It was… hell, different.
That word described a lot of things as a ghost. And I assumed it was an important word, because different was an enemy of boredom, which Randy said could be a negative.
“Don’t worry.” He seemed as if he wanted to pat me on the back or something. I think he even tried and I couldn’t feel it except for a blip of coldness and a buzz. “I’ll ask around, see if anyone’s met something like your… Dean. Thass his name, right? Your old boyfriend?”
I nodded, wishing the whiskey would drip some more.
“I wonder, though,” he said. “There’re… legends, even here in Boo World.”
“Legends.”
“Rumors about entities that like to suck energy off new, traumatized ghosts who carry lots of fear with ’em. But ya don’t seem all that fearful. He must’ve found that out and rejected ya.”
Ouch. I took that personally, because somewhere in my sick soul, I sort of liked that “Dean” had wanted me again. I knew it wasn’t really Dean, but still. Vanity works in strange ways.
Also, being a needy girlfriend sucks.
Then I recalled fake Dean’s last words to me. “Another day, Jenny.”
“I don’t think he’s done with me,” I said.
Randy got a protective scowl on his face. And why not? We’d kind of bonded so far. Sweet.
I told him everything fake Dean had said before sending me through the cracked floor.
“Yup,” Randy said when I was done. “I’m definitely talkin’ to the others about this.”
There was a lull in our conversation as Randy looked at the liquor pooled on the ledge. A tiny wave of it rolled to the edge and tumbled off. He smiled at how he’d manipulated the booze into a new fall of drops and bent down to catch some.
“You do that so easily,” I said.
“What? Drink?”
“Well, that. But… manipulating. I’m not very good at it yet.”
“Ya will be. It takes practice. So do things like causin’ hallucinazions”—he continued his championship streak of word-screwing—“in humans and bein’ able to empathize with ’em.”
I was still back at the hallucination part. “We can make them see things?”
“Oh, sugar, ya don’t even know. Remember when I said I scare jerks?”
“Yeah.”
“I usually do it when I’m downtown, and some guy is handlin’ his girl in the wrong way. All it takes is a long touch and your imagination and, voilà, instant nightmare flashin’ in front of the jerk’s gaze. It never fails to make ’em behave from that minute on.”
Wow. I decided not to tell him about haunting Gavin because I wasn’t sure how Randy would judge that. But this news was bad to the bone.
Immediately, my thoughts started whirring with the possibilities.
“How about empathizing?” I asked. “How do you do that right?”
“A softer, less intense touch. Those are the ones I use on the dames.” He waggled his eyebrows.
Then it was as if a ticking clock had sounded an alarm in Randy, because he whipped his gaze toward the door and float-hopped over the bar.
“Sunrise,” he said. “There’s light enough for me to look for my gal’s letter.”
He must’ve forgotten that I’d told him I’d help, because he was under and out the door before I could remind him.
Drunk ghost ADD.
But honestly, I was excited about the information he’d given me, and I couldn’t wait to put this hallucination and empathy stuff in action.
I smiled, knowing exactly where I’d be going today—a possible murderer’s mind.
And maybe even beyond that.
7
Gavin wasn’t at the mansion.
For the first time, I felt an energy suck that had nothing to do with traveling too far or putting out too much effort. Sailor Randy hadn’t gotten around to explaining the fact that disappointment could also take a bit of the charge out of a ghost.
But Gavin had to be home sometime—I just hadn’t expected him to be gone shortly after dawn.
I’d already done a sweep of the property, and not only was his door open, but his bed was made. Most of all, I just couldn’t sense his life force—a warmth that always stood out from everyone else’s.
The first thing I wondered was if he’d run off because of last night. I highly doubted that, though, since he seemed the type to stand up to trouble, even if it came at him invisibly. Maybe he’d just gone in to work early, distracting himself from his fears by immersing himself in video game designing. What better way to escape this world than to invent your own?
The bummer was that I had no idea where he might have an office—I’d have to hit the Internet again for that. Or if he’d taken off on another of those business trips Noah and Wendy had been talking about yesterday.
Just on the off chance that he’d run out to get groceries or something—right, like Mr. Rich Pants wouldn’t have his housekeeping staff take care of that—I decided to pay a longer visit to his room before I left.
If I couldn’t try out some empathizing or hallucinations on him, maybe I could at least get to know my person of interest better by playing detective.
More bummerville, though. His bedroom turned out to be like a hoteclass="underline" all expensive, starched sheets, closed closets, and anonymous vibes. He’d left nothing on the granite desk near the full-length window, and I wondered if he ever even worked in here. There wasn’t a damn thing that showed he had made this room his own and, unfortunately, when I tried to open drawers or cabinets, I didn’t have the skills.
Not yet, anyway.
Even the bathroom didn’t tell me much about Gavin. As I said, I couldn’t get into his cabinets to view even what kind of toothpaste he used, and knowing that he liked Paul Mitchell shampoo wasn’t exactly earthshaking information that convinced me of his murderous guilt. At least his walk-in closet was a little better—full of jeans and casual tops, a few business suits, a tux or two, plus what looked like hiking gear.
A dream date and an outdoorsman, huh?
Had Gavin done any serious walking near the beach on out-of-the-way trails, like the one Elizabeth’s remains had been found by?
Spurred on, I made my way downstairs before anyone in the house was up and about. I didn’t beat the cook to the kitchen, though—she was already laying out a buffet in the dining room.
Ultimately, I discovered a room off the garage that had all kinds of sporting equipment and accessories in it: a kayak, surfboards, wet suits. This gear was way better quality than any boards and suits Dean and I had ever used, but that wasn’t the point.
I’m not sure there was a point, because nothing gave me a clue about Gavin’s relationship with Elizabeth. Even the study I found on the first floor was as neat as a pin, in spite of the computer equipment riddling a few desktops in there.
Then again, had I expected to find, like, a bloody knife lying around? The murder had happened nearly three years ago.
I decided that I would continue my search later, because the cook was done with arranging the breakfast buffet, and that meant people were going to be coming downstairs and there’d be some good eavesdropping to be had.
I settled into a corner near the ceiling. The maid never even paid me the slightest bit of attention.
Farah appeared in the dining room first, her long, thick brown hair trailing down her back, her white silk robe wrapped around her. She smiled at the gray-uniformed maid, who nodded good morning.
“Noah hasn’t been down here for coffee yet?”
“No, Miss Farah.”
She blew out a breath and accepted a steaming porcelain cup of tea with a saucer from the woman. “I told him that he needs to be out of bed early today since Joseph is taking him to school for a newspaper staff meeting.”