Ghost On Duty (Destiny Bay Cozy Mysteries Book 2) (10 page)

I pulled the pork out of the oven where I’d been heating it and reached for the Hawaiian rolls. “So tell me,” I said, glancing over at him. “What did you find out at Ned’s? Besides the cat, I mean.”

He shrugged. “Nothing much.”

“Did you go into the house?”

He nodded. “I went up to all the floors.”

“And nobody shot at you?”
“Nope.”

“Did you see that room with the pictures on the walls? The ones of the lady in white?”

“I did,” he said. “It sure looked like Ned was obsessed with a woman, didn’t it? I mean, what man sets up a display like that unless his love is crazy hot?”

I met his gaze and made a face. “And with plenty of staying power. She looked so familiar, but all those pictures were from at least thirty years ago, as far as I could tell. That’s what the style of clothing she was wearing looked like. So she probably looks very different today. If she’s even still alive.”

He nodded. “It did have the look of an idealized memory shrine.”

“I talked to Peg,” I said as I began to put together his sandwich. “She thinks Bobby is the murderer. I don’t think so.”

Roy shook his head. “No way,” he said.
 

“She got very upset when I told her about getting shot at when I was at Ned’s. She was moaning about somebody named Jasper. Do you know who that could be?”

He went very still. “Yes,” he said slowly, purposefully not meeting my gaze. “I do know who that could be.”

“Really?” I stared at him. “Who?”

He finally looked up. “Jasper is her son.”

“Who? Peg’s?”

“Yes.”

I gaped at him, stunned. “No!”

“Yes.”

I remembered what I was doing and then set his sandwich in front of him. “Why would her son be running around in the woods behind Ned’s house?”

He took a deep breath and tried a bite of the sandwich. I had the feeling he was mulling over whether he should tell me or not. Finally, he looked into my eyes and made his decision. “Because Ned was his natural father. Though he never acknowledged him.”

“Oh.” That shut me up for a few minutes while I thought that through. “How do you know?”

He shrugged. “I’ve seen the report, looked through the files. It’s all there.”

I stared at him. “Tell me the rest,” I said quietly, sitting down across from him. I knew there had to be more.
 

He took another bite so I waited, trying not to look too impatient. After all, I was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to tell me these things and he could clam up on me at any time. I had to handle this carefully.
 

“That was the motive behind her attempt at killing Ned,” he finally added. “At least, that was what she said at the time. Because he wouldn’t accept the son she was having as his own, even though she knew for sure he was the father.”

“Oh.” I threw up my hands. All this was really clearing up some questions. “Oh for Pete’s sake! What else don’t I know about these people? Tell me quick.”

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

“Oh sure.” I stopped to think about all the new questions this brought up. “So the man who shot at me might have been Peg’s son Jasper? Oh wow.” I turned to look at Roy. “Tell me all about him. Why would he be in the woods behind Ned’s?”

He dragged his gaze away from mine. “This sandwich is great,” he said in an obvious attempt to avoid answering.
 

“And it’s poisoned,” I told him sharply. “Ancient island secrets, and I’ve got the only antidote. So answer quick or face the consequences.”

He combined a deep breath with a pained rolling of the eyes at my lame joke, then winced as though facing the music. “Okay. Here’s the deal. From what I was able to find out, Peg got pregnant while working at Ned’s as a housekeeper. He refused to accept the child. She tried to poison him out of spite. She ended up doing time for that. The baby was born when she was in prison.”

“Oh no.” How tragic!

“Yes. And the kid was mostly raised by her sister while she was locked away.”

“Oh yeah. I met her at the meeting last night. Sue Hatchet. Seemed very nice.”

He nodded. “When Peg got out, the kid ran off, wouldn’t accept her as his mother. Nobody was accepting anybody from what I could tell.”

“What a shame. What a balance relationships are. It’s so easy to tilt them out of whack.”

“I guess so.” He looked at me quizzically. “Anyway, Peg tried over the years. Sometimes Jasper would come and stay with her and try to come to grips with things. But mostly, he wandered the world, never really finding his place in it.”

“Poor Peg. No wonder she’s kind of nuts.”

“Yeah. Anyway, every now and then he would take to the woods behind Ned’s, trying to spook him, trying to get something out of him, a rise or a smile or something. Probably money as well. From what I can see, it never worked out. Ned continued to ignore him. He called the police a few times, but they never found Jasper. It seems he had a good hiding place out there. There might be some caves in the rocks below or something where he goes when he really has to go to ground.”

That made me think of something. “Did the captain know about all this?” I asked.
 

Roy hesitated. “He must have if he read the report.”

I narrowed my eyes staring at him. “And he still pretended I was lying about some man coming out of the woods and shooting at me?”

Roy looked troubled. “You have to understand. The captain seems to have something personal against you. I don’t know what it is. I can’t read the man’s mind. But there’s something there.”

“Great. So I’m doomed, no matter what the facts show?”

He gave me that sideways smile that curled my toes. “Seems like.”

I studied his face. He was handsome, but wary. Suddenly it occurred to me that he didn’t trust easily, and he definitely didn’t trust me. That was a shock. What was not to trust about me? I was an open book, for Pete’s sake.
 

When you came right down to it, I didn’t know anything much about this man. I knew he was handsome and sexy and could be kind. Other than that—nada. Had he ever been married? Did he have a kid somewhere? Had his parents sold him to gypsies? Or had he run away to join the traveling circus as a teenager?
 

Had he grown up in this beach town, surfing and dating a “Gidget” type girl and having bonfire parties on the beach? Or had he moved here from New York City? Was he heir to a vast fortune and just waiting for the right raven-haired, deeply tanned, only moderately neurotic island girl to share it with?
 

It could be any one of those things—so far, he wasn’t talking.
 

And right now, he wasn’t paying any attention to me. It was the cat he was staring at. I looked over to see what was going on. Sami was at the window, standing on the planter box outside, a wriggling lizard hanging from his mouth, taunting Silver.
 

Meanwhile, Silver was coming forward in a low slink. When he got close enough, he jumped up on the counter so that he and Sami were face to face. Slowly, deliberately, Sami dropped the lizard right down in front of Silver. His tail, high and proud, gave a defiant jerk. And he was off to find new victims. Silver made a pass at the lizard, but the glass was in the way. He gave the thing a sneer and jumped back down, sashaying toward his kitchen corner as though he really didn’t care.
 

I turned and looked at Roy. We both burst out laughing, then tried to stifle it. Cats are sensitive to ridicule and hold grudges. You have to be careful. But we could barely restrain our giggles.
 

“Did you see the look on Sami’s face?” I whispered. “It was like, ‘Hey guy, this is what I’m doing out here in the world while you’re locked up in your cushy prison. Ha ha.’”

“There was definitely some mockery involved,” he agreed. “Cats!” He smiled at me. I felt a slow warming where my heart was supposed to be.
 

“So tell me,” I said slowly. “How long have you been a cop around here?”

He leaned back in his chair and stretched. “A couple of years.”

“And Captain Stone has been your boss all that time?”

He nodded.
 

“Is he… .” I hesitated, not sure how to put this. “Is he good at what he does? Being the leader of a bunch of lawmen, I mean. Do you trust his methods? His instincts?”

He gave me a quizzical look. “What are you, the local shrink?” he said. “Put away the crazy theories I can see running around in your pretty head. Captain Stone is a good cop and a good investigator. I’d trust him with my life.”

I squinted at him. “With your reputation too?” I asked softly.
 

He gaped at me. “Where did that come from?” he demanded.
 

I bit my lip and shrugged. “I don’t know. Forget I said that. It’s none of my business anyway.”

“Look, Mele… .” He reached out and took my hand in his. “I know you’re frustrated right now. You feel like your reactions and instincts are being dismissed. But they aren’t. Believe me, the captain knows what I think of you.”

My jaw dropped. “You’ve talked about me?”

He nodded. “Sure. I wanted to make sure he didn’t get the false idea that you were somehow running around looking for trouble. So I told him a few things.”

“What things?”

He gave me a level look. “Okay, that’s enough true confessions. I’m done. I’ve got things to go do.”

I frowned, but I didn’t push it. I wondered if I should tell him about Lance, about seeing him with Gary. But I couldn’t really find a justification for it. What did it matter who Lance met with during the day? Or any other time. No point in bringing it up.
 

He looked at his watch. “I’ve got to get going.”

“Home?” I asked, wishing I knew for sure if he had a girl there or not.
 

He looked at me. “No. Actually, I thought I’d go back out to Ned’s. Do a drive-through at least. See if someone who knows how to hide in daylight might be skulking around in moonlight.”

“Good,” I said. “Hold on. I want to come too.”

“No. Hey, Mele. It might not be safe. After all, the guy shot at you once. Why wouldn’t he do it again?”

“We’ll be in the car, right? Just a drive-by?”

Reluctantly, he nodded. “Yeah, but…”

“Come on, Roy. I think I deserve to be in on this.”

He frowned. “You promise you’ll stay in the car, no matter what?”

“Of course,” I lied. “No matter what.”

He gave in. We dressed more warmly and went out to the car. The Christmas lights from downtown were lighting up the sky. Someone was running up behind me and I jumped, gasping, but it was only Ginny Genera, the local lady who trained constantly for marathons.
 

“Hey, Lovely people,” she said as she jogged on by. “Nice to see you together again.”

“Hey yourself, Ginny,” I called back.
 

Roy smiled and waved and then turned to me with a frown. “What is that supposed to mean?” he asked me. “That crack about us being together again?”

I just shrugged and got into the car.

“I mean,” he went on, obviously bothered by what she’d said. “what is that woman training for at ten o’clock at night?”

“It’s gotta be broad daylight somewhere,” I quipped, not very effectively.
 

Roy wasn’t the first I’d heard wonder about Ginny. I overheard one patron at Jill’s complain about her just the other day. “What...is she spying on us all or is it just me?” he sputtered, getting worked up about it.
 

But mostly, people felt about her the way I did. She was one of us.
 

 
“I think she’s the real deal. She’s just bound and determined to do well in the next marathon she enters.”

Roy looked a little disgruntled. “If you say so.”

“You cops. You’re all alike. So suspicious of everything anyone in the public does.”

“Hey, that’s not me,” he protested. “That’s the captain, sure. But it’s not me.”

I smiled and we took off down the road, heading for Ned’s.

Chapter Eleven

I started to get nervous as we turned on the dark access road. I stared into the trees along the way and realized it was going to be hard to make out a man in among them.
 

“What exactly are we looking for?” I asked, then realized I was whispering and Roy was laughing at me. “No, really,” I said aloud. “What does your training tell you in these situations?”

“Watch for movement. Watch for color.” We turned up Ned’s driveway. “And whatever you do,” he said, looking at me sternly, “Don’t get out of the car.” He pulled over and turned off the engine when we were still out of sight of the house and about a football field away.
 

“Wait a minute,” I said. “I thought this was just a drive-by. Where are you going?”

 
“You sit tight. I just want to take a look around. There was one area I had some thoughts about when I was here before.” He opened the door and got out. “I’ll be right back. Don’t move.”

And he melted into the trees.
 

“
Don’t move
!”
 

This was not what I’d bargained for and I was definitely annoyed. But I didn’t really want to go sloshing around in the woods. I didn’t know them well enough to have any idea of where I would be going anyway. So I sat where I was and pouted.
 

The minutes dragged by. I sat and I listened. I heard an owl, then a strange rustling, like wings, and a shriek. Oh great. Murder and mayhem in the animal kingdom. Other than that. It was mostly frogs. Boy those little guys could get loud.
 

Time was passing. It had to be a good fifteen minutes since Roy had left. What was he doing out there? I peered into the darkness, looking for a telltale light. He must have taken a flashlight with him. Where was he?

I started thinking crazy things, the way you do when you’re stuck in the dark with nothing to occupy your mind. I mean, like what if that Jasper guy was out there lying in wait? What if he’d grabbed Roy right from the first? I should have gone with him. I’m scrappy. Hey, Jasper wouldn’t stand a chance against a Hawaiian dynamo like me. Yeah … right.