Wild Wild Death Read online

  “Yeah, like I said.” The man’s sigh rose into the clear blue sky over our heads, an unheard prayer. “They’re cursed.”

  The next inning was about to start and the players came onto the field. Grumbling, Quinn turned back to the game. “I thought this summer was going to be different.”

  This, I understood.

  I thought this summer was going to be different, too.

  It was my turn to sigh. Not that I was about to let Quinn hear the frustration that bubbled in me like the fizz in the Diet Pepsi I was drinking. Pepper Martin does not keep her opinions—or her feelings—to herself. Unless those opinions and feelings reveal her weaknesses.

  And when it came to Quinn and what had happened a couple months before…

  Okay, I admit it, I was feeling… well, maybe weak wasn’t the right word. Maybe helpless was more like it. Or frustrated. Or sick and tired of beating around the bush and always ending up back where we started.

  Yeah, that was it.

  Sick and tired of beating around the bush and always ending up back where we started, I turned in my seat just enough to make it clear to Quinn that I wasn’t as interested in watching our pitiful team drag its way through to another loss as I was in talking.

  To him.

  Now.

  I put a hand on the arm of his navy windbreaker. Sure, it was summer. But this was Cleveland, and there’s an old joke in these parts about how if you don’t like the weather, all you have to do is wait around for a minute. True to form, it had been in the eighties earlier in the day and who could blame me for being thrilled about showing off the scoop-neck, ruffle-front, multicolored sundress I’d gotten for a steal at Filene’s Basement.

  Then, just an hour before Quinn picked me up for the game, a front blew through and a wind off the lake brought cool Canadian air streaming our way.

  “It’s not about warmth,” I’d told Quinn when he warned me I’d be more comfortable at the stadium near the lakefront in jeans and a sweatshirt. “It’s about fashion.”

  I was fashionable, all right.

  As long as nobody noticed the goose bumps that marched up my arms.

  But have no fear, even the shiver that raced over my nearly bare shoulders wasn’t enough to distract me. I leaned in close so Quinn couldn’t fail to catch the scent of my Happy perfume. “We need to talk,” I said.

  He slid me a look. For about a second and a half. That was when he went back to watching the game. “About… ?”

  It was my turn to grumble. “You know what it’s about. About how you got shot by that murder suspect.”

  “He’s behind bars where he belongs and I’m fine.” That was that. Or at least that’s the message he sent since Quinn never bothered to take his eyes off the field.

  But I am a redhead, remember, and not so easily put off.

  I tightened my hold on his jacket. “That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it. You know it, because I’ve tried to talk to you about this like…” I really didn’t have to stop to consider how many times I’d brought up the subject because I figured, by now, we were talking dozens. At least. I paused, anyway, the better to draw out the drama while the pitcher threw, the batter didn’t swing, and the umpire called a ball, a decision the Indians fans around us disputed loud and long.

  “I’ve tried to talk to you about this since it happened,” I reminded Quinn even though I shouldn’t have had to. “I’m not talking about how you got shot. I’m talking about how when you got shot, you died. For just a couple minutes, anyway. I’m talking about how I was home that night, and how you showed up in my living room and told me what happened to you. I’m talking about those few minutes, Quinn. You know, when you were a ghost.”

  “Did you see that?” Quinn was out of his seat faster than should have been possible for a guy who’d been mortally wounded just a few short months before. His groan was echoed by those of the other fans seated around us. He dropped back into his seat. “An error. The guy hit the ball and it went right through the third baseman’s glove. A frickin’ error.”

  “You mean another error.” The fan in the row behind us threw his scorecard on the ground in frustration. “That’s the second one this game and the second time the White Sox have scored thanks to the fact that our guys can’t catch a ball.”

  “Or a break,” Quinn growled.

  The guy behind us agreed. “Hell, that’s no surprise. We haven’t won a World Series since 1948. And it’s all because of that damned curse.”

  Not my problem, though from the way he nodded in agreement, Quinn apparently thought it was his. “That Indian,” he said, and since he glanced at me when he said this, I figured he wasn’t talking about one of the players on the field, “the one who put the curse on Cleveland. He’s buried in your cemetery, isn’t he?”

  This time, I had no reservations about showing my ticked-off-ness. Quinn should have known better than to bring up a subject that was still plenty sore. I narrowed my eyes and shot him a look, my teeth clenched.

  “It’s not my cemetery anymore.”

  “Of course. I know that.” This was his way of apologizing, and it wasn’t good enough. “I keep forgetting you got laid off.”

  “Dumped, you mean.” I crossed my arms over my chest. It was the perfect way to display my displeasure, and besides, it helped keep me a tad warmer. “When you get laid off, there’s some expectation of getting called back to work. Garden View Cemetery—”

  “Don’t take is so personally. You know what Ella says—”

  “That the cemetery is cutting costs. Sure.” I knew this like I knew my own name, because in the two months I’d been out of work, I’d heard Ella, my former boss, tell me all about it with tears in her voice every time she called me. Which was every day.

  Sure, I understood the party line. Times were tough. Budgets were tight. Costs had to be kept in line, and around Garden View, that meant getting rid of staff.

  Me.

  That didn’t make the sting of losing my job any less painful. Not that I’m a geek like Ella and actually like working in a cemetery. But there is the whole paycheck thing. Getting by on my unemployment check and the monthly payment I still got from helping out a ghost’s granddaughter a couple years back wasn’t easy. It was putting a cramp on my lifestyle, not to mention my ability to stay fashion-forward.

  “Besides, Goodshot Gomez isn’t buried at Garden View, he’s interred.”

  Quinn finished watching the next play before he asked, “Who?”

  “The Indian.” I sounded as exasperated as all the baseball fans around me. For all different reasons. “You’re the one who brought it up.”

  “The curse. The Indian.” Quinn nodded. “The one in your cemetery. The legend says that with his dying breath, he said he had to be taken back to New Mexico, and if he was buried anywhere else, that place would be cursed.”

  “Only he’s not…” I controlled a screech, but just barely, and used my best tour-guide voice. I congratulated myself—two months and I could still fake my way through sounding like I knew what I was talking about. “Technically, Goodshot Gomez isn’t buried. His casket is kept in a mausoleum. That means his body isn’t in the ground. It’s inside this fancy-dancy little marble building. He was in town as part of some Wild West show, you know. And he died here. And his friends left money at Garden View so the cemetery would keep his body until they came back for him and took him to New Mexico.” Even when I had a tour group in front of me, this was always an Ew! moment for me, and I shivered now like I always did back at the cemetery when I told the story. “Only they never returned for him. Nobody knows why. And there was this mausoleum that somebody had built and never finished paying for so the cemetery used Goodshot’s money and put him in there. His casket is kept in the mausoleum on a sort of platform.”

  “I think it’s called a bier.”

  “How would you know that?”

  A smile tugged one corner of Quinn’s mouth. “I hang out with a cemetery tour guid
e.”

  “A former cemetery tour guide.”

  He patted my knee. “Former cemetery tour guide.”

  “Who talks to the dead.”

  It wasn’t exactly subtle, but I was long past toeing the line. For my sake as well as for Quinn’s. I am not, after all, stupid. Deep in my heart, I know that people have to accept me for who I am without external proof. I wish Quinn would have just believed me back when I finally admitted that I keep getting mixed up in his cases because I’ve got this goofy Gift and it’s nonreturnable and the ghosts I deal with tell me they’ll haunt me for the rest of my life if I don’t help them. But that wasn’t how it worked, and then Quinn finally did have… well, I guess it wasn’t living proof… but it was proof. That’s for sure. He did finally have proof that I was telling the truth, and it was time for him to man up and admit it.

  “We’ve got to talk about it, Quinn,” I said. “When I told you I talk to the dead and solve their mysteries, you walked out on me, remember?” I guess he did because his green eyes flashed. “But then you died. And you were a ghost. At least for a little while. And you came to me and you told me where the cops could find the guy who shot you. I couldn’t make up that kind of information and get it right, could I? That proves the experience was real. That I really do talk to the dead. We need to talk about this, Quinn, partly because I need to hear from you that you don’t think I’m a nutcase, but mostly because you can’t keep something like this bottled up inside you. You were dead!”

  “As dead as this team, and it’s only June!” I guess while I was busy passionately defending my position, some more bad stuff happened out on the field because Quinn slumped back in his seat and the people around us groaned, got to their feet, and headed for the exits. “Another loss for the record books,” he said.

  And another go-nowhere, solve-nothing, can’t-get-passed-it conversation between me and the guy I once thought was the man of my dreams.

  There was no use prolonging the evening; I got to my feet, too, and headed up the steps to the main concourse of the stadium with Quinn right behind me. At the top of the steps, a brisk breeze whipped my curly hair and a new batch of goose bumps erupted up my arms and across my shoulders.

  Quinn’s not a cop for nothing. He’s pretty good when it comes to noticing things. “Here.” He already had his windbreaker off and he draped it over my shoulders. “I’m tired of watching you shiver, so don’t give me any bull about who might see you looking like a dork in my jacket.”

  I was too chilly to argue.

  I slipped my arms into the jacket, snapped it shut, and warmth enveloped me along with the scent of Quinn’s expensive aftershave. My mood brightened. At least for as long as it took us to get out onto the street. Right outside the stadium, there was a knot of people around a man with a microphone and a woman dressed in a buckskin dress and a feathered headdress.

  “I could put a stop to the curse,” the woman said. Her dark hair was done up in braids that hung over her shoulders, and she had a dozen strands of beads around her neck that reminded me of the jewelry Ella liked to wear. She was holding a smoldering bunch of smelly herbs and she raised her arm and waved the smoke toward the stadium. “I come here every game and do my best to try and clear the bad vibrations around the team, but if the cemetery where Goodshot is buried would just allow me to perform a corn ceremony at his grave, I know I could lift the curse. The city of Cleveland needs my help. The Cleveland Indians need my help. I’m pleading to the people in charge of the cemetery. If you’d just let me in to do the ceremony, I can turn this city around!”

  “Let’s see what this disappointed Indians fan thinks.” The reporter was in front of me and his microphone was in my face so fast, I never had a chance to duck out of the way. Too bad. At least then I could have shrugged out of Quinn’s jacket so I didn’t look like a complete fashion moron on the eleven-o’clock news.

  As if things could get any worse, the reporter’s eyes lit the moment he looked me over, and I knew what it meant. He recognized me from that wacky PBS cemetery renovation show I’d been involved in the year before. Sure, it was nice to know I was still something of a cult celebrity. Not so nice when I realized I was about to be put on the spot.

  Wearing a man’s blue windbreaker.

  “Talk about luck! This is Pepper Martin.” The reporter’s smile was as bright as the lights of the TV camera. “She works at Garden View Cemetery, where Goodshot is buried. Tell us, Pepper, what’s the cemetery going to do? Do you think Morning Dove here…” He glanced toward the Native American who I’d bet any money wasn’t a real Native American at all. “Do you think she can lift the curse? Can you help us out, convince the people at the cemetery that we need her? You could be a hometown hero, Pepper.”

  Did that pause mean I was supposed to say something?

  I scrambled, thinking about how I could get out of this tight spot by telling the world how I was low man on the totem pole (no Indian puns intended) and how I’d been unceremoniously tossed out of my cemetery job on my blue windbreaker–covered butt in the name of profits. I would have done it, too, except that I knew the reporter was from the station Ella watched every night. And I wouldn’t embarrass her for all the world.

  “I can’t speak for the cemetery administrator,” I said, pulling out that tour-guide voice again and giving the reporter a wide smile. Maybe if people concentrated on the seven thousand dollars of teeth straightening in my mouth, they wouldn’t notice the fashion faux pas that was my attire. “And I certainly can’t speak for Ella Silverman, the cemetery’s community relations manager, either. But I would like to remind your viewers that there’s no way to prove that there really is a curse.”

  “A curse? Sure there’s a curse. And somebody needs to do something about it.”

  Saved by the guy behind me who piped right up, his voice so passionate, the reporter had no choice but to swing his way. Glad to be off the hook, I stepped back to Quinn’s side to watch.

  The guy was in his twenties, short, round, and wearing an Indians T-shirt and flannel pants with Chief Wahoo, the team’s mascot, all over them. “That curse is what’s keeping us from winning,” he said, his face as red as his shirt.

  “No way we should have lost tonight,” the tall, thin kid next to him said. “We had our best pitcher on the mound. Winning should have been a sure bet.”

  “There’s no such thing as a sure bet,” another guy with them grumbled. “Not when it comes to this team.”

  The reporter signaled to his cameraman to stop filming. “That’s great,” he said to everyone, and no one in particular. “Thank you all. And Morning Dove”—he turned to her—“when Garden View lets you in, you’ll let us know, won’t you? Hey, talk to Pepper here. I bet she can arrange…” By the time he got that far, I was already marching down the street for all I was worth.

  It wasn’t until Quinn and I stopped at the next corner to wait for the light that I realized the guys who’d been on camera with us were right in front of us. And that I knew one of them.

  “Brian?” I turned for a better look. The last time I’d seen him, Brian was decked out in one of those vests fishermen wear, the kind with about a hundred little pockets all over them. But then, he’d needed the flashlights, batteries, notebooks, and such he’d brought along because we were on a ghost hunt. I was trying to solve the forty-year-old murder of a rock star, and Brian and his merry little band of buttinsky ghost hunters had been invited along by Dan Callahan, a paranormal investigator friend/boyfriend/almost lover of mine. “Brian, it’s me, Pepper. We met—”

  “Of course. I thought you looked familiar.” Brian stuck out his hand, I introduced him to Quinn, and he told us the guys who’d been on camera with him were John, the round guy in the flannel pants, and Gregory, taller, thinner, and decked out in just as much Indians gear. There was a fourth man in the group, too, a quiet guy by the name of Arnie. Done with the introductions, Brian got right to the meat of the discussion.

  “Maybe you
can do something, Pepper. You know, about the curse. You work at that cemetery and…”

  I might not want to admit my unemployment on the nightly news, but I knew I had to come clean with these guys. It was that, or they’d bug me forever about getting them into Goodshot’s mausoleum.

  I told them the bad news—no job, no influence, no corn ceremony—and watched their expressions fall.

  “We’re doomed.” Arnie shook his head. “If we can’t lift this curse, the team is never going to get any better.”

  Quinn sized them all up in his usual eagle-eyed way. “You’re really serious fans.”

  “You got that right.” John stuck out his left arm, back-side up. His wrist was tattooed in red and blue. the tribe will rise again, it said in thick, block letters right above 1948.

  “We’ve all got them,” Brian said, and he and Gregory and Arnie showed off their matching tattoos. “We figured it was the least we could do to show our solidarity with the team.”

  “Yeah, the team.” John’s shoulders drooped.

  The light changed. We crossed the street and said good-bye to the guys outside the bar where they went to drown their baseball-induced sorrows. Quinn drove me home, relatively silent. At least about what mattered.

  He talked about the game. And about Brian and the guys and how refreshing it was to still find fans who were committed to the team. He talked about going to rehab the next day and hinted that he could leave from my apartment—if I’d let him stay the night.

  Two could play the same game, and besides, I wasn’t ready to hop back into bed with the man who’d smashed my heart into a million pieces with his skepticism. We had a long way to go, Quinn and I, before we were back to where we’d once been.

  When we pulled up to my apartment building, I gave him one last chance to make a move. No, not that kind of move. A move in the right direction. “If you want to come in and talk about what happened to you outside that warehouse a couple months ago…”

  My offer dangled in the air between us for a few seconds. “I think you’re right,” Quinn said and my spirits rose. He was finally going to open up about what it was like to be dead and how lousy he felt to have ever doubted me. “It’s getting late and I’d better get home.” He gave me a quick peck on the cheek. “I’ll call you.”