Deadly Deceptions

I got out of the car, shoved my hands into the hip pockets of my jeans and approached.

Gillian couldn’t have heard me, but she must have sensed that I was there, because she looked up and watched solemnly as I drew near.

I added another title to the growing list of Damn Fool’s Guides I needed to acquire—one on sign language. I thought of how I’d asked Gillian about her killer, and she’d answered. Maybe she could read my mind—she’d responded at the funeral, when I’d mentally asked her to come back to where I was sitting—but it was more likely that she’d simply read my lips.

Duh. Mojo Sheepshanks, supersleuth. Not much gets by me.

Aware that she didn’t want to be touched, and not too keen on being seen reaching out to empty air, should anyone happen to glance in our direction, I kept my hands in my pockets instead of cupping her face in them, as I wanted so much to do.

A single tear slid down her smudged cheek.

Because she’d lowered her head, maybe hoping to hide the fact that she was crying, I crouched on the other side of the mound so I could look up into her eyes. I steeled myself to see marks on her neck, left by the wire someone had used to strangle her, according to Tucker, but her flesh was unmarked.

“Hey,” I said gently.

“Hey,” Gillian mouthed silently.

It was a forlorn greeting, but at least she’d acknowledged my presence.

“Time to go home,” I told her, forming the words very slowly and carefully. “You can stay at my place.”

She stared at me, looking almost defiant. Her little hands were clenched into fists, and her stance told me she wasn’t going anywhere, and I couldn’t make her. True enough. She’d simply vanish if I made any sudden moves.

How do you bribe a ghost-child? Do you offer to buzz through the drive-in at McDonald’s for a happy meal?

“You could watch TV,” I said, after searching my brain for any scrap of kid lore. “I have a big one that comes down out of the ceiling when you push a button.”

She signed something, but I didn’t know what it was.

“She wants you to buy her a dog,” a voice said.

I almost fell over, I was so jolted. I got to my feet and turned to see the young guy I’d glimpsed earlier, meditating beside a grave.

Duh, again. He was dead. The old lady with the flowers probably was, too. I made a mental note to pay more attention to my surroundings and not assume everybody I saw was alive.

He smiled.

I hoped he wasn’t planning to follow me home. I had my hands full with one ghost—I didn’t need two.

I swallowed. Stood up straight. “You’re—”

“Dead,” he said cheerfully.

“And you understand sign language.”

He nodded. “I took a couple of special classes at the community college,” he said. “I needed a service project to make Eagle Scout.” He signed something to Gillian, and she eagerly signed back.

“Ask if she knows who killed her,” I said.

“Whoa,” he said, round eyed.

“Just do it, okay? It’s important.”

“I don’t think we covered that in class,” the boy replied. “But I’ll try.”

His hands moved.

Gillian’s hands moved.

“She doesn’t know,” he said. “It happened really fast.”

“Damn,” I muttered. Then I took a closer look at him. He was wearing jeans and a red T-shirt, and he was even younger than I’d first thought. He probably hadn’t even made it through high school before he passed away. “What’s your name and when did you die?” I asked.

“I’m not sure when I croaked,” he said. “I only figured it out the other day. Up till then, I just thought I was having a bad dream.”

I threw back my head, looked up at heaven. Why did God just allow these people to wander around, not knowing they were dead? Wasn’t there some kind of intake system? Where were the angels? Where were the loving relatives, come to lead the newly deceased into the Light?

“But my name is Justin Braydaven,” Justin went on. “I probably wouldn’t be able to tell you that much if I hadn’t read it off my headstone.” He shook his head. “I’ve really been spaced lately.”

“You didn’t remember your name—but you can still communicate in sign language?”

Justin shrugged. “Maybe it’s like riding a bike,” he said. “You never forget how to do it, even when you’re—” he stopped, swallowed “—dead.”

I felt sorry for him, for obvious reasons. There was so much he was never going to experience. “I guess your date of death is probably on that headstone, too. Under your name.”

“I was so glad to know who I was, I forgot to look for that.”

“Justin, do you see a big light? If you do, you should go into it.”

“No big lights,” Justin said, sounding good-naturedly resigned.

Gillian began to sign again.

“She’s back to the dog,” Justin told me. “It’s a big thing to her. Maybe there’s one at the pound.”

I thought about Vince Erland, promising his stepdaughter a pet and then reneging. It would be easy to judge him for that, but the fact is, dogs and cats need a lot of things—shots, food, spaying or neutering, sometimes ongoing veterinary care. Those things aren’t cheap.

The three of us started walking down a paved, sloping drive, in the general direction of my car. I was musing, Justin and Gillian were signing.

“Hey, lady!” one of the groundskeepers called to me, loading tools into the back of a battered pickup truck. “We’re closing up for the night!”

I nodded. “On my way,” I called back.

We passed the old lady, fussing happily with her bouquet. She didn’t seem to notice us.

“She’s been in a good mood since the flowers came,” Justin informed me.

I drew up at the headstone where I’d first seen him, peered at the lettering.

He’d been dead for six years.

Where had he been all that time?

“Can I drop you off somewhere?” I asked, because I couldn’t just leave him there.

After giving the matter some serious thought, Justin came up with an address, and we all piled into the Volvo—Justin, Gillian and me. I recall a few curious glances from the groundskeepers when I opened the passenger door, flipped the seat forward so Gillian could climb in back and waited until Justin was settled up front.

I smiled and waved to the spectators.

The smile faded as I drove out of the cemetery, though.

I was busy trying to solve the great cosmic mysteries—life, death, the time-space continuum.

No Damn Fool’s Guide on that.

As it turned out, Justin lived—or had lived—in a modest, one-story rancher in one of the city’s many housing developments. I swear, every time I leave town, another one springs up. There were lights in the windows of the stucco house with the requisite red tile roof, though the shades were drawn, and an old collie lay curled up on the small concrete porch.

When we came to a stop at the curb, the dog got up and gave a halfhearted woof.

“Justin?” I said.

“Yeah?”

“This is your folks’ place, right?”

“It’s home,” he answered affably. Instead of opening the car door and getting out, he’d simply teleported himself to the sidewalk, leaning to speak to me through the open window on my side. The collie tottered slowly down the front steps. Its coat was thinning, and I saw lots of gray in it. “My mom lives here. My dad left a long time ago.”

Hope stirred. If his dad was dead, he might come looking for Justin, show him the way to the other side. He was sure taking his sweet time doing it, though.

“Your dad passed away?”

Justin shook his head. “No. He just decided he didn’t want to support a family.”

My spirits, already low, plummeted. I blinked a couple of times.

“Your mom…” I paused, swallowed, wanting to cry. Was the kid expecting a welcome-home party? “She probably won’t be able to see you, Justin.”

Justin nodded. “I know,” he said. “I just want to be where she is. See my old room and stuff. I couldn’t figure out how to get back here, that’s all.”

The dog was near now, and it made a little whimpering sound that must have been recognition, then toddled over to nuzzle the back of Justin’s hand.

“Hey,” he said. “Pepper can see me.”

“Not uncommon,” I told him, drawing on my enormous store of knowledge about the ins and outs of the afterlife. “Animals have special sensitivities.” I paused, gulped. “You’ll be okay, then?”

Justin grinned, and I had a sudden, piercing awareness of just how much his mother probably missed him. If I’d had the guts, I’d have knocked on her front door and told her straight out that her son was still around. That he still cared, still wanted to be close to her.

But I didn’t.

“What’s your name?” Justin asked after leaning down to pet the dog. “In case I need to contact you, or something?”

“Mojo Sheepshanks,” I said after briefly considering, I’m ashamed to admit, making up an alias.

“No shit?” he marveled. He stooped again, signed what was most likely a goodbye to Gillian and turned to walk away.

I sat at the curb watching as he and the dog, Pepper, headed for the house.

The front door opened, and a woman appeared on the threshold. I couldn’t make out her features, but her voice was nice.

“There you are, Pepper,” she called. “Come on inside now. Time for supper.”

She obviously didn’t see Justin, but he slipped past her, with Pepper, before she shut the door.

A lump formed in my throat.

The living-room drapes parted, and Justin’s mother looked out at me.

Strange car in the neighborhood.

Not a good thing.

I shoved the car into gear and drove away.

Gillian, meanwhile, had moved to the front seat.

“I’m sorry, but I’m not getting a dog,” I told her in a rush of words, careful to turn my face in her direction. “I live in my sister’s guesthouse. She’d have a fit.”

In that moment I was filled with a sudden and fierce yearning for my apartment. All right, I’d almost been murdered there. But it was my place, just the same. I could have a dog if I wanted. I could eat tamale pie for three days without feeling guilty—though stealing it would be trickier.

Did I mention that I never deliberately cook?

We made a detour, Gillian and I, and I zipped into a megabookstore to look for a Damn Fool’s Guide to Sign Language. Sure enough, there was one, complete with the hand alphabet and lots of illustrations. Inspired, I grabbed a second volume from the series, this one on popularity.

I was only a little embarrassed to buy a book that had probably been written for grossly overweight computer nerds and aspiring middle-school cheerleaders, but, hell, there wasn’t anything else for the socially challenged.

Back at Greer’s place, I led Gillian to the guesthouse, and she immediately plunked down on the couch. No orange velour here—Greer’s furniture was all decorator approved. True to my word, I brought the TV down out of the ceiling and cruised the channels until I found a cartoon.

Gillian was instantly engrossed.

I studied her ballerina outfit. If I bought her some clothes at Wal-Mart in the morning, I wondered, would she be able to wear them?

Nick, my ex-husband, had always shown up in the suit he was buried in. I had a feeling ghosts didn’t have extensive wardrobes. Still, it was worth a try.

Gillian’s leotard, tights and tutu were bedraggled, and she was still wearing just the one slipper. It haunted me, that missing slipper.

I wanted to cry every time I looked at her.

Which wasn’t about the outfit, I know, but I needed to do something.

While Gillian watched TV, I brewed a pot of tea and sat down at my kitchen table to study The Damn Fool’s Guide to Sign Language.

After two hours I knew how to say, “The cow is brown” and ask for directions to the nearest restroom.

Not very impressive, I know. But it was a start.

When I finally went to bed Gillian was still sitting on the couch, staring blindly at the TV screen.

CHAPTER THREE

GILLIAN WAS GONE when I got up the next morning, and the TV was still on. Closed-captioned dialogue streamed across the screen.

I sighed. Picked up the remote and switched to a news channel, clicking off the subtitle feature.

This was an act of courage. Because of my last excellent adventure, I’d been all over the media for days. That’s what happens, I guess, when you suddenly remember who killed your parents when you were five years old, and the guilty parties try to shut you up before you can spill the proverbial beans.

That was last week, I told myself, but it wasn’t much consolation.

The talking heads were prattling about obesity in children, and I regarded that as a positive sign. Nothing bombed, nothing hijacked. A slow news day is a good news day.

Trying to decide whether I ought to go to Wal-Mart for ghost clothes or run down another lead on Greer’s cheating husband, I padded into the kitchen to start a pot of java. Greer’s coffeemaker was state of the art, unlike mine, and I had my choice of everything from cappuccinos and lattes to cocoa and hot cider.

All I wanted was coffee, damn it. Plain, ordinary, simple coffee.

Again I missed my apartment and the chortle-chug of my own humble brewing apparatus. Heebie-jeebies or not, I was going to have to bite the bullet and go back. All this luxury was getting to me in a big way.

I wrestled a single cup of caffeine from the sleek monster machine, with all its shining spouts and levers, and headed back to the living room, blinking blearily at the TV screen as the theme shifted from fat kids to Gillian Pellway’s murder investigation.

Tucker Darroch’s harried face appeared, close up, then the camera panned back. He was wearing a blue cotton work shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, along with jeans and Western boots, and he looked as though he’d like to be anywhere else but in front of the sheriff’s office with a microphone practically bumping his lower lip.

“An arrest has been made, and yet the investigation continues?” the reporter asked. “Does that mean you aren’t sure you have the right man in custody?”

“Mr. Erland hasn’t been formally charged,” Tucker answered, tersely patient. “He’s being held for questioning.”

“He’s been in the county jail for almost a week,” the reporter pointed out helpfully. She was ultra-skinny—obesity clearly wasn’t rampant among media types—and wore a pink suit with a pencil skirt and fashionably short jacket. Her hair was blond and big. “Doesn’t that indicate that Mr. Erland is a prime suspect?”

Personally, I thought she was standing a tad closer to Tucker than absolutely necessary. I get sidetracked by things like that.

I took another slurp of coffee and reminded myself that I had no claim on Tucker Darroch. Oh, no. He still belonged to Allison, the divorce notwithstanding. While I’d tossed and turned in my lonely bed the night before, dreaming about dead people, he’d probably been snuggled in his ex-wife’s arms.

I almost choked on the coffee.

“Mr. Erland,” Tucker said evenly, “is a person of interest, not a suspect.”

Copspeak, I thought. Tucker couldn’t make a definitive statement regarding Erland’s innocence or guilt—I knew it, Tucker knew it and so did the reporter, along with most of the viewing audience, a few flakes excepted. It was all rhetoric to fill airtime.

Translation: nobody knew jack-shit.

The interview ended.

The telephone rang.

A wild fantasy overwhelmed me. It was Tucker, I decided, calling to ask if I’d seen him on TV.

As if he’d ever do that.

“Hello?” I cried into the cordless receiver I’d snatched up from the coffee table.

“Who is this?” an unfamiliar female voice demanded.

I bristled, disappointed. “You first,” I said. “After all, you’re the one who placed the call.”

There was a short standoff, and I was about to break the connection when the caller relented.

“My name,” the woman said, “is Mrs. Alexander Pennington. And I’m looking for Mojo Sheepshanks.”

I hadn’t had all that much coffee. It took a moment for my brain to grope past Greer, the only “Mrs. Alexander Pennington” I knew, to the ex-wife with the drinking problem. I’d met her once at Fashion Square Mall, and her image assembled itself in my mind—overweight, expensively dressed, too-black hair worn Jackie O bouffant.

“This is Mojo,” I said, against my better judgment. “What do you want?”

All right, maybe that question was a little abrupt, but it was direct and to the point. The first Mrs. Pennington knew I was Greer’s sister, and that meant she’d probably called out of some codependent need to harangue the trophy wife in a flank attack. It’s always better to be direct with that kind of person.

“I understand you’re a private investigator now,” Mrs. Pennington #1 said with drunken dignity. I wondered if she was still under the influence of last night’s cocktail hour, or if she subscribed to the hair-of-the-dog-that-bit-you theory and had started the day with a Bloody Mary.

I closed my eyes. Damn all that TV coverage, anyway. Why had I touted myself as a P.I. every time I got in front of a camera? Now people actually expected me to solve things. “How did you get my number?” I asked.

“You’re in the book.”

Right. And I’d programmed my phone at the apartment to forward calls to Greer’s guesthouse. I needed more coffee.

“Yes,” I said, scrambling for a little dignity of my own.

“I’d like to hire you.”

“That would be a conflict of interest, Mrs. Pennington,” I said, intrigued in spite of myself. “As you know, your ex-husband is currently married to my sister.”

“I’m aware of that,” she replied moderately. “Believe me. This is a separate matter, and it’s delicate, which is why I would prefer not to discuss it over the telephone.”

It finally occurred to me that Mrs. Pennington-the-first might be one of Greer’s blackmailers. As I said, I hadn’t had enough coffee.

While it seemed like a stretch, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned and, besides, you can dig up dirt on just about anybody if you have the resources to hire enough muscle to do the shoveling.

Suffice it to say that an instinct kicked in. There was something important going on under the surface here, and I had to find out what it was.

“When did you want to meet?” I asked.

“Noon today,” Mrs. Pennington answered readily, reeling off a posh address not that far from Greer’s. “I’ll have Carlotta serve her special lobster salad, so don’t eat before you get here.”

I wasn’t sure eating anything prepared under the grande dame’s roof would be smart, but I liked lobster, and my budget didn’t allow for much of it. I had my stash in the bank, thanks to Margery DeLuca, but I didn’t plan on blowing it on seafood.

“Noon,” I repeated cautiously. I’d scrawled the address on the front of a TV Guide.

“I’d rather you didn’t tell your sister about this meeting, if you don’t mind,” Mrs. Pennington went on. “At least, not immediately.”

“I can’t promise that, Mrs. Pennington,” I said, frowning. Elsewhere on the TV Guide cover someone had written, in lopsided, childish letters, “DOG.”

Gillian, of course.

She could write? Not much, probably, since she was only seven. Still, the word opened up a whole new realm of possibilities. Mentally I added an item to the shopping list in my head.

“Call me Beverly,” Mrs. Pennington said.

I wasn’t planning an ongoing relationship with Beverly Pennington, but calling her by her first name would certainly be less awkward, given that on the rare occasions the words Mrs. Pennington came to my mind, it was always in reference to Greer.

“Beverly it is,” I agreed.

We said our goodbyes, and I hung up. After a glance at the clock I took a quick, cool shower, donned a blue-and-white-print sundress with spaghetti straps and a pair of sandals and subdued my hair with a pinch clip. Tufts stuck up on my crown, giving the do a decidedly undone look, but hey, it wasn’t as if I was a TV reporter or anything. I was a detective, Tucker’s snide remarks about my mail-order license aside.

I was sort of expecting Gillian to materialize in the front seat of the Volvo as I backed out of the driveway, but it didn’t happen. I hoped she hadn’t returned to the graveyard to hang out. I was no expert on ghost behavior—maybe she’d gone home, the way Justin had, or to her school, or any one of a number of familiar places—but I’d found her at the cemetery once before.

All those possibilities stuck in the bruised places in my heart like slowly turning screws.

I couldn’t go to the school, or to the Erland home—at least, not without an excuse, and I hadn’t thought of one yet. I’d take a spin through the cemetery, though, I decided, on my way to Wal-Mart.

My cell phone jingled inside my purse as I was pulling onto the 101, heading south. I upended the bag and fumbled for the phone, afraid to take my eyes off the road. Arizona drivers, I’ve gotta tell ya, are stone-crazy. Maybe it’s the serotonin, from all that sunlight. Seasonal affective disorder in reverse. Maybe it’s the flat, straight roads. Whatever it is, most of them drive like maniacs, and last time I checked Phoenix was the number one city in the country for red-light fatalities.

“Hello?” I said, swerving to avoid a white Expedition crossing in front of me to make a last-moment exit. “Tucker?”

I hadn’t dared to glance at the caller ID panel before I answered; even a split second could have meant months in traction, and I don’t have that kind of spare time.

“Sorry,” Jolie said. “It’s only your sister. You know, the black one?”

I was glad to hear her voice. “Yeah,” I replied, grinning. “I remember. What’s up?”

“I’m on the job,” Jolie answered, and from the change in her tone I figured she must have cupped the phone with one hand, hoping her voice wouldn’t carry. For Jolie, “on the job” probably meant she was standing over a body. “Moje, this is bad.”

“What?” I asked, navigating the road leading to the cemetery. If I wasn’t careful, I’d end up checking in for good, and the adrenaline rush brought on by Jolie’s words wasn’t helping.

“I can’t talk long,” Jolie said, hush-hush. “The short version is I’m standing in the desert about twenty yards from a corpse, and I’m ninety-nine percent sure it’s Alex Pennington’s.”

The Volvo’s tires squealed as I wrenched the car off the road, came to a stop in a restaurant parking lot. I was shaking. “No!”

“Yes,” Jolie replied with a sigh. “The uniforms are here, and homicide is on its way. But it’s Alex, all right. I’d know that asshole anywhere.”

“Who found him? How was he killed?”

“Gotta go,” Jolie chimed, and hung up.

Something Greer had said the night before stung my brain. For all I know, he’s lying dead in the desert somewhere.

“Shit,” I said to my empty car.

She couldn’t have done it. She couldn’t have killed Alex. The Greer I knew, while self-absorbed and famously high maintenance, simply wasn’t capable of that.

I shook off the agitation and switched the dial to damage control.

How was I going to break news like this to Greer? Even though she’d hired me to get the goods on Pennington, I knew she loved the guy, even hoped to have a family with him, which was why I didn’t seriously entertain the notion that she might have killed him. I also knew she was still hoping he’d come out pure on the other end of my investigation. Instead, he’d come out dead.

A new and even more alarming thought elbowed its way to the forefront of my mind. What if he haunted me?

Goose bumps sprouted on my forearms, and even though it was a hundred degrees outside, I felt as though I’d just stepped into a meat locker.

I did some deep breathing—Damn Fool’s Guide to Relieving Stress—and waited until the shaking subsided.

What to do?

Motor back to Greer’s and wait, pretending I didn’t know Alex was a goner, until the police called or dropped by to tell her what had happened?