Ghost Talker (23 page)

Atop Lookout Mountain they watched in serene quiet as dawn lit the plains below. Gradually it filtered through the pines surrounding the graves and touched some of the quartz, trapping light in the rocks.

No poltergeist marred the peaceful morning, and Clare thought all of them sighed in unison.

She and Zach refused breakfast with the older couple and hit the road to Leadville, Evergreen Cemetery, and Texas Jack.

Zach drove. Most of the time they'd be on wide and modern Highway 70, but occasional old miner or prospector ghosts still drifted along in the canyons. Always better to be a passenger, then. Like in Denver when, if she wasn't with Zach, she had to use a car service, which she hated since she wasn't in control. Though she did get more work done that way.

For the first hour or so Enzo sat in the backseat, his head thrust out of the side of the vehicle. Then the Lab decided he'd go find Texas Jack on his own.

She and Zach didn't talk, except to comment on the glorious fall color above nine thousand feet. Aspens in green, deep gold, orange, and even red swept the hillsides against the dark green of pines and spruce. The color wouldn't last long, and their timing to see it this year was perfect. Fabulous views that lifted the soul.

Today she felt better about being excluded from the experience of sending Darin Clavell on last night. The whole situation had sounded like an uber-male-bonding event.

For a couple of minutes she'd wistfully yearned for some sort of female-bonding time. All of her old girlfriends at the accounting firm would think she'd gone insane. And the only new women she'd spent time with were Mrs. Flinton and Desiree Rickman. She and Desiree were well on the way to being friends. Actually, Clare thought that Desiree already considered them friends.

And Clare liked three women she'd just met in her beginning yoga class. With time, those could evolve into friendships, too.

If Clare dropped a word in Desiree Rickman's ear, she would take the idea of women-time and run with it. Heaven knows where they'd end up and what they'd be doing, but the idea made Clare smile. She reached for her phone and sent a text to Desiree about scheduling a ladies' night out.

“What are you doing?” Zach asked, his gaze on the road. They'd reach Leadville in the next few minutes.

“You had an all-male gathering last night . . .” She stopped when she saw his lips curve upward.

“Campfire tales with Texas Jack Omohundro. Yeah, excellent.”

“Well, I think some time with women would be good for me about now.”

His eyes flickered toward her, then back. “Oh yeah? With whom?”

“I texted Desiree.”

Zach gave a shudder and she didn't know whether he'd faked it or not. “Better you than me.”

“And Mrs. Flinton.”

“The three of you?” He coughed and she thought he covered a laugh. “What about Janice?”

“No.” Clare paused, then said, “I don't think she's on the same wavelength as the rest of us.”

Zach laughed until they turned onto Harrison Avenue, the main street of Leadville.

Soon, in just a few blocks, they'd be at Evergreen Cemetery and meeting with Texas Jack at
his
grave. Her heart picked up beat. Naturally, she'd scrutinized and downloaded and studied the files on the cemetery from the Lake County Public Library website. Even if the cemetery lacked signage, Clare believed she could find Texas Jack's plot. As they angled between the stone cemetery pillars, a brown metal historical marker detailing Texas Jack's life thrust up. Zach passed it.

“Wait—” Clare protested.

“Clare,” Zach said patiently. “You've read that sign online before, right? Even if you hadn't, you know more about Texas Jack than whatever is engraved on that plaque.”

“You're impatient to see Texas Jack again.”

“Damn right. And I'm nervous about you moving him on,
if
he plans on going today.”

“Which you don't think will happen.”

“Which I don't think will happen,” he agreed. Zach didn't look nervous. His hands showed rock steady on the wheel. “The Protestant section, right?” he asked.

It had fretted Clare that she'd have gone to the Catholic section first, or the theatrical block, before she'd found detailed maps.

“Here's a sign.” A white arrow with Texas Jack's name. Zach continued up to the first road. “And another.” He turned down onto the two-dirt-tire-tracks-with-grass-between road.

Clare put her hand on his arm. “Wait,” she said quietly.

Zach stopped his truck, looked at her. “What?”

“You're nervous?”

“Yeah. Of course I am.” He rolled his shoulders. “Helping spirits cross over takes a toll on you, Clare. I hate to see that. Stand by, able to do nothing as winter invades you.” His lips pressed together. “You get so cold. Freezing skin, slow breath, sometimes I can see puffs of air from your lips, and that's pretty much the only thing that tells me you still live.” He turned to look straight ahead and the dappled shade from the fluttering golden aspen leaves marked his face. “You've said the ice spreads through you and slows your heart as well as your breathing. I'm afraid one day your heart will stop while you're . . . fulfilling the terms of your gift and . . . executing your vocation.”

She undid her seat belt so she could angle herself toward him. “I didn't ask for this ‘gift,' but I've accepted it and found a certain amount of satisfaction and pride in it.”

“No joy yet,” Zach said.

She blinked. “What?”

His jaw flexed and he still didn't look at her. “I think a person should find more than satisfaction in their vocation and maybe that could help you with the effects of the transitions—” His bronzed cheeks took on a slant of color over the bones.

“Do you?” Her throat had tightened and she cleared it. “Do you find joy in being a private investigator?”

“I did last night. Loved working and closing this whole Darin Clavell case.”

“Something you, as a law enforcement officer, would not have worked on.”

“Nope, Clavell's death was accidental. Open-and-shut case not in my jurisdiction.”

“Your new career is similar to your old one.” She let out a heavy breath. “And we've had this conversation before.”

“Right and right again,” Zach said. Now he looked at her and took her hand. One side of his mouth quirked upward. “You're still balancing account sheets. Just on a larger scale, is all. With lives and deaths instead of numbers.”

That huge notion swept a shiver through her. “I'm no— St. Peter. Midas? Was Midas one of the Greek underworld-after-death judges?”

“Guy who loved gold? Don't know, but it doesn't sound right.” Zach bent and brushed a kiss on her lips, even as her free hand reached for her phone to check the fact. He shifted his grip to capture those fingers instead. “Don't. Not now. You have a job to do.”

Moving back to sit straight, then leaning back against the seat, Clare sighed. “Yes, I do. And though I might not find joy in it, I do know I find gratification.” She smiled at him. “Enough that I resented you and Texas Jack doing what I considered to be my work for me last night.”

“That's good to hear. I wish you could have been there.”

“Sounded interesting.” She took a breath and addressed his fears. “About the heart-stopping thing.” Her voice emerged a tinge high and she kept her eyes focused ahead. “I told you once that Enzo and the Other offered to let me know when my own death came near, and I accepted.”

Zach scowled. “Didn't the Other warn you during our last case?”

“Before we started, yes.”

With a grunt, Zach started up his truck.

“Have you seen any crows signifying death lately?” she pressed.

“Not today.”

Her gaze, which had been scanning the gravestones on the right as the truck slowly rolled by, flew to Zach. “When?” she demanded.

“Last week. And I saw ten last night before Poche tried to force us off the road.”

She relaxed, and went back to looking out her window. “All right, then. And, Zach, what about
your
paranormal gift? Have you found the joy in it yet?”

He exhaled noisily from his mouth. “No. But . . .”

“But?”

“With my former gift, as a boy, I enjoyed it. So did Jim. That's why I know there's a difference between accepting and something more.”

“Oh. Stop! There it is!”

Zach jammed on the brakes. “What, right here?”

“Just back there.”

“No sign.”

“No.” And they'd have missed it if she hadn't been watching.

Zach backed up and parked. Clare hopped out of the truck, and the door nearly brushed the fence of the iron enclosure around Texas Jack's grave. Zach joined her and they stared at the stone Buffalo Bill had erected. “So close to the road.”

“I don't recall seeing an iron fence in any of the pictures.”

“Neither do I.”

“It looks modern.” He scanned the graveyard. “More modern than many of the other enclosures.”

“Yes.”

And quite different than the rods and tall spikes of Buffalo Bill's fence. The fence stood lower than Zach's waist and had small spikes, but half-circles curved around the top of them, so they appeared decorative. Texas Jack's headstone faced them and the road, with his grave outlined in smooth stones behind it. That is, the gray granite stone faced outward. Another block of white marble facing upward showed writing designating Jack as a Confederate soldier. At the foot of the grave stood a small rectangle marker of gray marble veined with black and the simple initials: J. B. O.

Zach reached for her hand and intertwined their fingers. “Smells great out here.”

“Yes.” The scent of pine pervaded the air, along with the subtle fragrance of aspens. Two tall pines grew beyond the enclosure. The cemetery itself was heavily wooded . . . for Colorado.

“Friendly,” Zach said, scanning the area. Clare followed his gaze to the trees, then scanned the ground—dirt and pine needles, flat yellow evidence of tall grasses and low native plants, more brown than green, all disappearing quickly since summer had left the mountains. Now and then she spied a clump of columbine leaves—the purple variety was the Colorado state flower—that would have had several blossoms in the summer. “Sort of intimate.”

“Not like the monument to William F. Cody. Now that I'm here, that seems much more impersonal,” Clare observed.

“A monument for folks to appreciate; yeah, you got that right. And a long view of hundreds of miles over plains that makes the human body seem insignificant even though it might raise the human spirit,” Zach said.

Clare leaned against Zach, and he let her. “This is more emotionally accessible, more human.”

Clearing his throat, Zach gestured to the enclosure. “It's a large parcel plot.”

She met his eyes. “You think that Giuseppina bought enough land for her internment, too?”

Zach shook his head. “Don't know.”

He stepped up and went through the gate. Clare followed and swung the iron shut behind her. Whoever had put the enclosure up had set the fence so that Texas Jack's grave lay to the right of the gate and the center.

They trodded on thick pine needles dropped by the towering trees above them. When stepped on, those released fragrance, too.

“The enclosure is big enough to hold ten or fifteen people.”

“Having a gathering here could have been a consideration, I suppose,” Clare said. “Or Giuseppina just bought a standard plot and this was the size.”

“Doesn't matter,” Zach said.

“No.” Clare paused. “Unless she did think, at some time, that she'd be buried here with him.”

Zach put an arm around Clare's waist. “One of those things we'll never know. Unless you connect with her when you send Texas Jack on.”

“Yes.”

“Meanwhile, we're the only ones here.” He dropped his arm from her waist. “We might be able to get a bone from the grave without attracting much attention.”

“We're on one of the main roads through the cemetery, and there's that state road not too far from us, just beyond those trees. We could be seen.”

“We won't be desecrating a grave, Clare.”

“Technically, we will be,” she said stubbornly.

“At the inhabitant's request,” Zach said, voice smooth.

“I think we'd have a problem proving that to any of your law enforcement colleagues.” Clare visualized Texas Jack as a skeleton and wrinkled her nose. Much better to think of him as a vital man who'd become an equally vigorous spirit.

At that moment she heard the barking of a Lab.

“Enzo?” Jack asked.

“Yes. He's coming with Texas Jack.” She saw the gray and moving phantoms in the distance, quickly drawing closer.

She didn't watch, but turned in a circle to look at Texas Jack's last resting place. Most of the cemeteries she'd visited had been on a hillside—Boot Hill?—and she would have expected that here, too, but the trees rooted along flat land. She didn't see a hillside in the distance, only trees and gravestones. A fountain or large monument appeared fairly near.

Golden aspen and dark green pines blocked the view of jagged peaks, much closer than those seen in the distance at Buffalo Bill's grave. These included Mount Evans and the back of the range you could see in South Park. So Jack had forest instead of the plains he loved so well. And it wasn't much like the forests of Virginia.

Coming back to face the phantom man with the ghost Lab rambling beside him, Clare leaned against Zach. The silence filled with rustling leaves, the occasional car traveling the road. And the sound of Enzo's cheerful barking.

He didn't run to her fast, as he might have last month. Perhaps he'd become independent? Or she'd become
less
dependent on him. The dog didn't have to worry she'd die of cold in refusing her gift . . . or suffer madness in denying to practice it. Both consequences that still loomed in Clare's mind.