Ghost Seer (10 page)

Zach slid into sheets softer than any he’d slept in since his grandmother had died. Luxurious sheets. The kind of quality of sheets that he believed Clare would have on her new bed. He couldn’t wait to try them out with her.

And he would.

 • • • 

Clare gritted her teeth as she wrote another check to Dr. Barclay. She’d taken his first session the next morning to get the appointment over with.

He’d asked if she’d resolved her issues with her aunt before Sandra had died. No. Clare hadn’t told him there was no resolving clashing points of view on the reality of ghosts.

Then the doctor had led Clare to realize with a thunking in her mind that not only hadn’t she resolved her issues with Aunt Sandra, but she’d been handling the full burden of that estate, and the money from that estate had drastically changed Clare’s life. And Clare had quit her job. Not to mention that she’d decided to move.

Death, job loss, and moving. Three huge stress factors in her life.

Still . . . all she wanted to do was to talk about whether she was going crazy because she was seeing ghosts; just fix that one problem.

Dr. Barclay thought Enzo was a manifestation of a need she had for friendship and fun. The gunfighter—for some reason she hadn’t informed the psychologist that she’d discovered who he was—symbolized her rebellion against her careless parents and their stupid lifestyle, or heavy unresolved issues with Aunt Sandra herself, a psychic medium.

He was sure they could work through Clare’s concerns and eliminate her peculiar visions with biweekly sessions. Biweekly as in twice a week as opposed to once every two weeks. It had been a good thing Clare had been sitting down because she would have fallen off her chair at the thought of paying so much to the psychologist. But if the sessions rid her of seeing ghosts it was worth every penny. Probably.

She’d asked about the treatment schedule and he’d mentioned meds and an inpatient center as options if the visions continued and she kept losing weight and having problems sleeping. Those two options had tweaked her whole nervous system and she had to repress a shudder.

“Have a good day!” the receptionist chirped after Clare had made an appointment for Monday.

Clare forced a smile, stuck warmth in her voice. “You, too.”

“Thank you.”

Nodding, Clare crossed the elegant lobby to the outer door. She’d worked with a couple of happy, optimistic people and just didn’t get them.

To Clare’s surprise, Dr. Barclay came to stand at the threshold of his office door, scrutinizing her. Checking to see if she’d made another appointment or examining her physical condition, which had not improved after a restless night? She nodded to him and left.

Enzo reappeared to whine at her. He didn’t like the smell of the place and didn’t even go into the reception room, let alone the inner sanctum that was costing Clare big bucks.

Walking down the gray and deeply carpeted corridor, she let her body sag. Dr. Barclay wasn’t helping as quickly as she’d hoped. She’d be a thin and frozen skeleton before this thing was resolved, and from the looks he gave her, he was going to prescribe heavy-duty meds soon.

She didn’t want drugs.

She did want this
over
.

She had some thinking to do.

Clare hit the library next for more information on Jack Slade and the headquarters he’d built at Virginia Dale. Though the Internet had good data on the current condition of the building that Slade had erected, and even mentioned the ear . . . most sites on the web reiterated what Clare considered a mass of legends and falsehoods about Joseph Albert Slade himself. She already had the books she considered definitive on the man.

After a couple of hours at the library, she nerved herself to once again leave the place and head for the restaurant she’d used yesterday. Walking in the sun didn’t warm her as much as other people, nor did the sweaty folks in the under-air-conditioned mall bus Clare took to reach the restaurant.

She arranged the materials she’d copied from the library—noncirculating maps and reference items—and the books she’d checked out on the restaurant table. This time she sat outside in the warm sun.

It didn’t take the brain of a private investigator or cop to follow the logic that if Zach had a new job with a security firm, the business was no doubt located in a downtown high-rise near the restaurant, since he’d come in the day before.

She wanted to see him again.

I do, too
, said Enzo.
I like him a lot. He smells, really, really, REALLY good.
He sniffed lustily in demonstration.

She and her imaginary companion were rubbing along fairly well today, probably since she’d tossed an occasional murmur to the dog.

So she’d ended up here in the sun at the restaurant to reward herself and hope for a much nicer session with a much more attractive man than Dr. Barclay, though that individual was sure of his sex appeal. Not that he’d done anything unacceptable. Not while she was giving him a steady income. Still, she got a sense that if—
when
—she beat these annoying illusions, the doctor might be interested in her. Nothing she could pinpoint, just a sense. And nothing that irritated or harassed.

She just preferred the rougher and more conflicted and incredibly more sexy Zach Slade.

“Hi, Clare.”

S
HE JUMPED AT
the voice, the wrong voice, of the wrong man just outside the iron rail delineating the restaurant’s space from the mall sidewalk. Frowning, she tried to recall his name. She’d seen him in the Western History room of the Denver Public Library more than once. He was the research assistant for a professor at a local college. Scrounging through her mind, she at least came up with his first name. “Hello, Ted.” She smiled. “I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your surname.”

“Mather.” He gave her a wide grin before he wiped a blue bandana across his brow. “Whew, it’s hot today. How can you possibly stand it out here? Must be air-conditioned inside. You should go in there.”

“I’m fine.”

Enzo barked.
You should put on your hat.

“I suppose I have a hat somewhere,” Clare grumped. She leaned down toward her briefcase; dizziness had her stilling until she blinked and blinked again.

“Anything wrong?” Ted asked.

“No. Just looking for something,” she said. Her mind cleared and she took out a visor. “There, that should be good enough.” It would cut the glare of the light gray flagstones but still leave her head open to the sun.

You have not been eating well
, Enzo scolded.
You are fighting me. Us. Your gift. Not eating well. Your health is deteriorating.

“I’m still used to Aunt Sandra’s place in Chicago near the lake. I haven’t been home a full week yet.” And it had been a cloudy summer in Chicago.

“I understand,” Ted Mather said with a commiserating smile.

She’d actually forgotten he was there, a figure nearly too bright in a white polo shirt and beige pants. His hair was thinning and sandy and he had dark brown eyes. He was real, human, and alive, and he had color.

And her sanity was slipping. Her greatest fear.

She shoved that aside, forcing herself to deal with the man. “Can I help you?”

He chuckled. “No, I think I can help you. Can I join you?”

Help her? How?

Right now she began to think she should take any help she could get. From under her lashes, she glanced around the street. Her table was on the corner. No Zach Slade.

“Sure,” she said.

He nodded and moved into the restaurant.

You need food!
Enzo said.
Order some!

“I’ll be having tea later,” she said.

Hours from now. You didn’t eat dinner last night. You didn’t eat breakfast this morning.

“I rarely eat breakfast.”

“This is a good place for lunch,” Ted Mather said.

“Yes,” Clare agreed, though she hadn’t had anything but coffee here the day before. She looked at the menu. A sandwich might be good. Soup might be better, though, warm her up, and she wouldn’t worry about getting lettuce caught in her teeth if Zach showed up.

The waitress came and Clare ordered tomato soup. The woman gave her an odd glance but nodded and waited for Ted.

He smiled genially up at her. “Just decaf coffee, please.”

“Sure,” the server said, and left.

Ted scraped an iron chair against the flagstones. Clare gritted her teeth at the screech, bit her lip. She was obviously becoming too sensitized to . . . everything. Just when would the rest of those wretched physical tests come in?

“Clare?” Ted asked, now sitting across from her.

She forced a smile for him. “Yes, Ted?”

He beamed at her, reached down into his canvas messenger bag, and pulled out a fifteen-inch cardboard tube. “I got permission to copy this complete map for you. I saw you studying it this morning.”

“Oh, thanks!” She’d used her tablet to take pics of several maps, in sections. Most of them had been the Pony Express trail with the stations marked. The map she liked most didn’t have anything to do with Jack Slade, but it had excellent drawings and the dates that the route of the Mormon pioneers would have hit each stop. Pioneers often stayed at stations of the Overland Stage, including Virginia Dale, Slade’s headquarters and where the other ear had been lost. She shivered.

With a big smile, Ted unrolled a copy of a southwest treasure map.

“Oh,” Clare said. She’d liked the colors of the map, blue and beige, and had glanced at it.

Ted chuckled. “These are mostly shipwrecks and lost mines, not much about the 1863 Overland Stage robbery near Virginia Dale.”

“What?”

He leaned forward confidentially. “I know that’s what you’re curious about.”

It sounded to Clare that the robbery was what
Ted
was curious about.

“With all that research you’re doing on Jack Slade,” Ted said.

“Thank you for the map,” she said politely. She shrugged. “But you’re wrong about the robbery. It doesn’t interest me.”

“Of course not,” he winked.

“There’s no way such gold could be found today.”

“New technology for locating treasure is coming up all the time,” Ted said cheerfully. “And we’re also discovering more about historical figures, able to trace them and their movements better.”

Where did he come up with that faulty supposition? She began, “I don’t think so . . .”

“For instance, after a hundred and thirty years, Australian bandit Ned Kelly’s body was found in a mass grave. And after six hundred years, King Richard the Third’s body was finally found in England.” He waved a hand. “We’ll know more about Jack Slade soon. It’s only been a little over a century and a half.”

“Slade’s body is in Salt Lake City,” Clare said; the man himself had been an enigma for decades. Most people had taken Mark Twain’s description and stories at face value.

Ted huffed and waggled a finger at Clare. “It only takes time and effort and some money to trace anyone nowadays. Where Slade hid the gold is eminently discoverable.”

She didn’t think so; Ted obviously lived in his own dream world. He’d mentioned money, and Clare now had a great deal of that. Was this a scam? Like that guy who’d tried to con Mrs. Flinton? That sounded more reasonable. She said, “I’m not interested in that robbery, and Slade had nothing to do with it.”

“Untrue!” Ted snapped. His easy smile had vanished. “Jack Slade masterminded the 1863 robbery.”

Clare’s temper wore thin. She pulled out her timeline and nearly slapped it on the table. “
When
was this gold stagecoach robbery in 1863?”

Ted goggled, licked his lips.

Tapping her timeline, Clare said, “In the winter of 1862 to early 1863 Jack Slade was in Illinois; then he headed to Montana.”

“Plenty of room for error in ‘the winter of 1862 to early 1863,’ and ‘heading to Montana’ from Illinois,” Ted insisted.

For sure, but Clare continued to press, “When in 1863 was the robbery?”

Ted’s chin set. “I don’t know.”

Clare nodded. “Sounds to me that if anyone really wants to do some tracing, he’ll have to do some nitty-gritty research. On more than the Internet.” She took her paper and slipped it back in her briefcase. “Original source research.” And if she believed in ghosts, she
had
the original source.

But she didn’t . . . quite.

Ted rose. “I know how to do the research.”

Con or deluded man? She didn’t know, and as he frowned, she reined in her temper and said more softly. “There are a lot of legends out there.”

“There was a gold robbery from an Overland Stage coach in 1863 and Jack Slade was behind it, and I’ll prove that.” His pale face with freckles turned red. He looked hot. She felt a little warm herself.

“I’m going to find that gold,” Ted said.

Absolutely futile arguing with the man.

It’s ZACH
, Enzo said, wagging his tail.
I don’t think I like this Ted. He doesn’t smell right.

Clare wanted to close her eyes at the idea of Enzo being able to smell, but not with a simmering man in front of her.

“Hey, Clare,” Zach said. He stood just outside the iron fence. Though he smiled, his narrowed eyes stared at Ted in that cop look of detailed examination, Zach’s stance dominant, authoritative.

Clare rose. “Hi, Zach.”

With a short nod to her, Ted pivoted on his heel and stomped off, nearly bumping into the waitress with two glasses of water, the soup, and decaf coffee. Which Clare would end up paying for. She grimaced.

“What’s wrong?” Zach asked. He didn’t lean against the iron railing; probably too hot.

Clare waited until Ted strode to the street corner and hopped on the free shuttle that had just pulled up. “Not much.” She gestured to the mug at the place where Ted had been. “How do you feel about decaf coffee, since I’ll be paying for it?”

A corner of Zach’s mouth twitched. “Cheapskate.”

She gave him a stony stare. “I’m frugal.”

“Uh-huh. I’ll be right there.”

And he was. He picked up the mug, snagged the waitress, and handed it to her, and asked for the luncheon special and the check by the time Clare had sat and taken a few spoonfuls of her soup. Rather bland, but that was probably her taste buds and not the food.

“So, Zach, tell me what you thought of Ted Mather.”

I didn’t like him. He has a nasty cloud around him
, Enzo said. He’d moved outside the restaurant railing to lie down. Clare tensed every time a person walked through him. No one reacted.

“Who’s Ted Mather?” Zach took off his jacket and hung it over the chair back. The pale blue of his business shirt brought out the blue in his eyes, diminishing the green.

“The guy who was here just before you. He’s the assistant of a local prof I’ve met in the Western History room of the library. Did he strike you more as a con man or delusional?”

Zach’s gaze flickered as he considered, perhaps playing back whatever of the conversation he’d overheard. How much, Clare didn’t know.

“Guy thinks he’s going to find treasure?” Zach picked up the map and laughed. “Delusional. Pretty map.”

“You want it?” Clare asked.

“You don’t?”

“I don’t believe the odds of finding lost treasure are worth the risk.”

The waitress set a big toasted BLT sandwich in front of Zach. “Or ordering the lunch special without knowing what it is.”

“How’s your soup, ma’am?” asked the server.

Terrible. “Fine, thank you,” Clare lied. It didn’t even feel warm anymore.

Zach sat. “I don’t mind a certain amount of risk,” he said around a big bite of his sandwich. He nodded to the server. “Good food.”

I bet it smells good in real life
, Enzo said mournfully.

Smiling, the waitress left.

Of course Zach wouldn’t mind risk; he’d been a police officer and probably enjoyed adrenaline rushes. The only adrenaline rushes Clare had experienced were those when she’d screwed up and had to fix a mistake immediately before someone else discovered it.

“When we were talking, I couldn’t tell whether Ted was trying to get me to invest in his gold-finding scheme or not,” Clare said.

“Didn’t impress me as a slick guy,” Zach said.

“No.”

“A con would have had his whole scheme laid out, and answers to any questions you might ask.”

“That’s true.” She sighed and swallowed another tasteless spoonful of soup. She could fall into brooding about her physical and mental health or focus on Zach.

Now that he concentrated on his sandwich, Clare noted the strain around his eyes easing. She hadn’t spent a lot of time with him, but either the man himself or her new sensitivity to everything had her believing that she could tell when his leg pained him or something else bothered him.

“How has your morning gone?” she asked.

He snorted, finished chewing a bite, and said, “Well enough. I filled in the paperwork Rickman needed for my new job.”

“Rickman?”

“Rickman Security and Investigations.”

“Oh.”

“I don’t have a card yet, though I’m sure those are on the way.”

She took a sip of water. “You’re looking better.”

His gaze met hers. “Thanks.”

Dropping her eyes and carefully spooning another swallow of soup into her mouth, this one with a chunk of tomato, she said, “I think having a job agrees with you.”

His lips flattened, and then he nodded and took a huge bite of his sandwich.

“Even if it isn’t the sort of job you want.”

Again he nodded, chewed, swallowed, then said, “Yeah, helping Mrs. Flinton last night felt good. How about you, Clare? We talked about contributing.”

For an instant a whooshing wind blocked out her hearing, and her vision dimmed. Her accounting career seemed like ages ago.

Maybe like more than a hundred and fifty years ago. She
was
going crazy, but she wasn’t going to tell Zach that, mention that she was holding on to the hope Dr. Barclay offered her or still waiting for her in-depth physical tests.

An image of Aunt Sandra rose before Clare’s mind, wearing one of those cut-velvet scarf jackets, coming toward Clare with a big smile on her carefully made-up face that looked years younger than her true age, wafting the scent of the perfume Clare hadn’t used that morning. That was a memory. Sandra had sent a limo to pick up Clare the summer she’d visited when she was sixteen because Sandra had had a client for her psychic medium business that she couldn’t refuse.