Ghost On Duty (Destiny Bay Cozy Mysteries Book 2) (16 page)

Probably just my imagination
, I thought, wishing I could believe that.
Probably nothing at all
.
 

I looked again. Nope. No one in the window. Okay then.
 

I took a deep, cleansing breath and set my shoulders, then yanked open the car door and stepped out onto the gravel. I turned quickly, looking at the window again. Still nothing. Maybe it was going to be okay.

“If not, I’ll just head on up to San Francisco,” I told myself with more confidence than I really felt. “No problem. Just because something wants to haunt a place doesn’t mean I have to stay there and be haunted.”

I felt better. I could be strong and resolute if I felt like it. Hah.
Just try me, ghost.
 

I’d been feeling just a little shaky all afternoon, but I blamed that on the fact that I’d just made the four-hour drive from Los Angeles without a break. I usually started falling asleep after an hour at the wheel, no matter where, no matter when. But this time I’d managed to stay awake by singing old songs along with a Fifties station and gulping down one gigantic latte after another. Small victories like that were the stepping-stones to happiness—at least that was what my grandmother used to tell me.
 

My grandmother—suddenly I was finding myself thinking about her and all the other elements of my childhood I’d pushed away and ignored for the last five or six years. Must be because I was coming to visit my Aunt Bebe, my mother’s much younger half sister. Why was I doing that again? Oh yeah. Because my heart was broken and I’d lost my job and I had nowhere else to turn. That was why I was risking letting the past catch up with me.
 

Was this wise? Probably not. But here I was anyway.
 

I stepped out of the car, then drew back as a woman came running past me. I gave her a wave and she waved back. Dressed in running gear, it was pretty obvious she was training for some kind of running event. I smiled. She was at least forty, but her running clothes were colorful and chic. Kind of neat. Maybe I should look into marathons in the area. I tried to put a spring in my step as I headed for the house.
 

I lifted the latch on the garden gate and started in. The sun was starting to set, filling the sky over the ocean with streaks of gorgeous color and I was looking at that instead of where I was walking, so I tripped on the body, almost flying face first into the begonias.
 

The man was lying across the walk, spread out and awkward in a way that told me plainly he was already dead. I don’t know why I didn’t scream. I did gasp, but that was mostly me trying to stop from falling. Once I’d righted myself and turned to look at the poor guy, I was past the scream reflex, I guess. Because I didn’t make a sound.
 

I did glance at the window again, just to be sure. Nope. Nobody there.

I looked back down at the body and tried to catch my breath. It looked like a middle-aged man, hair turning grey. He wore fancy jeans and a rich, soft polo shirt. Looked like he’d been a man of means.
 

A friend of Bebe’s? Or not?

I shuddered, dashed up the steps and tried the front door. It was locked. I pushed the button for the bell and heard it echo through the house, but nobody came. By now I was shivering all over. Here I was, all alone with the dead guy.
 

What the heck! Somebody come help me
!

Listening hard, I heard music. It seemed to be coming from the back yard. Someone had to be out there. But—who?

I looked at the man again. It was starting to get dark, but I could see that the blood that had pooled around him seemed to come from the smashed-looking area at the back of his head. There were a lot of pretty big rocks along the walkway. Any one of them could have done the job.
 

But wait. How did I know he was killed by somebody? Maybe he’d just fallen and hit his head on the concrete steps and….

No. It didn’t look that way at all. The body wasn’t anywhere near the steps.

I swallowed hard and started around the house, heading for the sound of music. It sounded like disco. “Stayin’ Alive” wasn’t going to help this guy, not anymore.
 

The back yard was laid out like a maze, as I remembered from a previous visit a few years ago, vegetables on stakes mixed with flower beds and wood lathes filled with flowering vines.
 

I started to call out for my aunt, but then I stopped myself. Maybe I ought to be careful. Maybe I ought to check out who was out there before I made my presence known. And that wasn’t going to be easy in the gathering gloom.

There was a rustling sound to the side and I turned. Something came around the huge, sprawling morning glory vine—something holding a weapon on high was coming right at me! This time I did scream. The thing stopped short, then melted from something threatening into my cute little aunt, holding a hand pick high as though to kill me. Or not.
 

“Mele?” she cried. “Is that you?” She dropped the pick and reached for me, chortling with delight.
 

I hugged her back, taking in air in huge gulps of relief. “Oh my gosh, you scared me to death,” I managed to squeak out.
 

“You scared me, too,” she said, laughing. “We’ve had some break-ins
 
around here lately and I didn’t know what to expect with you sneaking in here like that.”

The thought flashed through my clumsy brain that she might have been the reason the man out front was dead—but no, that just couldn’t be. No way.

“Aunt Bebe,” I started as I caught my breath. “Listen, I have to tell you something.”

Bebe wasn’t stopping for air herself. Once she got going, nothing could stop her and she was going ninety miles an hour at this point. It was nice to think she was so excited about having me here, but all the same….

“Bebe, listen. There’s…there’s a body out on the front walk.”

“A body?” She rolled her eyes, shaking her head. “Oh that damn cat. He thinks he has to show me every little murder she commits. The entire rodent kingdom is running scared with him around. One time….”

I grabbed her by the lapels of her plaid work shirt. “No, Bebe, listen. I don’t think your cat had anything to do with this.”

She blinked. “Well, what is it, honey?”

“A man.”

She went stock-still and stared at me. “A man?” she said, and suddenly her voice was quivering. “What…who…?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. You’d better come see.”

She didn’t want to go. “No,” she whispered, grabbing my arm. “Who is it? Tell me!”

“Bebe, I don’t know him. I don’t know, I might have met him when I was here a couple of years ago, but I doubt it. You have to come and see for yourself.”

She came, but she didn’t want to. I practically had to drag her around the corner of her house—and there he was. By then, she was shaking like a leaf and I had become curiously calm.
 

“Do you know him?” I asked.

She nodded and started to cry. “Oh God,” she murmured over and over. “Poor Caroline. How am I going to tell her?”

Chapter Two

By then I’d pulled out my cell.
 

“I think we ought to tell the police first,” I mentioned dryly, punching in 911. It did seem like the thing to do and the cops showed up so fast, I almost thought they’d been waiting right up the street for us to finally make the call.
 

And that was what was so funny about the whole situation. I’d reacted emotionally at first, but by now I was feeling very removed from it all, as though I was just a spectator who had no dog in this fight. And I guess that was pretty much what I was. I felt for Bebe, especially when she had to call Caroline, who turned out to be her best friend, and tell her that her husband, Kyle Madronna, was dead on her doorstep. But I didn’t know either one of the Madronnas so it wasn’t really getting to me like I thought it should.
 

And then I found myself turning quickly and looking behind me every few minutes and I knew why I was feeling so hard-hearted. I was still looking for him, my ghost, the guy who shouldn’t be there. And something deep inside was wondering if this was all his fault.
 

A police cruiser showed up with Caroline on board. She turned out to be a very classy-looking lady, about my aunt’s age, with long, slinky blond hair that fell over her right eye, Veronica Lake-style. I did remember meeting her before. She seemed nervous and edgy, her blue-eyed gaze darting from the body to the detective, to me, to Bebe, then back again. I expected her to go to the body and start crying, but she didn’t seem to want to do that. Maybe she just wasn’t the drama queen type, who knew? But to me, she hardly acted the part of what you would call a grieving widow.
 

When I mentioned that to Bebe, she whispered in my ear. “They were having problems. He was quite the womanizer. You could hardly blame her for holding some of that against him.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Enough for her to want him dead?” I whispered back.
 

Her mouth dropped in shock and she shook her head so hard that the bandanna holding back her dark hair came loose and curls spilled out over her
 
shoulders. I was about to say more, but the detective was back with more questions and I took a few steps backward to stay out of the way.

Detective McKnight was handsome in a cool, cocky sort of way that immediately put my back up. His silver blue eyes seemed to size me up in a distant way that was downright offensive, as though he’d already decided not to believe a word I said. When I run into a man who comes on like I’m the enemy, I tend to behave badly. I had to fight back that natural reaction and remember that this incident wasn’t about me—and I didn’t want to push my way into any kind of starring role. That could only end badly.

He began to quiz Bebe about her activities of the day and looked skeptical when she claimed she’d been gardening in the back all afternoon and hadn’t heard a thing.
 

“I had my music on,” she explained. “That’s my favorite way to work out there. And I put it on loud.”

I nodded. I’d heard it. But McKnight made a face that made me want to smack him. “Did you have any reason to want Kyle Madronna dead?” he asked.

Bebe gasped. “Of course not. He’s my best friend’s husband.”

McKnight nodded. “Best friends have been known to turn on each other,” he noted, his gaze narrowed as though he thought he was that mentalist guy who could read minds.
 

Bebe gave him a look back that showed
she
thought he was a moron. “I just can’t accept that a murder happened right in front of my house,” she said fretfully. “Isn’t there still a chance it might have been an accident?”

“Anything is possible,” said McKnight.
 

“It was an accident, don’t you think?” Bebe obviously wanted this wrapped up and put away so she could go on with her life. “I’m sure it was.”

I loved her but I couldn’t let that go by. “Sure,” I responded. “You think the man was walking up to the door and out of the blue, just slipped and hit his head on the stairs?”

The detective frowned at me, suddenly on Bebe’s side. “It’s possible.”

“It’s also possible that this rock covered with blood--” I pointed it out with my foot—“fell off the roof on him. Or a small, localized earthquake caught him in mid stride. But I think I’d bet my money on someone taking up that rock and applying it to the back of his head with human force-a force powered by some real anger. Seems more likely, don’t you think?”

He sighed heavily. “We won’t know until our investigation is complete,” he answered in a monotone, but there was a spark of something interesting in his gaze.
 

“Well, whatever. Just don’t go implying that Bebe did it.”

The detective raised one eyebrow and stared at me coldly. “You found the body, right?” he said.

I nodded, suddenly feeling a wave of regret that I’d opened my mouth. Would I ever learn?

“And what exactly was your business here?” he asked, notebook poised to jot down my answer for juries and posterity.
 

I felt a smart-aleck reply sizzling on the tip of my tongue. I almost managed to hold it back, but something in his skeptical look just brought out the worst in me.
 

“I was committing a rock murder nearby,” I said. “Just not this one.”

He stared at me for a moment, then seemed to decide against ordering up the cuffs. Turning aside, he began to get a fix on the setting, pointing out the faux castle Kyle and Caroline lived in, right up the hill from my aunt’s place, and mentioned income disparity, greed and jealous rage, as though he thought those emotions might be relevant.
 

I held my temper, but it did remind me that I’d been to that castle a couple of years ago when I’d made my previous visit to my aunt’s. It was a fantastic structure and decorated in luxury, as I remembered it. I looked at it now, less than a mile away, surrounded by vineyards, like the grounds of a palace. Temporary royalty. That was what Kyle and his sort seemed to be.
 

Rich today, dead tomorrow.
 

“It’s a pretty amazing place, isn’t it?” Detective McKnight said to me, noticing where I was still looking and leaning a bit too close.
 

I made a face and leaned away.
 

His gaze narrowed. “Green eyes,” he mentioned softly. “Don’t they say people with green eyes tend to have a talent for witchcraft?”

I glared at him. “No.”

His mouth quirked on one side, but he gave up on me and began badgering Caroline instead. Did Kyle have any enemies? Anyone angry with him lately? Anyone she could think of who might want her husband dead? And just where had she been an hour or so ago?

She started answering in a robotic manner, but pretty soon tears began to fill her eyes and she looked on the edge of keeling over. So she was human after all. And who could blame her for falling apart? Marriage problems or not, this had to be an awful shock.