Don of the Dead (25 page)

Maybe not.

By the time I'd walked for what seemed like forever and was probably only a half hour or so, I still hadn't seen any sign of him.

And the sick, empty feeling inside of me just wouldn't go away.

I gave up somewhere between the section where the famous cookbook author was buried and the plot devoted to veterans of the Civil War, and I'd just turned to head back to the office when I was nearly blinded by a bright light.

Supernatural mumbo jumbo?

Only if Gus had developed a flair for the dramatic.

I put a hand in front of my eyes to help ward off the glare and squinted. As my eyes adjusted, I realized I was staring into the headlights of a car. It stopped ten feet or so in front of me and I tensed, not sure if I should stay or run.

The driver's door popped open.

"Pepper?"

I recognized Dan's voice, which was the only thing that kept me from ducking for cover behind the nearest headstone.

"Pepper? I've been looking all over for you."

He got out of the car, but he didn't turn off the engine or the headlights. Against the bright light, Dan looked like a silhouette cut from black paper.

I guess I didn't know I had tears in my eyes until I realized I didn't want Dan to see them. I dashed my hand over my cheeks and coughed away the tightness that had built in my throat back at Blessed Rosary.

"I'm here," I told Dan. I stepped closer to the two shafts of light. "How did you find me?"

Dan looked over his shoulder. Back toward the office. "I saw your car. The main gate is closed but I figured there had to be an entrance the staff uses after hours. I looked around until I found it. I tried the office but you weren't there. That's when I decided to drive around and find you."

"That's a lot of trouble to go through." I took another step toward the light. "What's up?"

"I've got news." When Dan waved something in the air, it was the first I realized he was carrying a file folder. Call me psychic; I was pretty sure it had my name on it. "I got some results back from those tests we did this afternoon."

"And they couldn't wait until tomorrow?"

I saw the quick flash of his smile. "I thought you'd like to know."

I suppose I did.

Which didn't explain why the rock in my stomach suddenly turned into a block of ice.

"What kind of results?"

I saw Dan look around. "Are you sure you want to discuss it here?"

"Who's going to hear us?" I didn't bother to point out that one somebody could. If he wasn't busy playing hide-and-seek. "If it's that important—"

"Well, I think it is." Dan hurried over to where I stood. He grabbed my arm and tugged me closer to the car so that we were standing full in the light. "Look. Right here." He flipped open the file and pointed to a scan of my brain. "I can't believe I didn't notice this the first time you came into the ER but then, I guess I didn't think it was possible."

To me, it looked like an oval with white glop in it. I told Dan as much.

"Yeah. Sure. I mean, it
is
a brain." He pointed. "But the occipital lobe—"

"Not that again." I sighed. I'd pretty much had it with his whole aberrant-behavior theory. I shrugged out of his grasp and started back toward the office and my car. "If that's the only thing you have to talk about, we could have done it some other time."

"But it's not."

Dan's words stopped me in my tracks.

"What I'm seeing here, Pepper, is a very high propensity for hallucinatory imaging."

I turned back to him, but I didn't budge from my spot near a headstone where a giant, crepe-draped urn sat atop a granite column. "And what exactly does that mean in English?"

"It means I think you're hallucinating."

"Yeah. I must be." I turned back around and kept walking. Better that than letting him see the way his words slammed into me like a fist. I tossed my parting shot. "I must be hallucinating. Because this goofy conversation can't possibly be happening."

I heard Dan scramble to catch up to me. "Don't you see what this means?"

"Nope." I didn't. I didn't want to. Call me crazy, but—

But nothing. That's exactly what Dan was doing.

I stopped so fast he was already ahead of me before he realized I wasn't at his side. He turned to find me with my fists on my hips.

"Is that what you think? That I'm some sort of nutcase?"

"I didn't say that." Dan hurried back to me. "I just said—"

"That I see things. That I hear things."

"I didn't say you did. I said you had the propensity. That means you could."

And wasn't it exactly what I'd been hoping to hear all this time?

I might as well have gotten clunked by that granite urn on the monument behind me. That's how bowled over I was.

I thought back to the day when Gus had first appeared outside his mausoleum. Then, all I wanted was to blow off his presence and convince myself that he was nothing more than a brain blip.

I remembered the times I'd told him that this investigation was bogus and that he was, too. And I wanted to believe it. More than anything.

After all, there was no such thing as ghosts and so, there could be no Gus.

Was that such a hard concept to get through my head?

Except then I found out about the birthmark on Gus's hip. Then I had the conversation with Father Anthony.

I'm not a soft touch. But on the off chance that what I suspected was true, there was no way I could write Gus off as a brain blip now.

No way in hell.

"I'm not crazy," I told Dan. "And I'm not listening. I do not, did not, and will not ever hallucinate."

"But you said—"

"No, I didn't say anything." I knew that was true. I'd been trying my best
not
to say anything—to anyone—for a long, long time. "I never said I was hallucinating because I'm not hallucinating. I never—"

"What about you talking to yourself?"

I was so shocked, it wouldn't have taken that urn to knock me over. A feather could have done the job.

I stared at Dan in amazement. "And you're talking about what, exactly?" I asked him.

He glanced away and I swear, if the light was better, I would have seen a look somewhere between regret and anger wash over his face.

Dan? Angry?

I didn't think it was possible, but I reminded myself of the old saying about still waters running deep. And the bit my grandmother always added to the end of it: The devil lies at the bottom of them.

Instinctively, I took a step back. "What makes you think I talk to myself?"

He ran a hand through his hair. I'd always thought of the gesture as cute. Now I knew he was stalling.

"I've got to be honest with you." Dan stepped closer. "There's a mirror in my office. You might have noticed it. It hangs next to the bookcase. It's a… it's a two-way mirror."

The ice in my stomach melted, shooting frigid water through my body. The cold lasted only as long as it took me to process what he was saying. It heated up in a nanosecond and the ice turned to steam.

"You were watching me? While I was in your office filling out that questionnaire?" I thought of that night and remembered that Gus had been with me. "You son of a bitch."

"Now, Pepper… " Dan reached for me but I batted his hand away. "You weren't supposed to know. I shouldn't have even said anything but… well… I like you. And I don't think it's fair to start a relationship unless we can be completely honest with each other." He tried for that cute puppy dog look that always had a way of twisting around my heart.

Maybe it was the dark. Or maybe I'd finally seen the light. I wasn't buying it. When I glared at him, Dan backed off.

"It's part of the study," he said, the puppy dog cute replaced by sterile facts delivered just as clinically. "It provides me with a chance to observe my subjects without them knowing. A sort of check and balance."

"Check and balance, what? Check to see if you've found the right crazy person? Balance my sanity against what you think it should be?" I didn't exactly scream, but I did give a little shriek of exasperation.

It reverberated against the headstones, echoing back at us like a spectral voice. "How dare you? How dare you spy on me?"

"I wasn't spying. I was observing."

"Oh, that makes me feel better." I turned and started back to the office.

"Pepper… " This time when Dan called to me, I didn't stop and I didn't look at him.

"Forget it, buster." I made a rude and unmistakable gesture over my shoulder. My footsteps slapped the pavement. My arms pumped at my sides. "And forget your stupid study. I'm out. Over. Finished. Don't call and don't write and don't think you're going to get a chance to look at my occipital lobe again because you're not."

When I heard him get into his car and close the door, I knew he was going to follow me. I left the road, darting onto the grass and between two tall headstones. From there, I headed off toward the center of the nearest section. By the time Dan turned the car around and cruised the road back to the office, I knew that like Gus, I'd be nowhere to be found.

I stood very still next to the statue of a grieving woman, refusing to move until he was long gone.

"Son of a bitch!" I tossed the word into the night and right about then, I wasn't sure which son of a bitch I was talking about. The one who tried to kill me. The one who walked out on me the night before. The one who thought I was a certifiable nutcase. Or the one whose presence pretty much confirmed the fact.

Then again, maybe it was the one who had broken our engagement.

Or the one sitting in federal lockup, the one whose greed and dishonesty had sent my life reeling out of control in the first place.

It all came down on top of me like a couple tons of bricks. I was pissed. And overwhelmed. I was exasperated. And so tired of trying to make sense of everything that was happening, I couldn't hold it together any longer. I plunked down on the grass and had a good cry.

My shoulders shook and my tears blinded me. I wanted to lash out, but I couldn't decide how or at whom, so I latched onto a clump of grass and pulled. I ended up with a divot in my fist, and I tossed it as hard as I could at the nearest tree.

Instantly, guilt filled me, head to toe. The grounds crew would find the destruction in the morning and think they had groundhogs to worry about.

"Like that's my problem?" I asked myself, and just to prove it wasn't, I pulled up another clump.

"How could I have been stupid enough to let all this happen in the first place?"

"Nobody ever said you was stupid."

I jumped to my feet and swigged back my tears. "Where the hell have you been?" I asked, swiveling to look all around me to find the ghost who belonged to the voice. Instead, all I saw was tombstones. "And what the hell do you think you're doing, scaring me like this?"

"Didn't mean to scare you." Gus stepped out from between two headstones. His white shirt glowed with reflected moonlight. He leaned forward and gave me a careful look. "What are you crying about?"

"I'm not crying." I swiped my hand over my cheeks. "Why would I be crying? Just because I sent Quinn away last night and then I found out that Dan is adirtbag peeping torn and oh yeah, I almost got killed by goodol ' Albert."

"And have you asked yourself why—"

"Oh, no!" I wasn't in the mood to be conciliatory. "No more questions. Not from you. Not from anybody. I'm tired of getting jerked around. I want some straight answers and I want them now."

Gus hesitated before he smoothed a hand over his tie. "It don't matter no more."

"Like hell."

"I said, it don't matter and you shouldn't argue with me about it, little girl." His voice rose to meet mine.

"And I said it matters plenty. How the hell am I supposed to solve this case when—"

"You're fired."

I was so stunned, it took a couple seconds for me to choke out, "What?"

"Fired. I said you're fired." Gus sniffed and pulled back his shoulders. "Don't need you no more."

"Like hell."

"You said that before."

"And I'll say it again. Like hell! You can't fire me."

"You should be glad it's not the old days. Then I wouldn't bother. I'd just have you clipped."

"Well, I hate to spoil your fun, but it's not the old days anymore. And if you ever had the chops… well, you sure don't have them now. You're not the don anymore, Gus. You don't have the authority. Nobody cares what you want or don't want. And that nobody includes me. I'm not quitting this case. Not now.

Not ever."

"Have it your way. It don't make no difference. You're not going to see me no more."

And in the blink of an eye, Gus was gone.

I stood there for a couple minutes, peering into the darkness, sure that if I looked long and hard enough, I'd see him again.

I didn't.

I suppose I should have been grateful. Once and for all, I was rid of Gus and the stupid investigation that had taken over my life.

Of course, that didn't explain why I reeled, like the turf had been pulled out from under me. Or why I was so mad, I could have spit nails.

"Oh no, buster!" I called into the night. "You're not getting away from me that easily. You can't just up and walk away. I'm not finished with you yet."

No answer. No Gus.

"I'm not giving back the money!"

Even my appeal to his business sense didn't produce any results.

"All right, have it your way." I started back toward the office and my car. "Disappear. Who cares, anyway? You've been a pain in the ass since day one." Ihiccuped around the tears that built in my voice and blocked my throat. "You want to spend the rest of eternity roaming around here all by yourself, that's fine with me. Just don't come asking for help again because you know what, Gus?" I raised my voice and at the spot where the grass met the road, I spun around, aiming my comments back toward the headstones, convinced that he was hiding among them.

"I'm not going to help. Not anymore. And once I'm gone… well, let me remind you that I'm the only one who can see you and I'm the only one who can hear you. Once I'm gone, you're out of options."