Any car built in the last decade needed plug-in parts-changers, not mechanics. Most of the cars I fixed were older than I was, owned by people who could barely afford their forty-year-old cars. There wasn’t enough money to be made in the business to justify dumping in more.
Adam’s contractor thought we’d need to throw in fifty or sixty thousand dollars more after the insurance money kicked in to rebuild because there were so many things that would have to be brought up to the current building code. Most years I was lucky if I cleared fifteen thousand, and that only because of the cars we rebuilt for the collector’s market and because my right-hand man, Tad, worked for freaking peanuts.
I’d come here today to say good-bye when Adam wasn’t here to see me do it. If I’d come here with him, he’d know how much this battered building mattered to me, and he’d rebuild it himself if he had to do it using nothing but the rubble lying around.
It wasn’t worth that. Wasn’t worth a moment of Adam’s worry—I’d given him enough pain the past year or so. He didn’t know that I knew he woke up in the middle of the night and put his head against my chest to hear my heart beat. Didn’t know I knew he had nightmares that Coyote hadn’t come in time to fix me.
Being important to someone, to anyone, was something I’d hungered for most of my life. Adam was the lodestone of my life, and I didn’t like it when I hurt him.
An unfamiliar car pulled up beside me. I turned around to see a gold Chevy Tahoe that had seen better days. It bore a graceful stencil “Simon Landscaping and Lawn Care,” complete with address, phone, and contractor license number.
The driver’s side window rolled down next to me, and a woman I’d never met before said, “Please tell me that you’re Mercedes Thompson, who is now married with a different last name that no one can remember. Because this is the third time I’ve driven past here in the vain hope that I’d run into you.”
She was human. I blinked at her, pulling on my professional self—I was at work, even if my garage was in rubble. “Yes?”
“Yes?” she repeated with the same questioning inflection I’d given it.
“Yes. I’m Mercedes,” I told her with a smile. Professionalism allowed me to bottle up all the angst until I wasn’t in the presence of a possible customer. I was very grateful to this stranger for allowing me that retreat. “And it’s Hauptman.”
Her jaw dropped. “Hauptman the Alpha werewolf of the Tri-fricking-Cities? That Hauptman?”
I nodded, and she banged her forehead into her steering wheel. “How could they have forgotten that? Her husband’s a werewolf, she said. I almost called him, you know? Probably would have if I hadn’t run into you here.”
I cleared my throat, wondering how to pull her up without offending her. “You needed to talk to me?”
“You probably think I’m a freaking idiot,” she told the steering wheel. “This is why I send out my assistant to talk to people.”
I found myself smiling at the remnants of my garage. “No worries,” I told her. Life goes on. What was it Coyote had told me once? Change is neither good nor bad. It’s just change. Frightening, but survivable. I’d survived a lot worse than the destruction of my garage—and I’d learned a lot along the way.
“What can I help you with?” I asked her.
She took a deep breath, glanced at me from under her bangs, and said, “I’m in love.” Then she looked horrified and surprised, and red swept up from her jaw to her cheeks. “I didn’t mean to say that. He doesn’t know.” She looked at me, this woman whose name I didn’t have, with total urgency. “You can’t tell him, okay? Not a word.”
I cleared my throat. “That’s not going to be a problem unless I know who he is. Is it someone I know?”
She shook her head. “No.” Then, “I don’t think so.” She looked at me. “Shoot me now. Shit. I practiced. I had this smooth speech-thing.”
“Yeah,” said a voice behind me. “I think that you might ought to’ve used it because we don’t got a foggy idea of what you need.” Zack’s voice was kind even if his words weren’t particularly gracious. “Mercy, it looks to me like someone managed to slide under the fence between now and the last time we looked. I don’t believe they managed to get anywhere dangerous—” Which meant he trailed their scent around, and they hadn’t gone into the building or burrowed under the large and heavy metal plate we’d put over the outside opening into the tunnel. “Still, it would be good to get this place bulldozed before someone manages to kill themselves exploring.”
“Okay,” I told him. “I’ll call Bill today and give him the thumbs-up.”
Zack’s hand came up and ruffled my hair. He was a new wolf to our pack, but once he’d gotten comfortable with us, he’d started touching everyone. I’d have thought it would bother me, bother some of the others more. But he was a submissive wolf—those are pretty rare—and all the touching had turned out to be just what the pack needed to get comfortable with all the changes that had been coming their way. Our way.
I think we were what he needed, too. When he’d come to us a couple of months ago, he’d been—as Warren described it—jumpier than a jackrabbit on speed. Now that Zack had settled down, there was a happy cloud that followed him wherever he went, spread by his touch. Maybe that’s why Adam had sent him with me today. I’d needed a happy cloud.
I gave the woman a smile in hopes that would reassure her. “Maybe we should start with introductions. I’m Mercy, and this is my friend Zack. You are?”
“Lisa Simon,” she said, sounding relieved that I had taken over the conversation. “I am so glad I found you. I have a—” She stopped, held up a hand. “I’ve got this now. I have a yard-care company centered in Yakima, but we service all the way from the Tri-Cities to Ellensburg—about a hundred-mile radius. We do everything from designing yards to maintenance, and I have two crews of four people each who work for me full-time. For the last eight years, I’ve been maintaining the lawn for Richard Albright.”
I blinked. “The Richard Albright?” Wealth, brilliance, eccentricity, and notoriety had haunted the Albright family for probably a hundred years until a couple of very-high-profile suicides, and an unsolved murder or three a decade or so ago had brought the notoriety to a climax that ended up with everyone in the family dead except for Richard Albright. As I recalled, he’d been in his early twenties at the time, and his wife’s had been one of the unsolved murders.
“That’s the one,” she said.
“He moved to Canada right after the trial,” Zack said. When I looked at him, he raised both hands slightly, and said, “It was all over the tabloids. No one who ever walked into a grocery store didn’t know about the murder trial and everything.”
Lisa nodded soberly. “And after a few years, he moved, very quietly, to Prosser.” I blinked at her. No one rich and famous moved to Prosser. It was a small town about thirty miles west of the Tri-Cities. It wasn’t a “pretty people” place like Walla Walla, which was pressed up against the Blue Mountains and beautifully green. Lisa had missed my surprise and continued to impart information in a circuitous fashion. “He never leaves the grounds. Not ever.” She looked at me. “And three days ago, I found out why not.”
I could feel the headache come on. She didn’t want me to fix his ’Wagon. “Ghosts,” I said, wondering who she’d been talking to.
“His dead wife,” she said at the same time.
“I don’t hunt ghosts,” I told her. The only time I’d tried had ended up with bodies.
Her mouth firmed. “I called in some big favors to get your name.”
“Who talked to you?” I asked. The wolves knew that I could see ghosts, I was pretty sure, though I didn’t make a big deal of it. That left . . .
“My best friend’s husband is Wenatchi and Cree. He’s a historian and folklorist. So I called her and he called me back this morning with your name. He said you are a walker and a spirit speaker and that you could help me. He said to tell you that Hank Redtail owes him a favor, and he is calling it in.”