To Sketch a Thief (2 page)

Chapter 1

G
hosts don’t make the best business partners. The thought scrolled through Rory’s head like the news crawl on CNN. It was an old loop of news that found its way to the forefront of her mind at least once a day. Some days a lot more often. What had cued it up this time was the latest e-mail to pop into her in-box: “You fixin’ to live out there?” The note was signed “Zeke,” as if she might have received similar questions from any number of people.

“I’ll be in soon,” she wrote back, stopping herself before she could add, “You need a hobby.” The problem was that
she
was his hobby—she and the investigative firm she’d started that bore both their names. Whenever her patience with him was wearing thin, she reminded herself that Mac believed without reservation that the success of
his
PI firm had been due in large measure to the experience and canniness of Ezekiel Drummond. And to be fair, she had to admit that the marshal had been helpful, maybe even pivotal, in breaking the double murder case that had launched their strange partnership.

The trouble with Zeke sharing her business life was that he also shared her domestic life in the old Victorian home Mac had left her. She could hardly blame him, since he seemed to be pretty much stuck in that haunting ground. Yet whenever she’d suggested he look for the light that might lead him out of his limbo, he’d become enraged and would say only that he wasn’t going anywhere until he knew for sure who’d shot him in the back more than a hundred years earlier. Rory had given up trying to convince him that having such information would be worthless, given that whoever the player or players might have been, they were all long dead themselves. Since Zeke was not without common sense, she was sure that there had to be another, more profound reason why he was hanging around. A reason he hadn’t as yet felt inclined to share with her.

She brushed her hair back. It was definitely past due for a cut. The short, low-maintenance style that had framed her face and accentuated her wide hazel eyes was now often concealing those eyes. Somehow since she’d opened her own business, there simply weren’t enough hours in the day to take care of everything.

She stretched her arms up over her head to ease the knot that was tightening in the small of her back. She’d spent the better part of the afternoon hunched over the keyboard, writing progress reports for the two cases she was presently working on, paying her bills online and trying to balance her checking account, which seemed determined to stymie her efforts. Sometimes it felt as if the microprocessors in the computer secretly had it in for her. Zeke would have loved to hear her say that, she thought wryly. Although he’d developed a measure of interest in the Internet after she’d shown him how to navigate it, he still complained regularly about how much time she spent at work on it. Rory chalked his attitude up to a case of sour grapes. According to the marshal, her only source on the subject, it took a lot of energy for a ghost to manifest in the third dimension. Even if he were to remain invisible and just use his energy to work the keyboard, there was a limit to how much time he could spend at it before needing to rest and recuperate. Ever since she’d nearly become the third victim of the killer she was investigating, the marshal hadn’t allowed himself to become too depleted in case she needed his help again. There was no convincing him that she’d had the situation under control before he’d popped in to save the day. They’d argued the subject up one side and down the other, until she’d decided to let him have the hero status he seemed to need so desperately. Apparently you could take the lawman away from the tin star, but you couldn’t take the tin star away from the lawman.

Rory glanced out the window over her desk. The mid-September sun hung low in the sky, playing limbo with a band of stratus clouds. She might still have enough daylight to tackle the weeds in the flower beds that ran like a scalloped hem around the front of the house. She hadn’t intended to leave the impatiens, pansies and petunias to fend for themselves, but the summer had been nonstop busy, what with leaving her job as a sketch artist for the Suffolk County Police Department and setting up her own firm.

Fortunately, the concerns she’d harbored about attracting business had proven baseless. Once the local newspaper ran the story of how she’d solved two murders the police had failed to solve, one of them sadly that of her beloved uncle Mac, she’d been inundated with requests for interviews from the major networks as well as from most of the cable news channels. After a good deal of consideration, she’d agreed to appear on just one of them. She politely but firmly turned down the others, not eager for her life to become a three-ring circus. As long as she was making headlines, it was hard to put Vincent Conti behind her. She still couldn’t believe she’d been naïve enough to fall for the drug dealer who’d had her uncle murdered. But in spite of her efforts to downplay the story, it seemed to have more legs than a centipede. Print journalists across the country rehashed tasty sound bites plucked from her interview and managed to keep it alive for the better part of a week, until Rory found herself wishing for some kind of world crisis that would knock her off the stage. Just when the hoopla finally seemed to be winding down, a zealous young reporter, posing as Vincent Conti’s terminally ill brother, emoted his way into a jailhouse visit. Although the subterfuge was immediately evident to the suspect, who didn’t have a brother, let alone a brother on the brink of death, he decided to use the visit to his own advantage. And when the reporter begged for a headline, Conti gave him a whopper.

The story appeared in dozens of newspapers, the headlines all variations on one theme: “Murder Suspect Captured by Wyatt Earp.” Quick as a wink the case was again story one. Conti’s attorney ran with the ball his client had thrown him and sprinted for the goalposts of an insanity defense.

The district attorney lambasted the sheriff’s department for having allowed the reporter access; the sheriff’s department barred the reporter from the courthouse, the trial and anything else they could think of for the rest of his professional life. By the end of the day, everyone on Long Island had an opinion on the subject. When Rory was asked to comment, she demurred, saying that she didn’t want to taint the case. Although she was horrified by the prospect of Conti being sentenced to a mental institution from which he might one day be deemed healthy enough to return to society, she had no wish to join him there by corroborating his ravings about his ghostly encounter. On the other hand, if she’d denied his ghost story, she might still be promoting the case for his insanity. It was a lose-lose situation, so she kept her mouth shut. In New York, multiple homicides entitled a murderer to an untimely death of his own at the state’s expense. Although the appeal process could take years, Rory looked forward to the day when Conti would draw his last breath.

She logged off the computer and turned off the light in the small office she’d had built in the detached garage behind the house. The garage had started life in 1870 as a carriage house and stable for the original owner and was large enough to accommodate three cars, several ladders and assorted gardening equipment. Even after it had been partitioned for the office, there was ample room for one car. Since Rory had sold her Honda in favor of the red Volvo convertible she’d inherited from her uncle, that was all the space she needed. Even so, she only parked the car inside when snow was in the forecast, preferring to leave it on the driveway where it was closer to the front door.

She went from the office into the garage through the connecting door and found her gardening gloves, a sturdy weeder and a small plastic bucket she’d bought specifically for that chore, so that she wouldn’t have to drag a large garbage can around with her. Then she let herself out through the office door and locked it behind her.

The temperature had dropped off while she’d been working, and her shoulders immediately hunched against the unexpected chill. The lengthening shadows of autumn had swallowed the day’s warmth whole, like an old-timer knocking back a shot of whiskey. Even after twenty-eight years on Long Island, the turning of the seasons always managed to surprise her. She’d have to detour through the house to grab a jacket for her gardening.

As Rory hurried across the backyard, she gave herself a mental thumbs-up for having had the office built. It was a great commute and far and away the smartest money she’d ever spent. Of course Zeke had tried to talk her out of it.

“It’s been fine with you workin’ right here in the house,” he’d said. “Why do you want to go changin’ things now?”

Rory had been prepared for his reaction. Since she couldn’t very well admit that she needed time away from him, she focused on other, more politic reasons for wanting a separate office. She talked about how the living room looked like a furniture store with her desk, filing cabinet and fax and copy machines all crammed along one wall. And how it wasn’t very professional to have clients traipsing through her house, especially if she’d forgotten to take the laundry basket upstairs or had left her slippers beside the couch the night before. She thought she’d presented a reasonable case, grateful that mind reading wasn’t one of Zeke’s otherworldly talents.

“You know I can’t be out there when you’re talkin’ to clients,” he’d grumbled.

Precisely,
Rory thought, trying not to look as pleased as she felt.

“What if you need protectin’?”

“Well, I’m not exactly without abilities, you know. I’m damned good with a gun. I bet I could even outshoot you. Plus I’ve had all sorts of martial arts training.”

“Marshal arts . . . what’s paintin’ got to do with it?”

Rory choked back the bubble of laughter rising in her throat. She knew better than to laugh at him. For a lawman from the old Wild West, Zeke had proven to be surprisingly thin-skinned, especially when he thought she was being condescending.

When she finally opened her mouth to reply a little hiccup of laughter escaped, so she faked a coughing spasm to cover it. “Martial arts are just forms of self-defense,” she said with a shrug, trying to gloss over his mistake.

“Since I don’t have the hang of leavin’ this place whenever I want to,” Zeke said, so focused on his own agenda that he didn’t even seem to have heard her, “there’s a right good chance I couldn’t help you out if you was to need me.”

The only time he’d managed to leave the house had been when Rory’s life was threatened. Somehow fearing for her safety had enabled him to break through the forces that kept him imprisoned where he’d died. He and Rory had tried to re-create the situation, without success. Either his concern for her had to be real, or that day had been a one-time-only anomaly. They’d both been disappointed when the experiment failed, but Rory had realized almost immediately that it was a blessing in disguise. While it would have been handy to have an invisible partner, a proverbial fly on the wall, privy to all sorts of information she could not otherwise obtain, there would also have been the downside of having a ghost tagging along wherever she went.

In any case, she was more than willing to trade the possibility of Zeke’s aid for the reality of some time alone. In spite of what he thought, she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself.

She opened the back door and walked into the kitchen, nearly plowing right through the marshal, who had chosen that moment to materialize a few feet from the doorway. She slammed to a stop, the bucket, weeder and gardening gloves flying out of her hands. She teetered there on her toes for several moments, doing an impression of an awkward ballerina, before regaining her balance enough to back away. She’d come close to touching him a dozen times before. Sooner or later her luck would run out. She didn’t let herself dwell on what the encounter might be like, although she supposed it could range anywhere from a yawner to a
Ghostbuster
-like sliming. She’d find out when it happened and she wasn’t in any hurry to rush that moment.

Zeke, on the other hand, having no doubt experienced the mixing of mortal flesh and spiritual ether at some point during his long tenure there, had stood his ground, obviously enjoying her discomfort. His lips were canted up in a sly smile, his mustache twitching with suppressed laughter. Above the sharp planes of his cheeks, his dark eyes twinkled with mischief.

More than once she’d thought of asking him what it felt like, but each time she’d decided against it, since it was likely to be a very different experience depending upon which side of the veil one was on.

“What happened to making the lights flicker before you appear?”she demanded instead, hoping to wipe the grin off his face.

“There wasn’t exactly time for that. First you weren’t here, then suddenly you were. I’m a ghost, not one of those sidekicks, you know.”

“Psychics,” Rory muttered, sidestepping around him to retrieve her gardening things. She usually found his trouble with modern vocabulary endearing, but she wasn’t feeling very charitable after being the target of his amusement. “Yeah, too bad about that. A psychic would be more useful and less inclined to startle me.”

Zeke’s smile only widened. “I’m pretty sure I would still be inclined to startle you. It just wouldn’t be as easy.”

Rory slipped her hands into the thick gloves as she walked out of the kitchen. “I’d love to stay and trade barbs with you, but I have a date with some weeds.”

“You surely do know how to hurt a fella,” he said, following her down the hall to the front door. With practice over the summer his hitching gait had improved so that he no longer resembled an actor in a flickering silent film. Although his stride wasn’t completely fluid yet, it was good enough that the casual observer might think he suffered from a touch of arthritis or the lingering effects of a sports injury.

Before meeting Zeke, Rory would never have guessed that a ghost might have problems approximating the walk of a mortal. For that matter, before she met Zeke she would never have guessed that ghosts actually existed. She still hadn’t confided in anyone that she lived with a departed soul who hadn’t completely departed, let alone that she had a business relationship with him. Her mother was a worrier who didn’t need the additional concern that her daughter had bought a one-way ticket to a room with padded walls and bars on the windows.