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The Night is Watching
Heather Graham
The dead of night… The town of Lily, Arizona, has its share of Old West history and mystery. It’s also home to the Gilded Lily, a former theater…and bawdy house. These days it offers theatrical productions geared to tourists, but the recent discovery of a skull, a real skull, among the props and costumes has shaken everyone up.So, who do you call? The Krewe of Hunters, a special FBI unit of paranormal investigators. In this case, it’s agent Jane Everett. Jane’s also a talented artist who creates images of the dead as they once were. But the Krewe always works with local law enforcement, and here that means Sloan Trent, ex-Houston cop and now sheriff.He has connections that go deep within this small town. His great-great-grandmother was an actress at the Gilded Lily…as well as a Confederate spy. She’s not resting in peace and she lets him know it! Then more remains appear in the nearby desert. As they search for answers, using all the skills at their disposal, Jane and Sloan find themselves falling into danger—and into love


The dead of night…
The Old West town of Lily, Arizona, is home to the Gilded Lily, a former theater…and bawdy house. These days, it offers theatrical productions geared to tourists, but the recent discovery of a skull, a real skull, among the props and costumes shakes everyone up.
So, who do you call? The Krewe of Hunters, a special FBI unit of paranormal investigators. In this case, it’s agent Jane Everett. Jane’s also a talented artist who creates images of the dead as they once were. But the Krewe always works with local law enforcement, and here that means Sloan Trent, former Houston cop and now sheriff. His great-great-grandmother was an actress at the Gilded Lily…and she’s not resting in peace.
Then more remains appear in the nearby desert. As they search for answers, using all the skills at their disposal, Jane and Sloan find themselves falling into danger—and into love.
www.eHeatherGraham.com (http://www.eheathergraham.com)
Praise for the novels of
New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham
“Graham deftly weaves elements of mystery, the paranormal and romance into a tight plot that will keep
the reader guessing at the true nature of the killer’s evil.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Unseen
“Suspenseful and dark. The culture and history
surrounding San Antonio and the Alamo are described
in detail. The transitions between past and present
flow seamlessly, the main characters are interesting
and their connection to one another is believable.”
—RT Book Reviews on The Unseen
“A fast-paced story, involving history and ghost stories. Graham is skilled at creating intriguing,
mature characters involved in challenging situations.”
—Lesa’s Book Critiques on The Unseen
“I am amazed at Graham’s ability to create a magical story that works so well in the present when part of the facts lie in the past. The Uninvited is a saucy romantic murder mystery with ghosts taking center stage.”
—Joyfully Reviewed
“The paranormal romantic mystery
is exhilarating and fast-paced.”
—Genre Go Round on The Unspoken
“If you like mixing a bit of the creepy with a dash of sinister and spine-chilling reading with your romance, be sure to read Heather Graham’s latest.… Graham does a great job of blending just a bit of paranormal with real, human evil.”
—Miami Herald on Unhallowed Ground
“The paranormal elements are integral to the unrelentingly suspenseful plot, the characters are likable, the romance convincing and, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Graham’s atmospheric depiction of a lost city is especially poignant.”
—Booklist on Ghost Walk
“Graham’s rich, balanced thriller sizzles with equal parts suspense, romance and the paranormal—all of it nail-biting.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Vision
The Night is Watching
Heather Graham

www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
For Nan and Joe Ryan
and my one and only but
really great trip to
Tombstone with them!
Contents
Prologue (#u1cef86ec-d7c7-5a30-a21a-3a36e0c62154)
Chapter 1 (#u67f0b939-bfc2-5055-873f-e5501d89533d)
Chapter 2 (#u6bf54027-29f0-5f19-912b-7d4c509221dc)
Chapter 3 (#u85ca488c-8dcb-5703-b9d0-5a1659e7ec36)
Chapter 4 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
Mornings were quiet in Lily, Arizona.
A pity, Sloan Trent thought, walking up the two steps to the raised sidewalk of the town’s main street. He felt tourists were missing out, because these summer mornings were beautiful, retaining the night’s chill, while the days were often blazing.
Not surprisingly, the street was called Main Street. Sometimes, when the wind picked up, tumbleweeds actually swept down the street, along with little clouds of dust. The tourists loved it—except on the few rainy days that turned the dirt road into a mud slide, which clearly explained the raised wooden sidewalks of the 1880s.
The entire town was built of wood; only a few of the newer dwellings on the outskirts were brick or concrete. When Lily was built, lumber had been the easiest material to acquire, so everything was made of wood. Even the jail.
It was probably a miracle that Lily had never burned to the ground. But, small and barren though it might be, the town was a survivor. Just naming it Lily had been a piece of optimism, but when Joseph Miller had first come in hopes of finding gold way back in the 1850s, he’d named the place for his grandmother—not because she’d been beautiful or sweet, but because the Irishwoman had been blessed with the greatest tenacity he’d ever known, according to his memoir.
And Lily, Arizona, was a town that had held on tenaciously through good and bad, fair times and foul.
Sloan looked down the broad dusty road that had been preserved. Lily had almost been a ghost town, in the truly deserted sense; at one time, in the early 1900s, only three places of business had remained open, and since one had been the sheriff’s office and jail, there’d really just been two mercantile establishments, both hanging on by a thread. Those two had been the Paris Saloon and the theater, the Gilded Lily. Of course, staying afloat at that time in this dry Western town off the beaten track, on the road between Tucson and Tombstone, was a struggle, and the Gilded Lily had offered pretty tawdry entertainment in the guise of theater. Clearly, the place had been successful.
And because miners, ranchers, opportunists and downright outlaws enjoyed the services of the main saloon across the street and the bar in the theater, the jail did a booming business, as well.
Today, there weren’t many shoot-outs. There weren’t even many drunken brawls. It was strange to be sheriff back here after being with the Houston, Texas, police force. And strange to be head of a six-man—including one woman—force when he’d previously worked with hundreds of fellow officers.
But he’d come back to be with his grandfather when they’d first found out about his illness, and then stayed with him, tended to him, while the cancer slowly killed him. And now...
Now, he didn’t have the heart to leave again.
Ah, yes, here he was in Lily, Arizona, taking care of not-so-major crime!
And that, he reminded himself, was why he’d left the new sheriff’s office down the highway and come into the tourist end of town. There was another report from the old sheriff’s office and jail, which was now being operated as a restaurant and bed-and-breakfast, known, naturally, as the Old Jail. It was featured on all the “haunted” shows that continually played on cable stations. Another “theft” had occurred.
The nineteenth-century office and jail sat next to the Gilded Lily, while the Paris Saloon and the old stables were across the street. While it was small in comparison to major tourist destinations like Tombstone, Lily had made something of a comeback. The other side of the saloon, in an old barbershop, had become a state-of-the-art salon and spa, and next to it, in the old general store, was a place called Desert Diamonds—a souvenir shop that also boasted a pizza parlor, ice cream and a barista stand. It was also a small museum. Grant Winston, proprietor, had been around since practically the Dark Ages and he displayed his old newspapers and artifacts in a special climate-controlled room in the back.
Main Street was hopping as a tourist destination. The old stables offered horseback riding, day tours and haunted night tours. They’d even arranged a few Styrofoam “relics” out in the desert to heighten the pleasure.
Shaking his head at the marvels of modern commerce, Sloan paused for a minute.
A breeze had picked up suddenly, and a large clump of sagebrush went skidding down the road before him. He was struck by the feeling that something was about to change—that dark forces were coming to life in Lily, Arizona.
He couldn’t help grinning at his ridiculous feeling that the sudden chill in the air and the sweep of sagebrush could be a forewarning of some kind of evil.
He opened the door of the bed-and-breakfast. The old sheriff’s desk was now the check-in counter, and the deputy’s desk held a sign that read Concierge.
Because, of course, in Lily, Arizona, you needed a concierge.
But the concierge did double duty, working the morning coffee and continental breakfast station that was laid out in the old gun room and pitching in when the gun room turned into a restaurant. The food wasn’t bad and there was often a need for reservations, since the room held only six tables.
“Sheriff, thank God you’re here!”
Mike Addison, owner and manager of the Old Jail, was at the sheriff’s desk. He stood quickly when Sloan walked in.
“I came right over, Mike,” he said. “What is it this time?”
“The couple in Room One! You know, Hardy’s cell,” Mike said dramatically. “They were robbed last night!”
“What happened?”
“They woke up this morning—and their wallets had been stolen. I wouldn’t believe it myself, Sloan, if they weren’t such fine people and if they weren’t so honestly upset. The husband says they were over at the Gilded Lily, they saw the show, had one nightcap and came back. As you know, only our guests have keys to the front and the cells. I swear, I can’t figure out how someone could have gotten into their room!”
Mike was in his thirties, tall, lean and earnest. He’d come out from Boston, having been a lover of all the Old West movies he’d seen growing up, thanks to cable channels. He’d bought the jail from old “Coot” Stevens, who’d first turned it into a B and B. Mike had worked hard to maintain its historic aspects and make it a nice place to stay. While the rooms were extremely small—they’d started out as cells, after all—they featured beds with luxurious mattresses, exceptional air-conditioning and tales of the outlaws who’d lived and died in the area, some in the cells and some at the scaffolding on Main Street.
“Where are they?” Sloan asked.
“The breakfast room. I offered to spike their morning coffee, they were so upset. Jerry and Lucinda Broling.”
Sloan nodded and went in. The walls were covered with various weapons and rifles dating from the early 1800s to the 1960s. The tables were stained wood, which gave the place atmosphere and was easy to clean.
The young couple in question certainly looked dejected enough as they sat at the table, heads bowed and shoulders slumped. They appeared to be in their late twenties. Jerry Broling glanced up with hope in his eyes as Sloan entered. “It’s the sheriff, honey. He’ll do something. Everything will be fine, you’ll see!” he said.
Lucinda, a blonde with cornflower-blue eyes, smiled tremulously. She’d been crying.
“How do you do? Sloan Trent,” he said, introducing himself. “So, you think you were robbed during the night. In your room?”
“It had to be!” Lucinda insisted. “We went to the show—it’s very funny, by the way—and afterward we stopped at the bar in the Gilded Lily.”
“We had Kahlua and cream,” Jerry said.
“I had Tia Maria. You had Kahlua and cream.” Obviously, the robbery had made them both irritable.
“Neither of us drank a lot,” Jerry said. “We—”
“I hadn’t been drinking at all,” Lucinda broke in. “Jerry was draining a few beers in the saloon during the show.”
“I wasn’t even slightly buzzed.” Jerry’s tone was hard.
Lucinda waved a hand in the air. “I paid for the drinks.”
“And that’s the last time you saw your wallets?” Sloan asked. “At the saloon and the bar?”
“Mine never came out of my pocket. It should’ve been in my jeans this morning,” Jerry said.
Lucinda waved a hand in the air. “I’d been using my credit card. Jerry hadn’t paid for anything all day. His might have been anywhere. But I know that my wallet was in my purse when I went to bed.”
Sloan nodded thoughtfully. “I understand you were in Room One.”
“I’ve already searched it,” Jerry told him.
“We even pulled the mattress up,” Lucinda said.
“Did you ask at the Gilded Lily?”
“Well, they’re not open this early, are they?” Jerry asked.
“Not for business, but they have rehearsals, meetings... The costumer goes in to sew up rips and tears and so on.”
Mike was at the door. “I called. Spoke to Henri Coque. They’re up and about, working down in the old storage room digging up more wigs. He went up to the bar area and searched through everything. Couldn’t find any credit cards. Talked to everyone he could, but no one handed in a lost wallet.”
“So, you were in Trey Hardy’s cell,” Sloan said.
They nodded. “Excuse me. I’ll give the place a search, too, if you don’t mind.”
The couple looked at him doubtfully. “Sheriff, there’s a thief in this town,” Lucinda said.
“A low-down, no-account pickpocket!” Jerry muttered.
“Stop trying to sound like some Old West bank robber,” Lucinda groaned.
“Lucinda—”
Sloan left the squabbling couple, passed through the barred wooden door to the cells and walked down the length of the hallway. The door to Room One, the Trey Hardy cell, was open.
Hardy had been a true character in his day. A Confederate cavalry lieutenant who had lost everything during the Civil War, he’d started robbing banks. He was a hero to some back in Missouri—just like Jesse James. He’d stolen from the carpetbaggers to give back to the citizens. He’d been dashing and handsome, and when things had gotten hot for him in Missouri, he’d gone farther. But in Lily he came up against another ex-Confederate, Sheriff Brendan Fogerty. Fogerty felt that the war was over, and ex-Reb or not, Hardy wasn’t stealing from the citizens of Lily, Arizona. He’d taken Hardy in after winning a fistfight on Main Street. Hardy had promised to come willingly if Fogerty bested him. To a cheering crowd, he had turned himself in when Fogerty had pinned him. Sadly, unknown to Fogerty, his deputy, Aaron Munson, had a long-standing beef with anyone who’d fought against the Union. Before Hardy could be brought to trial, Munson shot Hardy down in his cell, only to be dragged out to the street and lynched himself by a furious mob enamored of the handsome Hardy.
While Munson haunted Main Street, Hardy was said to haunt the jail and the cell where he had died.
The doors to the cells were wooden with barred windows. They were entered with large jail keys that had to be returned—lest the guest be charged a hefty fee. In the age of the plastic slot card, the Old Jail was a holdout. But entering a cell with a big jail key held greater charm.
The door wasn’t locked, so Sloan stepped inside. The couple had done a pretty thorough job of searching. Drawers were still open and the mattress lay crookedly on the bed.
Sloan turned back to make sure he hadn’t been followed. There was a security camera in the hall but he knew that was just for show; Mike never remembered to change the tape. He seldom had trouble. Guests seemed to love talking about the shadowy apparitions they’d seen in the halls or the “cold spots” that had moved into the room, et cetera, that went with staying at such a place. He walked to the dresser; it was heavy. A wide-screen TV sat on it, along with the bust of an Indian chief.
Sloan waited a minute, then shook his head, said quietly, “Give it up. Return the wallets.”
He heard the rasp of something against the wall. Turning, he saw that that there were two wallets on the floor. They might have been wedged behind the dresser and wall—and fallen when he tugged at the dresser.
He picked them up and headed to the door, then looked back into the room. “You know, Hardy, shadows in the night, cool. Your few ghostly appearances—great. But quit with the money, the keys and the wallets, huh? All these people think you’re the next best thing to Jesse James. Don’t go ruining your wonderful reputation.”
For a moment, Sloan thought he saw him. Hardy seemed to be standing there, still wearing a gray jacket and a sweeping gray hat with a plume, a cross between a Western outlaw and a disenfranchised soldier. He had a neatly clipped golden beard and his eyes were bright. He saluted Sloan.
Shaking his head, Sloan walked back to the breakfast room and set the wallets on the table.
The couple gaped at him incredulously. “They were wedged behind the dresser,” he said.
“Oh, thank you!” Lucinda gushed.
“Yeah, man, thanks!” Jerry said.
“Check them, make sure everything’s in them,” Sloan said.
“You said you searched everywhere!” Lucinda accused Jerry.
“Hey, you were in the room, too!”
She’d barely finished speaking when they heard it.
The sound was terrible; it seemed to come from the earth itself. It was a scream—one that might have been piercing except that it was muffled.
It came again and again...
“What the f—” Jerry began, leaping to his feet.
“Oh, my God!” Lucinda cried, trembling.
Even Sloan felt as if ice trickled down his spine.
And then he realized the source of the scream. There was nothing unearthly about it. It was simply coming from the basement of the theater next door.
Sloan strode quickly from the Old Jail and down the few steps to the swinging, slatted doors that led into the Gilded Lily. He saw the long bar and the rows of seating to the side of it and the stage at the far end.
“Hey!” he called out, seeing no signs of life.
He hurried behind the bar to the stairs that went down to the basement and storm cellar, now a depository for over a hundred and fifty years’ worth of costumes, props, scenery and other old theater paraphernalia.
He heard the scream again as he rushed down the steps.
The muted light blinded him for a moment. The basement was divided into a main room and three side rooms, separated by foundation walls.
He blinked and adjusted his vision. A woman stood alone at the back of the main basement room. She held an old burlap cover that had apparently protected shelves holding wigged mannequin heads. She was young, blonde and pretty, and he recognized Valerie Mystro, the current ingenue in residence at the Gilded Lily Theater Company.
“Valerie!”
She didn’t hear him when he called her name. She was staring in horror at something on the shelf.
Sloan strode over to her and took her by the shoulders. She looked at him blankly, as if not seeing him at first.
“Valerie!”
She trembled. “Sloan!” she said, and swallowed.
“Valerie, what is it? What’s wrong?”
She lifted a shaky finger and pointed at the row of old carved wooden wig heads.
They were creepy, Sloan agreed. Each had been painted with a face. Some pouted, some just stared, some seemed to laugh. A few of the newer heads were made of plastic or Styrofoam.
And at the end of the row...
There was one that bore a dark curly wig tied with a red ribbon. Dark curls fell over the forehead.
But the head wasn’t carved from wood. Nor was it plastic or Styrofoam.
It was a human skull, a skull stuck on a wooden spike. The jawbone had fallen and lay on the ledge.
That made it appear as if the skull itself was screaming.
As if evil was indeed alive in the world and had come to Lily, Arizona.
1
Jane Everett was entranced.
She’d been to a ghost town or two in her day, but never a functioning ghost town.
But then, of course, Lily, Arizona, had never really been a ghost town because it had never been completely deserted. It had just fallen by the wayside. It had seen good times—when the mines yielded silver and there’d been a hint of gold, as well, and the saloons and merchants had flourished—and it had seen bad times when the mines ran dry. Still, it had the look of either a ghost town or the set of a Western movie. The main street had raised wooden sidewalks and an unpaved dirt street. Muddy when it rained, she was certain, but that was seldom in this area.
The car her boss, Special Agent Logan Raintree, had hired to bring her to town let her out in front of the Gilded Lily, where she’d be staying. The driver had set her bag on the wooden sidewalk, but she waited a minute before going in, enjoying a long view of the street.
There were a number of tourists around. She heard laughter from across the street and saw that a group of children had come from a shop called Desert Diamonds and were happily licking away at ice cream cones. Farther down, a guide was leading several riders out of the stables; she could hear his voice as he began to tell them the history of the town.
But the theater itself was where she was heading so she turned and studied it for a moment. Someone had taken pains to preserve rather than renovate, and the place appeared grand—if grand was the right word. Well, maybe grand in a rustic way. The carved wooden fence that wound around the roof was painted with an array of lilies and the name of the theater; hanging over the fence and held in place with old chain were signs advertising the current production, The Perils of Poor Little Paulina. Actors’ names were listed in smaller print beneath the title. She knew the show was a parody of the serialized Perils of Pauline that had been popular in the early part of the twentieth century.
No neon here, she thought, smiling. They were far from Broadway.
She’d read that the Gilded Lily had hosted many fine performers over the years. The theater had been established at a time when someone had longed to bring a little eastern “class” to the rugged West; naturally, the results had been somewhat mixed.
As she stood on the street looking up at the edifice, a man came flying out the latticed doors. Tall and square as a wrestler, clean-shaven and bald with dark eyes and white-winged brows, he bustled with energy. “Jane? Jane Everett? From the FBI?”
“Yes, I am. Hello.”
“Welcome to Lily, Arizona,” he said enthusiastically. “I’m Henri Coque, artistic director of the theater for about a year now and, I might add, director of the current production, The Perils of Poor Little Paulina. We’re delighted to have you here.”
“I’m delighted to be here,” she responded. “It’s a beautiful place. Who wouldn’t want to come to a charming, Western, almost ghost town?”
He laughed at that. “I’m glad to hear that, especially since I’m the mayor here, as well as the artistic director. Lily itself is small. Let me get your bag, and I’ll show you around the theater and take you to your room. I hope you’re all right with staying here. Someone suggested one of the chain hotels up the highway, but everyone else thought you’d enjoy the Gilded Lily more.”
“I’m happy to be here,” Jane assured him. “I can stay at a chain hotel anywhere.”
She was happy. They’d been between cases when Logan had heard from an old friend of his—a Texas cop, now an Arizona sheriff—that a skull had appeared mysteriously in the storage cellar of a historic theater. It had sounded fascinating to her and she’d agreed to come out here. The local coroner’s office had deemed the skull to be over a hundred years old and had determined that handing it over to the FBI was justified, so that perhaps the deceased could be identified and given a proper burial. Like most law enforcement agencies, the police here were busy with current cases that demanded answers for the living.
The skull, she knew, was no longer at the theater. She would work at the new sheriff’s office on the highway, but she was intrigued by the opportunity to spend time at the historic theater, learn the history of it and, of course, see where the skull was found.
That was the confusion—and the mystery. No one remembered seeing the skull wearing the wig before. Granted, the theater had been holding shows forever; it had never closed down. And people had been using the various wigs down there forever, too. From her briefing notes, Jane knew that everyone working at the theater and involved with it had denied ever seeing the skull, with or without a wig. It seemed obvious that someone had been playing a prank, but Jane wasn’t sure how identifying the person behind the skull—given that he or she had been dead over a hundred years—would help discover who’d put it on the rack.
The sheriff, Sloan Trent, had wanted to send the skull off to the Smithsonian or the FBI lab, but the mayor had insisted it should stay in Lily until an identification had been made. So, Sloan had requested help from his old friend, Logan Raintree, head of Jane’s Texas Krewe unit of the FBI teams of paranormal investigators known as the Krewe of Hunters. And that had led to Logan’s asking Jane, whose specialty was forensic art, to come here. The medical examiner who’d seen the skull believed it was the skull of a woman and he had estimated that she’d been dead for a hundred to a hundred and fifty years.
“Come, Ms.—or, I guess it’s Agent—Everett!” Henri said, pushing open the slatted doors and escorting her into the Gilded Lily. “Jennie! Come meet our forensic artist!”
Jane tried to take in the room while a slender woman wearing a flowered cotton dress came out from behind the long bar behind some tables to the left. The Gilded Lily, she quickly saw, was the real deal. She felt as if she’d stepped back in time. Of course, her first case with her Krewe—the second of three units—had been in her own hometown of San Antonio and had actually centered on an old saloon. But the Gilded Lily was a theater and a saloon or bar, and like nothing she’d ever seen before. The front tables were ready for poker players, with period furniture that was painstakingly rehabbed. To the right of the entry, an open pathway led to the theater. Rich red velvet drapes, separating the bar area from the stage and audience section, were drawn back with golden cords. The theater chairs weren’t what she would’ve expected. The original owners had aimed for an East Coast ambience, so they, too, were covered in red velvet. The stage, beyond the audience chairs, was broad and deep, allowing for large casts and complicated sets. She saw what appeared to be a real stagecoach on stage right and, over on stage left, reaching from the apron back stage rear, were railroad tracks.
“Hello, welcome!”
The woman who’d been behind the bar came around to the entry, smiling as she greeted Jane. She thrust out her a hand and there was steel in her grip. “I’m Jennie Layton, stage mother.”
“Stage mother?” Jane asked, smiling.
Jennie laughed. “Stage manager. But they call me stage mother—with affection, I hope. I take care of our actors...and just about everything else!” she said.
“Oh, come now! I do my share of the work,” Henri protested.
Jennie smiled. “At night, we have three bartenders, four servers and a barback. And we have housekeepers who come in, too, but as far as full-time employees go, well, it’s Henri and me. And we’re delighted you agreed to stay here.”
“I thought the theater history might help you in identifying the woman,” Henri said.
“Thank you. That makes sense. And it’s beautiful and unique.”
“Lily is unique! And the Gilded Lily is the jewel in her crown,” Henri said proudly.
“Well, come on up. We have you in the Sage McCormick suite,” Jennie told her, beaming.
The name was familiar to Jane from her reading. “Sage McCormick was an actress in the late 1800s, right?”
“All our rooms are now named for famous actors or actresses who came out West to play at the Gilded Lily,” Henri said. “Sage, yes—she was one of the finest. She was in Antigone and Macbeth and starred in a few other plays out here. She was involved in a wonderful and lascivious scandal, too—absolutely a divine woman.” He seemed delighted with the shocking behavior of the Gilded Lily’s old star. “I’ll get your bag.”
“Oh, I’m fine,” Jane said, but Henri had grabbed it already.
“Tut, tut,” he said. “You may be a very capable agent, Ms. Everett, but here in Lily...a gent is a gent!”
“Well, thank you, then,” Jane said.
Jennie showed the way up the curving staircase. The landing led to a balcony in a horseshoe shape. Jane looked down at the bar over a carved wooden railing, then followed Jennie to the room at the far end of the horseshoe. This room probably afforded the most privacy, as there was only one neighbor.
“The Sage McCormick suite,” Jennie said, opening the door with a flourish.
It was a charming room. The bed was covered with a quilt—flowers on white—and the drapes were a filmy white with a crimson underlay.
“Those doors are for your outdoor balcony. It overlooks the side street but also gives you a view of the main street, although obstructed, I admit,” Jennie said.
“And the dressing room through here...” Henri entered with her bag, throwing open a door at the rear of the spacious room. “It’s still a dressing room, with a lovely new bath. Nothing was really undone. The first bathrooms were put in during the 1910s. We’ve just updated. And, you’ll note, this one retains a dressing table and these old wooden armoires. Aren’t they gorgeous?”
They were. The matching armoires were oak, with the symbols of comedy and tragedy carved on each side and on the doors. “They were a gift to Sage when she was here,” Henri said reverently. “A patron of the arts was so delighted that he had these made for her!”
Jane peeked beyond. The bathroom was recently updated and had a tiled shower and whirlpool bath. The color scheme throughout was crimson and white with black edging.
“This is really lovely. Thank you,” Jane said again.
“It’s our best suite!” Henri gestured expansively around him.
“How come neither of you are in here?” Jane asked, smiling. “And what about your stars? I don’t want to put anyone out.”
“Oh,” Jennie said. “Our ‘stars’ tend to be superstitious. They’re in the other rooms on this level.” With a quick grin she added, “And Henri and I are quite happy in our own rooms...”
Jane waited for her to say more.
Henri spoke instead. “Sage McCormick...” His voice trailed off. “Well, theater folk are a superstitious bunch. I mean, you know about her, don’t you?”
“I know a little,” Jane said. “She disappeared, didn’t she?”
“From this room,” Jennie explained. “There’s all kinds of speculation. Some people believe she was a laudanum addict, and that she wandered off and met with a bad end at the hands of outlaws or Indians. Laudanum was used like candy back then. Lord knows how many people died from overusing it. Like today’s over-the-counter pills. Too much and—”
“And some people believe she simply left Lily with her new love—supposedly she intended to elope—and changed her identity,” Henri said impatiently. “Prior to that, she’d met and married a local man and they had a child together.”
“Really? But she still kept her room at the Gilded Lily?” Jane asked.
“Of course. She was the star.” Henri spoke as if this was all that needed to be said.
“Anyway, the last time anyone reported seeing her was when she retired to this room after a performance,” Henri went on.
“Her esteemed rendition of Antigone!” Jennie said.
“What about the husband? Was he a suspect?” Jane asked.
“Her husband was downstairs in the bar, waiting for her. He was with a group of local ranchers and businessmen. One of her costars went up to get her, and Sage was gone. Just...gone. No one could find her, and she was never seen again,” Jennie told her.
“Oh, dear! You’re not superstitious, are you?” Henri asked. “I understood that you’re a forensic artist but a law enforcement official, too.”
Jane nodded. “I’ll be fine here.”
“Well, settle in, then. And, please, when you’re ready, come on down. We’ll be in the theater—I’ll be giving notes on last night’s performance. Join us whenever you’re ready.”
“I wouldn’t want to interrupt a rehearsal.”
“Oh, you won’t be interrupting. The show is going well. We opened a few weeks ago, but I have to keep my actors off the streets, you know? You’ll get to meet the cast, although the crew won’t be there. This is for the performers. As Jennie mentioned, the cast lives at the Gilded Lily while performing, so you’ll meet your neighbors.”
“Thank you,” Jane said, and glanced at her watch. “Sheriff Trent is supposed to be picking me up. I’ll be down in a little while.”
“Oh! And here’s your key,” Henri said, producing an old metal key. “The only people here are the cast and crew—”
“And bartenders and servers and a zillion other people who’ve come to see the show or have a drink,” Jennie added drily. “Use your key.”
“I will,” Jane promised.
Henri and Jennie left the room. Jane closed the door behind them and stood still, gazing around. “Hello?” she said softly. “If you’re here, I look forward to meeting you, Sage. What a beautiful name, by the way.”
There was no response to her words. She shrugged, opened her bag and began to take out her clothing, going into the dressing room to hang her things in one of the armoires. She placed her makeup bag on the dressing table there, walked into the bathroom and washed her face. Back in the bedroom, she set up her laptop on the breakfast table near the balcony. Never sure if a place would have Wi-Fi, she always brought her own connector.
Jane decided she needed to know more about Sage McCormick, and keyed in the name. She was astounded by the number of entries that appeared before her eyes. She went to one of the encyclopedia sites, assuming she’d find more truth than scandal there.
Jane read through the information: Sage had been born in New York City, and despite her society’s scorn for actresses and her excellent family lineage, she’d always wanted to act. To that end, she’d left a magnificent mansion near Central Park to pursue the stage. She’d sold the place when she became the last surviving member of her family. Apparently aware that her choice of profession would brand her as wanton, she lived up to the image, marrying one of her costars and then divorcing him for the embrace of a stagehand. She flouted convention—but was known to be kind to everyone around her. She had been twenty-five when she’d come out to the Gilded Lily in 1870. By that point, she’d already appeared in numerous plays in New York, Chicago and Boston. Critics and audiences alike had adored her. In Lily, she’d instantly fallen in love with local entrepreneur Alexander Cahill, married him almost immediately—and acted her way through the pregnancy that had resulted in the birth of her only child, Lily Cahill. On the night of May 1, 1872, after a performance of Antigone, Sage had gone to her room at the Gilded Lily Theater and disappeared from history. It was presumed that she’d left her husband and child to escape with a new lover, an outlaw known as Red Marston, as Red disappeared that same evening and was never seen in Lily again, nor did any reports of him ever appear elsewhere. Her contemporaries believed that the pair had fled to Mexico to begin their lives anew.
“Interesting,” Jane murmured aloud. “So, Sage, did you run across the border and live happily ever after?”
She heard the old-fashioned clock on the dresser tick and nothing else. And she remembered that she’d promised to go downstairs. The sheriff was due to pick her up in thirty minutes, so if she was going to meet the cast, she needed to move.
Running into the dressing room, she ran her brush through her hair, then hurried out. As she opened the door to exit into the hall, she was startled to see a slim, older woman standing there with a tray in her hands. The tray held a small plug-in coffeepot, and little packs of coffee, tea, creamers and sugar.
“Hello!” the woman said. She looked at Jane as though terrified.
“Hi, I’m Jane Everett. Come on in, and thank you.”
The woman swallowed. “I—I—I... Please don’t make me go in that room!” she said.
Jane tried not to smile. “Let me take that, then. It’s fine. You don’t have to come in.”
The woman pressed the tray into Jane’s arms, looking vastly relieved. Jane brought it in and set it on the dresser. She’d find a plug in the morning.
When she turned around, the woman was still standing there. She wore a blue dress and apron and had to be one of the housekeepers.
“Thank you,” Jane said again.
Suddenly, the woman stuck out her hand. “I’m Elsie Coburn. If you need anything, just ask me.”
“Elsie, nice to meet you,” Jane said, shaking her hand. She couldn’t help asking, “How did this room get so clean?”
“Oh.” Elsie blushed and glanced down. “I make the two girls clean this room. They do it together. They’re okay as long as they don’t work alone. Bess was in here one day and the door slammed on her and none of us could open it. Then it opened on its own, so...well, we don’t have to clean it that often, you know? No one stays in this room. One of those ghost shows brought a cast and crew in here and the producer was going to stay in the room all night but he ran out.... People don’t stay in that room. They just don’t.”
“Oh, well, I’m sorry that my coming here caused distress.”
Elsie shook her head. “No, no, we’re happy to have you. If you don’t mind...please don’t mention that you had to bring your own tray in.”
“Of course not,” Jane assured her. “Why did the producer of the ghost show run out in the middle of the night?”
“He said she was standing over his bed, that she touched him, that—”
“She? You mean Sage McCormick?”
Elsie nodded.
“But what made him think she wanted to hurt him?”
“What?” Elsie was obviously mystified.
Jane smiled. “I thought ghost shows tried to prove that places were haunted.”
“This whole town is haunted. Bad things, really bad things, have happened over the years. The ghost-show people got all kinds of readings on their instruments. And the Old Jail next door! People leave there, too, even though they don’t get their money back if they do. This place is...it’s scary, Agent Everett. Very scary.”
“But you live and work here,” Jane said gently.
“I’m from here, and I don’t tease the ghosts. I respect them. They’re on Main Street, and they’re all around. I keep my eyes glued to where I’m going, and that’s it. I do my work and I go home, and if I hear a noise, I go the other way.” She rubbed her hands on her apron. “Well, a pleasure to meet you. And we’re glad you’re here.”
“Me, too. And don’t worry about cleaning the room—no one has to clean it while I’m here. I’ll just ask you to bring me fresh towels every couple of days. How’s that?”
Elsie looked as if she might kiss her.
She nodded vigorously. “Thank you, miss. Thank you. I mean, thank you, Agent Everett.”
“Jane is fine.”
Flushing, Elsie said, “Jane.” She turned and disappeared down the hall, heading for the stairs. Jane closed her door, locking it behind her as she’d been told to do.
* * *
When Sloan arrived at the Gilded Lily, the servers had yet to come in for the night. He had to knock on the doors—the solid doors behind the latticed ones that had been preserved to give the place its old-time appearance—to gain entry. The bar didn’t open until five.
Jennie let him in, smiling as she did. Jennie was always in a good mood. “Sloan, hi. You’re here for Jane?”
So...Agent Everett was already on a first-name basis with people at the Gilded Lily. But then again, was she like most agents, or was she an artist—with the credentials to work on FBI cases? He gave himself a mental kick; even though he’d made the call to Logan that had brought her to town, Sloan wasn’t pleased about her being here, but he wasn’t sure why.
Yes, he needed to find out who the skull belonged to. But logically, in his opinion at least, the skull should have been sent off to a lab where such things were done or to the experts at a museum. In the end—after arguing with Henri Coque about procedure—Sloan had been the one to call Logan to ask for a forensic artist and Logan had sent her. He’d trusted Logan to send him a good artist, but he was also aware that Logan was a different kind of lawman.
Sloan was, too.
He and Logan had shared secrets that they hadn’t let on to others. Working cases together, they’d both had occasion to follow leads because they’d spoken to the dead.
Sloan didn’t walk around interacting with spirits all the time. But there’d been occasions... He and Logan had recognized the ability in each other. And they’d been good partners.
True, he sometimes argued that the dead he saw were his particular form of talking to himself. And while it might seem that talking to the dead should solve everything, it didn’t work that way. But now Logan wasn’t a Ranger anymore; he was a fed. And he was the head of a unit. A special unit that was informally called the Texas Krewe.
Jane Everett was part of that Krewe. Did that mean she shared Logan’s secrets? Or that she knew about Sloan? He doubted it. Logan never spoke to anyone about anyone else’s business. But, somehow, Jane Everett made him uneasy.
Was he worried that she was only an artist—and not really much of a law enforcement agent?
Or was he worried that she was an artist and an agent and might find him incompetent?
He’d just had an odd feeling that they needed to get the skull out of Lily. It was almost as if the skull could be a catalyst for bad things to come.
Ridiculous, he told himself. Still, he didn’t like it.
But he’d been the one to call Logan Raintree.
In keeping with what Sloan knew about his old friend, he wasn’t surprised, when he’d looked up his recent work, that Logan’s Krewe worked with strange, supernatural cases.
In fact, it was one reason he’d decided to approach him.
Because there’s more to this than meets the eye and it may be important—but do I really want to know? he asked himself. He’d called Logan because he wondered if they might need help from the dead while not wanting it to be true.
“Yes, I’m here for Agent Everett,” he told Jennie.
“Come in,” she said. “The cast is down by the stage apron. She’s been meeting them all.”
“Sure.” Thankfully, there weren’t any other pressing issues in Lily at the moment.
He followed Jennie into the theater.
The group had gathered around the stage. Valerie Mystro, who had found the skull, was leaning casually against the show’s hero, Cy Tyburn, a tall, blond, all-American-looking actor from Kansas. Alice Horton, dark-haired, dark-eyed, sultry and buxom, the show’s vamp, was seated on the stage next to Brian Highsmith. Brian was dark-haired, as well; his green eyes bright against the near-black of his hair. Smiling, he appeared to be totally nonevil, although he played the show’s villain. Henri looked happy, standing in front of the newcomer, Jane Everett, who was seated next to Alice.
Even in the group of beautiful twenty-to-thirty-year-old actors, Jane Everett stood out. She was seated, so he couldn’t judge her height, and she was wearing a typical pantsuit—one he might expect to see on a working federal agent. The slight bulge was apparent at her rib cage; she was wearing a shoulder holster and carrying her weapon, which was probably just as regulation as her black pantsuit and white shirt. But she wore her hair loose and it was a striking shade, the deepest auburn he’d ever seen. And when she looked up at his arrival, he saw that she had the most unusual eyes he had ever seen, as well. They were amber. Not brown. Not hazel. Amber.
As he entered, she stood. Whatever they’d been discussing, they’d all gone quiet as he walked in.
“Sloan! We’ve just met Jane,” Valerie said happily. She giggled. “I told her how terrified I was when I found the skull, but then, she’s an FBI agent—I’m sure she would have behaved perfectly normally.”
“Maybe not. A skull can startle anyone,” Jane Everett said.
“Oh, you haven’t met yet!” Valerie said. “I’ll introduce you. Agent Jane Everett, meet our town’s sheriff, Sloan Trent. Sloan, this is Agent Everett.”
“It’s Jane, please,” Jane said, standing to shake his hand. She was on the tall side, he noted. Probably about five-nine, since she was wearing neat low pumps and seemed about five-ten or so against his six-three frame. She had a beautiful face, absolutely elegant and classical. He imagined that once they were gone, the show’s leading ladies would be discussing her...assets. She appeared to be lean and trim, but even in her regulation attire, she seemed to have the curves to suggest a well-honed body.
So this was the artist Logan had sent to sketch his skull?
It wasn’t his skull, he reminded himself. But the skull had belonged to a living, breathing human being and it was part of his town’s history. As far as he knew, anyway. And if it wasn’t—if Jane Everett’s rendering of the long-dead woman couldn’t be identified—someone had dug it up from somewhere to play a gruesome prank on the show’s cast or crew.
It just should have gone to Washington or a museum, he thought again.
He understood why Henri had insisted it stay in Lily. He wanted to know who’d gotten hold of the skull—and who’d put it in the basement storage room of the Gilded Lily.
“Sheriff Sloan Trent,” he said, accepting her hand and nodding to the others in acknowledgment. They all greeted him in turn, either as Sloan or as Sheriff—as if that was his given name. There wasn’t a lot of formality in Lily.
“I’m here to take you to our offices. We have a room prepared for you to work in. I hope you’ll find everything you need.”
She nodded. “I bring most of my own supplies,” she said, patting the black case she carried over her shoulder. “We should be fine. Thank you, Sheriff.”
“My pleasure, Agent Everett. You ready?”
“I am.”
There was a chorus of “lovely to meet you” and “nice to make your acquaintance” and other cordial statements as they left the stage area and headed out, along with “See you later, Sloan!”
He led the way to his SUV—then hesitated. He’d been raised to open doors for ladies, but wasn’t sure what the protocol was with an agent. He decided he’d be damned if he was going to change. He opened the passenger door. She thanked him as she slid in.
An awkward silence followed as he drove down Main Street, then along the paved road that passed by a smattering of houses and ranches on small plots, and finally larger tracts as he traveled the six miles from the heart of Lily to the modern “downtown” area of town.
She broke the silence.
“So, Logan said he sometimes worked with you in Texas. But you’re from Lily?” she asked.
“I am,” he told her.
“It’s really remarkable,” she said. Her voice seemed strained; she was obviously trying to be pleasant and cheerful. “The town, I mean—not that you’re from it.”
“It’s remarkable in its preservation, I suppose. Tombstone is similar, but far better-known. The gunfight at the O.K. Corral and all that,” he said. “We had our share of outlaws, but none that caught the American imagination like Wyatt Earp and his brothers. Of course, Wyatt Earp wrote books that fostered the popular conception of the Old West.”
“Ah, but Lily has the Gilded Lily,” Jane said.
“And Tombstone has the Birdcage.” He glanced her way. “But the Gilded Lily has never been closed. It’s been an operating theater since it first opened. And while the Birdcage had its ‘cages’ or ‘cribs’ in balconies so its ladies of the night could entertain during performances, the Gilded Lily pretended to be a totally legitimate theater. The working ladies only entertained clients in their rooms upstairs—and that was to keep from losing clientele to the saloon and ‘entertainment’ center across the street. Of course, the Gilded Lily tried for a higher class of clientele,” Sloan said.
She laughed softly. “Convenient where they placed the Old Jail. Right next to the Gilded Lily...”
“Within shouting distance,” he agreed.
“And across the street from the saloon.”
“Either way, you could walk prisoners into a cell within a few hundred feet,” he said. He glanced at her. “You’re from Texas?”
“Yes,” she said. “San Antonio,” she added. “Though I did work with different agencies around the state until I joined Logan’s Krewe.”
“You always wanted to be an artist?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I was always drawing,” she said.
They’d reached the sheriff’s office. He pulled into the lot in front.
The office wasn’t really that small—not when you considered the size of the town. The building had been constructed in the 1930s by someone who’d evidently been to Toledo, Spain, and fallen in love with the medieval architecture. There was a tower on either front corner, and the roof was tile while the exterior was brick. The parking lot held room for at least twenty cars—someone had been optimistic about the growth of Lily. To the left, where the offices were located, were a bank, a coffee house, a Mexican restaurant and an Italian restaurant. To the right was an Asian restaurant and a Brazilian steak house, along with the area’s mall—an enclosure of about eight shops. Lily could proudly say that there were three national chain stores among them.
The biggest excitement in town had occurred when they’d acquired one of the country’s largest burger chains, which had chosen to locate in the mall. Keeping offices in old adobe homes or the occasional professional building were a few lawyers, accountants, doctors and decorators. The high school was just half a mile back toward the old town.
“Not such a small place,” she said cheerfully as he parked and they exited the car.
“Small enough that the skull should have been sent to a lab,” Sloan murmured.
He realized that his antagonism toward her became apparent with his careless words when she made a barely perceptible movement, stiffening. She stood by the car, looking at him, and he saw the hardness that came into her eyes.
“I’m really proficient at what I do, Sheriff. You don’t need to worry that my work will be lacking in any way.”
He could have said something to try to smooth her ruffled feathers; he didn’t. He just shrugged. “Since this isn’t a new murder, I’m sure your work will be more than sufficient.”
He felt the chill of her eyes. “Sheriff, I will certainly try very hard to do work that’s sufficient.”
He hadn’t meant to make matters worse. On the other hand, he could hardly have been more rude. Once again, an explanation or an apology might seem lame, so he indicated the door and said, “That didn’t come out the way I meant it. I’m sure you’re excellent at what you do. Come in and meet the staff—all two of the rest of our day crew.”
She turned, not waiting for him, and entered through the front door.
Deputy Betty Ivy was on duty at the desk when they came in. Again, someone had been overoptimistic about the growth of Lily. There were three offices for senior law officials, but since they only had six law officials all told—three on days, three at night, reduced to two at various hours to avoid overtime—one office was usually empty. Betty often manned the front desk during the day. Lamont Atkins, an easygoing man in his mid-forties who managed to maintain more control with a quiet voice than any swaggering might accomplish, also worked the day shift. Lamont started his day by touring around in town; he liked to show that the sheriff’s department was ever-vigilant. Chet Morgan rounded out his day crew.
As they walked in, Jane Everett breezed right up and introduced herself to Betty with professional charm before Sloan could make the introductions. From his office behind the entry, Chet Morgan rose and came out to join them by the front desk, grinning and friendly as he met Jane.
“We’ve set up the skull in the interrogation room,” Betty said, standing. “I’ve got a scanner in there, camera connected to the computer, sketch pad... I’ve watched a few forensic programs, so I thought you might want to take a lot of pictures and do whatever you do to get that 3-D image thing going. I mean, the computer has a camera, but I wasn’t sure how you’d move it around to get the right angles, so...well, anything you need, we’ll do our best to get for you.”
“That’s perfect, thank you. Actually, more than perfect. I have my own instruments for measurements. I’ll probably do what I call an imagination sketch today—just what I see from the skull,” Jane told her. “It’s late, and I’ve come in from the D.C. area, so I’m little travel-weary. Tomorrow, I’ll start with the measurements.”
“I’m intrigued to see your work!” Betty said enthusiastically.
Betty was a good woman—and a good deputy. When he’d come back to Lily, Sloan had been surprised that she hadn’t wanted the job of sheriff herself. A widow with two grown children, she’d worked for the department most of her adult life. But she hadn’t wanted the responsibility of being sheriff. She had iron-gray hair, cheerful blue eyes and a way of handling the occasional drunk or kid working on a misspent youth with unshakeable stoicism and a calm demeanor. She had the ability to convince both drunks and adolescents that they weren’t going anywhere—they’d pay the price for their transgressions before a judge and no fast-talking lawyer was getting them out of the clink that night. Sloan had told her that being sheriff of Lily wasn’t really a matter of heavy responsibility but Betty had said, “Oh, Sloan, small towns can still have big problems. I like being a deputy. You run for sheriff. I’ll vote for you!”
“Ms. Everett—Agent Everett!” Chet said, quickly correcting himself. “Anything you need, you let me know!”
Chet was only twenty-six. He was staring at Jane Everett as if Marilyn Monroe had risen from the grave and floated into their offices. He was as good and solid a deputy as Betty, just...young. Tall, a bit awkward, Chet had served in the military as a sharpshooter before returning to Lily—and a parade in his honor. Lily was small; the return of a serviceman was an occasion to be celebrated.
“Agent, come with me, if you will,” Sloan said. “I’ll show you your workroom. And the skull.”
“Well, show her the kitchen and where to find coffee, too, huh?” Betty said, frowning at Sloan before turning to smile at Jane again. “We’ve got sodas, coffee, snacks, you name it. Kitchen’s the first door on the left down that hall and you help yourself to anything. Oh, and you have an intercom in there. If you need me for anything, just push the button and call me.”
Jane thanked Betty and Chet and followed Sloan down the hall. He opened the door to Interrogation Room A. They also had Interrogation Rooms B and C, but they’d never actually used A to interrogate anyone, much less B or C.
He opened the door and turned on the lights. There was a desk with a computer and they’d also set up a graphic arts easel with a large sketch pad for their guest. As she’d said, Betty had supplied their guest with a camera, computer, scanner, tracing paper, “tissue markers,” wire and mortician’s wax. The skull itself had been set in the middle of a conference table in the center of the room; it was on a stand, minus the wig and with a few adjustments. Sloan hadn’t known much about reconstructing a lifelike image from a skull, but Betty had done some research and had some help from a professor friend in Tucson. The skull had been angled to the best of the professor’s ability at a “Frankfurt plane,” or the anatomical position of the skull as it naturally sat on the body.
The jawbone, disarticulated, lay in front of it, just as it had when it was found.
Jane seemed to have eyes for nothing but the skull. She walked right up to it, studied it for a moment and then picked up the jaw, testing the jagged lines that connected it.
“The M.E. was right,” she murmured. “It’s very old.” She glanced at Sloan. “If this was someone who’d died more recently, the structure would have more integrity. The years gone by create these soft spots. If you pressed too hard along one of these lines, it could just fall apart. I would agree that it’s the skull of a woman—probably in her late twenties or early thirties, judging by the fusion of the bones. She took good care of her teeth, since there’s very little decay.”
For a moment, she closed her eyes. She seemed to be in a trance; she looked like a medium standing there, as if she could communicate with the bone.
Irritated, he cleared his throat.
“Can I get you anything?” he asked her.
She turned to look at him, and she seemed equally irritated. “Sheriff, you are, after all, the sheriff. A very busy man. I’m sure I can find my own way around the office. I’ll help myself to coffee...if you don’t mind.”
“We change to the night crew at five,” he told her. “Please wrap up your work for the day by then. I’ll get you back to the Gilded Lily and then pick you up in the morning, about 8:00 a.m.—if that works for you.”
She nodded. “Yes, that’s fine.”
He left her and returned to his office, the one directly behind Betty’s desk. There were several folders waiting for him. He picked up the first—the arrest report for Arty Johnson. Arty was an old-timer with a penchant for drinking too much. He’d wind up banned from the Gilded Lily and the saloon, but he was really a decent guy, and he’d quickly work his way back into the good graces of the management. Last week, Arty had gotten a little carried away and joined the cast onstage at the Gilded Lily. Henri Coque, incensed at the time, had demanded that he be arrested. Arty had slept it off in one of the five cells, and then Sloan had driven him home. Arty had rued his behavior all the way.
He set the file aside. Hopefully, Henri wouldn’t press charges.
He picked up the next file, shaking his head. Jimmy Hough, local high-school senior and football star, was in the cells now. His father owned a beefalo farm; the meat hadn’t become as popular in the east as they’d expected, but Caleb Hough still made a fortune selling his hybrid meat. Jimmy had taken his father’s Maserati out for a spin and crashed into Connie Larson’s Honda. When he was picked up, he’d been as high as a kite—not even Lily, Arizona, escaped the drugs that continued to ravage schools.
Logan decided this was a good time to type up reports.
An hour passed as he dealt with paperwork. Then he became aware of a commotion out front. He looked up. Caleb Hough was accosting Betty, reaming her out for putting his son’s future at risk.
Sloan got up and went out to meet the big man. Caleb wore his wealth as if it were clothing. Maybe that was what happened to self-made men, at least in areas like this, where the population was sparse.
“Trent!” Hough bellowed as Sloan walked out. “You had the audacity to order your deputy McArthur to keep my kid in jail overnight. It was just a fender bender! Jimmy has a future—he’s a star! He’s being scouted by colleges across the country. If my boy has a record—”
“Hough, I had my deputy keep your boy in here when he was picked up because he was three sheets to the wind. I would think you’d want him learning something about accountability. No, he’s not a bad kid, and I don’t want to see him with a record. I didn’t just throw him in and forget him, either. I asked Doc Levin in to check on him. I also had a good conversation with him and with Connie Larson. Jimmy didn’t leave the scene, and he was concerned about hitting Connie. I kept him overnight because, for one, he needed to sober up. Two, he needed a lesson. I let him out this morning, since Connie doesn’t want charges pressed and there were no witnesses, and I believe that he’s a good kid. However...he knows I’m watching him now, even if you aren’t. I warned him that if he takes one step in the wrong direction, I’ll throw the book at him. He’s charged with careless driving. Now, get the hell out of here before I charge you with something.”
Hough scowled at him furiously. “Who do you think you’re talking to? Who do you think you are, putting in your two cents on how to raise my boy?”
“He won’t be a boy in a year, Caleb. He’ll be of legal age—and if he doesn’t learn his lessons now, he’ll face some real problems.”
“This isn’t the end of this!” Hough warned him.
“Let’s hope it is. For your son’s sake,” Sloan told him.
Hough seemed about to explode. But he turned on his heel and stalked out. Sloan followed him to the door and saw Jimmy Hough standing in front, looking as if he wanted to crawl into a hole. His father walked up to him and slammed the back of his head. Sloan reached for the door but felt Betty’s hand on his arm.
“Let it go. The kid’s okay. Maybe he’ll survive the old man,” she said quietly.
He nodded and went back to his office. Betty followed him. “He is pretty powerful, you know, with all his money. Maybe you don’t want to be enemies.”
“If money can buy this office, Betty, I don’t want it,” Sloan said.
“He’s going to cause you trouble.”
“I should have charged the kid with a DUI,” Sloan muttered. “I didn’t because Jimmy was so remorseful and no one was hurt—and because I figured he did deserve a second chance.”
“And there were no witnesses,” Betty reminded him. “And Connie’s not going to file charges.”
As they spoke, the door opened and he saw that Declan McCarthy, his senior-ranking night deputy, had arrived. It was time for the shift change.
He shoved his folders into a desk drawer, anxious to leave. “Let’s call it a day, Betty. Declan is here.”
Declan came in cheerfully. He’d started off working as an officer in Detroit. He frequently said that he found Lily, Arizona, to be like a little piece of hot, dry heaven.
Betty went out to report on the day, but there wasn’t much. Sloan closed his computer and went to retrieve Jane Everett.
He knocked on the door before opening it. She was sitting in front of the easel and had just finished a drawing.
Sloan paused, staring at the rendering she’d done. It was only a sketch, but she’d done a remarkable job of capturing life. The woman on the page seemed vibrant—on the verge of speaking. Jane had her hair tucked in a bun, a few tendrils escaping to fall over her forehead. She wore a secretive smile as if she held some tidbit of information that she might be convinced to share with others.
The oddest thing was that he sensed something familiar about her....
“Sheriff? Ready to go?” she asked briskly.
“That’s her?” he asked. “You’re already done?”
She shook her head. “No—well, yes and no. I attached the jaw and did some of the easier work. That’s my preliminary, a bit of a guesstimate. This is what you might call a special science, because it’s a combination of science and art. It’s two-dimensional. You take photographs, feed them into the computer, fill in the tissue-depth approximations for race, age and sex and get a computer mock-up. In the sketch, I worked with images of the skull, using printouts and tracing paper, and this is what I came up with. Tomorrow, I’ll start with the tissue markers—build in the most likely muscle and tissue depths measurements, and begin physically reconstructing. This is just my first imagining.”
“That’s pretty remarkable,” he said. He couldn’t take his eyes off the image she’d created. He gave himself a mental shake. “Yes, I’m ready when you are.”
Jane picked up the coffee cup she’d apparently gotten from the kitchen, collected her bag and moved toward the door. She stopped. He was still in the doorway, he realized, staring at the drawing she’d done, wondering why he felt he knew the woman in the drawing.
“Sheriff?”
He stepped aside. She exited the room ahead of him, and he heard water running as she washed her coffee mug. He was still gazing at her rendering of a woman’s face.
He made himself turn away and leave.
Back in the front office, he introduced Jane to Declan McCarthy, Scotty Carter, the night man on the desk, and Vince Grainger. Now she’d met his entire department.
Once outside, he again opened her car door, before he walked around to his own.
They didn’t speak. He didn’t try to make small talk.
He couldn’t dislodge the mental image he now had of a living, breathing woman.
Except that she was long dead.
And nothing remained of her except her skull.
2
The Gilded Lily’s bar and restaurant was open for business when Sloan Trent dropped Jane off. The inner doors that had been locked earlier were now wide-open, and the slatted doors invited travelers to enter—just as they had for over a hundred years. Jane walked in, quickly noting there was no one around that she’d already met. She was assuming the actors she’d encountered that morning were getting into costume or makeup or perhaps finishing dinner somewhere else. In any event, she didn’t recognize a single person in the bar.
A waitress in a prairie costume, her hair covered by a bonnet, greeted her as she came in. “Dinner, miss? Or did you just wish to sit at the bar?”
Jane smiled. “Neither. I’m going upstairs. I’m staying here for a few days.”
“Oh!” The young woman smiled. “I’m Liz. You’re the artist. Welcome. If you want to eat, call down to the bar. We can run something up if you want privacy. And if not, well, come on down! I know you’re here to work on a project, but you should take some time to see the place. Desert Diamonds across the street has great books and weird little treasures. The spa is terrific. The Old Jail is a neat place to stay—really scary. I live in town, but I rented a room there once. Oh, and you have to get down to the basement in the Gilded Lily. Henri took me through once.” She paused and laughed. “They wouldn’t need to do anything to set it up as a haunted attraction! They have old wig stands with painted and carved faces that can totally creep you out and a room filled with old film and theater stuff. Mannequins and wooden cutouts. Some of the mannequins were dressmakers’ dummies. Some were theatrical displays and some were movie props. One of the directors in the 1950s had Hollywood connections and started collecting them.”
“Sounds like a museum,” Jane said.
“It could be!” Liz told her. “The theater is a treasure trove of history. And, honestly, the food here is good!”
“Thanks. I can’t wait to see it all—and I’ll be down in a bit.”
“Great!”
Jane headed for the stairs. She needed a few minutes to gather her composure before returning into public again. There were times when federal agents didn’t get along well with the local law and yet, in her experience, everyone just wanted a solution to the crime. She was surprised by the simmering hostility that seemed to lie beneath the sheriff’s not-entirely-cordial exterior. So, he thought they should have packed up the skull and sent it off. Fine. Turned out it wasn’t his call. The mayor had wanted to hang on to it.
On the other hand, she and Trent had Texas in common. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t dealt with a few rugged macho-man cowboy types in Texas, but Sloan Trent personified every aspect of that image. Physically and in his attitude and manner. He was six-three or so, broad-shouldered, with the kind of ruggedly sculpted face that instantly made him larger than life.
He didn’t have to behave as though he’d been burdened with an adolescent.
Add to that the fact that he’d worked with Logan, so surely he knew that the Krewe units were different. That they were called in when it seemed a sixth sense, an awareness of the unusual, was needed. Even within their own branch of the FBI—although they were respected for their record of solving cases—they were often known as ghost-busters.
They could live with it. They knew that many of their fellow agents looked at them with a certain amount of awe, as well.
Maybe that was Sheriff Trent’s problem. Maybe he thought she’d create an image and then insist on a séance or something to put their dead woman to rest.
Actually, the whole situation was annoying. Because, like it or not, she found him extremely attractive—and she worked with a lot of extremely attractive men. She gritted her teeth; she hated the fact that she was drawn to him and that, despite all common sense, she found him compelling on many levels.
Sexual among them.
“I won’t be here that long!” she told herself. She was a federal agent with a good reputation. She wasn’t naive and she wasn’t going to accept unprofessional behavior from anyone, attractive or not.
When she entered her room and closed the door, she said aloud, “So, the sheriff is an ass. I’ve put up with worse.”
She was startled when her hairbrush came flying out of the dressing room and nearly smacked her in the head.
Her regulation weapon was holstered and she instantly drew, flicking off the safety. She walked cautiously into the dressing room but there was no one there and nothing else was out of place. She walked into the bathroom, but again, saw nothing.
Returning to the bedroom, she holstered her weapon. “Interesting,” she said aloud. “I assume you’re Sage McCormick, although, of course, I could be wrong. If I said anything that offended you, I’m sorry. I’ll keep my opinions to myself.”
The room yielded nothing.
She kicked off her shoes, removed her jacket and holster and plopped down on the bed. It had been a long day of travel, since she’d started off at the crack of dawn, East Coast time. She was tired. She lay there for a few minutes with her eyes half-open, wary now of the room. But nothing else happened. Finally, she decided she wanted a shower, and if she was going to have a shower and get something to eat, she needed to rise before she fell asleep and found herself waking, starved, at three or four in the morning.
She placed her gun and holster in the bedside drawer, went through her closet for fresh clothing and hurried into the bathroom. The whirlpool was tempting, but it would send her right to sleep and she had to switch time zones. Instead, she got into the shower and emerged ten minutes later, feeling nicely refreshed.
Still in the bathroom, she dried off, then wrapped the towel around herself and looked in the mirror. It was solidly misted from the steam. But as she picked up a facecloth to clear it, she paused. An eerie sensation swept over her.
She wasn’t alone.
And as she stood there, writing appeared in the mist.
BEWARE
She froze. She’d long accepted that there was a thin veil between life and death and that restless spirits could linger behind for any number of reasons. And yet, despite everything, despite every Krewe case she’d worked and those she’d been involved with for the San Antonio police, she still felt a moment’s primal fear. Her heart thudded. Her breath caught.
The writing began again.
TRICKSTER
“Beware of a trickster,” she said, exhaling as she did. “Who is the trickster?” she asked softly.
But, this time, she wasn’t to be answered. “Talk to me, please. If there’s something I should know...”
No more writing appeared in the mist on the mirror.
She didn’t touch it. She brushed her teeth and looked again. Nothing more than the two words she’d already seen.
She left the bathroom, closing the door so the mist would remain awhile longer, and dressed in casual clothes for the evening to come. She debated staying in the room, but by the time she’d brushed her hair, the fog had cleared in the bathroom mirror and no other incidents had occurred.
Jane figured she’d go downstairs for dinner. She stood in the middle of the room. “I know you’re here,” she said. “If you have something to tell me, please do.”
No objects flew, the air didn’t grow cold, nothing happened at all.
And still, Jane was certain that she was being watched. And judged.
She made her way downstairs, and when she reached the lower level, she noticed that the velvet curtains were drawn and that laughter was coming from the theater section of the Gilded Lily. She turned and saw that there were still a few diners at the tables and a mix of locals and tourists at the bar; she assumed the locals were the men in work wear rather than the designer jeans and denim shirts or T-shirts and cutoffs the tourists tended to wear. Women, of course, were harder to peg. Several wore casual dresses and others were in pants or jeans and T-shirts.
She sat at a table that she thought must be in Liz’s station, since she was delivering food to a family at a nearby table. She was right. As she studied the menu, Liz breezed by with a smile. “Hi, glad you came down! Okay,” she said, lowering her voice, “I don’t suggest the fish. We have farm-raised tilapia and it’s kind of blah. Are you a vegetarian? We do a cheese and broccoli risotto that’s absolutely delicious. But, hey, we’re in meat country. The beefalo is pretty darned good, either as a steak or in a burger. And then, of course, there’s Tex-Mex. We have excellent fajitas, tacos, burritos...”
“The risotto sounds great,” Jane said.
“Oh, you are a vegetarian.”
“No.” Jane shook her head. “It just sounds good for tonight.”
Liz was going to give her the full list of wine choices to complement her meal but Jane didn’t think she wanted her perceptions dulled in the least that night. “I’ll have an iced tea, thanks.”
“Sure thing!” Liz said. “Be right back. Oh, take a peek at the show if you like—just slip through the curtain. We’ve all been told that you have free rein of the place and to make you as happy as we can.”
“That’s really nice. Thank you,” Jane told her.
Liz grinned and hurried off, and Jane decided to check out the show. As she stepped through the divide in the curtain, she saw that there was a full house and moved to the side to hover in the background.
“Oh, no, oh, no! What shall I do, what shall I do?” Valerie Mystro was crying out as Jane entered. Valerie was tied to the train tracks on the stage, struggling against the ropes that held her there while a train whistle sounded in the background.
“I’m coming, my heart, I’m coming!” Cy Tyburn cried in return. He’d been tied to the old stagecoach across from the tracks.
“Save her! Save her!” someone from the audience called out enthusiastically.
Cy stopped and looked at the audience, arching his brows. “Well, duh!” he said, bringing a rise of laughter from the crowd.
Jane laughed herself as he tried to drag the stagecoach toward Valerie.
“The knife!” Valerie shrieked.
“The knife?” Cy asked.
“The one strapped to your ankle, idiot!” someone yelled from the audience.
“Oh, yeah...yeah!” Cy said.
The play was ridiculous, Jane could see, but tremendous fun, and the audience seemed to love it. Cy cut himself loose, then ran over and freed Valerie as the audience urged him on.
Valerie spoke loving words of appreciation, while he gazed into her eyes adoringly. The two ran offstage together just as a train pulled out from behind the curtains. Alice, in full vamp mode, was standing in the front of the locomotive, hissing as she saw that she’d lost her victims. The audience booed her until she stepped down, played with them, telling them she was really a good girl caught in terrible circumstances. Then she launched into a musical number in which she told the audience why everyone should love a vamp. Watching, Jane smiled. It was a cute show, suitable for all ages. The physical humor had broad appeal and the sets were impressive.
She felt a tap on her shoulder. Liz had come in to get her.
“Take your time, but your food is on the table,” she said cheerfully. “And,” she whispered, “all hell breaks loose when the show lets out!”
Jane whispered a thank-you and watched a few more minutes of the show. As Alice’s musical number ended, Cy Tyburn, naive and innocent hero, came back onstage. He tried to warn Alice about the evil machinations of the villain, Brian Highsmith, and Alice listened with wide-eyed adoration. They shared the number “You Make a Bad Girl Even Better at Being Badder.”
It was clever, and Jane decided that the next night she’d make a point of seeing the whole show. She quietly left the theater and returned to her table. A metal cover had been placed over her plate to keep her meal warm and, as she lifted it, she glanced at the stairs.
A woman was standing on the upper landing, her hand resting on the stair rail. She was dressed in late-Victorian attire, in a dark green travel suit with a slight bustle and a tailored jacket over a high-buttoned blouse. A green hat was worn at an artistic angle, her dark hair neatly tied at her nape. Her facial structure was elegant, handsome. She stared down at Jane, and for a moment, Jane thought she was an employee who worked in the bar or food area—or perhaps sold tickets or souvenirs. But as she watched Jane, she raised her hand from the rail, adjusted a glove and slowly faded away, her eyes on Jane all the while.
Sage McCormick? Jane wondered. And if so, what had happened to her?
Judging by the way the woman had stared at her, Jane wasn’t at all certain that Sage—if that was indeed who it was—liked her or felt happy to have her there.
She didn’t ponder the question long. She felt a real presence nearby and turned.
Sheriff Trent was back. She glanced up at him, thinking again that he fit his Western town very well. He had the rugged good looks of a cowboy, a frontiersman. She was disturbed at feeling her heart rate increase as he stood before her; she was afraid she was going to blush. But, like it or not, he was a very attractive man, masculine, rugged, exuding casual confidence.
“May I?” he asked her.
“Please,” she said, indicating the seat across from her.
“Tables are at a premium right now,” he told her. “The show’s almost over.”
“I don’t suppose it would be a neighborly thing to do, refusing you a chair,” Jane said. Sloan Trent had made it fairly evident that he didn’t approve of her any more than the ghost seemed to.
“How do you like staying here?” he asked.
She smiled. “Well, I’ve only had a few hours. But the room is both historic and lovely, the employees and the theater people all seem very pleasant, and I’m about to judge the food.”
“Sorry, please, eat!” he urged. “Liz.” He greeted the waitress who’d seen him and she came over.
“Sloan, nice to see you!” Liz said with her natural warmth and enthusiasm. “What would you like?”
“Whatever our guest is having. It looks good,” he said.
“Sure.” Liz nodded and moved away.
“So, I guess you really were desperate for a chair—since you don’t seem to want me in this town,” Jane said lightly.
He grinned at that and shrugged. “Have I been an ass?”
“Yes. I would say so. Especially since you’re the one who called Logan and asked if he knew a forensic artist he could recommend.”
“I’m sorry. It’s nothing personal. And yes, I called Logan. I wanted the skull sent out, say, to the Smithsonian or something. But when Henri, as mayor, said no...” Sloan shook his head. “I don’t understand Henri Coque’s motivations. I’m worried that he wants to use a dead woman’s skull as a tourist attraction, a ghost story...a fabrication.”
“Maybe he’s just clinging to history,” Jane suggested.
“He’s got a notion that he can create some kind of great romantic story that will make the theater and the town even more appealing. You know, hit up the travel sites and magazines and so on.”
“Is that really such a bad thing?” Jane asked.
Liz delivered an iced tea to Sloan and he thanked her. “I don’t know. I just think that there are labs better situated to deal with this.”
“In my brief, I read that no one has any idea how the skull got where it was.”
“That’s right. Henri is always saying that one day he’ll get all the ‘treasures’ in the basement organized. Some of the things down there really are priceless. Old cutouts for advertising and promo, dressmakers’ dummies, mannequins—some are wire, some are wooden, some are cardboard. Some are junk and some are certainly collector’s items. The problem is, it’s such a hodgepodge, the actors seldom go down there. Now, the wigs are used, but they hadn’t been in about a year. What happened was that the show was about to open and Valerie’s wig had been damaged, so she went to see what else they had down there until it could be fixed. But...if she hadn’t needed a wig, the skull could have sat there for weeks or months or who knows how much longer. They hadn’t been touched in ages, so...”
“There was powder residue on it so I assume you tested for prints?” Jane asked. “Or was it just seen as an act of mischief—not really worth investigating—since no real crime was committed? At least, not a current crime.”
“Mischief, but the kind of mischief that infuriated Henri. Yes, we tested for prints and found none. It had been wiped clean. I mean, there weren’t even prints from way back when. Nothing at all. Someone wore gloves and knew enough to wipe it down.”
“So, you’re thinking maybe it was someone who’d been in law enforcement?” Jane asked skeptically.
He laughed. “No! I was thinking someone who’s seen a cop or forensic show at some time during his or her life—and that’s practically everyone. The woman’s been dead for over a hundred years, so as you said, we’re not looking at current crime. Also, Henri wants to exploit the skull—great for tourism. I also think he wants to know who it belonged to. That might help him figure out who put a wig on the skull, and he wants to know that so he can fire his or her ass.”
“You believe whoever did it had to be an actor or crew member or Gilded Lily employee?”
“It’s not like the place is locked up tight all the time. It’s unlikely that anyone not associated with the theater would have wandered in with a skull in hand to hide it under a wig in the basement,” he told her, shrugging. “So, yes, it had to be someone already here, someone trying to cause trouble.”
“Someone like...a trickster,” Jane murmured.
“A trickster?” Sloan asked, looking at her curiously. “Yes, I guess.”
“Ah, beware tricksters.”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing, just thinking out loud,” she said. “It’s hardly a good...joke when you consider that the skull once belonged to someone living and breathing.”
“Maybe after so many years that didn’t matter much to whoever put it there.”
“Are you investigating?”
“We did investigate,” Sloan replied. “Like I said, we dusted for prints. We checked out the basement area. Naturally, we did a thorough search. We wanted to make sure there were no more bones down there. But whoever messed around with the skull wiped it clean, and prints in the basement would mean little because everyone goes down there from time to time. Not necessarily for a wig, but there are boxes of fabric, costumes pieces, props, you name it. So, other than me questioning the cast, crew and staff, there wasn’t all that far we could go. Everyone here denied ever seeing the skull before.”
“I guess you’re at a dead end, if you’ll forgive the pun. And I understand that Henri Coque might want to know who put the skull there.”
“Everyone—other than the person who put it there, of course—wants to know who did it. Who the trickster, as you called him, might have been.”
“Someone with a warped sense of humor, I guess.”
Sloan frowned at her. “I’m surprised Logan let you come here. Don’t you and your group usually deal with felonies, serial killers, major crime?”
“Yes.”
“So how could he spare you?”
“I’m an artist. You needed an artist. If something major occurs, he’ll call me back in. Frankly, I’m surprised myself. You don’t want me here, for whatever reason, but you called Logan.”
“I thought I explained that,” he said, a little testily. “I know Logan. I trust him. If we had to have someone in here, I’d prefer to go with a professional sent by someone I know.”
“Power struggle!” she teased.
“Not at all. Henri is a politician, I’m just a lawman. But I wanted it done right.” He hesitated. “Henri wanted to call in a local artist who does landscapes, caricatures and the like. When I suggested calling a friend who could recommend a legitimate forensic artist, we came to a compromise.”
“Ah,” she said.
“So, I wound up with a member of Logan’s own Krewe.”
“So you did.”
He didn’t offer an opinion as to whether that was what he’d wanted or not. He knew Logan, so he had to know something about their Krewes. She’d already guessed as much. But he didn’t ask the questions they usually got. Questions like “Aren’t you known as the bureau’s ‘ghost-busters’?” Or “Shouldn’t you be off chasing ghosts somewhere?” Or one of her personal favorites: “Did the ghost do it? Or was it the butler? Or the butler’s ghost? Ha-ha!”
Yes, he had to realize that Krewe units were considered “special” or “specific.”
But he didn’t ask her another question. Liz arrived with his meal and they both began to eat, concentrating on their food. After a while, the silence grew awkward, even though there seemed to be an expectant quality in the very air between them. He was definitely way too attractive, and the sexual draw she felt toward him made her uneasy.
Jane felt that she had to speak. “You were close to Logan?” she asked.
“Logan didn’t tell you anything about me?”
“Just that you were a friend he knew from Texas, and you needed a forensic artist here in Lily. He gave me a short brief on the situation, on the Gilded Lily and the town.”
“We worked well together. I was with the police force in Houston. He was a Ranger, which, of course, you know. We met when we ended up combining forces to capture a spree killer who was making his way through the state,” Sloan told her. “That was before Logan joined the bureau. But I take it you worked with him before then, too?”
“I did. I wasn’t with any agency. I was brought in whenever a forensic artist was needed.”
“So, when you were a little girl, you knew you wanted to grow up and do facial reconstructions for law enforcement?” he asked. There was a curl to his lip. He did have a sense of humor.
“I started off the usual way. I was into nudes,” she said drily.
He gave her a full-fledged smile at that. “Sorry. I guess I did ask that rather caustically.”
“I always drew, and I had a flair for faces. When I was in college, one of my professors was asked to help with a reconstruction on a burn victim. I was fascinated by his ability to take a skull and return it to life through the image he created. I didn’t go right into forensics, though. I graduated, and then apprenticed on an anthropological dig in Mexico. And...well, Texas is a big state. I helped various departments fairly frequently. Logan was approached by a man named Jackson Crow, who managed the first Krewe, and I was called in. We worked a sad and gritty case in San Antonio, and next thing I knew, I was in the academy at Quantico.”
“Life does take us along unexpected paths sometimes,” he said. He sounded far more open than he’d been earlier in the day.
“You seemed disturbed by my sketch,” she said.
He shrugged. “I can’t put my finger on it, but your sketch reminded me of someone.”
“At this point it’s not really accurate, you know. It’s just the way I work. Tomorrow, I’ll have measurements, do a second sketch and begin to build up the face. With what we know and what we can guess, that should give us a better sense of a person’s appearance. Some of it remains guesswork, of course, but you’ll have more of a likeness when I’m done. But you can’t know the woman. The skull is over a hundred years old. If it was from someone more recently dead, it wouldn’t be as delicate.”
“No, I haven’t been around for a hundred-plus years,” he said with a slight laugh.
“True, but I understand you’ve been in law enforcement for quite a while. Did you always want to be a cop?” she asked.
“Yep.”
“You’re from here. However, you started your career in Texas?”
“I went to Texas A & M University and then into the academy.”
“You left Houston to come back here,” she said.
“My parents died when I was a kid. I was raised by my grandfather. He was dying. I came home to be with him.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thanks. He had a good life and lived well. Didn’t deserve to die the way he did, but then no one does. The cancer was brutal.”
“And you stayed here in Lily,” she said.
He had a rueful smile that could almost be described as charming. “Well,” he mused slowly. “I took the job of sheriff. Right now they’d be stretching to find someone to take my place. I have deputies who’ll be up to it soon enough.”
“Still...Houston, Texas. Lily, Arizona. You must’ve become accustomed to dealing with gangs, murder...you name it.”
“Lily is a change,” he agreed. “In a way, a damned nice change. Back in the very early days—the Civil War and after—you had a fair share of bar brawls, shoot-’em-ups and rancher-outlaw entanglements. Then, a decade or two after the war, there were men working the silver mines out in the caverns. Those were rough days. There was a sheriff way back—but no real sheriff’s department, and the sheriff had to be an ex-outlaw himself to handle the trigger-happy gunfighters out here. Now, of course, we have our small-town department and the larger county department. The towns had their own sheriffs back then and county help amounted to praying that the militia might be on hand or the regular military if things went really badly. But then the outlaw days pretty much petered out in the twenties. We had a few more modern bank-robber types pass through in the thirties. In the forties, when a lot of local men went off to war, the town almost closed down. Now...” He paused with a shrug. “Now, we get a few bar brawls, a few fender benders, occasionally a domestic situation. But Lily’s a safe place. We have law-abiding citizens and tourists for the most part.”
“So, you stay because you love Lily, you love the peace and tranquility or...?”
“Or I burned out in Houston?” he asked her.
“I didn’t say that.”
“It’s easy to burn out in Houston,” he said mildly. “But no, I didn’t burn out.”
“If you were friends with Logan and worked with him, you were probably pretty intense as a cop,” Jane said.
“Intense? I think it’s a requirement. Anyway, I liked working in Houston. And I don’t mind being the sheriff in Lily. There is a lot here that’s good. I like the history, and the fact that my family’s from this area. Anyway, who knows what the future will hold?”
The velvet curtains were drawn back by an usher as they spoke; people surged out of the theater area and into the bar.
“Time for me to go,” Logan said, rising. He dug into his pocket and left a large bill on the table. “I’ll pick you up in the morning. Eight-thirty? We have a car you can use while you’re here if you want, but it’s down at the sheriff’s office.”
“Thank you. I’ll build up the skull tomorrow, get a more realistic look at measurements and have a more accurate image of soft-tissue depth, at least,” she told him.
“Thanks,” he said. “You should see the show while you’re here.”
“I did watch a few minutes of it before you arrived. It’s really cute.”
“Catch the haunted hayride, too.”
“Sounds like fun. Maybe I will.”
People were spilling out of the theater. He glanced at the crowd and grimaced. “Kind of a long day. I’m out of here. Good night.”
“Good night.”
He made a quick escape, and Jane soon realized why. It had been a full house and forty or fifty people were milling in the bar. It seemed a nice crowd; the show made people laugh and put them in a pleasant mood. Some people were going across the street to the saloon—too crowded at the Gilded Lily. She could see that the theater was good for all the businesses in the area. It brought those who then stayed at the Old Jail or other local bed-and-breakfast places or hotels and it brought people to shop and visit restaurants and use the stables.
Liz came sailing by to ask her if she wanted anything else before the crowd got crazy. Jane said no.
“I told you, you’re totally on the house,” Liz said, looking at the money.
“Sloan left that.”
“That man!” Liz groaned. “He always tips way too much. Well, Lily is his town, and he tries to make sure we all do well here. Wish he’d stay around!”
“You don’t think he’s going to stay in Lily?” Jane asked.
Liz shook her head. “No. Not forever, anyway. He’s popular here. He’s a man’s man, you know?” She laughed. “He doesn’t smoke, but I could’ve seen him as the Marlboro Man, sexy and rugged and good-looking. Don’t you think?”
“He’s a very attractive man,” she replied, trying to sound noncommittal.
“Be still, my heart!” Liz said, and then laughed again. “Oh, well. You sure you don’t want anything else—more tea, some coffee or maybe decaf?”
“No, no, I’m fine, thank you. I’m going to call it a night.” She reached for her purse; her food might be free, but she wasn’t letting a server work for nothing.
“Don’t you dare leave money. Next time, you can give me a tip if you want. Sloan tipped enough for five tables,” Liz told her. “Seriously, don’t you put down a dime!”
Jane didn’t want to insult the woman and she was afraid that insisting might just do so. “All right, thank you. But, please—”
“Next time!” Liz said.
Liz moved on, efficiently taking orders from the crowd now seeking chairs and bar stools.
Jane didn’t see Henri Coque, Jennie or any of the actors yet—just the people who’d been in the audience. She headed for the stairs. She glanced around to see if the slightest hint of an apparition might appear; none did. She was convinced, however, that she’d seen the image of a woman there earlier.
The ghost in her room? The spirit of Sage McCormick?
And had Sage been busy in the bedroom while she was gone?
Jane turned the key in her lock, opened her door, flipped on the light and looked around. Nothing seemed to have changed in the room. “Hello,” she said softly.
“Hey!”
The shout came from the hall. Startled, Jane swung around. Brian Highsmith was opening the door to the room beside hers. “You all right, Jane? Were you expecting to greet the resident ghost? If you’re worried, I can check out the room for you.”
Brian was serious; he seemed worried that she might be frightened, even though he knew she was an FBI agent.
“Just because you know how to use a gun,” he said, walking down the hall toward her, “doesn’t mean you might not be afraid of the theater’s reputation.”
“Brian, I’m pretty sure every old building has a reputation for being haunted.”
“But this is Lily.”
“Yes, yes, it is.”
He paused, looking a little disappointed. “You don’t understand. This town...well, it saw a lot of violence. The whole place is haunted, inside and out. Are you positive you don’t want me to check that there’s nothing—no one—in your room?” He leaned against the wall, presenting her with a come-on smile. Was he trying to use this as a pickup line? Did he think she’d ask him to protect her, so he could offer to sleep by her side?
He was dark and handsome, and although he played the villain, he had a pretty-boy flair to him. She was disturbed to realize she was comparing him to Sloan Trent. Trent was far more seductive, even in his awkward courtesy when he’d pondered opening a door for her. She liked his looks, but she was still debating his reversal, from hostility to polite and genial conversation this evening. Well, he’d wanted a seat to have dinner. It could be as simple as that.
“Jane?”
“Oh, no, Brian, thanks. I had my door locked. I’ll be fine.”
“You’re not afraid of ghosts?”
“Not tonight. I’m too tired.”
“You really should take the haunted hayride trip tomorrow night,” he advised. “You’ll hear about all the ghosts haunting this town. Pretty scary.”
It was the second time she’d been told she should try out that particular Lily attraction. Maybe she would. She’d enjoy learning more about the history of the town.
She smiled at Brian. He was young and earnest—if a bit too persistent. “And yet,” she said, “you seem to be okay. As do the other actors.”
“Well, we’re not sleeping in her room,” he said.
“I’ll take my chances tonight.”
“If you need me, just holler. I’ll be here in a second,” he assured her.
“I appreciate that,” she told him. “But I’m quite tired. Traveling all day, you know. I’m sure the room is empty—and that I’ll go right to sleep. A lot of people believe Sage ran away to Mexico, right? If so, she’s not here.”
“Okay, but don’t forget. Just scream if you need me. Some people don’t believe she ran off.”
“I’ll do that,” she promised solemnly.
With a reluctant nod, he returned to his room down the hall as Jane entered hers and closed the door.
She’d much rather deal with a ghost than a young would-be lothario.
She leaned against the door for a moment, and then moved away, quickly turning to lock it.
Experience had taught her. The living were usually far more dangerous than the dead.
Usually...
3
Sloan’s house wasn’t but a mile down Main Street where it crossed Arizona Highway 101. Although it was in the countryside, it was also within walking distance of the Gilded Lily. Only two properties sat between him and the old town. One belonged to Silvia Mills—eighty-eight and spry—and the second belonged to Mike Addison, who now owned the old sheriff’s office and jail bed-and-breakfast. Mike was seldom at his property; his ranch overseer was a good man of mixed Mexican, American and Indian descent, Barry Garcia. Neither Mike nor Silvia ever had any trouble at their properties.
Sloan’s house was ranch-style and had been built in the 1860s, first as a one-room log structure, and then gradually, as the years had gone by, as a far larger home. The front door still opened into the main section of the house, a parlor with leather and wood furniture, Indian artifacts, a stone fireplace and a stone counter that separated it from the kitchen. Beyond that was a screened-in porch with a pool; to the left were two bedrooms and to the right was a master suite. It was a comfortable home and had always been in his family. Wherever he chose to go in the future, he’d hang on to the house. Johnny Bearclaw, an Apache who’d come to help his grandfather before Sloan made it home, still lived here. Johnny’s wife had died of cancer and he had no children; running Sloan’s property and working with the horses seemed to be a good life for him. He had an apartment above the barn, which was about an acre back on the land. He looked after the house and grounds and the two buckskin quarter horses Sloan kept, Kanga and Roo.
It was late. Sloan had been out far longer than he’d expected, not thinking he’d actually stop by the Gilded Lily for dinner. But as he’d driven through town from the sheriff’s office, the theater had beckoned him—mainly because he was fascinated by their visiting artist.
And he did have to eat. That was a fact. He knew he’d been rude, so maybe taking a few minutes to be...not rude would be a smart idea. He reminded himself that Logan would never have sent him his own Krewe member if she weren’t good. He’d gone to Logan because they both knew there were forces in the world that weren’t obvious, that weren’t necessarily seen by everyone. Logan had sent him Jane, therefore Jane was good.
It wasn’t good that bothered him.
It was the fear that finding the skull was all some kind of catalyst, that something evil had begun—or come to the surface—when the skull was found. Dread had been building within him and he’d sensed it, felt it in the air, almost smelled it...but been unable to pin it down.
Maybe that was why he’d wanted the damned skull out of town!
They weren’t dealing with a current tragedy, accident or murder. Whatever had happened to the living, breathing person they now sought to identify, it had happened way before they could make an arrest or bring any responsible party to justice. So why his concern?
He didn’t know.
He walked into the kitchen and opened his refrigerator. For a moment he froze, brought to full attention as something plopped onto the counter next to him.
He refrained from pulling his gun and smiled to himself, shaking his head.
“Cougar. Where were you? Sleeping on top of the fridge?”
He stroked the pitch-black cat with the huge gold eyes that sidled up to him.
“Sorry, how inconsiderate of me. I’ve eaten, you haven’t. Hang on, okay?”
Sloan found the cat’s bowl, which was shoved up against the cabinets beneath the sink, and filled it with cat food, then checked the automatic water dispenser he had for his pet. It was still almost full.
“You needed sustenance and that comes first. I was just going for a beer.”
The cat meowed; he was darned loud for a cat. Very talkative. He’d found Sloan, rather than the other way around. One day, he’d been on the doorstep and Sloan had taken him in. The fliers he’d posted around town hadn’t produced an owner, nor had the ad he’d placed in the paper. Cougar had become his. He was huge, maybe part Persian or Maine coon, and he deserved the name “Cougar.”
Once the cat was cared for, Sloan pulled a beer from the refrigerator and went back to the parlor.
He eased into one of the two plush leather chairs that sat in front of the fire, although tonight he didn’t have a fire going. He closed his eyes for a minute; when he opened them again, he saw that he wasn’t alone.
The man who sat next to him was ageless. His hair was long and dark and barely graying. He wore jeans, a calico shirt and a cowboy hat. His facial structure was fine and proud, his expression stoic at all times.
It wasn’t Johnny Bearclaw. Johnny never entered without knocking.
It was the “visitor” he’d first met when his grandfather was dying. Longman. In talking, he’d learned that Longman had ridden with Cochise and had been his great-great grandfather on his mother’s side. He had come for his grandson, Sloan’s grandfather—and to see that his great-great grandson learned how to help the living cross the great plain to the great lands beyond.
Only, when Sloan’s grandfather had died and crossed the plain, Longman had not. He chose to remain behind and torment Sloan. At least that was how Sloan saw it.
He managed to keep from groaning out loud. He held his silence, waiting for the spirit of his ancestor to speak.
Longman didn’t say anything for a while. He stared at the hearth as if a fire was crackling.
“Evening,” Sloan said at last, raising his beer to Longman, who nodded gravely, then continued to stare as if deep in thought, mesmerized by dancing flames that weren’t there.
“An artist is doing a rendering of the woman whose skull was discovered up at the theater,” Sloan began. “She’s a very good artist.” She was. “I don’t know why, but I feel I’ve seen the woman in her drawing, and it bothers me. But that’s impossible.” He didn’t add that he was bothered by Jane Everett, as well. She could be all business, and yet courteous at the same time. She’d clearly gone through all the right training. She was truly stunning and he had to admit he was attracted to her in a way that was definitely physical but much more. Maybe it had to do with how she moved and spoke, or the depth of passion and care that seemed to lie beneath the surface.
He was worried about her. Again, he didn’t know why. She was no doubt proficient at protecting herself.
Longman looked at him. “And?” he asked.
“And...and that’s it. Oh, there’s the usual. Caleb Hough is acting like an idiot over his son being arrested. The kid is okay, though.”
“But you’re worried.”
“Yeah, I’m worried.” He didn’t say that Hough wasn’t his major concern at the moment; it was Jane Everett. Strip away the FBI appearance, the tailored business attire, and Jane Everett looked as if she could be a model for an elegant line of lingerie.
That didn’t explain why he was afraid for her. In fact, there was no reason for anyone to be afraid in Lily. The town had kids who drank too much and a few adults, like Caleb Hough, who thought they were money kings. There weren’t even any high school gangs in Lily and, for the most part, Native Americans, African Americans, Hispanics and old Euro-Americans—everyone—got along just fine.
Longman turned back to the hearth. “When you feel the wind, my boy, it means it is blowing from somewhere. Remember that. Too often, we forget that we need to pay heed to the sights and sounds that tease the air. If you feel wind, Sloan, then you must look for the storm, for surely it is coming.”
“A storm? To Lily? When?” Sloan asked.
“A storm, a change, a shake-up. The ground is always quiet before the earth erupts. First, men feel a rumble, and if they don’t heed the warning, they fall through the cracks.”
Great. Really great. All he needed was a cryptic ancestor. Longman was on his mother’s side. His dad’s people had been a no-nonsense mix of English and Norwegian. But, of course, this land had been in his mother’s family for generations. Longman was his mother’s great-grandfather, and it was her father who’d raised him. This house was on old Apache land, it was natural, he supposed, that his last full-blooded Apache ancestor should come to his parlor to watch invisible flames.
Then, of course, his dad’s family had its share of the unusual, as well. The bad, the good—and those who’d just disappeared into thin air.
As if reading his mind, the specter of his dead great-great grandfather looked at him thoughtfully. “You think you’ve seen the woman in the picture because you have. You’ve seen pictures of her many times—even old photographs. In fact, those pictures have been seen by everyone in Lily. You believe they found the skull of Sage McCormick, your father’s great-grandmother.”
Yes, it had been in his mind. Of course!
“You knew her?”
“I often saw her perform from the back of the theater. I was allowed in. We were tolerated in Lily—my people, I mean. When the wars still raged and Native peoples were rounded up, many of us were part of the community here. I remember when Sage McCormick came to Lily. I remember her presence onstage. I remember her laughter, and that she was kind. I remember when she fell in love with your father’s great-grandfather, and I remember her daughter, your father’s grandmother, as she grew up.”
“So that’s it,” Sloan said. “I knew the picture because I’d seen the woman Jane depicted dozens of times. She’s my great-great grandmother. And I’ve avoided acknowledging this—because I never wanted to know how she died. It’s the distant past now, but I guess the stories always made me want to believe she went to Mexico and lived happily ever after in a world where she could be herself.” He sighed. “And if there is a ghost in her room at the Gilded Lily, I wanted to believe that it wasn’t her—or that she returned there after her death. Does that make sense?”
There was no answer. Sloan looked over at the chair. Longman was gone.
Maybe he had never been there. Sloan didn’t know. He had never known if he created spirits with whom he could earnestly debate the dilemmas in his own mind or if they actually existed.
But now...
Cougar, still in the kitchen, suddenly let out a screech. The cat was almost as good as a watchdog. Sloan jumped to his feet. He headed straight to the kitchen and saw that the cat was standing by the door to the screened-in porch, his back arched.
Sloan strode across to the door, set his hand at his waist over his gun, and yanked the door open.
No one there.
He looked out at the far stretches of his property. Sparse trees grew here and there, low and scraggly. His land stretched out in back until it came to a row of foothills that skirted the mesa where Lily was situated. To the left, he saw the stables and the paddocks, and all seemed quiet. A light burned upstairs in Johnny Bearclaw’s apartment. He heard one of the horses whinny.
He had ten acres—a big enough spread if someone wanted to hide there.
He walked out to the stables, turning on lights as he entered. Kanga and Roo whinnied again as he approached their stalls, stepping up to the gates to receive attention. Sloan patted the horses, speaking to them softly. Kanga was almost twenty, and she was as friendly as a dog and loved human interaction. Roo was “the young un,” at twelve. He was Kanga’s only offspring, bred from Fierce Fire, an award-winning running quarter. Sloan wasn’t much on rodeos, but occasionally he brought Roo out to show. He didn’t enter competitions, but Roo could turn on a dime, and Sloan liked to let him strut his stuff now and then.
The horses didn’t seem skittish. Then again, they did like human contact and Sloan had enough visitors out here that they wouldn’t be skittish if they’d heard someone walking around the yard.
Maybe the cat had seen demons that haunted his feline mind.
As he stood by the stalls, his cell phone rang. He answered it quickly.
“Hey, you down there?” Johnny Bearclaw asked.
“Yeah, it’s me, Johnny.”
“You been there awhile?”
“No, I just came out. The cat was freaking out over some noise or other,” Sloan said.
“I was about to come down,” Johnny announced.
“You heard something?”
“It sounded as if the horses were a little restless. I’ll be right there.”
Sixty seconds didn’t pass before Johnny came hurrying down the steps from the overhead apartment. He wasn’t a tall man; he stood maybe five-ten, but he was barrel chested and had broad shoulders and huge hands. Johnny could tenderly serve a dying man soup—or tackle the meanest bronco. His dark eyes were narrowed as he said, “Oddest thing. I just had the feeling someone was around. Strange as hell. Then heard Kanga there neighing and stomping. I saw the light spill out over the paddocks and called you. Does anything seem to be amiss?”
Sloan shook his head. “Let’s take a look around for the hell of it, though.”
“Could’ve been a coyote who thought better of it. ’Course, we don’t have any chickens around here, anyway. A coyote would have figured that out pretty fast,” Johnny said.
“We’ll split up. I’ll go east, and you take the west,” Sloan told him.
Some brush on either side separated Sloan’s property from his neighbors, but like him, his neighbors had paddocks and stables; they all put up picket fences in front of their homes, but they didn’t bother with gates. No one cared if someone rode over someone else’s land.
That meant there wasn’t far to go and not many places to look.
Sloan met Johnny at the rear of the stables. “If someone was snooping around, they’re not here now,” Johnny said. “My money is on a coyote.”
“You’re probably right.” Sloan looked off into the night. Behind them, the foothills were purple in the moonlight.
“’Course, if anyone was around here and they knew the place and wanted to disappear...” Johnny began.
“They could just head out back behind the hills,” Sloan finished.
“Not much there now but desolation,” Johnny said. “The old mine entrances were blown out with dynamite years ago.”
“Coyote,” Sloan said. “Thanks, Johnny. Get some sleep.”
“Yeah, you, too, Sloan. Everything going all right?”
“Yep.”
“That artist come in?”
“Yep.”
“She any good?”
“Yes, very good. Well, see you tomorrow, Johnny.”
“Hey, bring her on out. The horses could use some more exercise.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Sloan agreed.
He waved good-night to Johnny and returned to the house. He seldom set the alarm, but he did that night.
When he lay down to sleep, he felt a thump at the foot of the bed. He smiled. There was nothing unearthly about that thump; it was Cougar, settling down for the night.
He wondered why he still felt so disturbed. He’d probably had a hunch from the beginning that the skull might have belonged to Sage McCormick. The story had seemed off to him—women might leave their husbands, but from what he’d read about Sage, she wasn’t the type to walk out on a child.
Still, she had been dead for a hundred years.
But, like Henri, he was concerned. Why had the skull shown up now? Where had it been?
And where was the rest of Sage McCormick?
He thought that when he slept he might be plagued with dreams of the late 1800s—dreams in which outlaws rode down Main Street in a cloud of dust and flying sagebrush. Or that he’d dream of the Gilded Lily, a dream in which Sage McCormick took the stage, belted out a musical number...and then demanded that he find the rest of her body.
He didn’t dream anything of the kind.
Instead, he saw Longman seated cross-legged on the top of a sand-swept dune. Jane Everett stood next to him. She wasn’t in her bureau suit; she wore a long white gown that might’ve been appropriate in the late 1800s or in a show...like The Perils of Poor Little Paulina. Her hair was flowing around her face and shoulders, caught in the same breeze that swept the white gown around her body. She was listening intently to Longman. Sloan wanted to tell her that Longman wasn’t real, that he was a ghost or a figment of his—Sloan’s—imagination. He was a small portion of all that had made up Sloan’s past, a man he’d heard about from his family, one who was wise and careful and ready to face the world with his slow wisdom, whatever the world might bring.
Jane didn’t know that, couldn’t know it, and yet her features were both troubled and animated as the two conversed. She needed to find something out, and it seemed she believed Longman would help her.
She continued to stand next to Longman, heedless of herself, of her environment.
Sloan was mounted on Kanga, far below them, and as he watched, a shadow composed of desert sand began to sweep out of the earth and form a barrier between him and the other two, Jane and Longman. It grew darker as it rose in a frenzy—and it seemed to form the image of a man as it whirled closer and closer to where Longman sat and Jane stood. He shouted out in warning but they didn’t hear him. He spurred Kanga, but no matter how hard he rode, the danger moved ahead of him. He had to reach them before the swirling dark shadow enveloped them....
He woke with a start. He was sweating as he lay there, as if his physical exertion had been real.
Sloan looked around his darkened room. Nothing had changed. The cat, curled at his feet, stared at him with his wide eyes.
Sloan glanced at the clock on his bedside table and saw that only minutes had passed since he’d gone to bed. Wonderful—he was dreaming about a woman who’d come to town for a few days. Granted, the population here was small. But...
She would be an unusual and striking woman regardless of where she was. He would’ve found her intriguing and sensual, and his libido would have been piqued anywhere he might have met her. He just hadn’t admitted it yet.
With a groan, he threw his head back on the pillow. He was dreaming about Jane Everett. He would’ve expected a great dream about hot sex on a balmy beach. But no, he was dreaming about dark forces swirling around, ready to engulf them all.
It was going to be a long night.
* * *
As usual when she went online, Jane found herself browsing far longer than she’d intended. She discovered that she had a ton of email waiting for her.
One was from Logan. Everything okay out there?
Yes, fine. I’ll finish up in a few more days, she typed. She went on to describe the town of Lily, and the people she’d met. She refrained from saying much about his friend, the sheriff. At the end she added, Anything on the rise? Do I need to be back sooner?
She shut down the computer; if there’d been an emergency, Logan would have called her.
She rose, stretched and looked around the room. Nothing in it had changed, nothing had moved and she hadn’t heard even a creak in the old floorboards around her. The clock on the mantel told her she’d managed to spend several hours on the computer.
Too easy to do.
She stood and walked into the dressing room and then the bathroom.
The mirror was clear; no words remained, not even the hint of a smudge.
Jane slid out of her clothing and into a pair of pajamas that consisted of a tank top and loose trousers. She pulled the bedcovers down and noticed that a blanket lay on the trunk at the foot of the bed. It didn’t seem cold in the room so she left it where it was. The bed stretched out invitingly. She hadn’t lied when she’d told Brian how tired she was.
When she lay down to sleep, she hesitated for just a minute.
“Good night,” she said softly. “And I apologize for anything I might have said about Sheriff Trent. He seems upset about what’s going on. I believe he’s a decent human being.”
Once again, nothing moved or changed in the room. Jane closed her eyes and wondered if she’d stay awake all through the night, waiting to see if something was going to happen.
She tossed and turned and half woke in the wee hours of the morning, feeling a chill. She was too tired to actually get up and do anything about it. She thought about the blanket, but she couldn’t make herself move.
Moments later, she felt warm again and fell into a deep and peaceful sleep.
The alarm on her phone went off at 7:00 a.m.
She woke up. Light was filtering through the drapes and she lay there luxuriously for a few minutes, surprised that she’d slept so well.
Rising, she showered, brushed her teeth and dressed in a black pantsuit, a blue shirt, her holster and gun and jacket.
It wasn’t until she picked up her computer bag and supply box that she looked back at the bed.
The blanket lay there, neatly stretched out over the bedspread. The blanket that had been on the trunk.
The blanket she hadn’t reached for because she’d been too tired to move.
She must have moved. She must have retrieved it in her sleep.
But she hadn’t.
She couldn’t help shivering. Yes, even knowing that some remained behind in spirit when death had claimed their earthly forms, she could still feel that eerie sense of disquiet, of fear.
But she’d learned long ago to accept it.
And really...
What a nice gesture.
“Thank you,” she said aloud. “Thank you so much. I was cold, and you made me warm, and I had a great sleep.”
There was no response, but she hadn’t expected one. Yet as she walked to the door, a rush of cold air swept by her. If felt as if something, someone, was hurrying through the dressing room.
She started to follow. As she did, there was a knock at her door.
She glanced at her watch; she was late. Wonderful. Sheriff Trent had felt compelled to come up and make sure she was ready.
“Just a minute!” she called.
She followed the draft that had seemed to touch her and walked into the dressing room.
This time, there was no steam coming from the bathroom. She didn’t need to go that far.
There was a message on the mirror at the dressing table. It was written in her lipstick; it looked as if it had been written in blood.
TELL THEM THE TRUTH
Puzzled rather than scared, she ignored the chill that seemed to touch her.
The truth about what?
“But I don’t know the truth,” she said.
She watched as the tube of lipstick she’d left out on the table began to float in the air and write out more letters.
YOU WILL
BEWARE
TRICKSTER
“Jane?” a woman’s voice called from outside her room. So not Sloan, after all.
“Coming!” she said.
She hurried to open the door and found Alice Horton. In jeans, a tank top and sneakers—her hair scooped up into a ponytail—Alice looked way more like the girl next door than she did a wicked vamp. But, of course, she was an actress, and she seemed to be pretty good. She could probably play just about any character.
“Hey, Alice,” she said. “How are you?”
“Fine, thanks. I thought I’d come up and get you. Jennie talked Sloan into having a cup of coffee, but he’s getting a little restless,” Alice told her.

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