Gull Harbor (22 page)

“So, I’m guessing those thoughts were not about me.” He nodded at Dan as the other man emerged from the kitchen.

“No, they were about Maria. I had a vision last night, from after she had died.” Claire lowered her voice and glanced around, recalling the time she’d caught the strange man snooping amongst her things. “I’m not sure she was even aware she’d passed on—she seemed so confused and scared.”

“That’s terrible.” Max kneaded the taut muscles in the back of her neck. “Thanks,” he said as Dan set a cup of coffee in front of him before hurrying away.

“It is terrible. And then…Gary put her in a wheelbarrow. I saw that part. And I got the Spanish word for woods. He must have taken her out of the house in the middle of the night and buried her body in the woods,” she finished with a shudder.

“God,” Max said with a grimace. “Well, that certainly seems like a safe assumption. Which means this is over, Claire. There’s nowhere to go from here, except maybe to try and locate Maria’s family and let them know what happened.”

“That’s not good enough!” Panic fluttered through her chest, like wings beating against her ribcage. She drew in a calming breath. “I mean, of course we need to tell her family eventually—I have the name of her town written in my notebook. But first we have to find her. Then we can work on getting her remains back to Mexico.”

“There are acres and acres of woods around that house—and all around Mill Pond. And she’s been out there for years. We won’t be able to find her, babe.”

She gazed out the front windows of the diner. Dismal gray clouds were rolling in, echoing her mood. “There has to be a way. Maybe I could convince the police to bring out cadaver dogs?”

Max’s phone rang from its spot on the counter, the screen lighting up with his assistant’s name.

“Here we go,” Max said with a sigh. He picked up the phone and took a few steps toward the back of the restaurant. “Hey, Sean.”

Dan returned, setting a plate in front of her. “Breakfast is served. And it’s nice to see you two together again,” he added with a wink.

Her cheeks warmed. She shrugged, dipping a slice of melon into the bowl of yogurt. “Thanks. I don’t know if we’re ‘together,’ but we’re not fighting anymore, at least.”

“I have to get to the tavern,” Max announced as he walked back over. “Supplier issues.” He pulled a small silver rectangle out of the pocket of his jeans and handed it to Claire. “This is for you. I meant to give it to you last night when you came by, but I got…distracted.” The corner of his mouth curled into the hint of a smile.

The flush in her cheeks burned hotter, and she dropped her eyes to the silver card in her hand. “Um…what is it?”

“It’s an Internet card. Basically it’s a wireless connection that will get you online anywhere.” He pressed a quick kiss onto her forehead. “I’ve got to get out of here before she starts arguing,” he told Dan as he backed toward the door. Turning on his heel, he strode out into the weak light of the overcast morning.

“He’s right, I would have argued. He just caught me by surprise.” She glanced up at Dan and was dismayed to see an uncharacteristic frown on his face. “Oh, God, how expensive are these things?”

“I have no idea. I’m more concerned about how it’s going to impact me. Now free Wi-Fi isn’t going to be enough to lure my best customer in here every morning.”

She burst out laughing. “Best customer? Surely you can’t mean me. Every time I try to pay off my tab, it magically amounts to less than ten dollars! Any more customers like me, and you’ll go bankrupt.”

He shrugged, his smile returning. “Okay, favorite customer then. You definitely brighten the place up. And you get the discount because you’re a draw—you’re like a local celebrity.”

She laughed again, but it sounded slightly bitter to her ears. “A local celebrity they’re terrified of. No one but you and Max even talks to me around here.”

“Well, they’re a little bit in awe of you. After all, you live in that house by yourself, and you talk to ghosts. The locals are always asking me what’s going on over there.” He shook his head quickly when he noticed the alarm in her eyes. “Don’t worry, I don’t tell them anything of substance. I just give them little things, like how the ghost arranges your stuff all the time. I hope that’s okay,” he added, his eyebrows pulling together in concern.

“That’s fine,” she assured him. “I just don’t want the big details getting out.” She relaxed, reminding herself that Max had encouraged her to keep the big details from Dan quite a while ago anyway.

Dan nodded to a customer across the room. “I’ve got to get back to work. Promise you’ll still visit, even though you now have your very own portable Internet connection?”

“Of course I will,” she said, her heart swelling gratefully. “It’s not just the free Wi-Fi that brings me here. I happen to like the food—and the owner.”

He favored her with one more wink as he hurried away. Setting the silver card next to her laptop, she focused on her breakfast.

****

Gary stubbed out another cigarette in his car’s overflowing ashtray. The waiting was grating on his already frazzled nerves. He’d checked out of his hotel at noon, to avoid being charged for another day in that pit; since then, he’d been driving around aimlessly. His injuries were still too conspicuous to allow himself to be seen walking around anywhere.

He’d finally parked in the driveway of the vacant house again, but doing nothing but staring at Mill Pond Road was worse than driving around. His hands shook as he lit another cigarette. This was ridiculous. The stolen gas can was in his trunk, his lighter was in his pocket, and his knife was under the seat. He was ready to put his plan into action, and every minute he had to wait only heightened his anxiety.

He glanced at the dashboard. It was 4:00 in the afternoon, but the dense cloud cover made it feel much later. In this weather, no one would be at the beach. Not one car had passed in the hour he’d been sitting here. He could kill Claire, pull her body down the stairs, and get a raging fire started in the basement within the next hour. A fire from below would do an enormous amount of damage before it was discovered. And then he could be on his way back to Connecticut.

It was tempting. His pills were concealed within the front seat, beckoning to him. And he wouldn’t be able to enjoy the release they offered until he was off the road and back in his apartment.

He had to move—to at least get out of the car and scope out the house. He’d take the gas can with him and approach the back of the house from the surrounding woods. At least that was doing something.

Decision made, he opened the car door and hurried around back to the trunk. After wiping his damp palms against his jeans, he grabbed the red plastic gas can by its handle and hoisted it up. The contents sloshed ominously. Gripping the can, he closed the trunk as quietly as possible and faded into the woods.

Chapter 30

Words flew at Claire, flooding her brain. She was doing her best to translate words and phrases as fast as possible with her new Internet connection. Maria seemed to sense something was different, and the air in the house felt charged, as though an electrical current was agitating the invisible molecules.

Maybe it’s just an approaching storm,
Claire thought as she glanced out the window at the dark afternoon sky. But no rain had been forecasted—just heavy clouds that seemed determined to obscure every last ray of sunlight left in the day.

She pulled her gaze back to the tragic words filling the page of her notebook:
cuerpo, sepultura, familia.
Their meanings—
body, grave, family
—were scribbled next to them, along with the translations of a dozen other phrases. It all boiled down to one thing: Maria was desperate to be found, and to be returned to her grieving family. They all deserved the closure that would bring, and Claire was determined to see them get it.

She made another attempt at entering a Spanish phrase into the translation Web site’s box. This was the most arduous task—trying to figure out how to spell words she could barely pronounce. She’d never taken Spanish in school; her father had insisted upon Latin, the language he felt would help her most in her legal career.

This time she hit upon a correctly spelled word, and its English counterpart popped up:
Find me
. Her heart squeezed painfully. “Oh, Maria…I want to,” she said out loud. “But I don’t know how.” She rolled her eyes as she realized Maria couldn’t understand her answer. Switching back to English to Spanish translations, she typed
I don’t know how
into the box on the screen.

“No sé cómo,”
she said with a sigh. Her accent was getting better at least. Standing up, she stretched her arms up to the ceiling. A dull ache pressed against her forehead. The pain wasn’t the debilitating kind the visions often brought on, but she could tell it had potential. She’d been at this for too long.

“Taking a break,” she murmured, climbing the creaky stairs to swallow some aspirin. Maria’s unintelligible reply to her previous comment swirled around her, demanding and repetitive. Another sigh escaped as she returned to her computer to engage in a new round of translations.

Ten minutes later she had it figured out:
I’ll lead you there
. Claire’s pulse quickened. Could Maria truly direct her to the correct spot in this great expanse of woods? Maria’s spirit could leave the house—that much had been made apparent by both flying rocks in the yard and growing leaf piles in the house. And in Claire’s last vision, it had certainly seemed as though Maria had chosen to follow her lifeless body as it was wheeled away into the night. Perhaps this really could work.

It was worth a try, she decided. Even if nothing came of it, a hike through the woods would provide her with some much-needed exercise. The danger, of course, was in getting lost. But if she was careful about noting her surroundings in relation to the pond, and remembering landmarks, it shouldn’t be too hard to find her way back.

“Okay,” she said. “I mean,
sí
.” She paused to think for a moment, chewing on her lip as her fingers hovered over the keyboard. Then she nodded to herself and typed another word into the box.

Ten minutes later, she had
izquierda
—the Spanish word for
left
—written in black marker on the palm of her left hand.
Derecha
, in much sloppier letters, was written on her right. Unfortunately, she’d discovered the word for
straight
—
derecho
—only varied from the word for
right
by one letter. She’d have to be careful of that.

She’d found a garden spade in the basement that was small enough to fit in her backpack, although the wooden handle stuck out of the top awkwardly. She added two bottles of water, a banana, and a granola bar to the contents of the backpack, closing the zipper around the tool’s handle as best as she could.

Her eyebrows lifted in surprise as she glanced at the clock. Somehow it was already 4:15 in the afternoon. She really had been sitting on the couch with her computer since she’d returned from the diner. A walk would do her good. And there was plenty of daylight left, or what was passing for daylight today. She’d grab a flashlight from the kitchen, just in case.

She tied a hooded sweatshirt around her waist and carried the backpack to the kitchen. Pulling open the junk drawer, she flicked the flashlight on to test it before securing it in a side pocket. Satisfied, she shouldered the backpack and let herself out through the kitchen door.

****

Gary froze, pressing his body into the rough bark of a massive pine tree. What the hell was she doing? He stood motionless, his heart slamming in his chest. Rushing blood thundered in his ears, competing with the sound of Claire securing the back door.

Exhaling slowly through his nose, he fought for control. What she was doing was less important than whether she had seen him. He didn’t think so; he’d been partially hidden already when she emerged from the kitchen
. Stay calm,
he reminded himself. He studied the gas can in his clenched fist as drops of sweat rolled off his forehead. The bright red plastic seemed to glow amongst the muted browns and greens of the surrounding woods.

He risked a glance around the left side of the tree. She was headed toward Mill Pond, away from him. His muscles relaxed a few degrees as he silently sighed with relief.

She turned onto the path, and he caught a glimpse of her backpack before she disappeared from view. His stomach seized, and he swayed on unsteady legs. The wooden handle sticking out from her backpack belonged to a shovel—he was certain. Claire the psychic detective was hiking into the woods on a gray afternoon with a shovel in her backpack. He knew, without a doubt, what it was she hoped to find.

A sickening fear washed over him, exacerbating the dizziness of withdrawal. Turning around carefully, he leaned his back against the solid trunk of the pine and forced himself to think.

This could be a good thing. He had his knife. If Claire’s destination really was Maria’s grave, she’d be following unmarked trails into a remote area of the forest. On a day like today, not many people were likely to be strolling through the woods. It was damn near perfect, in fact. Claire was about to vanish, much like her ghostly friend.

He waited another minute, going over the plan one more time in his head, searching for problems. There were none that he could recognize. Hurrying across the backyard, he placed the gas can near the bulkhead doors. The house would still burn—Claire’s body just wouldn’t be inside. And without a body, no autopsy that could possibly arouse suspicion could be conducted.

Nodding, he fingered the knife reassuringly before tucking it back into his belt. He pulled his shirt down over it and set off down the path.