Nearly Departed (Spring Cleaning Mysteries) (20 page)

Smiling her satisfaction, Juliet drifted back to where Cusak was berating his son.

Smoke put me down and followed me out of the café. His cell phone buzzed. Pulling it from his pocket he glanced at the display. "Now what?"

We had to swing by the store where Halley worked on our way back to the job site.

"
She's never done this before," he said for the sixth time while trying to squeeze the life out of the steering wheel.

"
It's not a problem," I assured him once again.

His sister had called and demanded to be picked up from work immediately or she was going to walk home. The formerly unflappable man panicked
, convinced she had no idea what direction "home" was in, so we were speeding across town, hoping to catch her before she got lost.

He needn
't have worried. Halley was sitting on a bench outside the store having an animated conversation with an older man in a bloody butcher's smock.

"
Great," Smoke muttered. "Now I'll have to tear her away from one of her imaginary friends." Throwing the car into park in the Emergency/Fire lane, he leapt from the car and stalked over to her.

Lucky for him, the ghost butcher disappeared the moment Halley turned to face her brother
. After a brief exchange of words punctuated by Smoke rubbing the back of his neck in agitation, they ambled over to the car.

"
Hi, Vicky!" Halley greeted me with a great, guileless smile.

"
Hi, Halley."

She clambered into the backseat of the Jeep as Smoke rounded the car. His face was set in a scowl that would make bluebirds stop singing.

I gulped nervously, but his sister didn't seem to even notice his sour mood.

"
I wanna play Rock, Paper, Scissors," she announced the moment he slammed his door shut and started the car.

"
I told you, Halley. I have work to do. I don't have time for playing games."

"
Not with you, silly."

"
Ms. Spring has to work too." He slid his gaze sideways as though daring me to argue the point.

I kept my lips pressed together.

"Not with her," Halley said. "With the one who had the accident."

"
What accident?" Smoke glanced at his sister in the rearview mirror.

"
I dunno. What accident, Vicky?"

My fingers flexed instinctively as I fought the sudden urge to throw myself from the moving vehicle. How was I going to explain this to Smoke without sounding like a total lunatic?
"

"
She doesn't know what you're talking about either, Halley." Smoke sounded tired, resigned, as though they were re-enacting a conversation they'd had a thousand times before.

"
Yes she does. She's the one who told me about the accident when she saw me playing Rock, Paper, Scissors with him."

Stopping at a traffic light, Smoke looked over at me.
"Is that true?"

I shrugged helplessly.

"Why would you do that?"

"
She wanted to know why he couldn't talk to her," I said weakly.

A car behind us honked. The light had turned green. Smoke turned away, focusing on the road. His tone was laced with a mixture of anger and sarcasm.
"Of course. It makes perfect sense for a grown woman to play along with the delusions of an imaginary friend."

I cringed. I couldn
't defend myself. Not without claiming to be able to see ghosts. Something which sounded even more ridiculous than making up a story about the imaginary friend of a woman with Down syndrome.

Thankfully Halley filled the uncomfortable silence with chatter about what was on sale at the grocery store. She seemed to have a real aversion to bagging kitty litter and couldn
't understand why anyone would buy a spiky pineapple.

Even her cheerful prattle couldn
't soothe the nervous churning of my stomach. I knew that Smoke was probably mentally rehearsing how he was going to rip into me once his sister was out of earshot. He was pissed. I'd been warned by two cops, Reed and Cusak, that I'd be better off staying away from him. Then again, Reed had been the one who'd sent me Buck's violent brother, and I suspected Cusak of murdering poor Juliet .

However,
whatever Smoke was going to say to me and whatever flimsy excuses I was going to offer in defense of my bizarre behavior were quickly forgotten as we pulled up in front of the frat boy house. The Spring Cleaning van was about six inches closer to the ground that it should have been.

The moment Smoke put the Jeep in park, my door was open
, and my feet were on the ground. I hurried to the company vehicle, my brain trying to make sense of what my eyes were seeing.

All four tires were flat.

"Shit. Shit, shit, shit!" I kicked at the nearest tire.

"
Ooooooh, Vicky has to put money in the swear jar!" Halley crowed.

I looked from my damaged van to the woman standing in the street, clapping her hands at my misfortune.

"Quiet, Halley. Can't you see she's upset?" Smoke had joined me to examine the damage.

"
But she sweared! She's got to pay the fine."

"
Okay, okay. Why don't you go wait in the Jeep?" He shooed his sister away before turning to me. "Sorry about that, it's this thing we've got at home."

"
We had that when I was growing up." Despite being upset about the tires, the memory brought a smile to my face. "There were weeks when my brother had to put half his paper route money in the jar."

"
Who did that?" Halley came up behind me, having ignored her brother's suggestion.

I shrugged.

"Maybe he knows." She pointed to Donny who'd just materialized through the front door of the frat house. "You should ask him."

It wasn
't a bad suggestion, but it wasn't like I could follow through on it with Smoke standing beside me. "Why don't you ask him?"

"
Okay." Halley hurried toward Donny. "Hello."

"
Please," Smoke spoke through gritted teeth, "please don't do that. I've got enough problems with her talking to imaginary playmates."

"
Maybe they're not imaginary. Maybe they're ghosts." I watched his reaction carefully, and was immediately sorry I'd broached the subject.

"
Ghosts? Did you hit your head again when you were in the restroom at the soup place?"

"
You don't believe in ghosts?" I asked with deceptive mildness.

"
You do?" he asked incredulously.

"
I…" Out of the corner of my eye I saw that Martin was circling the van, examining the damage. "I don't believe in limiting options."

"
Yeah, right," he scoffed. "So says the woman who's stuck running a business she hates."

"
I don't hate it!" I argued a tad too quickly and way too defensively.

Smoke took a step closer, invading my personal space, and forcing me to tilt my head back in order to look him in the eye.
"You, Ms. Spring, are either delusional or a liar. Which is it?"

I swallowed hard and looked away, hoping he didn
't see the tears that had welled up unexpectedly. I was unduly hurt by his assessment, when really, I had no reason in the world to care what he thought of me. Through the blur of tears, I saw Halley returning to where we stood.

Smoke let out a loud sigh, but I didn
't dare risk looking at him. "Look—"

"
He doesn't listen to me," Halley interrupted with a plaintive whine.

"
That's because he can't hear you," I answered automatically.

"
What did I just say?" Smoke fumed.

"
Is Vicky not listening to you?" his sister asked.

"
Vicky
doesn't listen to anyone," Smoke said.

Dashing away the unshed tears, I glared at him.
"If I did, maybe I'd give some weight to the people who keep telling me to stay away from you."

"
Who told you that? That jerk Reed?"

"
You sweared!" Halley hurried over and wrapped me in an awkward hug. "And you have to pay double for yelling at Vicky!"

Smoke eyed us incredulously.
"I didn't yell at her."

"
Did too!" his sister countered. "Now apologize before you make her cry again."

A muscle in Smoke
's cheek twitched, signaling the effort he was making to control his reaction. "I—"

"
Everything okay, Vicky?" a familiar male voice asked.

Smoke, Halley
, and I turned simultaneously in the direction of Detective Alan Reed.

"
Speak of the jerk," Smoke muttered.

Halley shook her head, signaling her disappointment in her brother
's continued use of profanity.

Pulling free of her embrace, I gestured at the four flats for Reed
's benefit. "Vandals."

He strolled over to the car and bent to examine the front right tire.
"And where were you when this happened, Barclay?"

Seeing Smoke ball his hands into fists and knowing he was in a bad mood, I hurried to answer.
"With me. At Soup for Nuts. Plenty of people saw us there."

Reed straightened and turned to look at me.
"I was just going to ask if he'd seen anybody suspicious hanging around." He looked to Smoke for a response.

My surly employee shook his head slightly.

"So then the next question is, do you have any enemies, Vicky?"

"
Enemies?" I squeaked nervously. "This is just vandalism. Isn't it?"

"
Doubt it. One tire, maybe two is a prank. All four is personal," Reed said.

"
But I haven't done anything!" I looked at the damage anew, no longer calculating what it would cost me at the mechanic's, but wondering who could be so angry at me.

"
Maybe it was ghosts," Smoke cracked dryly.

"
Ha ha." I surreptitiously glanced at where Martin was hovering over the hood and was relieved when he shook his head.

"
Have you been inside the house yet?" Reed asked.

I gulped.
"No."

"
Okay, give me the key." Reed held out his hand. "You wait out here while I check it out."

Glancing over at the house, I realized Donny had disappeared. Was he inside, watching someone ransack the place while we were out here? Would Reed be walking into a dangerous situation?

Making a show of rooting around in my pocket for the key, I looked over at Martin. "What if whoever did this is still inside?"

Understanding my unspoken message, he flew back into the house, straight through the front door.

"
We'll
go in and check it out," Smoke corrected in a tone that brooked no argument, snatching the key from me.

"
What-evvv," Reed said with a shrug in his best surfer dude impression.

I had to kill time until Martin returned to give me the all clear. If it wasn
't, I had no idea how to stop these two men from going inside. "But what if—"

"
Halley, you stay out here," Smoke grabbed her hand and mine and pressed them together.

Martin drifted up behind him and gave me the
"okay" sign.

I curled my fingers around hers and nodded at Smoke, signaling I understood he needed me to keep his sister safe.

He headed toward the frat house door with long, purposeful strides, forcing Alan Reed to hurry after him.

"
You do remember that I'm the one with the authority and the gun, don't you?" I heard Reed ask.

I didn
't hear Smoke's response, but I assume that whatever it was, he'd probably have to make a donation to the swear jar because of it.

When they re-emerged from the house a few minutes later, I figured the hard part was over. I should have remembered that nothing is ever easy.

Never mind the headache of having the Spring Cleaning van towed to the tire place. Once Reed and Smoke had determined nothing in the frat boy house had been disturbed, the detective, using his phone, took pictures of the tires, made notes in a spiral bound pad, and asked a million inane questions. He seemed quite disappointed that I couldn't think of anyone who would want to harm me or the business.

"
What about…?" I asked Smoke.