Nearly Departed (Spring Cleaning Mysteries) (30 page)

I wasn
't sure if he was offering physical support or trying to draw me in. All I knew was that I wanted to lean into him, lean on someone.

"
Offer me a cup of coffee, Tori," Smoke urged quietly. "We'll go inside and talk it over."

I raised my eyes to his face. I saw concern in his steady blue gaze. I looked over his shoulder to the moonless sky.
"We can't go in the house," I said. "It's that time of the month."

Smoke chuckled.
"Relax. 'Talk it out over coffee' isn't code for 'let's have sex.'" Releasing my shoulders, he stepped back as though to prove that nothing physical would be happening between us.

I looked away, cheeks flaming.
"I…I didn't mean—"

A giant crash from inside the house effectively stopped my stammering and simultaneously proved my point.

"Stay here!" Smoke took off for the house at a dead run.

"
No! Stop! Come back!" I chased after him, but he'd gotten a better jump and had longer legs.

Thumps and thuds echoed from inside the house.

Smoke had already flown up the back steps and was opening the kitchen door, something he shouldn't have been able to do. I realized that I must have left it unlocked when I'd left the house in the morning.

"
Don't!" I screamed.

But he ignored the warning and pushed inside. The thumping, thudding, and crashing increased exponentially.

"Smoke!"

I jumped inside, fearful of what I would find. I imagined discovering his bloodied body sprawled across the linoleum
.

He was not prone on the floor as I
'd feared, but he was hiding behind my kitchen table, which had been turned on its side to be a makeshift shield. Cans covered the floor, of course, once again pulled from my cabinets, and as I watched, one arced through the air, smashing into my now splintered tabletop.

"
Stop it!" My throat burned with the exertion. "You stop it right now."

I jumped in front of Smoke to protect him. It would have seemed more heroic if I hadn
't twisted my ankle on a can of beef stew and fallen to my knees in an undignified heap.

"
What the hell is going on?" Smoke asked. He sounded shaken.

I couldn
't blame him. To him it probably seemed that the tin and aluminum projectiles were being launched out of thin air. He couldn't see Delia grabbing the canned pumpkin and taking careful aim at the shaved dome of his head.

"
That's enough!" I told her as I struggled to my feet. "Put the pie filling down and step away."

"
Who are you talking to?" Smoke whispered.

"
I'm going to kill him," Delia declared, but she didn't immediately chuck her impromptu weapon.

I could only deal with one of them, so I gave the immediate threat my attention.
"You can't kill him here," I told my ghostly roommate.

"
Why the hell not?"

"
What if you can't get rid of him?"

She considered that. We
'd had enough conversations about ghosts being tied to the places they died for my argument to make sense. She tossed the can from hand to hand as she weighed her options.

"
Get out!" I whispered to Smoke, shooing him toward the kitchen door.

He got to his feet, but then froze. He stared wide-eyed at the can floating in the air.

"Now," I urged. I reached over the table, grabbed a handful of his shirt, and dragged him toward the door, making sure to keep my body between him and Delia. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her put down the pumpkin and pick up something smaller.

We
'd just escaped outside when she let the last can fly. It crashed against the door frame with a sickening thud.

Smoke and I both winced.

"What the hell was that?" he asked.

"
A wild guess, but I'd say black beans."

He stared at me as though I made even less sense than the situation he
'd just run into. "What was going on in there?"

I shrugged, too tired to try to keep the secret.
"I told you. This house is haunted."

"
Haunted? As in by ghosts?"

I nodded.
"One ghost. Delia. It's her time of the month. It's the full moon. She died on a night with a full moon."

"
You mean you really believe in ghosts?" He stared at me as though I was even more frightening than the can floating in mid-air had been.

My heart sank. He didn
't believe. He thought I was nuts.

I turned away and trudged toward the garage silently berating myself.
I should have known better. I never should have told him. Now he'll tell Mike. Mike will probably have me committed. Hmmm, maybe that wouldn't be so bad. I could catch up on sleep.

And then the guilt set in.
I can't do this to Mom.

I turned around, ready to beg Smoke not to tell anyone what I
'd said.

He was right there behind me.

"You've got to stop doing that," I muttered.

"
Doing what?"

"
Sneaking up on me."

"
I wasn't sneaking up on you. I was following you."

"
You should stop that too."

An uncomfortable silence, punctuated by thuds and thunks from the house, stretched between us as we stood beside the van.

"About the ghost thing—" we said simultaneously.

Smoke dipped his chin.
"You first."

"
Just do me a favor and forget I said anything," I said in a hurried rush. "I was just yanking your chain to see how you'd react."

"
That's
the story you're going with?"

I shrugged and looked away.
"It's all I've got."

"
And how do you explain that?" He tilted his head in the direction of the house. Delia was still making a racket.

"
Ummmm….magnets?"

Folding his arms across his chest, he considered me carefully.
"Is that a question or an answer?"

My spine stiffened
, and I found myself standing taller, as though I thought by looking tough, he'd believe my bluff. "Whichever you want it to be."

His mouth flattened into a hard line.
"That's your M.O. isn't it? Tell people whatever they want to hear."

"
Tell him I'm here! Tell him I'm here!" a tiny, shrill voice demanded. Angel appeared between us.

I
'd been about to say 'fuck you' to Smoke. Instead I bit my tongue, unwilling to curse in front of the little girl.

"
He doesn't believe Halley, but he'll believe you," Angel said. "Please, Vicky? Please tell him I'm here?"

I shook my head. Things were bad enough. I couldn
't afford to make them any worse.

"
Pleeeeeeease?" Angel whined piteously.

I closed my eyes. I wanted to help the little girl
. I really did. I said to her, "Not now."

"
Not now?" Smoke asked incredulously, thinking I was talking to him. "Why? Do you have something better to do? Like trash your garage some more?"

I opened my eyes and glared at him.
"You don't understand."

"
Then explain it to me."

"
Tell him! Tell him!" Angel shouted, jumping up and down.

"
Angel says hello," I blurted out.

Smoke
's gaze darkened dangerously, and his hands balled into fists.

Frightened, I took a step back and found myself flattened against the van. I eyed him nervously as he covered the distance between us in three long strides.

"What did you just say?" The words were spoken softly, but they brimmed with a barely suppressed anger that sent a chill racing down my spine.

Telling him about Delia had been an error of judgment.

Telling him about Angel had been an even worse mistake.

"Everything okay?"

Smoke and I both turned in the direction of the voice.

Detective Alan Reed stood a few yards away. His hand, none-too-subtly resting on the butt of his service revolver, which hung from a shoulder holster. No doubt he'd seen Smoke's aggressive posture and was trying to assess the situation.

"
Hey!" I meant the greeting to sound casual, but it came out as a nervous squeak. "What are you doing here?"

"
Thought I'd check up on you." Although he was talking to me, Reed didn't take his eyes off Smoke. "Make sure you hadn't run into any more trouble."

The anger that Smoke had been
sending in my direction a moment ago had found a new target in the form of the detective. He stared at him with a dead-eyed glare that would have made a lesser man cringe. Reed though, stared back nonplussed.

"
We're good. Everything's good." I didn't know if I was trying to reassure him or myself. I punched Smoke in the shoulder playfully to illustrate my point. That brought his attention back to me. I stared into his eyes, willing him to relax, silently begging him to not make the situation worse.

With a nod so slight, I doubted Reed could even see it, he acquiesced
. Stepping back, he adopted a relaxed posture, all traces of his anger evaporating into thin air.

I realized that Angel had disappeared too.

Reed dropped his hand from his gun. "I stopped by the frat boy house and saw the van was gone but the Jeep was there. I wanted to tell you that my techs confirmed that there are photos on that memory card you gave me."

I nodded. Had it only been that afternoon that I
'd handed it over? It had seemed like a lifetime ago.

"
They say what the pictures show?" Smoke asked.

Reed shook his head.
"It's damaged. Techs hope to have something in a couple days."

"
Convenient," Smoke muttered under his breath.

"
Is that why you stopped by?" I said hurriedly, hoping Reed hadn't heard him.

"
No. I wanted to ask you if you'd found any drawings in the frat boy house."

"
Drawings?"

"
Probably more like sketches. Martin Nottoway's fingers were smudged with graphite, the same grade as 'lead' in an artist's sketching pencils."

So that
's why Martin's fingers were dirty. "I don't remember coming across any." I turned to Smoke. "Do you?"

He shook his head and then turned his attention to Reed.
"You're sure it's from a pencil and not that chemistry set that's in the dining room?"

"
It's just a guess until the tests are complete, but they don't think so."

"
I'll keep an eye out and let you know if we find any," I said.

"
I'd appreciate—" A series of crashes from inside the house. He turned toward the racket. "What's that?"

Smoke arched his eyebrows and tilted his head, challenging me to come up with an answer.

Ignoring him, I said, "A friend is helping me rearrange my kitchen cabinets."

I forced myself to smile as Reed swung his gaze back to me.

"Is that why you had all that stuff out on your counters?" he asked.

I nodded.

More crashes.

"
She's passionate about her work," I said through my frozen smile.

Reed turned to Smoke.
"I saw your Jeep parked outside the frat boy house. Need a ride back to it?"

Smoke shot me a look I couldn
't decipher. "Yeah, Reed. That'd be great."

A few minutes later, after Reed had told me twice to call the police if anything suspicious happened, they drove off together, leaving me alone in my driveway.

I really didn't want to go face Delia in the mood she was in, so instead I went to work in the garage, cleaning up the mess I'd made with my earlier temper tantrum. It had taken me just a few moments to do damage that took me close to forty-five minutes to put right again. By the time I was done, the crashing inside the house had stopped, signaling it was safe for me to return.

Tiredly I turned to go inside.

A man stood at the edge of the garage, his face hidden by shadows.

Startled, a vi
ce of fear suddenly crushed my chest. I stopped in my tracks.

"
Did you have a nice dinner with Ruth and Artie?" His voice was high for a man and tinged with an accent I couldn't place.