Coming around the Old Jail, Jane paused. A man was standing in the road as people walked past and around him; he was staring at her. He wore a Confederate jacket, old-fashioned cotton trousers and a plumed cavalry hat. He had long curling hair beneath the hat, and she thought he might be an actor who’d come in to work with the theater ensemble.
But even as she returned his stare, she saw someone brush by without noticing him. Someone else passed by—walking right through him.
He wasn’t real. Or he was real, just not really there.
She hurried toward him, sensing that he was curious about her—or curious about the fact that she’d seen him. But when she reached the street, he was gone, as if he’d been absorbed into the crowd.
Then she saw him enter Desert Diamonds. She followed.
That afternoon she’d grabbed a cold drink at the little pizza parlor in the front corner of the establishment but she hadn’t taken time to explore because she’d wanted to bring Sloan’s horse back to his stable and get to the sheriff’s office.
Now she looked around. The coffee shop was to the right, the pizza parlor to the left. The ice cream parlor was in back, and in between, she saw every kind of souvenir that could be imagined in an old frontier town. Kids’ bow-and-arrow sets, badges, tour books, maps, stuffed toy horses, cows, bulls, buffalo, armadillos, snakes and more—filled the many shelves and covered the tables.
Jane started walking up and down the aisles, trying to figure out where her ghost had gone, but she didn’t see him—just the endless supply of souvenirs. Shot glasses, mugs, cactus juice, hot sauce and kitchen utensils crowded one aisle. T-shirts, towels and spaghetti-strap dresses another. She’d gone down three rows when she was startled to run straight into Sloan.
He instinctively set his hands on her shoulders to steady her.
“Looking for a killer in the T-shirt section?” she asked, surprised that she felt a little awkward.
He raised his eyebrows. “You’re shopping for shot glasses that say ‘Lily, Arizona’?”
No, I followed a ghost, she thought.
Jane shook her head. “It’s a curio shop. I was curious. And excuse me, but I was there when you found a corpse this morning. Sorry, two corpses. So, yes—I’m really curious. What are you doing here?”
“Exploring the possibilities,” he told her.
“Oh?”
He studied her face, then shrugged. “Look, it’s late. I haven’t eaten in a while—”
“Neither have I,” she said flatly.
He had the grace to smile. “Well, ma’am,” he said, exaggerating his drawl, “I just gotta get outta town for a while. I’m heading to my place. Come on out if you wish and I’ll fill you in.”
“Sure. I remember how to get there. It’s pretty easy around here with only one road.”
“I’ll drive,” he insisted.
“That’s ridiculous! You’d have to come back here to drop me off.”
“There has been a murder, you know,” he reminded her.
“I’m a federal agent,” she reminded him.
“You want to talk?” he asked. “If so, I drive.”
She sighed. “Fine. Stay up all night driving me around.”
He shrugged again. She saw that he had two books in his hands and he stopped by the clerk to pay for them before they left, assuring the clerk—who, of course, knew about the desert corpses—that they were on it, and he didn’t believe anyone else was in danger, but that, of course, they should all be careful and stay in groups to be safe.
“Seriously,” he said when they were in his patrol car, “why were you prowling around the shop at this time of night?”
“I just finished work for the day.”
He paused, frowning. “You went in to work on the skull after getting Heidi home, getting Kanga back to the stables and...and after this morning?”
“That’s what I’m here for,” she said lightly.
“Oh, yeah. I guess I forgot,” he murmured.
“Out of sight, out of mind.”
Gazing ahead at the road, he smiled at that.
“So why were you shopping for tourist books in your own town?” she asked him.
“Our victim.”
“Oh?”
“Yep. I came in to see Grant Winston—the old guy who owns Desert Diamonds. Jay Berman, the victim in the desert, bought the same two books I’ve just purchased. Seems he was big on Lily’s history. All he talked to anyone about was the old legends. Apparently, a few locals, including Caleb Hough, have been in buying the same books. Anyway, right now, I’m trying to learn whether Jay Berman was looking for something out here. Something the history or the old legends might help me figure out.”
“I’m sure there are lots of legends—and a lot of pretty violent history,” Jane said. “So far, I’ve heard about Sage McCormick. Who disappeared.” She turned to face him. “And I’m also sure you think the sketch I did of our skull suggests it belonged to Sage McCormick.”
His jaw tensed.
“Yes,” he said after a moment.
“I don’t understand. Why does that bother you so much?”
He let out a sigh. “I guess it shouldn’t.”
“But it does.”
He glanced over at her. “Remember, Agent Everett, I’m a man from these here parts,” he said, exaggerating his accent once again. “Sage McCormick was my great-great grandmother. Not that I knew her, or that my parents did. Call me sentimental, but I still don’t like to think she might have been viciously murdered—and that her body is scattered all over the place!”
He swung his eyes back to the empty road, but he was aware of her shocked reaction. Which quickly turned into a nod of understanding.
“That explains a great deal,” she murmured.
He didn’t ask what.
5
It was difficult to believe he’d just met Jane Everett, or that it could be this easy to sit at his house with her, discussing the case. She’d spent a few minutes stroking Cougar and, naturally, the cat had reveled in the attention.
Johnny Bearclaw had left pulled pork in the oven and a salad in the refrigerator; there’d been plenty for two. When they’d finished cleaning up, they sat at the table together and he went on to tell her everything he knew about their victim.
“Jay Berman didn’t have any relatives in New York. He took off from Oklahoma twenty years ago and never looked back. Both parents are dead now and his only family’s estranged. He had no rap sheet in New York, but he didn’t seem to have any friends, either, which makes me think he was lucky—he just never got caught. He worked part-time as a mechanic in a shop and lived in a studio up past Harlem. It’s not possible to support yourself in New York City with only the money from a part-time job. No one that any of the New York authorities managed to track down seemed to know anything about him, so I suspect he moved in the underworld. Petty theft, that kind of thing. He had a legitimate Social Security number and paid taxes. But other than that...”
“So some guy who didn’t have any friends in New York came on vacation to Lily, Arizona, and wound up being shot in the back of the head,” Jane said thoughtfully. “Why?”
She was leafing through the books he’d purchased at Desert Diamonds.
“He was looking for something,” Sloan said. “Okay, that’s speculation on my part, but I’m willing to bet he was. And I’m trying to find out what.”
“At Desert Diamonds?”
“These books are replica editions. The Great Gold Heist is actually a compilation by a historian in the 1890s who put together a book composed of newspaper reports on the disappearance of a stagecoach carrying gold—right around the time Sage disappeared. The second is written by Brendan Fogerty, the sheriff in the town when all this was going on. Certain incidents, although they occurred about the same time, weren’t believed to be connected in any way.”
“Still, it’s interesting. Sage disappears, the gold disappears—and they weren’t connected?”
“Sage disappeared two weeks before the gold did. And while she was known for her Bohemian lifestyle, she was never suspected of being a gold thief.”
“I’m assuming people went out to look for the missing stagecoach?”
“They did. They never found the gold, the stagecoach and horses, the driver or the two armed guards hired to watch over it. No wreckage, no bodies—nothing,” Sloan said.
“And Sage disappeared two weeks before,” Jane repeated.
“Yes.”
“What about the man she supposedly left with?”
“Red Marston?”
“Yes.”
“Well, he was considered a shady character. But he disappeared—or took off—at the same time. He was apparently good-looking and he had the reputation of being a womanizer.”
“Could they have hidden out for those two weeks—waiting for the stagecoach to leave?” Jane asked.
“Sure. Anything could have happened. This was back in the 1870s. We have a few records, and plenty of oral legends. But they’re pretty much supposition because people were making assumptions back then just as they do now.”
Jane yawned. She seemed suddenly startled, looking out to the living room area.
He looked, too. Longman was in his chair by the fire.
Sloan glanced sharply at Jane, but she’d already returned to the book.
He felt something cold slip over him as he watched her.
Logan Raintree’s unit was known for its unusual cases.
Did they really search for ghosts?
And find them?
She stood up. “I guess I should get back. Especially if we’re going to be worth anything in the morning.”
He didn’t move; instead her frowned at her. “You see him, don’t you?” he demanded. “It’s true—you and your team do paranormal investigations!”
