometimes I think you turn into a she-wolf at the full moon, or something.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” I retorted, hedging. I knew exactly what Jolie was talking about. It hadn’t happened in a while, but occasionally I had nightmares, full of faceless characters in black hooded robes, grabbing at me with skeletal fingers. My own personal crew of Dementors. On the referenced occasion, I was staying at Jolie’s place. I’d gotten out of bed at roughly 1:30 a.m., pulled on my clothes, left a hasty note, and booked it back to Cave Creek.

“Let’s not get into an argument before you even get here, all right? You may be white, and you may be crazy, but except for Sweet Lillian and Greer, you’re all I’ve got. How is Lady Bountiful these days, anyway? Still livin’ the high life in Scottsdale? And before you answer—how’s Lillian?”

“I’ll bring you up to speed on Lillian when I get to your place. I’m planning on stopping by Sunset Villa on my way south to make sure she’s all right.” I paused. “As for Greer—well, she’s Greer.” There was something off about Mrs. Pennington, but mentioning that could wait until Jolie and I met in person.

“I’ll be looking for you Friday night, then,” Jolie said. “Call my cell if I’m not at the apartment when you get there.”

I promised I would and hung up.

Breakfast was a Lean Cuisine. I kept hoping, as I went through my wardrobe for clean and presentable items of clothing, that Chester would pop in—it would even have been worth another round with Nick to see my cat—but he didn’t show. Maybe he’d hopped one of those trains out of the heavenly depot, bound for feline glory.

I had mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, Chester deserved Cat Paradise. On the other, I’d have to start missing him all over again.

I packed my toothbrush and cosmetics, stuffed what I intended to wear into a black garbage bag, and left the apartment. Next stop, Maggie’s Spin-N-Dry.

Bert’s bike wasn’t in the lot, and I could see the padlock gleaming on the side door, still fastened tight. I wanted to let him know I was going to be away for a few days, both so he wouldn’t worry and as an incentive to keep an eye on my apartment. I decided to stop by after my laundry was done.

A chill tiptoed up my spine and did a moon-walk at my nape.

I looked around again. Nobody in sight, but I would have sworn I was being watched. Seriously creepy feeling.

I opened the rear door of the Volvo, on the driver’s side, and tossed in my trash bag. Something drew my gaze upward, to the apartment, and I saw Nick’s face, framed in the kitchen window. I couldn’t read his expression from that distance, but I knew he was trying to push my buttons.

I’m a poor lonely ghost. How can you leave me like this?

I actually considered going back upstairs to keep the dead ex company for a little while—and maybe Chester was with him—but I wasn’t going to get my laundry done and make Cactus Bend by four o’clock if I tarried. So I smiled and did a waggly-fingered wave, then got into the Volvo and sped away.

I felt only mildly guilty.

Things went okay at Maggie’s. I folded my blue sundress, clean jeans, fresh underwear and T-shirts, put them back in the garbage bag and made for the Volvo. One of these days, I was going to have to invest in a suitcase.

The lot was full at Bert’s when I got back, and the kitchen window was empty.

I decided not to go upstairs and conduct a paranormal investigation. If Nick’s business, whatever it was, suddenly became urgent, he could probably haunt me even if I was on the move.

Bert was busy behind the bar as I entered, so I stopped to pet Russell, who was on his bar stool, licking his chops after a pepperoni donation. A few scraps remained, but I predicted he’d make short work of those, and I was right.

“Hey, Mojo,” Bert said. “Trying to score a free coffee?”

“I wouldn’t mind one for the road,” I answered, and zeroed in on the coffeemaker.

“You goin’ somewhere?” Bert asked.

I lowered my voice, although the jukebox and the steady click of pool balls were so loud, the risk of being overheard was minimal. “Cactus Bend,” I said. “Then a day or two in Tucson, with my sister. I ought to be back by Monday afternoon. Would you mind trying my apartment door a couple of times, just to make sure it hasn’t been kicked in or jimmied open?”

“Sure,” he said, and the old baby blues twinkled. “Sheila’s after me to shut down the bar for a few days next week, so we can go camping up at Oak Creek Canyon. You mind dog-sitting while we’re gone? Russell isn’t much for sleeping under the stars.”

I grinned, touched Bert’s shoulder as I passed with a large coffee to go. “I’ll bet he doesn’t mind camp food, though.” In my opinion, Sheila was right—Bert needed some time off. In the two years I’d lived over the saloon, he’d never turned away a day’s business. In fact, last Christmas morning, he and Sheila had thrown a party for their customers, right there on the premises. I stopped to ruffle Russell’s ears. “I’d be happy to look after the fur-face.”

Bert’s smile broadened with gratitude. “He farts,” he said, in farewell.

“Great,” I said, in mock horror. “I’ll lay in some air freshener. See you Monday.”

Bert nodded, and I ducked out.

I gave the parking lot a quick sweep of the eyeballs, but I was basically over yesterday’s fright. Anyway, if Geoff appeared, all I’d have to do was yell for help and half the bikers in Maricopa County would spill out of the saloon and be all over him like liberals on a budget cut. As for Heather—well, I could handle her myself.

Maybe I’d gotten through to Brian at the casino the day before, I thought. And maybe he’d gotten through to Heather. Between the two of them, they might have one good brain, and use it to figure out what they were doing to their kids.

I was almost to Sunset Villa when I remembered Tucker’s note on the refrigerator door that morning. He planned to stop by my place to chat about why I had a litter box and no cat, among other things.

I knew I wasn’t obligated to keep him updated on my changing schedule, especially since we weren’t an item and I hadn’t agreed to the rendezvous in the first place. Still, Tucker had been a good friend to me the night before, sleeping on my couch so I wouldn’t have to spend the night alone, jumping at every little sound.

Once I got off the freeway and onto a regular street, I pulled into the parking lot of a convenience store, dug out my cell phone, speed-dialed him and waited.

“Darroch,” he said. Very clipped.

“It’s Mojo,” I told him.

“Busy,” he replied.

Yeesh. I’d caught him in the middle of some sting, or even an actual drug bust. “I’m on my way out of town,” I ventured.

“Check,” he said.

So much for that.

I pushed the end button, tossed the phone in the general direction of my purse, which was plunked on the passenger seat and pulled back onto the road. Next stop, Sunset Villa.

I met Felicia in the hallway outside Lillian’s door. She was wearing hot-pink scrubs and a glare.

“No more of them cards,” Felicia ordered. “Mrs. Travers ain’t havin’ a very good day.”

I could have been pissed off, but I knew Felicia’s main concern was her patient’s welfare, so I didn’t go for her jugular. Anyway, I was too worried to bother with drama. I held up both hands to show I wasn’t trying to smuggle in a Tarot deck, Ouija board, or Magic 8-Ball. “What’s the matter with Lillian?”

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