Don of the Dead (3 page)

For the first time since I plucked the two-carat diamond from my finger and chucked it at JoelPanhorst , I was actually going out on a date. And so what if the guy just happened to be interested only in what was happening inside my skull.

It was pitiful. But it didn't stop me from telling Dan I'd meet him the next evening atMangia Mania, a new bistro over inCleveland 's Little Italy neighborhood that was getting a lot of press and packing in a crowd of the young, the chic, and the trendy. It was right around the corner from my apartment and just a couple minutes from the cemetery.

By the time I left the hospital, I'd convinced myself that things were looking up. I had Dan to look forward to and maybe I could distract him enough to get him to notice the body that went along with my brain. With any luck at all, he also might be able to explain the static in my head. And why it had decided to morph itself into a wisecrackingwiseguy .

I was in a pretty good mood when I got to the
office the next morning. Who could blame me? Six o'clock was only ten hours away and in ten short hours, I'd have Dan the Brain Man all to myself. Minus the distraction of X-rays, CT scans, and the hubbub of the hospital ER.

It was enough to make any girl smile.

Unfortunately, even my good mood wasn't enough to get rid of GusScarpetti . He was waiting in my office when I got there.

"No. No. No." I closed the door and stood with my back against it, my hands on the knob behind me.

Just so my own personal I'm-not-really-here-but-you're-talking-to-me-anyway couldn't see that they were shaking. "You can't be here. You're not real."

"Not as real as I used to be." Gus was lounging in my one and only guest chair, one leg crossed over the other. He glanced around.GardenViewCemetery was established in the middle of the nineteenth century and the office was located in what used to be the caretaker's house. It was one of those big, rambling buildings with high ceilings and wooden floors. Somebody, sometime, had decided to chop up the rooms to make lots of small offices.

Mine was the smallest.

Desk. Chair. Guest chair. Bookcases that doubled as file storage and were filled to the brim. That was about it. That was all there was room for. As the tour guide and newest member of the cemetery's administrative staff, I was low man on the totem pole; I didn't even rate a window.

If I did have one, I'd be looking out at the high stone wall that surrounded the cemetery and on the other side of it,Cleveland 's Little Italy. Cute shops I couldn't afford to buy anything in. Great restaurants that were way too pricey for me. Oh, and cheap apartments. That was one good thing. It was where I'd been living since the day three months earlier when Dad headed to the federal penitentiary and Mom left town for Florida, where she hoped folks would know her simply as
Barb
and not as
Barb whose husband the
doctor was convicted of Medicare fraud
.

"The first thing I'd do is get somebody in here to clean up this place." Gus's comment snapped me back to reality. "Or maybe I'd just have it torched and put it out of its misery. You always this sloppy?"

"It's inherited slop." True. Sort of. The woman who had the job before me left most of the stuff there.

The books about the history ofCleveland . The old magazines she swore, the one and only time I'd met her, contained "oodles of useful information." I wasn't so sure about the
useful
but I think the
oodles
part was right. There sure were a lot of them, and organization skills had never been my strong suit. In the month I'd been there, things had gotten a little out of hand.

There were old copies of
Life
on the floor and issues of
National Geographic
tucked between the file folders in the bookcase. There were more magazines on my desk along with the latest Abercrombie catalogue, a sale flyer fromVictoria 's Secret, and what was left of the taco salad that was the previous day's lunch. After my run-in with Gus, I'd left so fast the day before, I never went back to the office to clean up.

I crossed the room and flopped down in my desk chair. I didn't bother to open the Styrofoam container to see how the salad had fared. An overnight on top of my desk couldn't have done it any good. I jammed the container into the bag it came in and tossed the whole thing into my trash can.

It wasn't until I was done that something Gus had said hit me.

"What do you mean, as real as you used to be?"

He sounded just about as disgusted as anyone I'd ever heard. "You might be pretty, sweetheart, but you're sure not very smart. Don't you get it yet? I used to be real, all right. Now I'm a ghost."

My heart stopped right then and there. I swear it did. It started back up again with a sort of thump that made my ribs hurt and my breath catch. There was only one logical comeback to the announcement.

"You're shitting me."

Gus winced like he was in pain. "In my day," he said, "girls didn't talk like that."

"In your day—" I realized that I was falling into the trap. Just the way my brain wanted me to. I was so desperate to convince myself I wasn't a certified nutcase that I was willing to buy into this whole ghost theory. Almost.

I shook away the very thought with a motion that made my breasts jiggle inside my standard-issue Garden View polo shirt.

Gus grinned.

"There. See." I pointed an accusing finger at him. "That proves it. No way you're a ghost. Ghosts don't look at women's boobs."

"Who says? I may be dead but that doesn't mean I've lost my appreciation for the finer things in life. And your things, honey… " He gave a long, low whistle. "Those are really fine!"

I scraped my hands through my hair. "No way am I sitting here talking to a ghost."

"You'd rather think you're crazy?"

"I'd rather think—"

I never had a chance to finish the sentence. Which was probably just as well because at that point, I didn't know
what
I was thinking.

The door popped open and Ella Silverman, the cemetery's community-relations manager and my boss, poked her head into the room. Ella was round and middle-aged. She must have had a hippie moment somewhere in her past because she always wore dresses that were loose and flowing and hung down around her ankles. Her hair was cut short and spiked at the top and she liked jewelry. As usual, she was decked out in lots of beads and plenty of chunky bracelets.

"Sorry!" she whispered. "I just have to tell you that—" She looked around my office and her apologetic smile wilted. She knew she didn't have to whisper anymore. "I just wanted to tell you that we've got a staff meeting in a half hour. Jim's orders. I thought you were in here with someone. I could have sworn I heard you talking."

"Phone." I pointed.

Ellasquinched up her nose. "Except that you're not on the phone."

"Speaker phone."

"We don't have speaker phones."

"Just thinking out loud."

"Uh huh." She came into my office and closed the door behind her. That day's choice offlowy dress was a little teal number with a matching jacket. Like she always did when she was slipping out of Ella-everybody's-friend mode into Ella-the-boss mode, she tugged on her right earlobe. Her turquoise and silver earring swayed. "Do we need to talk?" she asked.

"Talk? No." I slid the magazines on the desk together and tapped them into a neat pile. "I was just pulling your leg. What you heard was me practicing. For that talk I'm scheduled to give to the Junior League ladies next week. You know, the one at the chapel." For once my less-than-stellar filing system came in handy. The tour script I had been given two weeks before and hadn't even read yet was lying on the desk, and just to prove my point, I picked it up and waved it at Ella.

"I'm so glad!" She walked over to the chair in front of my desk and for a moment, I was afraid that she was going to plop down right in my guest chair. I don't know why the thought bothered me so much.

Logic dictated that the chair was empty. But my eyes told me otherwise. When Ella stepped in front of the chair, Gus wiggled his eyebrows and patted his lap. She perched herself on the arm of the chair, and I let go the breath I was holding.

"I don't want you to get too hyper about it but remember, that's an important group, Pepper. There are a couple members who are married to cemetery trustees."

I tried not to notice that while we were talking, Gus gave Ella's backside a careful examination. When he was done, he nodded in appreciation and gave me the thumbs-up.

"That is so sexist!"

"Excuse me?" Ella's blank stare was familiar. It was just like the ones I'd seen so often on the previous day's tour. "Did you say—"

"I said… " I had no choice but to come up with an excuse. Half-baked or not. It was that or have her think I'd flipped my lid. "I said it was sexist. Yeah, that's what I said. I said that it's not right to define the women in the group by the men they're married to. Isn't that what you were telling me? When we talked about what it was like back in the days when feminism got started?"

We had talked about the whole Stone Age feminism movement just a couple of days before. More precisely, over salads at a nearby cheap-food place, Ella had talked and I had pretended to listen. She looked pleased to realize that some of what she'd said had actually sunk in.

She beamed. "Exactly! I did mention that women need to be defined by who they are personally, not by the men in their lives. But when I mentioned the Junior League, I didn't mean—"

"Of course you didn't. I know exactly what you meant. See, I was paying attention."

"Better attention than my kids ever pay." Ella sighed. She was the mother of three teenaged girls so she had earned the right. "I try to tell the girls, Pepper. I try to explain what the world was like back in the sixties and seventies. But they don't listen. They think it doesn't apply to them."

Just like I was pretty sure it didn't apply to me.

Not that I was going to mention it. Number one, because of all the people I'd met since my comfortable upper-middle-class world fell apart, Ella was one of the nicest. Number two, because she was my boss.

Number three…

Well, Gus was making like he was about to pinch Ella's ass, so I suppose my third reason was that I just wanted to get this whole thing over and done with. "A meeting with Jim, did you say?" I got out of my chair and opened the door that led into the outer hallway. "We'd better get going."

"You don't have to. Not yet." Ella checked the watch that was on her wrist along with a half-dozen beaded bracelets. "I do. He's going to want facts and figures and I'd better pull them together. From you, I think he'll want a list of the tours that are scheduled for the rest of the month. If you could just… " She motioned toward the mess on my desk.

And because she knew she didn't have to explain herself, Ella left.

As soon as she was gone, I closed the door.

I made sure to keep my voice down this time. "That was really rude."

"You think?" Gus sat back and stretched. "Back in my day—"

"Yeah. Back in your day. That's what we were talking about before Ella came in here."

"I take it that means you don't believe me when I tell you that I'm a ghost." Gus uncrossed his legs. He ran a hand over his big-as-a-dinner-plate tie. "You calling me a liar?"

"I'm not calling you a liar. But I'm not calling you a ghost, either. Ghosts are spooky. You know, woo woo !" I waved my hands around and hummed the theme music from
The Twilight Zone
. "I can't see through you. You don't glow. You're not misty around the edges. Besides, I don't believe in ghosts."

"I never did, either."

"Then how—"

"Listen, kid." Gus got up and tugged his suit jacket into place. "I can't explain how the whole thing works

'cause I don't understand it myself. I only know that I died and I got buried over in that mausoleum out there. At least my body did. But the rest of me… " He poked a finger at his chest. "I never left. I'm still here."

"And I'm supposed to believe this because… "

"Because I'm telling you it's the truth. My word of honor. And if you can't believe that, then believe your eyes. And your ears. And if you can't believe them… " Gus undid the buckle on his belt. He unzipped his pants.

I held my breath and my eyes went wide.

Flashed by a ghost?

Things had just gone from bizarre to way-too-kinky for words.

Lucky for me, what I had in mind wasn't what Gus had in mind. Heuntucked his shirt and tugged down the right side of his pants and his underwear just enough for me to see that he had a vivid red mark on his right hip. It was about the size of a quarter and it was shaped like a rose.

"There. See that?" Once he knew I did, Gus yanked his pants back in place. He tucked in his shirt, zipped his pants, and buckled his belt. "That there is a birthmark."

"Great." I smiled like it was. "Thanks for sharing."

Gus threw his hands in the air. "Are you some kind of
mortadella
? Don't you see what I'm getting at here? You think I'm a… what do you call it… a figment of your imagination."