Don of the Dead (2 page)

"You're not really here."

He kept right on walking. "You think?"

I didn't just think it, I knew it, and it made me feel a whole lot better. I wasn't a whack job. I wasn't cracking up. My walking, talking dead guy was nothing more than a figment of an imagination that got scrambled like an egg when I thwacked my head.

Of course that didn't explain why I was wasting a perfectly good hallucination on something as weird as a dead-and-gone mobster. You'd think if I was going to fantasize, it would be about something really worthwhile.

Like my ex-fiancé JoelPanhorst .

Wearing nothing but a Speedo that was two sizes too small.

Swimming in a lake full of piranha.

Wishful thinking, and I snapped out of it just in time to see myScarpetti fantasy disappear behind a nearby marble column with a statue of a sad-looking lady at the top of it.

I breathed a long sigh of relief. As hallucinations went, I was glad this one was over.

That probably explained why I was in such a good mood when I got back on the bus.

It didn't explain why when we got to the chapel, the next stop on our tour,Scarpetti was leaning against the front door.

This time, I wasn't just upset, I was pissed. At my own brain for letting this happen. At myself for letting it get to me. When I gathered my clipboard, my hands shook. When I climbed down off the bus, my knees buckled like they were made out of peanut butter. But I had to give myself a lot of credit. The first thing I did was face my own warped fantasy. I marched over to whereScarpetti waited.

"You're not here," I told him and big points for me, I sounded like I meant it. I guess I figured if I could convince him, I could convince myself. "That means you can go away. Right now."

"But we're not done."

I didn't realize thatChester was standing behind me.

"She wants us to go away, Mother." He handed Betty off the bus. "But we're not done yet, are we?

We're supposed to see the grave of that Supreme Court justice. And the former mayor. And that woman. You remember. The one who wrote that cookbook."

Chesterwas right, and that meant only one thing. As the cemetery's one and only full-time tour guide, I was trapped like the proverbial dirty rat. As the afternoon ticked by and we visited one grave after another, GusScarpetti was always there. Lounging against the headstone of the Supreme Court justice.

Sitting next to the angel that topped a long-dead mayor's final resting place. Walking alongside the bus as it wound its way through the two hundred and seventy-five scenic acres of Garden View.

By the time we were done, I wasn't just tired of my Gus hallucination, I was more convinced than ever that I was teetering on the brink. My stomach was tied in knots. My breathing was shallow. I was shaking and, let's face it, sweat is not an attractive thing.

As soon as I could, I said goodbye to my tour group and hurried into the ladies' room near the cemetery's main office.

"Cold water," I mumbled to myself. "Lots of cold water."

I splattered it on my face. I soaked a paper towel with it and held it to the back of my neck. I tried the face again, leaning over the sink and splashing so much of it on me that the front of my polo shirt got damp and there were drops all over the Pepper Martin printed on my plastic name tag.

It wasn't until an icy cold drop trickled between my breasts that I realized I was finally breathing a little easier. I stood and looked at myself in the mirror above the sink.

It wasn't a pretty picture.

My mascara was a mess. My bangs were soaked. I had long since chewed off my lipstick and without the help of the Pretty in Pink that I made sure I put on when I so much as ducked into the hallway for my morning newspaper, I was as pale as a coed on the first day of spring break. I had never been fond of the freckles that coated my cheeks and nose. They looked worse than ever against the background of washed-out, wrung-out, stressed-out me.

It's not like I needed a reminder of what was making me feel like a full-blown nutcase. Still, it took me a minute before I dared a look over my shoulder.

For the first time in what seemed like forever, there was no sign of GusScarpetti .

I let go a long sigh of relief and, as calm as I was going to get and finally back in control, I headed out of the ladies' room.

The first person I saw outside was Gus.

I must have turned green because he took one look at me and shrugged. "What? You didn't think I was going to follow you into the ladies' room, did you? Just because I'm awiseguy doesn't mean I'm some kind of pervert."

"Are you having headaches? Do your eyes hurt? Is your stomach upset?"

Each time I shook my head
no
, Dr. CeciliaCho checked off another item on her list. When she was done, she looked at me over the rims of her glasses. "You don't have any symptoms. You say you have no pain. Why did you come back here to the ER to see me, Pepper?"

"I just thought… " I glanced toward the wall. It was backlit, and hanging from it were a series of head X-rays and CT scans. I knew I was looking at my own brain. "I just wondered… "

Dr.Cho's dark hair was shot through with gray. She wore scrubs and a lab coat decorated with pastel butterflies. She patted my hand. "It's common to feel a little shaky after a mishap like the one you had.

Once the world slips out from under your feet, you expect it to happen again. But you've got to remember, you went through… " She checked the patient information sheet on the desk in front of her.

"You went through the first twenty-five years of your life without an accident. Relax! Chances are, you aren't going to have another one any time soon."

"I know that. It's just that last night when I was lying awake—"

"You have trouble sleeping?"

"No. I mean, not usually. I mean… "

Actually, I didn't know what I meant. I had never had trouble sleeping until the night before. I tossed and turned all night long, thinking about the GusScarpetti I had met in the cemetery. Wondering what was wrong with me and what they did to people who were so crazy that they talked to people nobody else saw. And the people nobody else saw talked back.

I shrugged before I could stop it. "I just wondered if, you know, a hit on the head might cause a person to… I don't know… Maybe see things?"

Dr.Cho laughed. One of the nurses outside the office where we were sitting called to her and she popped out of her chair and headed into the hallway. "You've been watching too much TV. The brain doesn't work that way. Your X-rays and scans don't show anything abnormal and your EEG is fine, too.

If you're not having any real symptoms… "

Before I could ask what, exactly, made a symptom real, Dr.Cho was gone.

I gathered up my LouisVuitton bag, my sweater, and all that was left of my hopes that I'd find out that GusScarpetti was nothing more than residual brain scramble. Just as I turned to leave, a guy walked in. I stopped just short of slamming into his chest.

Too bad. I saw right away that this was one chest I wouldn't mind getting up close and personal with.

Toned. Just like the rest of him.

Hey, I might have had my heart mashed, smashed, and bashed by Joel the Jerk, but I wasn't dead. No use letting an opportunity like that pass me by. I took a moment to check the guy out.

He had brown hair a couple weeks past needing a cut. Blue eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. And one of those boy-next-door faces. Cute. Way cute. In an

oh-boy-wouldn't-I-like-to-find-out-what's-under-those-clothes sort of way.

Speaking of clothes, he was dressed in a green lab coat and underneath it, a blue shirt with a button-down collar over rumpled brown pants and black loafers. There was a hospital ID around his neck. It said he was DAN CALLAHAN, PhD.

Okay, so Dan Callahan wasn't much when it came to color coordination. That didn't keep him from being the most delicious thing I'd seen in as long as I could remember. Even if he did have a plastic pocket protector.

Geek god.

Like I was giving off some sort of electrical charge and he didn't want to get zapped, Dan backed off and backed away. "Sorry," he said, but even though he might have been, it didn't keep him from glancing at my chest.

Like I said, guys always noticed.

Ever since Joel dumped me like a cup of cold coffee, I hadn't been noticing back. This time, though, my hormones sat up and paid attention. A tingle zipped through my bloodstream. It was nice to remember how good sexual attraction felt.

Not so nice to realize that I was the only one feeling it. Done checking out my chest, Dan gave the rest of me the quickest once-over ever. He pushed his glasses from the tip of his nose to the bridge. "I thought Dr.Cho was done in here. I just wanted to… " He sidled his way between me and the examining table, heading for the X-rays and scans on the wall.

"That's my brain, you know."

Not exactly a subtle way to get his attention, but it worked. Dan stopped and turned to me. "Really?" He poked his thumb over his shoulder. "This is you?"

I pulled back my shoulders. "Well, it's just a little part of me."

"Remarkable."

I thought maybe he was looking at my chest again. But Dan was apparently more of a brain man. He turned right around and went straight for the pictures. "Has Dr.Cho seen these?"

"Sure." I gave up on the pulled-back shoulders. Dan wasn't paying attention and besides, my back muscles were cramped. "She said my brain is as good as the rest of me."

"Yes." He plucked the first X-ray off the wall and held it up to the overhead fluorescent lights. "I can see that. Except… " He looked at the X-ray so intently, I was convinced he forgot I was there.

"Except what? You don't see anything wrong, do you?"

He
had
forgotten I was there. I could tell when he looked at me through the picture of my brain. Like he'd never seen me before. "Wrong? No. I mean, there is a slight deviation in the occipital lobe." He squinted and took a closer look. At the X-ray, not at me. "And Dr.Cho ordered an electroencephalogram, didn't she?" He ruffled through the papers on the desk, and when he didn't find what he was looking for, he tapped a finger against his top lip. "Of course if we had old scans to compare with these new scans… " He glanced my way. "You weren't lucky enough to have a brain injury before this one, were you?"

"Lucky? You mean the part about me smacking my head against a slab of marble was the lucky part?"

Apparently, Dan wasn't big on irony. He chewed his lower lip. "Too bad." He plucked one of the scans off the wall and held it side by side with the X-ray. "Of course Dr.Cho is the doctor and if she's convinced… " He drifted off again.

I wasn't about to give up. Not easily, anyway. While Dan studied my brain, I took a closer look at his nametag.

"You're a doctor, too, right? Your nametag says—"

"Not a medical doctor." He lowered the pictures. "I've got a PhD in psychology. And another one in biochemistry. And one in associatedneuro -sciences. And one—" He gave me a quick grin. "All that doesn't matter."

"What matters is that you study brains."

Dan looked at the pictures again. "Yours is very interesting."

As compliments went, it wasn't much, but it was more than I'd gotten from any other guy in as long as I could remember. I perked right up. "We could talk about it."

"Really?" Dan perked up, too. The smile he gave me was toothpaste-white. He checked his watch. "I've got a meeting in ten minutes but if you're going to be around the hospital later, maybe we could—"

"Hospitals are for sick people!" He didn't get the joke. I gave up trying to be cute. I was too old for it and it wasn't working anyway. "How about a drink sometime?"

Like I'd suddenly started speaking a language Dan didn't understand, he gave me a blank look. The next second, he blinked, surprised. "You're not asking me out on a date, are you?"

"You're gay." I knew it. The good-looking ones always are.

"No!" A smile came and went over his expression. "I'm just really busy."

I knew a brush-off when I got one and let's face it, I wasn't exactly feeling like my usual I-am-woman-hear-me-roar self. I spun around and headed out of the office.

"Can we talk about your brain?"

Dan's question stopped me cold. I tried not to look too eager when I stopped and turned back to him.

Kind of hard considering my sneakers left skid marks on the linoleum.