Dances With Ghosts (Murder By Design Book 7) Page 2

  “Lemon tree,” Detective Smith said.

  They all laughed.

  Yeah. This was all just hilarious.

  Jake handed me his keys. “Here, you can head home, babe. I’ll get a ride from someone.”

  I was being dismissed.

  I understood the why of it in theory, but hey, I had a decent track record solving murders. I had been the only one who had even suspected my grandma’s friend Vera had been murdered, and because of me, a confessed killer was sitting in jail awaiting his hearing.

  This sucked. “Okay.” I took the keys, because what choice did I have? They weren’t going to let me stay. Crime scene techs were already unrolling the yellow tape.

  Once upon a time, in my early twenties, I had been a crime scene technician myself, because I had wanted to be badass like my prosecutor mother, but sucked at public speaking, so law was out. I had also wanted to be around Ryan, who I had met in criminal justice class at community college, and who I had developed a massive crush on, so while law was out, crime scene tech was in.

  But I hadn’t vibed with the job. In fact, if I hadn’t quit, I would have been fired. I’d gone on to start my own home staging business “Put It Where?” but knowing how to choose a soothing color palette did me no good in this ghost business.

  Marner took his cronies inside and barely gave me a wave.

  It occurred to me that the murderer might still be in the area. None of those pros had considered that, had they? Except they had. I realized a uniformed officer was following me discreetly and doing a sweep, gun out. Yikes. I fast-walked around the corner.

  Ryan, my one-time crush, and Marner’s former partner, fell in step beside me.

  “Dance lessons? How did you talk Marner into that?”

  I glanced over at my dead friend, not surprised to see him. His ghost came and went at will.

  “His mom bought them for us as a gift.”

  “Ah. That makes sense. You can’t say no to Mrs. M.”

  “That is very true. I was just thinking that same thing.” I crossed the parking lot, glancing around to make sure there was no murderer about to leap out and strangle me. “What’s new with you? Are you here because of Carmen? Was she murdered?”

  I knew she had been murdered. She had to be. There had yet to be a ghost who had shown themselves to me who had died of natural causes. But Ryan occasionally had intel from upstairs and could share it with me.

  “Yep. Bludgeoned to death. Multiple hits to the head. I saw the paperwork.”

  He always talked about mysterious paperwork but never explained what actually went on in his afterlife. I strongly suspected at times Ryan was withholding information from me or flat-out lying. Now didn’t seem like the time to question it though.

  “That seems very aggressive,” I said, as I unlocked the door to Jake’s truck. “Isn’t that classic overkill?”

  I approached the truck and was about to open the door when something from under the carriage grabbed my ankle.

  I screamed.

  Two

  Jerking backward to escape, instead of making a clean getaway, I fell onto my butt. But survival instincts had me crab walking, trying to escape my attacker.

  “Bai, calm down, it’s a cat.” Ryan was doubled over laughing.

  That made me pause. From my view on the asphalt I could see under the truck. Ryan was right. It was an orange cat. Fat and angry looking. “What’s his problem?” I asked, annoyed. He had scared the begeezus out of me. “I didn’t do anything to him.”

  “Cats can be jerks.” Ryan shrugged. “I didn’t know you could move that fast. That was solid gold.”

  “Hilarious.” I hauled myself off the ground, dirt all over my hands and butt. I brushed my leggings off and reached in my bag for hand sanitizer. It wouldn’t get rid of the dirt, but it would make me feel better. Hand sanitizer has a placebo effect on me.

  I opened the truck. “Who would want to kill Carmen? Any clues? And what kind of a killer knocks her off in broad daylight with a giant glass window at the front of the studio?”

  Ryan appeared in the passenger seat, without opening the door. “Are you sure it was in daylight? Maybe it was last night.”

  The thought that Carmen had been lying there all day made me wrinkle my nose. “You’re right. I don’t know that. I only had a two-second glance at the blood pool.” It was frustrating to be kicked out of the crime scene. How was I supposed to solve murders when I couldn’t look for clues? “I don’t see how it could be a burglary. I doubt there was any money in the studio. Carmen does electronic billing.”

  “It’s either a predator or interpersonal.”

  “You think a random person could have seen that she was in her studio alone a lot at night and targeted her?”

  “Sure. Especially someone who is sexually motivated.”

  I didn’t want to consider the fact that Carmen had been assaulted prior to her death. There couldn’t possibly have been time for that in a studio with a glass window. I kept coming back to that window. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it happened last night. But I thought she had a private lesson before ours. She did last week.”

  “Maybe their lesson was canceled. Or maybe they showed up and she didn’t let them in, so they left without looking around.”

  “The door was unlocked.” I pulled out of the parking spot. I always felt like a toddler driving Marner’s truck. It seemed like a lot of vehicle for a skinny redhead. Like being a kid and your dad lets you pretend to drive his car. “I’m going to have to call Mrs. Marner. You need to stay with me for moral support.”

  Ryan was never a great bet for a comforting word but he was better than nothing. I had no idea how Jake’s mother was going to react. I hit her number and put my phone on speaker so I could drive.

  “Bailey?” she answered, as if it were in question that it would be me calling from my phone. “What’s wrong? Aren’t you supposed to be at your dance lesson right now? Is Jake okay? Was there a car accident?”

  “If she stopped talking, maybe you could answer any one of those questions,” Ryan said, looking amused.

  I waved my hand at him.

  “Jake’s fine. We’re both fine, but well, our dance instructor isn’t. When we got to the studio she was, um, incapacitated on the floor.”

  Mrs. Marner gasped. “Is she okay? How terrible!”

  “Well.” I wrinkled my nose and cleared my throat. “I didn’t really get much of a look because Jake had me wait outside, but it seems, well, that she’s dead, and it appeared to be suspicious. Jake called in Homicide.”

  “Oh, good Lord,” she said. I could actually visualize her doing a sign of the cross. “How is that even possible? What is with you two? You can’t go five minutes without stumbling on a dead body. I’m going to pray for poor Carmen’s soul. Then I’m going to pray for you and Jake.”

  What was I supposed to say to that? Deflect. “I’ll have Jake call you when he gets home tonight.”

  “Has Jake moved in with you already?” she asked sharply.

  There is only one thing Mrs. M likes less than us being tangled up in murders, and that was us living together. Which we weren’t yet. We had several weeks before Jake moved in but clearly the idea that something might have happened without her knowledge was just as bad, if not worse, than the thought of our living in sin.

  “No. I meant when he gets home to his apartment.” Maybe. He had to come to my house to get his truck because I had to go home because of Grandma Burke. But I’d already dropped a corpse on his mother, I wasn’t going to argue about living arrangements.

  “Oh. Okay. We’re still going to brunch on Sunday, right?”

  “Yes.”

  She said goodbye and I ended the call. “That went well.”

  “Totally. She only grows to dislike you a little more every day.”

  Very reassuring. “Hey! She doesn’t dislike me. At least, she didn’t until the bodies started racking up. Which is not my fault.”

  “I t
hink she cares more about the fact that you’re not married.” Ryan was preoccupied trying to touch the vent on the dashboard. He was attempting to open the slots but his hand kept going through the lever.

  I’d seen him move objects before but he hadn’t learned the skill consistently. “I have no control over Jake proposing or not and us moving in together was his idea.” One that sometimes still made my throat constrict. I loved Jake, don’t get me wrong, but he came with a lot of stuff. Plus, that made three of us in a small house.

  He was very tidy though, so that was a plus. I wouldn’t have said yes if he wasn’t because I have some issues involving organization and my obsession with it.

  Ryan stopped fiddling and looked at me. “Would you say yes if he asked you to marry him?”

  Flustered by the direct question, feeling his gaze on me, I kept my eyes on the road. “What? I don’t know. Yes? What difference does it make? He hasn’t asked me.” We hadn’t been dating long enough for marriage, in my opinion, but I knew that was the wrong answer to most people. If a man is ready for marriage, a woman is supposed to be. Which is crap. I was almost ready. Getting warm. Like when you put on a sweater in September. Upping the temp just a notch. That should count for something.

  “Whoa. Overreacting. That’s very revealing.”

  Now I did glance at him. “What are you, Freud? It’s not revealing at all. Jake is moving in with me. We have a serious relationship and that’s all that matters and why do you care anyway?”

  “Meow.”

  I hated it when he did that. I rolled my eyes even though I was still looking forward at the road.

  “I can’t get used to the two of you as a couple. You knew each other for years before you started dating, so I don’t get the sudden shift. And I just never saw you two together, that’s all.”

  “You never saw me with anyone.” That was a sore spot for me. “You were visualizing me as an old maid, there for you whenever you needed a favor.”

  “You wound me. That is not true.”

  It was true. “Can we get back to the dead dance teacher? I feel really terrible about Carmen.”

  “You need to get your hands on the CCTV footage from the neighborhood.”

  Because, sure, that would be easy. “And how am I supposed to do that?”

  “Impersonate a police officer?”

  That actually made me laugh. “Sure, sounds like a great plan. How about I just let Jake take the lead on this murder? Carmen isn’t part of our quota, is she?”

  There had been some noise about me having a quota as a medium, that I needed to help a certain number of spirits pass on or… what, I had no clue. I didn’t even know what my alleged number was because Ryan sucked at details. He tended to fall asleep in meetings. Being dead hadn’t changed that.

  He was, as usual, zero help. “I don’t know. But she has to be. It can’t be a coincidence that Mrs. M called this particular dance studio for lessons. It had to be some kind of guiding force.”

  “I think it was because she got a Groupon. And she liked the name Tippy-Toe.”

  “Lemon tree.”

  Of course, he’d said that. I wonder if Carmen had regretted her name choice. Or maybe she’d done it on purpose so people would easily remember it.

  “Well, unless I get some sort of actual notice from upstairs, I’m taking a backseat on this. I have no way to investigate Carmen’s death for one thing. And for another, in this case, the cops will be on it. I thought my job was to be the squeaky wheel when nothing was getting done, not to play detective.”

  “I’ll have to see if I can get some clarification on the issue.”

  “Great. Then we’ll circle back to this next week.” I glanced over and shot him a grin. “This meeting of the first order of otherworldly incidents is adjourned.”

  “You’re weird,” was his response.

  Then he was gone.

  I sighed.

  Sure, I was getting used to the vaporizing thing. But I still didn’t like it.

  Pulling into my narrow driveway, I put the truck in park and turned it off. Jake was calling me.

  “Hello?”

  “You could have warned me you were going to call my mother,” he said, though he sounded more amused than pissed. “She’s on my ass about it already. Like you and I personally killed Carmen.”

  “Sorry. But admit it, it would be worse if she saw it on the news or something.”

  “You’re right. I’m going to be really late tonight. I’ll just stay at my place so I don’t wake you up.”

  “Okay.” That was a bit of a bummer. Jake kept my feet warm. “I can bring the truck back to you tomorrow.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “So—

  “No, I can’t tell you anything, so don’t ask.”

  Dang it. He knew me too well. “You can’t tell me what?” I asked, angling for innocent.

  Jake snorted. “Uh-huh. Okay, Nancy Drew, I gotta go. I love you.”

  I never appreciated the Nancy Drew reference. She was way better at this sleuthing thing than me. But she had lousy shoes.

  “I love you too.” I ended the call and exited the truck, slamming the door shut. Geez, that thing was heavy. I really needed to start working out.

  I can’t explain how I didn’t notice the man right away. Probably because I was staring down at my phone. Darn technology, it’s hypnotizing.

  But suddenly there was a guy in tight pants and a silky shirt popping off my front step and getting in my face.

  What the heck?

  I jumped backward, shifting my bag to nail him in the gut if necessary. I fumbled around with my phone to have access to 911 if I needed it. “Back off, buddy!” I said, trying to sound menacing. “I have pepper spray!” I stuck my hand in my bag to make it seem like I was fishing around for a can.

  “What?” He stopped moving toward me, and put his hands up. “No. I’m not mugging you.”

  Truthfully, if he did mug me, I could get the best of him. He wasn’t exactly Jason Momoa. He was slim and at most five foot six. We could have been fair-skinned twins. I relaxed just slightly. “What are you doing on my doorstep?”

  “I had to talk to someone about Carmen.”

  That explained the outfit he was wearing. Generally speaking, men don’t wear teal silk shirts in March. Not in Cleveland anyway. That didn’t make this any less… off. “What about Carmen?” I asked, suddenly suspicious. “Are you her partner?”

  He nodded, looking guilty. “Her new partner. Secret partner.”

  Oooh, there was a secret partner. Also of note, he was either a baby-faced forty-year-old or he was substantially younger than Carmen. I was going younger. Not even good genetics or Botox could achieve that silken smooth complexion.

  “What about her former partner?”

  “He doesn’t know. Not yet. But I think something bad happened to Carmen. When I got to the studio last night there was blood and I tried to call 911 and…” He looked around. “I don’t know. I’m not sure what happened. But somehow I ended up here.” Now he paused and frowned. “Wait a minute. Why am I here? Who the hell are you?”

  Oh, boy. Spirit alert. It seemed we had two dead bodies at the dance studio. Maybe this guy was in the back room or something.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Jason Walker.”

  “Jason, why don’t you come inside and have a seat. We need to talk. I’m Bailey.”

  He put his hand out to shake hands and I hesitated. That was not a way for him to learn he was, in fact, dead. Then I decided there was no easy way to get the news you were dunnzo. I put my hand in his and of course, it went right through him.

  Jason yelped and jerked away. “What is going on? What just happened?” He looked around, voice rising. “Where am I? How did I get here?”

  “Jason,” I said, using a gentle voice. “You’re dead.”

  Then before my neighbors called social services and said I was a nutbag who shouldn’t have guardianship of my g
randmother because I was trying to shake hands with nothing, I unlocked the front door and entered my house. He would follow. I could almost guarantee it.

  He did.

  “What are you talking about? That’s impossible!”

  I gestured for him to enter the living room and I closed the door behind me. “Is it? You don’t remember how you got here. I’m sorry, Jason, I think when you interrupted Carmen’s murder last night, you were murdered as well.”

  A shame, really. Jason looked around my age. That was really young to have danced his last tango.

  “Murdered? Who would want to murder me?” He put his hands on his chest in outrage, like I’d just suggested someone gut a unicorn.

  Which might be an accurate description of him.

  “I don’t know. You tell me. Or maybe you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Who might have wanted to kill Carmen?” I set my bag down on the bench by the door and slipped off my shoes. I’m not a fan of shoes in the house. “Grandma, I’m home,” I called out.

  “Who’s with you? That’s not Jake’s voice.” Grandma shuffled in from the kitchen with a doughnut in her hand.

  She ate from dawn to dusk and beyond every single day and never gained a pound. It was some kind of old lady voodoo. Maybe one of life’s little mea culpas. You’re old and nothing else on your body works, but at least you can eat whenever you want without gaining weight. There should be at least some advantage to aging.

  “It’s not. He got called in to work. This is Jason.” I gestured behind me. Jason was trailing me, clearly bewildered by his new status.

  “Ah, a fresh one,” Grandma said. “What happened to you, kiddo? Fall off of a cruise ship?”

  I pursed my lips so I wouldn’t laugh. There was nothing humorous about the situation.

  “I was meeting my dance partner. We were planning a dress rehearsal for an upcoming competition.” He rubbed his temples, like he was trying to remember. “I came in from the parking lot and the music was playing, so I just went into the studio and… there she was. Just on the floor, bleeding. I was planning to go into the office to use the phone because I didn’t have my phone on me. I left it in the car.” He patted his tight pants. “No pockets.”