Ghost Killer (12 page)

“Poor little guy,” the knitter commented, her needles clicking away steadily again.

“That family has always had a bit of oddness in them,” Bill said.

“Not the LuCettes,” the knitter said. “The Flintons are the folks who have the touch
of fey, and I won’t hear a word against them . . . neither of them, the LuCettes or
the Flintons. And I tell you that if little Caden is having nightmares, it’s just
another sign that something is off around here.”

“Huh,” gray plaid guy said, but Bill and the thin man shared a concerned glance.

Then the waitress came with great-smelling omelettes and placed them before Zach and
Clare.

“Thank you.” Clare’s voice sounded strained though she smiled up at the server.

The local folks at the table next to them got up and left before Clare had finished
her coffee. As they went out, a tall older man of about seventy walked in, scanned
the room, saw them, came over to their table, and took a seat.

Clare appeared alarmed. Zach touched her hand. “Checking us out.”

“That’s right. Mason Pais, Jr.”

“I RECOGNIZE YOUR
surname as the same as the sheriff who worked the rockfall accident yesterday,” Zach
said.

“He’s the fourth, Mason Pais the fourth, and following in my footsteps. I’m Junior . . .
the second.”

“You sound proud of him,” Clare said calmly, though Zach noted she folded and refolded
the linen napkin in her lap.

“I am. Very. He’s the youngest sheriff in Colorado. Studied and trained for it since
he was a kid and he’s a good sheriff. Said he met you yesterday, that you’re an ex-deputy,”—Pais
glanced at Zach’s cane— “and now a P.I. Don’t know as there’s anything here that needs
a P.I.”

Zach lifted and dropped a shoulder. “Who asked you to look us up?”

“Michael LuCette. His family has been here as long as mine has.”

“Oh,” Clare said in a small voice.

“Wondered if that was who was behind this little visit,” Zach said. He reached into
his jacket and pulled out his wallet, handed Pais his card.

The man glanced at it, stuck it in his back jeans pocket. “Zach Slade, Rickman Security
and Investigations,” he said.

“Yes.”

Clare’s backbone had stiffened to ramrod straight.

Pais frowned at her. “You work for them, too?”

She sniffed. “Not as an . . . operative. An expert consultant. Occasionally.”

“Huh,” Pais said.

“I don’t have a card.” Her tone indicated she didn’t
want
a card.

“I’ve met Rickman and his wife,” Pais remarked, keeping his voice slow and drawling,
his attitude casual to tempt them to say more.

Clare took the bait. Her eyes warmed and she smiled. “Desiree Rickman is a friend.”

Tilting back on two legs of his chair, Pais said, “She’s a pistol, all right.”

“We are who we say we are.” Zach relaxed his body.

“And the Rickmans are associated with the Flintons who are kin to the LuCettes,” Pais
said.

“That’s right,” Zach replied.

Clare’s lips thinned and she glanced at Zach. He shrugged.

After clearing her throat, she said, “Yes, Mrs. Flinton sent us.”

During the small pause in conversation, the waitress came up with a carafe. “Coffee,
Mason?”

He looked at both of them, but Zach said nothing and Clare kept her mouth shut, too,
as she studied the man.

“Don’t mind if I do, Pearl,” Pais said to the server.

The woman gave him a mug and poured the excellent coffee. As soon as she left, Pais
sipped, then shook his head, commenting on Clare’s info. “Barbara Flinton. Now there’s
an original woman. Another pistol.”

This time Clare said nothing. Zach knew she wouldn’t ever admit to a stranger that
she was a ghost seer. Not this soon in her . . . vocation.

“What do you want from us?” Clare said, her voice wobbling a little. Zach reached
out and covered her hands with one of his own, stilling them.

“How about the truth?”

Clare shot Zach another glance. He kept his face expressionless so as not to influence
her decision.

“Or I could call Tony Rickman or Barbara Flinton.”

“Mr. Rickman wouldn’t say anything,” Clare snapped back. Her lips thinned, tightened,
and she looked at Zach again, then let out a slow breath, met the man’s eyes and said
in a very quiet voice, “Caden LuCette sees ghosts. I do, too. There’s an evil one
around and I’m here to stop it.”

Well, that surprised Zach.

Pais’s face went inscrutable. “I hear that you believe that.”

Zach finished up his coffee. “And I’ve heard there have been too many deaths in Creede
lately.”

The man flinched infinitesimally, but Zach saw it. “Something else has happened.”
He kept his voice soft, too.

Clare gasped. “What?”

After sliding his gaze around the room, Pais clicked the front legs of his chair back
on the floor, picked up his mug, swigged, then muttered, “One of our elderly ladies . . .
who should
not
have been out on her own last night, fell outside. Cracked her head on the coping
at the top of the flume, rolled into the creek. It’s not deep at this time of year . . .”

“But it’s freezing cold,” Clare whispered. She’d gone pallid as if cold herself.

“Gone?” asked Zach.

“Yeah.”

Well that was one “four crows for death prediction” done, and it hadn’t been Caden
or Clare, thank God.

Unfortunately, one more death prediction remained.

Clare raised her hand and Pearl bustled over. “More coffee, please, mine has gone
cold.”

“For sure, honey.” Pearl hurried back and poured steaming, aromatic brew into Clare’s
cup. Both Zach and Pais gestured for a refill.

When she was gone, Pais said, “I just heard the news before I came in.”

“It will get around quickly enough,” Zach said.

“That’s right.” Pais sipped from his mug, eyed them, then leaned over the table and
said, “Appreciate it if you didn’t speak to the LuCettes.”

Putting down her cup, Clare looked up at the former sheriff. “Perhaps you can tell
the LuCettes—when you talk to them about us—that they should consider taking Caden
away, or sending him to his great-grandmother’s.”

“I’ll relay that warning,” Pais said.

“Concern.” Clare tilted her chin. “We can be concerned about a young boy.” She paused.
“If you have any influence with those who serve and protect, you should protect the
LuCettes and Caden.”

“I hear you.” The ex-sheriff’s observation of Clare intensified.

Zach heard the refusal in the man’s voice and even more suspicion of Clare. Time to
divert attention to himself. “And we can be concerned about an old woman who lost
her life in odd circumstances,” Zach added.

“I didn’t say anything about the circumstances being odd . . . but the door to her
house shoulda been locked, and her companion had fallen asleep, and old Mrs. Tewksbury
shouldn’t have been anywhere near the stream.”

“Uh-huh,” Zach said. He drank his coffee, still good. “A lot of people to be concerned
about here, the whole town.”

Clare frowned. “You will really watch Caden?” She sounded doubtful, glanced in the
direction of the motel. Her eyes flickered as if she made plans.

Pais leaned forward, face hard and set, and said in a low voice that shouldn’t carry
past their table, “You two listen, and listen good. If you attempt to see Caden LuCette,
I will personally get a restraining order against you.” Pais’s smile twitched tight.
“It won’t be hard to convince one of our local judges. And then we’ll just run you
right out of town,” the ex-sheriff ended with satisfaction.

Clare’s shoulders straightened and she glared at the older man. “Then you
will
watch Caden. You and whomever would run us out of town. Believe me when I say he’s
in danger.” She didn’t back down, and that pleased Zach.

“I’m outta here.” Pais rose. With a last jerk of his head in a not-so-courteous-good-bye-nod,
he stalked from the restaurant.

“You okay?” Zach asked.

Another sigh. “As well as can be expected. I hope
they’ll
—the Paises, LuCettes, and whomever—will listen.” She swallowed. “Too many deaths
should concern them.” She shook her head. “Another one, last night.” Her brows lowered
in concentration. “I think the flume with the stream runs behind this building.”

“Yeah? You want to check it out?” Zach asked. He did.

“I suppose we should, and look around the rest of the town more, too, not just drive
through it, and at least find the archives.”

“Right.” He stood and put his napkin on his plate, reached in, and pulled out his
wallet.

Now her brows went up.

“Tip, Clare. What do you think this would have cost us in Denver?”

“Oh, all right. Leave her seven dollars as a little over twenty percent.”

Clare checked the weather on her phone and they went up to get their outer gear. The
highs should be in the upper fifties. Weather predictions were for a cold front the
next couple of days and mixed weather—snow early and late mixed with rain mixed with
sleet mixed with occasional sunshine.

Once outside and rounding the hotel, Zach noticed heavy clouds flattened the sky to
a steady gray. They walked between buildings to the rear to observe the stream, nicely
flowing in the bottom of a man-made, widely angled V, the flume. A foot-high rim of
rectangular stone blocks set in concrete edged the top. Clare followed his gaze and
winced.

“Yeah, trip, hit your head, fall and roll down into the stream, drown or freeze to
death. Easy.” He paused. “A real good wind could push a tottery person off balance.”

Clare looked upstream to the small metal bridges with open railings. Those wouldn’t
keep anyone from falling either.

“We don’t know if Mrs. Tewksbury was tottery,” Clare said halfheartedly.

“No. We don’t know a lot of things.” Zach took her hand. He’d decided the threat this
case brought was primarily supernatural and his gun wouldn’t dent the thing. If he’d
had one of his weapons last night, he couldn’t have drawn it under the circumstances
anyway. Though he did note that the silk-sheathed bone knife
had
affected the monster.

“We don’t know too many things.” He tugged on her hand and they walked to the front
of the hotel and the street.

Hills on the east and west contained the town, with the south showing a distant ridge,
too. The highway opening out into the Rio Grande river valley wound southeast. Rocky
promontories toward the north led to the mining canyons.

Clare sauntered with Zach through the business district and down to the town park
that held the archives. Only the hardware store was open, the tourist places still
shut for another hour . . . a couple of them even closed until next June. They all
looked interesting.

The wind picked up, gathering clouds low over the canyon in big puffs with dark bellies.
More likely they’d get caught on peaks and drop rain, sleet, or snow than they’d just
blow away.

Mostly two-story brick buildings, painted and not, comprised the three blocks of the
business district that catered to tourists. Their window and door frames were painted,
like the lavender wood of their hotel, to attract the eye and promise delightful shopping.
All of the buildings were built later than the fateful June day of Robert Ford’s murder,
since a fire had burned down Jimtown three days before—and some intimated that it
had been set by Soapy Smith’s men to torch Ford’s dance and gambling hall.

They reached the corner where the street angled and Clare stopped, the crisp, clean
air lifting her mood. “Just think, Soapy Smith could have set up his con right here.
It looks like the spot where his Orleans Club was.”

Zach chuckled and squeezed her hand. “You know how that scam worked?”

She stuck up her nose. “Yes, he’d buy little bars of soap, unwrap them, put a hundred
dollar bill, a ten dollar bill, and maybe some one dollar bills around them, rewrap,
then come out and hawk them. ‘Soap for a dollar! Some have money inside. Take a chance,
you could win big!’”

Zach snorted. “And Soapy’s first customer would be a confederate who ‘buys’ the one-hundred-dollar-wrapped
bar, opens it, and shows it to everyone.” Zach shrugged. “Made more than one fortune
that way.”

“Yes.” Clare tilted her head. “He had a gang here, so maybe I was wrong, he’d be rich
enough not to run that scam.”

“For some, rich enough
isn’t
enough.”

“No. I saw that often in my previous career.” She turned around on the corner, admiring
the silver-faced building, made from tin perhaps, with dark blue trim across the street.

With a roll of his shoulders, Zach said, “We talked about greed. I’m not getting a
feeling that the motive is that particular one of the seven deadly sins. It’s something
else.”

Clare turned her admiring gaze toward Zach, who raised his brows. “You’re a good investigator.”

“Thanks.”

“Have you seen any more crows?” she asked.

Now his shoulders hunched a little and he said gruffly, “No lying, so rather not say.”

Her mouth went dry; she swallowed, but it remained dry. “Four then, for death according
to the rhyme.”

“You remember that part of the rhyme.”

“It’s hard to forget.”

Wanting to change the subject, Zach said conversationally, “We haven’t seen Enzo today.”
He wondered if the ghost dog would be any use whatsoever in a deadly case.

Clare jerked a little as if he’d interrupted a deep train of thought. “No,” she said
in a stifled voice. “I haven’t seen or heard from him since . . . since . . .”

“He jumped right into the ghost, ready to bite,” Zach provided.

“Yes. I can’t believe that I forgot about him!”

“Well, you would have known if he were, uh, consumed, right?”

She nodded. “I’m sure.” Her next inhalation was long and even. “I’m going to . . .
look for him.”

“Right.”

“Mentally,” she said, as if he hadn’t gotten it.

“Yes.” He wrapped an arm around her waist. “The sidewalks look relatively new, bump
free. I’ll keep you safe.”