Buried Secrets (17 page)

“Or using whatever those are to watch us,” she suggested. She still hadn't lost that sense of being stared at.

“Either way, the longer we chase phantoms, the better it is for whatever thinks it's in charge here.”

“So we do what, leave?”

Zack scanned the cemetery one more time, then nodded. “Yeah. If this is something's version of a delaying tactic, then here probably isn't where we need to be. We'll give the information to Cecil and see if he has a better idea.” He started back for the Ferrari. Jo followed.

“He's the brains and you're the brawn, huh?”

Zack's answer was wry. “Something like that.
Damn
it!”

“What?”

“We forgot to lock the car.” And that was clearly Jo's fault, because it was Jo's fault they'd been arguing, right? Okay, and she had the remote.

“No harm, no foul?” she asked, then sighed defeat as he gestured her back—what he seemed to think was a safe distance—while he opened the passenger door, examined the car's interior, looked beneath it. When he then circled the car, still not satisfied, Jo looked back toward the cemetery…and froze.

For a second, she saw a young woman, just inside the cemetery gates. Curly black hair blew into her face, blew her dress, as she reached for Jo—then dissolved into particles, blown away like the low-sweeping sand. But she wasn't gone; Jo still
felt
her. Deep inside, like the pounding bass on a stereo, Jo felt her overwhelming loss. Her helplessness. Her neediness.

Damsel-in-distress neediness.

The desperation lingered long after the illusion faded.

“It looks safe,” said Zack, from behind her. Then, “Jo?”

“One more,” she reported. “Gone now. It was a woman. Early to mid-twenties. Dark hair, a little taller than me. She felt so…sad.”

“Yeah, well I'd be sad too, if I was dead in my early to mid—” Suddenly, Zack stopped.

Jo turned away from the cemetery, from that throat-clutching desperation. “What?”

“Nothing.” He swung into the passenger seat. “We've got work to do.”

Jo looked over her shoulder, unsure whether she wanted to see the woman again—or feared it. Either way, she saw nothing.

“Sometime today?” prompted Zack, loudly.

The woman's desperation echoed in Jo's head.
Soon. Soon.

And Jo couldn't tell if that was need…or warning.

 

Was it Gabriella?

Zack got through the rest of the afternoon focusing on work instead of his completely unfounded suspicion. Plenty of dark-haired women died in their mid-twenties, even if around here they weren't likely Italians. Plenty would be taller than Jo.

But the barest chance that it might've been his late wife unsettled him anyway. Especially after what he and Jo had been doing in the car, not an hour earlier.

She felt so sad,
Jo had said.

Crap.

It didn't help that their next stop was the only funeral parlor in Almanuevo. The most time he'd ever spent at a place like this had been arranging things after losing Gabriella.

The funeral director was having a slow day. When Zack flashed his license, the man proved surprisingly accommodating. He gave Zack and Jo a tour of the whole place, from its tasteful selection of coffins and urns to its dark-paneled viewing area to its sterile back rooms. No matter how clean those rooms were, they never lost the stench of formaldehyde, did they?

No matter how empty a funeral home got, it never lost the memory of grief and loss that permeated it through the years.

Zack looked at the preparation table and thought:
They put Gabriella on one of those.
That's one way he knew for sure she was dead. She'd been autopsied and embalmed.

Nobody could survive that, even if they hadn't really…

“Hey, Zack,” murmured Jo, and he jumped when she touched his sleeve. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he muttered, shaken from the dark memories. That had been old history—unlike the apparition Jo had seen just this afternoon.

“Yeah,” he repeated, tempted to hold her hand, just to remind himself that they were alive. He didn't. “I'm peachy.”

It annoyed him that she looked skeptical.

Even if she was right.

“I
can't believe we're doing this,” said Jo that evening. Zack had been unusually quiet ever since the cemetery. Not that anyone would choose morgues or mausoleums as their Happy Place. But it seemed to go deeper than that, or the fact that the Almanuevo Police still had no leads into their shooter.

She'd given up asking what was wrong after he'd all but snarled, “You keep asking me what's wrong, that's what.”

Now the sun had set, dusk was deepening, and surely
this
would divert him. So she grinned. “You sure you're up to it?”

Zack just shrugged, eyeing the old town square around them.

Jo spent the rest of their silent wait looking over the other eight tourists who'd gathered at the historic gazebo, in Almanuevo's town square, for their Spirit Tour. The idea was a little silly, investigation-wise, but could it hurt?

Even evil magic-using criminals, Zack had assured her, rarely posed a threat in well-lit, public places.

With them stood a small family, some elderly ladies and what—from the way they were draped around each other—looked to be a honeymooning couple. The bride caught Jo's eye
and shared a smile, as if by being the only two couples they had a great deal in common. Jo smiled back, but only to be polite.

Whatever romantic possibilities she'd been considering with Zack, earlier today, faded steadily the quieter he got.

“Good evening, everyone,” greeted the lanky man who approached their group, wearing a brown-and-black T-shirt with the tour agency's logo. He began to collect their tickets. “And welcome to Almanuevo's one and only Spirit Tour. I'm King, your guide into the world
just
be-
yond
the
veil.
”

He pitched that last bit in a way that managed to sound spooky without quite overdoing it.
Not bad,
thought Jo.

But Zack, handing over his and Jo's tickets, just sighed.

King's slow gaze included them all. “The West has long been a place of death—it's where the sun sets, where Natives believe that their spirits go upon leaving their old bodies. Almanuevo, as you'll be hearing tonight, fits that tradition. We have a long and bloody history of Spanish conquistadors, Apache raids, outlaws. Events that a power point like this remembers—and then, slowly, leaks back out on nights
just like tonight.
Y'all
did
sign your legal waivers when you purchased the tickets, right?”

Pretty much everyone nodded, the older women more nervously.

King looked dramatically relieved. “Good. Not that I expect trouble, but the psychic activity around here can get intense. You'll want to stay close…if only for your own safety.”

At least Zack let the guide have his hushed effect, a whole moment or two, before saying, “So basically it's a ghost tour.” That was why they'd signed up. They needed a quick overview of Almanuevo's most haunted locations, and this was it.

“I'm glad you mentioned that.” At least
King
was a diplomat. “No, sir, this is not a ghost tour, and I'll tell you why. The term
ghost
is a painful one—too often they're trapped souls, folks taken so suddenly or in a moment so painful that they don't realize they are dead. That's hell on earth, and here in the spiritual oasis that is Almanuevo, we would never try to profit from it. In fact, I and my associates at Spirit Tours work to lead such lost innocents into the light, where they ultimately belong, so that they may have peace.”

Some of Jo's fellow tourists seemed particularly touched by that sentiment. The honeymooning couple was too busy kissing.

“The spirits who remain despite our efforts are rarely victims—at least, not to their afterlife,” King continued. “We may glimpse mere recordings of the horrors that once existed, being replayed over and over until time's end. And some souls freely choose to remain, although—” he smiled his slow, spooky smile again “—not always for the best of reasons. Now let's go see if they are wandering tonight.”

As King began to lead them through the three square blocks that encompassed almost all of Almanuevo's historical district, Zack bent down to Jo's level. “Spiritual oasis,” he muttered.

She elbowed him.

He said “Ow.” But his heart didn't seem to be in it.

He's hiding something.
Jo hadn't liked that thought at the morgue, and she didn't like it now. She'd come to count on Zack to speak his mind, just in time to get shut out. And she felt vaguely jealous of the young, cuddling couple who had so clearly gotten past their own personal reserves.

King kept up a running narration, sharing legends of Indian fights and bank robberies, cheating wives and bootleggers. Jo made sure to examine each building, tree and rock that their guide indicated as having a haunted past, and to imagine growing roots.
If I could see ghosts, what would I see here?

Tonight, the trick didn't work. Maybe she was too distracted by Zack, big and silent beside her, and his damned secrets.

“Normally,” continued King, slowing as they approached a gully with a stream creeping down its center, “we would stop at an old footbridge that once spanned this creek. But two months ago, flash floods washed away that particular piece of history. Hopefully its loss finally gave release to one of our saddest local haunts—the spirit of
La Llorona.
”

La Llorona
—the Weeping Woman—was native to the southwest, not just Almanuevo. The peasant woman, grief-stricken by the loss of her wealthy lover, was said to have murdered their children.

Grief makes us do funny things,
Zack had said the other day.

Legend told of her wandering creek bottoms, wailing for her
lost babies and sometimes, like a Latina boogey man, stealing live ones to take their place. It made a dramatic story, and King told it well. But since Jo knew it, she found her mind wandering.

She remembered those record-setting storms. In the middle of a drought, the area got almost five inches of rainfall in one day. Dry, rocky ground like theirs couldn't handle that kind of water, and the runoff had turned deadly. Almanuevo was lucky to lose no more than a stretch of highway and a historical footbridge. She'd heard that someone drowned, down in Marfa.

Hank, whom Jo sometimes contracted for at Spur Blasting, had joked that someone must have pissed off the rain gods. He'd had extra work, but Jo avoided the jobs blowing up carcasses that were decomposing in local ranchers' water supplies. Yuck.

King said, “What we used to do here was form a circle, hold hands, and send our healing energies out toward the Weeping Woman, to help her find peace. But perhaps she has. We may never know—unless, on a night like tonight, the weeping
begins again.

“Now, let's move on to Almanuevo's most haunted place of business, the saloon, and I'll tell you what sort of spirits this gin joint
doesn't
sell while you have a drink. Everyone thirsty?”

The majority of the group agreed that they were, but Jo was only half listening. Now that she thought about it, they'd had a blizzard last November, too. A
blizzard,
not three hours from the Mexican border, and then record rainfall three months later.

Like Nature had a complaint to file?

As soon as they reached the Old Soul saloon—originally named the Two-Bits—Jo drew Zack aside at the ornately carved bar and tried to explain her half-formed idea.

“You think all that water brought the snakes topside?” he asked, not even close to understanding. He also raised two fingers at the bartender, and pointed at something.

“No, I think Nature
itself
is riled, just like Bud—”

“So what gives with you two, anyway?” asked King, beside them, and Jo jumped. How long had he been there? What might he have overheard? “That is, are you enjoying yourselves?”

Their beers arrived, so Jo answered while Zack paid. “It's a good tour, really.”

King considered that. “Thank you, ma'am. But it seems to me that you two aren't particularly spooked by my stories.”

“No,” admitted Zack, with a shrug.

“No,” said Jo. “But that's not your fault. It really
is
creepy.” King just didn't know the week she'd been having.

Zack added, “Besides, she doesn't have the sense to be scared even when she should.”

Jo narrowed her eyes at him. He took a sip of his beer and smiled dangerously.

“Here's the thing,” said King, looking from one of them to the other. “Most people go on a ghost tour—”

“A spirit tour,” Zack corrected him dryly.

“—to get a little scared. It's a group energy thing.” That's when Jo noticed the odd pendant he wore, wire forming a bar with three interior lozenges, tiny gems at each of the ten points. When he saw her noticing, King tucked it back into his shirt. “Y'all seem to have a different agenda, and it's dragging down the fun for everyone else.”

“Yeah,” said Zack. “Just look at them.” Almost everyone was watching the couple making out in the corner, some more blatantly than others. The little girl was waving a ghost-shaped pendant.

Jo offered, “Would it help if we walked in back?”

King waited a few beats too long to look away from Zack, but when he did, he smiled again. “Sure, ma'am. That'd be fine.” And he moved on to see how the two elderly ladies were holding out.

But Jo got the feeling he was still watching them. “Did you recognize that symbol he was wearing?”

“It might represent the Kabbalah,” Zack muttered. “Jewish tree of life. Mystics and ceremonials are big into that.”

Jo took a sip of her cold beer, glad Zack had ordered it. Even if he could have asked her first. “Are you hating this?”

“What, the tour?” He looked surprised. “Nah, it's fine. Hokey, but—” He shrugged. “You can't score every time out.”

“Then what's—” She cut herself off at his scowl, so he wouldn't have to tell her, one more time, that nothing was wrong.

He clearly didn't want to have to say it, and frankly, she didn't want to hear it.

Not if it was a lie.

 

“What's the difference between a psychic hunch and guesswork?” she asked Ashley later that night as they made up her bed in the nurse practitioner's second guestroom. What was usually a wide sofa converted easily into a narrow bed.

One little, lonely bed for lonely little Jo.

Not that she'd expected to pursue anything with Zack tonight. Not with Ashley and Cecil so close.

“Psychic hunch versus guesswork?” repeated Ashley, taking back one of the lace-edged pillows she'd asked Jo to hold. “Most guesswork probably incorporates psychic hunches without people even realizing it. That's how magic—”

“—works,” Jo finished softly.

Settling the second pillow into place, Ashley nodded. With its lace-edged sheets and earth-toned quilt, its polished tables with doilies and its lingering scent of fresh air and sunshine, the room—like the whole house—seemed warm and welcoming.

Even if Jo wasn't exactly the lace-and-doilies type.

Then Ashley sank into one of the two wing-backed chairs that, with a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf, finished out the room's furniture. “What do you think you're having a psychic hunch about? Or do you even want to talk about it?”

And Jo realized she did want to. She'd wanted to talk about it all afternoon. It was Zack who kept shutting her out.

So she perched on the other chair. “I think Zack's hiding something. At first I thought he was angry at me. Long story,” she added, when Ashley arched a curious brow. “But now I don't think that's it at all. Zack isn't exactly someone who hides his annoyance at the world, you know?”

“I got that impression.” Ashley smiled.

“It was after we left the cemetery that Zack got quiet,” Jo continued. “Well, sort of. He was fine with the business talk. He just seemed…closed off.”

“Did you ask him about it?” suggested Ashley.

“I think if I ask him one more time, he might shoot himself
to escape me.” Funny, how she couldn't imagine him threatening
her,
just himself. One more reason she'd been able to relax into the feel of his big, competent hands, earlier this afternoon, into his kisses. Not only did she trust herself to manage trouble…she increasingly trusted Zack not to
be
trouble.

He'd pretty much become the opposite of trouble. But as long as he was holding back from her, she couldn't help but instinctively hang back from him, too.

“Maybe it's just that caveman thing. I'm not saying you shouldn't honor your instincts,” Ashley added quickly. “If you think he's hiding something, he probably
is.
But if he'll open up to anybody outside of Cecil, it'll be you. Just give him space.”

That wouldn't be easy, after this afternoon and the defunct promise of more. All Jo had to do was smell leather, and her body felt heavier, hotter…more eager than it had in years.

Everything kept coming back to breathing, didn't it?

“That really is your gift,” offered Ashley. “Your power.”

Jo's mouth opened. Heavy petting in a Ferrari?

“You've got a calming effect,” the nurse continued solemnly. “Not healing, like me, so much as…grounding.”

“Imagining my feet have roots?”

“Sort of, but you provide roots for other people in your presence, too. You've got a very matter-of-fact way of looking at things, which makes you a good anchor when energies get intense. I was noticing that when you and Zack told us about your ghost tour, in the kitchen. Didn't you see us looking at you?”

Jo had only noticed Zack glancing toward her—and quickly scowling away. Mixed messages. “Not really.”