Drowning in Amber (A Marie Jenner Mystery Book 2) (12 page)

I carried the daytimer into James’s office, and held it out. “It was turned to this page,” I said.

He looked at it. Shook his head. “I knew that woman was going to be trouble.”

“Or maybe we’re bringing trouble to her,” I replied.

“Yeah,” he said, and pulled his cell from his pocket.

“It’s James,” he said after quite a long pause. “I’m sorry I woke you, Honoria, but I wanted to make sure you were all right.” He leaned over and plucked a piece of wood from the cuff of his jeans, tossing it to the floor with the rest of the garbage.

“We had a break-in here,” he said. “And I just wanted to make sure— No. I don’t think so. Yes, I probably will.” He rolled his eyes at me, then, when I giggled—and why did I giggle like a kid at him? It was so embarrassing!—he turned his back to me and continued to answer her obviously panicky questions.

“So, who’s he talking to?”

The voice was right behind me. I whirled, ready to do battle, scared almost out of my mind, and faced Dead Eddie Hansen. Face to dead face.

“How ya doin’?” he asked, and grinned, his teeth black, broken, and really quite horrible. They looked way too old for his young face. “I didn’t think I’d ever catch up with you.”

He’d found me. Finally! He’d look at the sketches, tell me who had really killed him, I’d tell James—making up some suitably plausible lie concerning how I found this information out—and we’d be done.

I glanced at James. He was still standing with his back to me with his cell phone pressed to his ear, so I turned to Eddie and pointed through the open door to the other room.

He shrugged and led the way. I followed him, trying to figure out the best way to get the information out of him without him getting upset. Upset ghosts were always more trouble than they were worth.

He watched me, a fuzzy smile on his face. I think he was pleasant-looking at one time, but not anymore. He looked used-up. Paper-thin, his hands and face covered with old scabs and scratches that hadn’t healed before his death. Plus the big new ones, of course. The great huge holes where the spikes had gone through both hands, and a bashed-in bit on his forehead. I glanced down at his feet and could see carpet through a hole in one foot. The other one wasn’t quite as bad, but close enough. I felt sick and pulled my line of sight back up to his face. His teeth might be bad, but at least I could stand looking at them.

“Look pretty bad, don’t I?” he asked.

“You don’t look too good.”

“Haven’t for a while.” He grinned. “But I’m feeling good now.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” He smiled even more broadly, and stretched both arms above his head, looking like a beat-up alley cat. “My buddy Noreen—she hooked me up.”

Before I could ask him what he meant, he leaned in, hard. “Why were you at my mom’s?”

“A friend—a friend of mine told me you might be there.” Close enough to the truth.

“Who told you that?”

“Her name is Honoria Lowe.”

He frowned. “Don’t think I know the chick,” he finally said.

“You’re sure?” I asked.

“Pretty sure.” The frown stayed. “You gotta leave my mother out of this. She doesn’t know anything.”

“I will. I promise,” I whispered, to make absolutely certain James in the next room heard nothing. “Honoria is our client.” I blinked. “Mostly our client. The cops think she’s involved in your murder, and we’re trying to prove that she isn’t.”

I grabbed a couple of the sketches off the desk and held them out. “She drew these. Plus one that was of your mother’s house. She said you were there. That’s why I went. I was just trying to find you.”

“Huh.” The frown was gone, thank goodness, but the suspicious look still hung on his face. Then he blinked twice, rapidly, and half-smiled. “So she sees ghosts, too?”

I nodded. “Yes. But not the way I do.”

“Huh.” He glanced down at the sketches in my hand, and his light dimmed appreciably. “I told you there were ducks,” he finally muttered.

“Yeah, I saw that.” I held the sketches out. “Please look at them, closely. I think everything we need to know is in them.”

He glanced at them, then closed his eyes. “Those are horrible,” he whispered, and turned away. “I don’t want to look at them anymore.”

I closed my eyes, to calm myself. James was still talking to Honoria in the other room. I still had time. All I had to do was get Eddie to really look at the sketches—but he’d wandered away from me, and was staring out the window.

“So, how come I don’t see no more ghosts hanging around?” he asked. “This part of town, there should be lots of us.”

“Most of them move on.”

“Where to?” Gave a small laugh, but it sounded more frightened than amused. “Calgary?”

“God forbid!” I whispered, and he laughed again. “No. They move to the next plane of existence. Sometimes, if they need it, I help them.”

What was wrong with me? All I’d wanted to do with this particular ghost was get the information about his death—specifically, who had brutally killed him. Why had I even put the thought of moving him on in his head?

“Oh.” His face went back to a frown. “You’re not going to do that to me, are you?”

“No,” I finally said. “I wasn’t really thinking of it.”

“Good,” he replied, and the easygoing grin was back. “I have business to attend to, after all.”

“Yeah.” I walked up behind him, staying just out of his crazy-making aura. “About that, Eddie. Why are you so sure that your mom’s book club had anything to do with your death?”

He didn’t answer me for a long moment. “You met ’em,” he finally muttered. “They wanted me dead. They said so.”

He wasn’t going to be easy to convince.

I heard James put down his phone and walk toward the door. “We’ll finish this conversation later,” I whispered, just as he walked into the reception area.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked.

“I thought I heard someone,” I said.

Eddie stared at James for a second, then smiled. “He doesn’t know you can see me, does he?”

“Who were you talking to?” James asked.

“Does he?” Eddie repeated.

“I wasn’t talking to anyone,” I replied, trying to ignore Eddie.

“It sure sounded like you were,” James said.

“Well,” Eddie muttered, chuckling. “This oughta be interesting.”

You said a mouthful, Eddie.

“OKAY, FINE,” JAMES
said for the third time, and for the third time didn’t believe one word I was saying. “So you were just talking to yourself.”

“Yes,” I said. Again.

“And you just wanted me to have a little privacy.”

“Yep. That’s it, exactly.”

“Is this the way you guys communicate all the time?” Eddie asked. “My guess, you ain’t gonna make it.”

I ignored him, or tried to. “We should call the police. Report the break-in.”

“Break-in?” Eddie asked, and looked around the wrecked room. “Oh. Yeah. That was R and Crank.”

I almost whirled and screamed, “R and Crank? Who are they?” But I didn’t. I needed to keep up stupid appearances, after all.

James righted the chair, then sat at the desk and pulled the old-fashioned phone up by the cord, reconnected it to the wall, pressed a button or two, listened, seemed satisfied, and set it on the desk. “I already did.”

“When?”

“After I talked to Honoria.”

“Did they say when they’d get here?”

“Probably never,” Eddie said. “Not with this address.”

“They didn’t say,” James said. “But it’s probably going to take them a while in this area of town.”

“Well, what do we do, then?” I asked. Both of them, apparently.

“We wait,” James said.

“We could get high,” Eddie suggested. I decided to ignore Eddie.

“What if whoever did this comes back while we’re waiting?”

“Then we protect ourselves,” James said.

“They probably
will
come back,” Eddie said. “Didn’t look like they found what they were looking for.”

“And what were they looking for?” I asked. James gave me a strange look, and Eddie cackled out laughter, so I asked, “Do you have any ideas?”

Weak, I know, but it was all I had. This three-way conversation was beginning to make my head ache.

“I think you were right. I think you probably rattled some cages at the park,” James said.

“You went to the park? My park?” Eddie cried. “No wonder they were here.”

“So, if the druggies—”

“Druggies!” Eddie laughed. I shot him a quick look, even though, to James, it would look like I was glaring at an empty corner of the room. Luckily, though, he had leaned over to pick some broken stuff off the floor.

“You shouldn’t touch anything,” I said. “The cops will want to check for fingerprints or something. Won’t they?”

“You’re right,” he said, and pulled his hand back. “So, if it was those guys from the park that did this, they came here looking for information . . .”

“The only real information they could get would be Honoria’s address, and since I hadn’t written it down, she should be safe,” I said. “Right?”

“Right.”

“But what about us?” I asked. “We could be in danger, or something.”

“Don’t worry,” James said, and smiled at me. “I’ll protect you.”

“Thanks,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound too sarcastic. He didn’t respond well to sarcasm.

“You’re welcome.” He favoured me with another smile. Then we all jumped about a foot when someone hammered on the door. Through the broken window I could see two blue uniforms.

“Well, look at that,” James said. “The police.”

I really hoped neither of the cops standing at our door had been involved in the drug bust earlier that evening. That would be just too embarrassing.

As James let them in, Eddie skittered over to me. “I’m not sticking around,” he said. “I personally hate cops.”

“Come back, though,” I whispered. “I want to know more.”

“All right. Tomorrow.” And in a swirl of light, he was gone. I was surprised and then angry. No walking? Swirling light and disappearing? Where did that come from? Ghosts always seemed to be doing things I’d never seen before. What was the deal with that?

TWO HOURS LATER
, the police were gone, and James and I were alone in the wrecked office.

“Let’s board up the window and get some rest. We can decide next steps tomorrow.”

He yawned, a jaw-cracking affair, and then we quickly picked up as much of the wreckage as we could and found some cardboard in the overstuffed closet. James duct-taped it in place over the broken window in the door.

“This won’t keep anyone out,” I said. I felt nervous. These guys, whoever they were, could get back in here, easily. “Maybe we could go to Jasmine’s.”

“Marie, it’s three in the morning.”

“Oh.”

“Trust me, if they come back, we’ll hear them and deal with them,” James replied, and yawned again. He didn’t seem the least bit nervous, and I decided I was being a real girl about everything.

“All right.”

I looked around for something else to clean, and realized we’d finished the worst of it. I was going to offer to make tea or something, and then realized I was trying to put off actually going to sleep. I was being ridiculous.

“You take the cot,” James said. “I’ll be okay on the floor.”

Sometimes he took this being a gentleman thing way too far. “You’re still pretty banged up,” I said. “You use the cot. I’ll be fine out here. I’ll keep watch, just in case we have any more visitors.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

He pulled a blanket from the closet, handed it to me, then walked into the inner office. “Wake me in a couple of hours. I’ll spell you off,” he said, and I nodded.

Moments later, I heard the springs of the cot creak as he rolled onto it, and then, very quickly, all was silent.

I pulled the big chair over by the office door and settled into it, pulling the blanket over my shoulders. Heard a creak and jumped up to check if someone was coming up the stairs. Nothing. Settled back down, and tried to relax. Another creak, and I jumped up again. Didn’t remember this building making quite that much noise before. Looked around, even going so far as opening the front door a crack. Nothing.

Settled down, and was instantly up again, this time because I couldn’t hear anything and was certain that the silence meant someone was creeping up the stairs.

“Good grief!”

I pulled the blankets back over me, but didn’t even bother closing my eyes this time. Wished that Dead Eddie would come back, so at least someone was in the room with me. But he’d said he would come back the next day. I was alone for the rest of the night. Heard a cat yowl somewhere close by, and jumped up, heart pounding.

“Marie?”

“What!” I screamed, my heart hitting that ultra-high range that meant either I was about to have a heart attack or I was scared out of my tree.