Ghost of a Chance (Banshee Creek Book 2) (40 page)

"It's the Historical Preservation Committee, Salvador. And I'm just clearing up a few small misunderstandings with the Board. Elizabeth's not on the Board."

"Let me see if I understand this," Salvador drawled. "You're talking to her superiors behind her back. You're planning a grand new initiative and not telling her about it. You're moving heaven and earth to get this all done before next week. Are you, by any chance, planning to surprise her with this?"

"Well, yes." And it wasn't the only surprise he had in store for her.

"You're an idiot." His business partner's voice was filled with pity. "A crazy idiot. She's going to tear out your spleen and eat it with mint jelly. Like she did in that movie."

"She's going to love it. It's a great idea."

"I don't care if it's the greatest idea since penicillin. Trust me, she's going to hate it. Women only like surprises that involve diamonds."

"Elizabeth's different."

"I agree. And you know what makes her different? She eats people. And she doesn't even bother with the Chianti." Salvador paused, and Gabe could picture him shaking his head. "Well, it's your funeral,
irmão
." With that parting shot, Salvador hung up.

Gabe dropped the phone on the table and leaned back in his chair. Salvador was wrong. This idea was brilliant. It would work.

It had to.

The doorbell rang. He got up and walked to the door, pausing to kick a stray tentacle under a bookshelf. Well, no time for second thoughts now.

It was showtime.

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY
-F
IVE

E
LIZABETH
LOOKED
around her brother's old room, a dark gloom wrapping itself around her like a heavy, musty cloak. She was not looking forward to this. The room matched her mood, with dark blue walls, old furniture, and lots and lots of cardboard boxes.

She didn't know where to start the cleanup. Her gaze fell on a bunch of
American Gothic
DVDs strewn on the star-studded coverlet. Her TV binge had started three days ago with
The X-Files,
but sadly, Dana Scully had no answers.
 

An unexpected plot twist didn't help. Her father had suddenly rediscovered the joys of marital life and had summoned her mother to the Caribbean for an impromptu vacation. Faced with her mother's excited packing, Elizabeth had chickened out and kept her mouth firmly shut. She couldn't tell her the truth.
 

So her father's infidelity remained unresolved. As did her own relationship with Gabe. She had several calls and texts from him on her cell phone, but she had yet to answer any of them. She also had a bunch of messages from her agent that she hadn't returned. Her mom was definitely better, she was free to take an acting job now. The news that someone wanted her to do a screen test should thrill her.
 

But she had made no calls. Other than making sure that Zach loaned her the truck, she'd been completely incommunicado. She would have to deal with the outside world someday, but today wasn't that day.
 

She missed Gabe. She wished she could ring him and tell him about her father's perfidious ways and her mom's surprise vacation. He could help her figure out what to do. He was good at that. But that would lead to a conversation about Haunted Orchard and his investors, a conversation she didn't want to have. No, she couldn't call Gabe.

But there was something else she could do. She could clean the heck out of her brother's room.
 

She looked around. Cole's bed was gone, but the room still screamed "boy's room." The shelves were a place to start. They held various video game boxes, science-fiction paperbacks, and assorted ghost-hunting equipment. Autographed photographs in shiny frames peppered the shelves. Elizabeth considered a dour-looking picture of Alfonso Cuarón. Maybe she could give it to the PRoVE folks?
 

Boxes containing Cole's meager possessions cluttered the rest of the room. She felt a stab of guilt. She should have sorted and thrown away the stuff months ago, but she hadn't had the heart. Her mother had spent the last two years walking through this room, surrounded by her dead son's belongings. Definitely not the best way to recover from the loss.
 

That ended today. Well, maybe tomorrow, depending on how long it took her to clean up and paint. Her to-do list included sorting through the boxes, donating the bulk of their contents, and throwing out the rest. A fresh coat of paint, a couple of chairs from the basement, and some pretty pictures would turn this room into a nice office. The room makeover wouldn't exorcise the grief. No amount of paint could do that. But it would be a fresh start for her mom.
 

Or so she hoped.

But she needed to work fast, because her mom's impromptu vacation wouldn't last very long. She only had a few days, and she'd already wasted several watching Fox Mulder pout at the camera. She checked her watch. Zach would be here with the truck very soon, and she wanted to have her brother's possessions sorted so she could send him on to the Salvation Army with a hefty cargo.
 

She looked at the computer games glumly. She'd been so excited about the remodel only a few days ago. But now she was fighting an urge to sprint for her car and drive all the way back to California. Why was she dragging her feet?

It must be the beige. There was so much beige, it was scary. She had two gallons of beige paint, beige fabric for the chairs, and beige cushions. She also had a set of antique botanical prints. The frames were silver and the mats were, of course, beige. The flowers, however, were pink. It was all very pretty, and very, very beige. She hated it. She simply wasn't a beige person.

Her mom, however, wouldn't consider any other color. Oh well, it was a small price to pay for her happiness.

She forced herself to go to work. First, she tackled the desk, which was a mess. She carried the computer and printer to the dining room. Heck, those things were heavy. She was already tired and she'd barely started.
 

Next came the piles of paperwork. She stared at the pile of Middleburg real estate listings left on the desk. Throwing those out would feel really good. Come to think of it, a bonfire would feel even better. Once Gabe signed on the dotted line, she'd grab a couple of logs and have a party.

Damn, she was thinking about him again. She had to stop that. The Haunted Orchard party had been a big wake-up call. House hunting with Banshee Creek Gabe had been fun. But she couldn't deal with Manhattan Gabe.
 

Curse the Howrey House. If it weren't for that grotto, she would have kept her hands off Gabe. She would have gone home, read a novel, and gone to sleep. Okay, maybe she would have indulged in a fantasy or two, especially if she read the rest of that spicy bestseller on her bedside table. But there would have been no sex, no entanglement. It would have remained on the fantasy plane. The fantasy plane was easy to deal with. Hot, sweaty sex wasn't so easy. Hot, sweaty, absolutely fabulous sex was even worse.

And it had been hot. She had to admit that too. Fantasies she hadn't known she had had been turned to flesh. Elizabeth didn't recognize the girl who'd stripped her clothes off in Gabe's hotel room. Had that really been her? Or the girl who'd demanded that he tie her up in the Rosemoor. Shy, careful Elizabeth Hunt? It seemed impossible. And yet, it had happened.
 

How bizarre.

And she wanted it to happen again. That was the most disturbing aspect. She'd hoped that their attraction would burn out once they'd slept together. But no such luck.

Still, Gabe would be gone soon, and now it was time to focus on the imminent beige-ification of Cole's bedroom. She'd procrastinated for months. Time to get to work.
 

But her feet weren't moving.

She really didn't want to do this. Maybe she could just put the boxes in Zach's truck and ask him to take everything to the dump. She didn't really have to look through Cole's stuff. She could just throw it all out.
 

She looked at the boxes and slumped in defeat. She couldn't do that. Sure, her mom couldn't bring herself to look at any of Cole's possessions right now, but that could change. In a couple of years, she may want to use his possessions to remember her son's life.
 

Elizabeth remembered putting pictures into the boxes. There were also some books. Cole had a rare edition of Jules Michelet's
La Sorcière
with annotations by Guillermo del Toro. They could give that to one of his friends. Or maybe Gabe would want it. She shook the thought out of her head. She didn't want to think about Gabe. She'd look through the books and pictures instead. If she felt like going on, she'd also look through the clothes. If it got too hard, she'd take a rest and break out the Ben & Jerry's.

Decision made, she got to work. She opened the first box and found framed diplomas. Those were keepers, so she put them aside. There, that wasn't so hard – practically painless, in fact.
 

She kept on digging and threw a bunch of papers away, including what looked like a pile of Dungeons & Dragons maps, and kept on digging. She found more papers, a cookbook her mother had given to Cole in a wild burst of optimism, several video game booklets, and a couple of porn magazines. She quickly stuffed the magazines in the trash bag. This was sibling TMI.

After a half hour, she had a half-full garbage bag and a manageable stack of family pictures to keep.

And she hadn't shed one tear. Good.

She opened up the next box, which had a bunch of Army stamps, and found a bunch of military commendations. Her brother had, to everyone's surprise, been a model soldier. She put those in the keeper pile and pulled out a picture of her mom in her wedding dress. An overly made-up Mary Hunt smiled into the camera, looking young and happy. She sighed and put the picture in the keeper pile.
 

Then she pulled out a picture of her brother hugging her after her eighth-grade graduation. She was wearing a polyester cap and gown and a huge smile, and Cole looked happy and carefree. Oh man, her braces belonged in one of her brother's horror movies. He'd taken this pic with him on his tour of duty?
 

Rats, she was tearing up.
 

She dug out another picture. This one showed Cole, Gabe, and three other guys. Her brother was smiling and joking, and everyone was calm and relaxed. The photo wasn't that old. It must have been taken shortly before he died, probably during one of his ghost-hunting trips. The guys were carrying cameras and they looked dirty and sweaty. No surprise there, Cole loved tough trips. They were his favorite escape. When ghost hunting hadn't taken him far enough, he'd enlisted. When that wasn't far enough, he'd volunteered for service overseas. In the end, the need to escape had finally killed him.

She looked at the other figures in the picture. Gabe looked muddy and disheveled, a world away from the put-together executive who'd taken her to the Haunted Orchard inauguration. She put the picture to the side. This Gabe didn't exist anymore.
 

She hesitated for a second, then threw the picture in the trash bag and carried on. She went through the boxes mechanically, barely looking at the contents. She saved some pictures and papers for her mom, who might someday want evidence of her dead son's military career, but threw most of it away. The process was oddly cathartic. True, she cried through most of it, but the tears were long overdue. It was, as her L.A. therapist would say, a much-needed cleansing.

She was taping the boxes closed when she heard the doorbell. Who could that be? It was too early for the truck. She walked toward the front door. Was her mom back already? She wouldn't put it past her dad to cancel the vacation. But a loud, rhythmic knocking rang out, and she smiled with relief. She knew that knock.

She opened the door and greeted Holly and Ben. Holly was holding the toddler as he energetically banged on the fox-shaped door knocker. He gave her a toothy grin and banged again, triumphantly. His mom smiled an apology.

"Sorry about that, Elizabeth." Holly was dressed up in a plaid skirt and patent leather pumps, and she sounded harried. "He loves that silly door knocker. We just came to see if you were okay."

"I'm fine," she replied. She motioned her friend into the house and closed the door. Ben ran to the kitchen to raid the cookie jar, but Holly stayed in the living room, looking worried. "Why wouldn't I be okay?" Elizabeth asked. A twelve-hour
The X-Files
marathon didn't count as a breakdown, right?
 

"Well, you're wearing Cole's
Night Stalker
shirt, which is never good news."

"What do you have against Kolchak? He's a classic." And definitely not a sign of illness, mental or otherwise.
 

Holly looked skeptical. "Well, if you're okay, then why weren't you at the meeting?"
 

"Meeting? What meeting?" A feeling of dread came over her.

"The Town Council meeting. It just ended. They were voting on the ghost tours."

"I wasn't notified about a meeting." Her mind was racing. This wasn't good. "Let me guess, Caine asked to speak to the Council." She forced herself to calm down. There was no need to panic. Caine was a horrible speaker. He couldn't convince a chicken to cross the road.

"Nope. Gabe spoke."

Elizabeth's heart sank. Gabe was a different kettle of über-successful executive fish. If he talked to the Committee, they wouldn't just give him ghost tours, they'd blow up a giant marshmallow man and parade it down Main Street.
 

"Second guess," she said, with a growing sense of dread. "The ghost tours are back on."

"Like Donkey Kong." Holly pushed her tortoiseshell glasses up her nose. She did that when she was agitated. "Zombie-infested, lycanthropic Donkey Kong with a taste for virgin blood. Gabe didn't just want ghost tours. He wanted a complete town makeover. Haunted house attractions, horror movie festival, zombie convention." She paused dramatically. "He got all of it."