Dying Echo: A Grim Reaper Mystery (Grim Reaper Series) (19 page)

“I don’t like it,” he said. He stood close, but didn’t touch her. “You sure you’ll be okay by yourself?”

“See,” Death said, “he wouldn’t have to worry if you’d told him about me. Then he’d know you weren’t alone.”

“I’ll be fine.” Those creepy-crawlies she was feeling weren’t an indication that she
wouldn’t
be fine, right? It was just the whole jail thing again. For once she didn’t mind the idea that Death would be tagging along.

“Ask Ricky about the shirt, too,” Eric said. “I mean, about the guy who was supposed to be fixing the bathroom. The one the neighbor saw.”

“Right.” Just because the cops had given up on that route didn’t mean she should. Actually, it meant she should check it out
more
.

The guard called her name and she went back with her notes folded in her pocket, feeling Eric’s eyes on her until the door closed between them.

“He still likes you, you know.” Death had abandoned the heat sensor this time, choosing instead one of those new Smart Nametags that syncs your interests and personality traits with whatever other technology you use. Death’s name tag bore bright red lettering which proclaimed,
Hi! My name is GILTIN
Ė
. I love clever conversation, tear-jerker movies, and long walks by the river Acheron.

Death saw Casey checking out the tag. “I hate to think what yours would say.
Hi! Today my name is FILL IN THE BLANK, and I love running from the law, hitchhiking along the interstate, and keeping everyone at arm’s length.
Don’t think
Eric
would even want to date you if he saw
that
.”

Casey bared her teeth with an audible growl. Death huffed and chose to walk up beside the female guard. “I wonder what
her
name tag would say?
My name is Bad-Ass Prison Guard and I’ll happily whack you on the head with my baton
?”

Ricky was waiting, this time behind one of those plexi-glass partitions with the phones like Casey had seen on TV. The private room they’d had the other time was apparently an attorney-client bonus. Nothing they said this time would be privileged. Or anywhere close to confidential. A row of eight phones sat in the room, five of them in use. The one on Ricky’s right was empty, but the other held a man on the prisoner’s half, and a loud, under-age family on the visitor’s.

Ricky was still pale and lost looking, and Casey had to rap on the window to get his attention. He jerked, then picked up the receiver. “Why are you back?”

“To see you.”

“You have news?”

“I have a couple questions.”

He winced, but kept the phone at his ear. “What?”

“First, did you hire some company called Hometown Interiors to do any work at your place?”

“The cops were asking about that, too. I’ve never heard of them, but they say I hired them to fix my bathroom. My bathroom doesn’t need fixing.”

She knew it. “I think he went into your house to plant fake evidence.”

“The shirt.”

“Exactly.”

“That’s what I keep telling them. The last I saw that shirt it was in the bottom of a drawer. I never wear it. I certainly never wore it around Alicia. Not with that stain on it. I mean the one from before, when you busted my face.”

“The cops found emails and other correspondence saying you hired them.”

“I
didn’t
.”

“I know.”

“But why can’t they ask them? They’ll know nobody from their place was there.”

“But that’s the thing. They’re saying they were.”

A line formed between his eyes. “But…”

“So obviously it’s a fake company, with fake employees answering the questions. We’ll find them out.”

“Whatever. I guess it doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Ricky…” But it was no use spending energy trying to pump him up, not when he was determined to be miserable. “Another question. Why were you hiding weird little things about Texas?”

He went completely still. “What do you mean?”

“Candy. Southern sayings. Carol Burnett.”

He breathed through his mouth, then swallowed. “How did you find those?”

“Go on,” Death said from the next cubicle, where a skinny black inmate had sat down to wait for a visitor. “Tell him you were snooping.”

“I was looking for anything that might help get you out of here,” Casey said.

“By going through my house? My private things?”

Casey gripped the phone. “How am I supposed to get you out of here if you don’t tell me what you know?”

He looked away, dropping the receiver to his shoulder.

Casey banged on the window. “Ricky. Come on. Talk to me!”

The family to Casey’s left stopped their yammering and looked over, all eyebrows raised, as if they were attached to a string.

“Sorry,” Casey said.

They lowered their eyebrows and went back to their conversation, except for the youngest boy, who still peeked out from under his older sister’s arm. Casey decided he’d get bored eventually, and rapped on Ricky’s window again, more gently this time.

Ricky lifted the phone, but stayed silent.

“Come on, bud. What’s the deal with Texas?” And then she understood. “Alicia was talking in her sleep again, wasn’t she?”

He closed his eyes. “It’s like I’m betraying her. Telling her secrets.”

“It’s her secrets that got her killed, Ricky.”

He blanched. “You mean if I would have betrayed her before, she might still be alive.”

“I didn’t say that.”

His arm drooped again.

“Ricky,” she said quickly, before she lost him. “Tell me about Texas. Please.”

“It could help?”

“Yes.”

He let out a breath and shook his head, face toward the ceiling, like he was arguing with himself. He didn’t look at her when he spoke. “She was sleeping. Real restless, you know? She never slept peacefully, at least not the few times I was with her. It was hard to understand exactly what she was saying, but it was something about not wanting to go to Texas.”

“So you started collecting Texas knick-knacks? That’s kind of a big leap.”

“It was just—I wanted to know more about her. And when she’d mention something that seemed unusual I wanted to check it out, and then I kept the stuff so I wouldn’t forget. Those expressions she used that people around here don’t say, like the one about cream gravy, she wouldn’t do it real often, but when she did I wrote them down. They were cute, you know? Then she mentioned that candy one time, those Chick-O-Sticks? They’re pretty good, actually, and she said something about liking Carol Burnett—we were watching a birthday party for that old lady, Betty White, and Carol Burnett was there. When I asked Alicia why she liked her she just said she was funny, but I could tell it was more than that. So I got the biography so I could try to understand, but realized it was just about her being from the same place as her.” He shrugged. “At least, I thought it was. Maybe I’m taking the whole thing out of context and she was talking about something else altogether and it had nothing to do with her being from
Texas
.” He practically spat the word, then sagged. “I didn’t know her at all, did I? Was anything she told me true? Her birthday? Her favorite color? Her
name
?”

Casey kept her face neutral and put her palm against the window. “Hey. We can’t know everything about anybody. Especially if they don’t want to share it. I’m sure you did your best.”

“Like that did a whole lot of good.”

“Ricky. Even when you do know a lot about someone, it doesn’t always stop bad things from happening.”

He looked at her, his eyes dark and wet. “I know. I’m sorry.” He put his hand on the other side of the glass, his fingers only slightly longer than hers.

“We’ll find who did this, Rick. I promise.”

His lips twitched, like he was trying to smile. “Sure. Because that’s what big sisters do, right? Get their little brothers out of messes.”

“That’s right.”

“Only thing is…when you do get me out of here…what will I do then?”

Casey flexed her fingers against the plexi-glass, wishing she could interlace her fingers with his. “You’ll just have to do what I’ve been doing for the past couple of years.”

He shook his head. “I don’t want to live on the road, Casey.”

“Of course you don’t. You’d be miserable. What I meant was you’ll just have to go day to day, trying to make sense of it all. It
won’t
make sense, but you have to try, anyway. That’s just the way it is. You’ll…exist.”

He nodded, then took his hand off the window and set it in his lap. “Now I have a question for you.”

“Sure. Anything.”

He gestured toward the cubicle where Death sat across from the other prisoner. “Who’s your friend?”

Chapter Twenty

“I don’t want to talk to you!” Casey stomped down the hallway toward the waiting room.

“It’s not my fault he could see me!”

“That’s my little brother!”

“Who is not a kid anymore, in case you haven’t noticed.”

Casey stopped to get herself together before having to appear normal in front of Eric. She was just glad the guard had left her after the second barred door so she had a chance to let off some steam.

Death pointed back toward Ricky. “He’s been through a lot, Casey. The woman he loved is dead.
Tortured
and dead. It wasn’t an accident. Do you really think he’s immune to guilt?”

“Guilt shouldn’t mean he’s not afraid of you.”

“Who are you kidding? Guilt has been making
you
want to die for the past two years.”

“It’s not guilt.”

“No? Then what is it?”

Casey went quiet.

“Well?”

“I’m thinking.”

“Right. Because there’s nothing else to say. You want to die because you feel
guilty
. You know that line you gave Ricky about bad things happening even when you know someone well? It’s about time you believed that yourself.”

“It’s not…what about
grief
? Remember that? How people feel sad when they lose their husbands? Their
children
?”

“Oh, please. If everyone who lost a loved one suddenly became fearless, the entire world would see me 24/7. I would no longer be, as they say, rare and exotic.”

“Exotic, my ass. More like a disease.”

“Whatever. No matter what you think, what you’re dealing with is not grief. Or not
solely
grief. It’s guilt.”

Casey gritted her teeth. “So what am I feeling guilty about, exactly? I didn’t build the car that killed my family. Pegasus hadn’t been in the national news, so I didn’t know about the mechanical issues. I wasn’t even
driving
.”

“So you think your guilt should only come if the accident was your fault?”

“What else would I be feeling guilty about?”

Death gave a short laugh. “You really are as sharp as mashed potatoes.”

“What? Wait! Where are you—”

Death disappeared through the waiting room door, waving serenely, like a 4-H dairy queen.

Casey whipped the door to the waiting room open, ready to pounce on Death and demand an answer. Several people close by jumped and instinctively grabbed their purses and children. The guard at the front desk stood, hand on his holster. Casey froze, arms half-raised. “It’s okay. It’s all right. I’m just…upset. That’s all.”

Eric stood in front of her, shielding her from the rest of the room, like he’d done at the restaurant only an hour before. “You okay?”

Casey took a shuddering breath that felt more like a sob. “No. I’m really not.”

“Okay. It’s okay. I’ve got you. Come on.”

And with the gentlest of touches, he led her outside to the car.

Chapter Twenty-one

“Ricky couldn’t tell
anything
from those notes about the women?”

Casey slouched in the passenger seat. “I didn’t ask him.”

“You didn’t—why not?”

She didn’t answer, still thinking about the bombshell Ricky had dropped at the end of their visit. If he was seeing Death, she couldn’t let him stay in that jail any longer. He was going to do something stupid, or else just wither away to nothing.

“Casey, why didn’t you ask him? I thought that was the whole point of seeing him. That and to ask about the Texas stuff. You did ask about
that
, didn’t you?”