Wild Wild Death (7 page)

Yeah, like Goodshot Gomez’s.

The trick, of course, was to find them.

I raced around to the far side of her desk and whipped open drawer after drawer.

Granola bars, bottled water, hand cream, paper clips, computer paper, appointment book.

“Keys,” I grumbled to myself. “I need the keys.”

When the desk yielded nothing, I zipped back to the other side of the office and tried the file cabinets.

If I were El a…

I drummed my fingers against the metal cabinet.

“If I were El a,” I said to myself, “I’d file keys under…”

I pul ed open the drawer marked
H–L
and practical y whooped. Right behind the divider with the
K
on it was a zippered pouch and inside was a key ring with a dozen or so keys on it, the kind that are old and clunky and heavy, complete with curlicues on the handles.

By the time El a came bustling back into the room—her cheeks pink and her breaths coming in short, quick puffs—those keys were safely inside my purse and I was lounging in one of her guest chairs like I didn’t have a concern in the world.

Guilt?

I didn’t have the time.

Dan’s life was hanging in the balance and Goodshot Gomez hadn’t needed his bones for like a hundred years.

Tel that to my pounding heart and shaking hands.

“Wel , that was odd.” Thinking it over, El a shook

“Wel , that was odd.” Thinking it over, El a shook her head. “That was Reggie. You know, the Reggie you worked with on that cemetery restoration. He said he was driving by, and he stopped in to say hel o. Wel …” El a’s eyes sparkled, but that was no surprise. In spite of the fact that she’s like twenty years older than him, El a has had the hots for Reggie since the first day she saw him—sans shirt

—at that oldy-moldy cemetery. It was a classic case of Mrs. Straight-and-Narrow being drawn like a moth to the flame of the ultimate Bad Boy.

And Reggie was one bad boy.

“I told him you were here,” El a said, “but he said he had to run.”

“Reggie’s a busy man.” Which was why I was grateful he’d taken the time to help me out. “Most drug dealers are. Busy, I mean. Not men. I mean, maybe some of them are men, but—”

“Pepper, what on earth is wrong with you?” El a put a hand on my arm. “You’re as jumpy as a June bug.”

I was, and I had to get away from El a’s mothering or I’d risk everything and blurt out the truth.

I gathered up my purse and headed for the door.

“Wait!” Her command stopped me cold just as I was about to make my escape. I cradled my purse in my arms and hoped she didn’t hear the keys clinking inside. El a bustled toward me. “You forgot the food.”

She handed me one bag. “And your new clothes.”

I thanked her and got out of there as quickly as I could, and I hoped she didn’t see the guilt written al over my face. Stealing from El a made me feel terrible.

Of course, I’d feel even worse if I didn’t do everything I could and Dan ended up dead.

B

y the time my head settled and I groped through the bits and pieces of Goodshot’s shattered coffin to grab my flashlight, I was covered with cobwebs, dirt, and—

There was something on my lap, and I held my breath and shined my light that way.

Hand.

Skeleton hand.

My heart stopped. Which wasn’t such a bad thing because when it banged to a start again, I choked on the bile that clogged my throat. If I wasn’t afraid someone might hear, I would have let out a shriek ful blast. The way it was, I stifled it, and my pitiful cry wobbled back at me from the cold stone wal s.

My teeth gritted and my insides shimmying like my mother’s legendary (and not for good reasons) lime-and- marshmal ow Jel -O salad, I did my best to ignore the ick factor and used two fingers to pluck the hand off my lap. As quickly as I could, I shoved it in the pocket of the blue windbreaker, and before I could talk myself out of it, I skimmed my light around the underground chamber to see where the rest of Goodshot had landed.

His ribs were against the wal . What looked like leg bones were near my feet. His skul stared back at me from where it had come to rest near my right hand. In the trembling light of the Rayovac, those empty eye sockets were bottomless.

Creepy. Majorly. I was used to the dead, sure, but when I encountered them, they looked the way they had in life. Skin. Clothes. Hair. Just like the living, only they weren’t, of course. And not a bone in sight.

Of course, if I was going to keep Dan alive, I couldn’t let a few old bones stop me.

Using the bier as a prop, I got to my feet and reminded myself that the next time I burgled a body, I needed to bring along latex gloves. Too late now, so I got to work, opening my tote bag, plucking up bone after bone, stowing them al in my tote. Within a few minutes, I had every bone and was brushing off the dirt of more than one hundred years of entombment from my hands.

At the same time I limped over to the winding staircase, I prayed that no one would come down here to check on Goodshot anytime soon, just like no one had checked on him in years. I was al set to get the hel out of Dodge when my light hit the pile of rotted and shattered wood and glinted off something metal ic.

Could anything gross me out more? I thought not, so I bent to poke through the rubble.

“Belt buckle,” I crooned, and wiped it against the leg of my jeans. I knew the story, and it was that Goodshot got the buckle from Queen Victoria and that it was his prized possession. It only made sense he’d be buried with it.

The buckle was rectangular, maybe three inches across, and from the weight of it, I’d say it was the real deal, too. Intricately worked silver leaves and curlicues surrounded a golden star ringed with sparkly stones. Grime or no grime, I’d been raised right, and I’d been raised by a mother who expected turquoise Tiffany gift boxes for al occasions, and a dad who knew there would be hel to pay if they didn’t show up; I knew diamonds when I saw them.

The star was engraved, and I held my light nearer and bent closer for a better look at the initials,
VR
.

Okay, I wasn’t at my best, what with being in a filthy tomb and having just picked my way through the earthly remains of Goodshot Gomez. But even I recognized that the initials didn’t make sense.

Goodshot’s would have been
CGG
and the Queen’s… wel ,
QV
, I suppose. But hey, who was I to question hundred-year-old customs? Instead, I stowed the belt buckle in my tote bag, too, suspecting that Dan’s kidnappers might want more tangible proof than just some filthy bones. I’d had experience with murderers and traitors. I’d crossed paths with poisoners and plagiarizers and thieves. I had never dealt with kidnappers, but something told me they were not a trusting bunch. There were plenty of photographs of the Queen presenting that buckle to Goodshot, and in that moment, I decided to take along the Garden View pictorial guide that showed one of them. Along with the bones, the buckle should be enough to prove my sincerity—not to mention my be enough to prove my sincerity—not to mention my felonious tendencies—and assure Dan’s release.

If I could make it out of the cemetery before I got caught.

It was al the reminder I needed that I had to get a move on. I checked the time on my cel . Fifteen minutes before Security showed up.

The minutes ticking away inside my head, I got back outside, locked the door behind me, and breathed a sigh of relief. “Wel , that’s that,” I told myself.

“Not exactly.”

Honestly, by now, I should be used to the dead popping up out of nowhere. That didn’t stop me from screeching and slapping a hand to my chest to keep my heart from pounding out of my ribs. That is, right before I turned around and found myself face-to-face with the one and only Chester Goodshot Gomez.

“What do you mean, not exactly?” So it wasn’t an elegant introduction. Ghosts aren’t big on smal talk, and I didn’t have time for chitchat, anyway. “I got your bones.” To prove it, I rattled my tote. “And now I’m out of here.”

He was a stocky guy of forty or so wearing a black-and-red-plaid shirt, jeans, and beat-up cowboy boots, and his terra-cotta skin was so crinkled from the sun, it reminded me of a rumpled blanket. Since he was a ful head shorter than me, Goodshot had to step back to give me a careful once-over. He swept off his cowboy hat. His coal black hair was parted in the middle, braided, and the braids were wrapped in red fabric and hung down to the middle of his chest.

“You got nerve for a woman,” he said. “I’l give you that. And you’re sure a sight for these sore eyes.

But you’re not usin’ your head, girl. Not if you think you can just waltz out of here and—”

I was way ahead of him, and not inclined to stand around shooting the breeze when my reputation, not to mention my crystal clear, unbesmirched, and unblemished arrest record might be hanging in the balance. I marched away from the mausoleum, heading back toward where I’d climbed the wal , and told him, “Not to worry. I brought a step stool with me.

You know, to help me get over the wal and get in here in the first place. And I was plenty smart.” This should have come as no surprise. For a few reasons:

1. He knew I could see and talk to him, and 2. There was only one person in the world who could, so

3. He must have known who I was.

Stil , when it comes to setting the record straight, it never hurts to lay the groundwork early with ghosts.

They’re al about
please, please, please
when they need my help. And way too bossy when they think they’ve got the upper hand.

“I tied a rope to one leg of the stool.” I dragged it out of the bushes where I’d hidden it and showed him. “When I got to the top of the wal , I hauled the stool up, then lowered it down here. I’l do the same thing now to get back to the other side. No muss, no fuss. And no more exertion than necessary.”

“No sense, you mean.” He didn’t elaborate, just chewed his bottom lip, crossed his arms over his chest, and watched me position the step stool on a level spot so I didn’t have to worry about nasty spil s.

When I was done and realized he was stil just standing there, stil just watching, I threw my hands in the air. “What? You…” I stabbed a finger at him.

“You’re not happy.”

“Happy’s got nothin’ to do with it. You stole my bones.”

I never considered that he might be pissed, but dang, that clock was tick, tick, ticking away and I didn’t have time for drama. “You haven’t needed them for years,” I pointed out. “And besides, stealing them, it’s al for a good cause.”

“I’m glad of that, at least.” Goodshot’s voice was husky and as mel ow as smoke. That didn’t take away the sting when he said, “Somebody’s gonna come lookin’. You know, down in my tomb.”

I hated to hurt the guy’s feelings, but he hadn’t had a visitor in years. “They’re not—”

“They’re gonna find that mess you left behind,”

he said, ignoring my protest completely. He paused.

One heartbeat. Two. Needless to say, these were my heartbeats I’m talking about. “That is, if you don’t put back those keys.”

I was already on the first step of the stool, al set to climb the rest of the way, and I stopped dead in my tracks. Dead being relative, of course. Just like the heartbeat thing. The keys were in my pocket—

the one without Goodshot’s skeleton hand in it—and I jingled them. Dang, how I hated it when ghosts one-upped me! Nothing good could come of the ghostly grapevine getting wind of the fact that I wasn’t on the bal when it came to these sorts of things, so I scrambled to save face. “I’l just come by to see El a again tomorrow and—”

It wasn’t exactly the most pitiful suggestion in the world but that’s how it looked when Goodshot shook his head. “Suspicious,” he said.

“Okay. Yeah. Right. Two days in a row might be too much. But I could wait awhile. Until next week.

And I could come then and—”

“Risky.”

I blew out a breath of frustration. “Nobody’s going to look for the keys before then. They never have.”

“Which doesn’t mean El a’s not going to look for something else and notice the keys are missing.”

He was right.

Another thing I hate about ghosts.

That, and them coming up with ideas like, “You could go right now and put them back where they belong.”

“Yeah, if I want to take the chance of getting caught.” I whipped out my cel and glanced at the time. “Security is going to be by here in just a couple minutes, and when they’re done here, they swing past the administration building. Since the building is locked up tight after hours, that means me breaking in. I don’t have keys anymore, you know. They took mine away when they canned me.” Just for good measure, I grunted. “Like I’d ever real y want to come back to this place.”