"That," observed a voice at my elbow, "is one wicked pedicure. You should ask for your money back."
10
I didn't even have to turn my head to see who it was.
"Hi, Craig," I said out of the corner of my mouth. Neil and Jorge were too deeply absorbed in the beverage order they were just finishing up discussing to pay attention to me, anyway.
"So." Craig settled onto the bar stool next to mine. "This is how you mediators work? Get your feet all wrecked, then mooch rides off the siblings of the deceased?"
"Not usually," I murmured discreetly.
"Oh." Craig fiddled with a book of matches from the bar. "Because I was going to say. You know. Great technique. Really making some stellar progress on my case there, aren't you?"
I sighed. Really, after everything I'd been through, I did not need some dead guy making wisecracks.
But I guess I deserved them.
"How are you doing?" I asked, trying to keep my tone light. "You know, with the whole being dead thing?"
"Oh, jim-dandy," Craig said. "Loving every minute of it."
"You'll get used to it," I said, thinking of Jesse.
"Oh, I'm sure I will," Craig said. He was looking at Neil.
I should, of course, have gotten a clue then. But I didn't. I was too caught up in my own problems . . . not to mention my feet.
Then Neil handed his clipboard to Jorge, shook his hand, and turned to me.
"Are you ready, Susan?" he asked.
I didn't bother to correct him about my name. I just nodded and slid down from the bar stool. I had to look to make sure my feet had hit the floor, because I couldn't feel it. The floor, I mean. The skin on the bottoms of my feet had gone completely numb.
"You really did a number on yourself," was Craig's comment.
But he, unlike his brother, very helpfully slipped an arm around my waist and guided me toward the door, where Neil was waiting, his car keys in his hand.
I must have looked particularly peculiar as I approached - I was definitely leaning some of my weight into Craig, which must have given me an odd appearance, since of course Neil couldn't see Craig - because Neil said, "Um, Susan, are you sure you want to go straight home? I think maybe you might want to pay a little visit to the emergency room. ..."
"No, no," I said lightly. "I'm fine."
"Right," Craig snickered in my ear.
Still, with his help, I made it out to Neil's car all right. Like Paul, Neil had a convertible BMW. Unlike Paul's, Neil's appeared to be secondhand.
"Hey!" Craig cried, when he saw the vehicle. "That's my car!"
This was, I felt, the natural reaction of a guy who'd found his car in the possession of another. Jake would undoubtedly have said the same thing. Over and over again.
Craig got over his indignation long enough to steer me into the front seat. I was about to give him a grateful smile when he then hopped into the backseat. Even then, of course, I didn't figure it out. I just assumed Craig wanted to come along for the ride. Why not? It wasn't like he had anything better to do, so far as I knew.
Neil started the engine, and Kylie Minogue began to wail from his CD player.
"I can't believe he's listening to this garbage," Craig said disgustedly from the backseat, "in my car."
"I like her," I said, a little defensively.
Neil looked at me. "You say something?"
Realizing what I'd done, I said no quickly.
"Oh."
Without another word - he wasn't apparently much of a conversationalist - Neil pulled his car out from the Sea Mist Cafe parking lot and headed down Scenic Drive for downtown Carmel, which we'd have to cut through to make it back to my house. Cutting through downtown Carmel was never a picnic, because it was usually crammed with tourists and the tourists never knew where they were going, because none of the streets had names ... or stoplights.
But it can be especially dangerous navigating downtown Carmel-by-the-Sea when there happens to be a homicidal ghost in your backseat.
I didn't realize this right away, of course. I was attempting to do some, you know, mediation. I figured, as long as I had the two brothers together, I might as well try to patch things up between them. I had no idea at the time just how badly their relationship had disintegrated, of course.
"So, Neil," I said conversationally, as we went down Scenic Drive at a pretty good clip. The ocean breeze tugged at my hair and felt deliciously cool after the way the sun had beat down on me earlier. "I heard about your brother. I'm really sorry."
Neil didn't take his gaze off the road. But I saw his fingers tighten on the steering wheel.
"Thanks," was all he said in a quiet voice.
It is generally considered rude to pry into the personal tragedies of others - particularly when the victims of said tragedy were not the ones who introduced the subject - but for a mediator, being rude is all part of the job. I said, "It must have been really awful, out there on that boat."
"Catamaran," both Craig and Neil corrected me at the same time - Craig derisively, Neil gently.
"I mean catamaran," I said. "How long did you hang on for, anyway? Like eight hours or something?"
"Seven," Neil said softly.
"Seven hours," I said. "That's a long time. The water must have been really cold."
"It was," Neil said. He was clearly a man of few words. I did not allow that to dissuade me from my mission, however.
"And I understand," I said, "that your brother was, what, a champion swimmer or something?"
"Damned straight," Craig said from the backseat. "Made all-state - "
I held up a hand to silence him. It was not Craig I wanted to hear from just then.
"Champion swimmer," Neil said, his voice not much louder than the purr of the BMW's engine. "Champion sailor. You name it, Craig was better at it than anybody."
"See?" Craig leaned forward. "See? He's the one that should be dead. Not me. He even admits it!"
"Shhh," I said to Craig. To Neil I said, "That must have really surprised people, then. I mean, when you survived the accident, and Craig didn't."
"Disappointed them, is more like it," Neil muttered. Still, I heard him.
So did Craig.
He settled back against the seat, looking triumphant. "I told you so."
"I'm sure your parents are sad about losing Craig," I said, ignoring the ghost in the backseat. "And you're going to have to give them some time. But they're happy not to have lost you, Neil. You know they are."
"They aren't," Neil said as matter-of-factly as if he'd been saying the sky is blue. "They liked Craig better. Everybody did. I know what they're thinking. What everybody is thinking. That it should have been me. I should have been the one to die. Not Craig."
Craig leaned forward again. "See?" he said. "Even Neil admits it. He should be the one back here, not me."
But I was now more concerned for the living brother than I was for the dead one. "Neil, you can't mean that."
"Why not?" Neil shrugged. "It's the truth."
"It's not true," I said. "There's a reason you lived and Craig didn't."
"Yeah," Craig said sarcastically. "Somebody messed up. Big time."
"No," I said, shaking my head. "That's not it. Craig hit his head. Plain and simple. It was an accident, Neil. An accident that wasn't your fault."