Hush

Five

"You were right, Jesse."

Jesse grinned at me and said, very smugly, "I typically am."

"Taking the day off was a good move. I feel a lot better now."

"I thought so. Stomach viruses clear up on their own, but you're going to make yourself miserable if you don't slow down for a few moments. The world will be right where you left it when you come back, querida."

And then he climbed into bed beside me, apparently none the wiser that his wife was lying to him.

It couldn't be helped though. My lying to him, I mean. The stakes were too high to tell him now, right when we had just started investigating a thieving, homicidal ghost. If he knew the truth he'd insist on handling everything himself. Because I knew Jesse. Jesse did not like the idea of me being in danger even when I was in peak condition.

So I knew his macho side would absolutely revolt against the idea of his six weeks pregnant wife being in danger.

Dr. Morgana Morgan had confirmed it yesterday, even though it didn't make any sense to me because why had I been bothering to take birth control if it wasn't controlling anything? I took it every day at the same time, didn't skip days, and had never thrown any of it up (until recently at least). Her only answer for me had been, "Technically, Susannah, birth control is only 99.9% effective. By the way, please stop taking your birth control and go out and buy some prenatal vitamins today."

Jesse and I had talked about having children offhandedly, but we'd never actually sat down and planned anything out before. We had barely settled in at the clinic. It would've been better if we'd pushed back on the whole kid thing for another year or two.

Another year or three might have given me more time to grow up.

Because here I was, still slamming money in the swear jar like there was no tomorrow and regularly eating takeout instead of successfully cooking meals and sticking to my guns about my stubborn mediating habit of keeping things from people, including my husband. The more I thought about the whole thing, the more I didn't want to think about it all. And the more I didn't want to think about it, the more my mind forced me to confront it.

I was going to be a terrible mother.

Besides, how was I going to manage being a mother and a counselor and a mediator?

I didn't want to live my life according to any schedule made up by ghosts, but sometimes it was hard not to. After all, I was the best mediator in the northern California area, what with Jesse being a lot busier with the clinic than I was and Father Dominic being not exactly spry enough with his cane to be able to do battle with NCDPs anymore. I made the most regular sacrifices in the field of mediation.

Take, for instance, the past twenty-four hours.

Yesterday had been a lot less fruitful than I would have liked it to be. I took a taxi home, napped for a couple of hours, and then stopped by the pharmacy in the Land Rover to pick up the prenatal vitamins Dr. Morgan had suggested I buy. And then I showed up to work to see Daniel, the very reason I'd come into work instead of taking the whole day off to wallow in my nauseous pregnant misery, and I proceeded to make absolutely no headway with him.

I don't know what I'd been expecting. I thought the second his overbearing aunt was out of the room, we'd just bond or something, and then he'd reveal that he'd seen a shimmer of something out of the corner of his eye that couldn't have been real. He would also tell me the ghost's first and last name, city of birth, and possible the last four number of their social.

Instead, Daniel had looked at me, then looked away, and spent the entire length of the session in utter silence. So I abandoned the part of me that was acting as more of a mediator than a counselor, and I'd found something for him to do that allowed him to be completely silent: art. I gave him paper and a pack of crayons (with 152 different colors and a special crayon sharpener) and we doodled together.

I had drawn a picture of Spike, who was getting on in years but still hated me as much as he had the day I'd found him, and Daniel drew a very detailed drawing of a fighter jet. Or at least, I thought it was a fighter jet. I'd explained all about Spike and showed him a scar on my hand from when he'd ruthlessly scratched me a few years back, but Daniel had not participated in story time.

As a counselor, Daniel expressing himself was definitely a plus sign, but it wasn't exactly a victory for me as a mediator.

And tonight probably wouldn't be any more successful.

I hadn't gone out the night before, so I'd checked the local news website religiously today to see if there was any footage of a robbery at the last jewelry store. There was no footage, and there hadn't been any more news on the ghost robber though. How could there be? Unless someone on the Carmel police force was a mediator, this case was going to go unsolved until I figured it out myself.

Me leaving to stake out the last store was doing a service to mediation and to the people of Carmel. Who knew what the ghost might move on to once their weren't any more jewelry stores left to hit up? Who knew who the ghost might decide to murder next? For all I knew though, last night was a sign that the ghost was done with jewelry stores, and my investigation had already come too late.

But I still had to try.

I shifted in bed slightly, but I didn't feel Jesse move at all in response, and nothing changed in the sound of his breathing.

Jesse didn't snore, but I could always tell when he was asleep. The way he breathed was deep, slightly audible, and so totally relaxed that it sounded like he was doing some kind of sleep yoga. I think he managed to sleep so well because he always went to bed exhausted. Back in the nineteenth century, toiling away on his family's ranch all day had done the trick. And now he was dedicating time to his job that went far beyond his office hours. Every hour Jesse slept was an hour of sleep he'd more than earned.

There was no change in his breathing pattern even as I slowly rolled out of bed. I knew better than to think that meant I was out of the woods though. Jesse could be in a coma, and he'd still manage to wake up if he sensed I was in danger.

So I was going to have make sure I stayed safe tonight.

I headed off down the stairs immediately once I'd gotten out of bed. I'd been smart about everything this time. This time I had remembered to leave my boots downstairs. I changed out of my pajamas and into a pair of leggings and an oversized sweatshirt in the living room. I wasn't going to win any awards for glamour anytime soon, but I was going to be comfortable. I grabbed my handy dandy mediation tools, my phone, a set of brass knuckles, and a pair of binoculars, and headed out the door.

When I arrived on Ocean Avenue, I parked the Land Rover as far as I could while still keeping an eye on the jewelry store. Even from far away, it wasn't too hard to keep an eye on the place. The lights in the store were on, and, although the premises looked empty, it also looked about as bright as an examination room. Moreover, the police outside weren't bothering to hide their presence in the parking lot. Maybe this was why the ghost hadn't decided to stop by yesterday. With a cop car lying in wait, it must not have looked like an appealing site for a robbery.

The police's strategy was perfect for stopping thefts but horrible for catching thieves.

With ten minutes down on the clock, and nearly forty-five minutes to go until it was midnight, I was already getting pretty impatient at the idea of sticking it out here all night. There was no way I was going to stay until six in the morning again. Because I hadn't just used my sick day to sleep. I'd found every single one of those Carmel heist footage videos on YouTube and memorized them all. There was only one video missing, the one with the murder of Daniel's mother, and I wasn't sure if that was because even the internet wasn't grim enough to post a video of someone dying (I doubted it) or if it was because the video in question didn't exist.

The timestamp on each of the videos I'd seen, and the police report I'd found regarding the death of Daniel's mother, Francesca Powell, indicated that each of the robberies had taken place between eleven at night and one in the morning. At the very latest, I would stay until one thirty. Even though I had spent a significant portion of the day sleeping, I was still going to be exhausted before too long.

After all, fatigue came part and parcel with pregnancy.

But I wasn't going to think about that. Not now. Preferably, I wouldn't think about the future until I had a better handle on the present, the present being the murderous, thieving ghost who was Carmel's latest threat.

The murdering, thieving ghost who I could see now, in the bright lights of the store.

In an instant, I put the binoculars that I'd rested on the passenger seat in front of my eyes and adjusted the view. The ghost was standing in front of the cash register. The ghost was a woman, with wavy hair that was a mixture of blonde and brunette and beach. With the way she was standing, I could see her in profile. She was tall and slender, the most highly represented body type in the Valley.

And then she turned so that her back was towards me, and all I could see was the cascade of hair going down her back and the back of her legs in a pair of skinny jeans. She was standing next to the cash register still, and I watched it intently, waiting for the moment when it burst open.

But it never did.

Instead, there was a sudden explosion of glass. It flew in the air before hailing down in a crystal clear storm. And then, suddenly, the storm wasn't quite so clear anymore. The glass was joined by an array of flying jewels, all swirling around in the air of the jewelry shop. And in the middle of the fray stood the ghost, who was still standing with her back to me.

I took my eyes off of her for a moment and watched as two policemen exited from their squad car, guns drawn. I looked at the faces of the policemen for a few seconds to see if Brad was one of them. But he wasn't there.

And when I turned my eyes back to the store, neither was the ghost.

The rain of glass and jewelry had let up, and, from what I could see, the floor and counter space of the shop were absolutely littered with debris.

I took another look around, but I didn't see the ghost materialize anywhere else where I could see her. I then put down the binoculars and eyed the clock on the dashboard. Calling someone with a little over a half hour until midnight was definitely less than polite, but I hoped CeeCee wouldn't mind too much.

She picked up the phone after about five rings.

"Whose obituary do you want now?" she asked. CeeCee had grown accustomed to me occasionally calling her up at odd hours with odd requests for the sake of my mediator duties.

"That's the thing," I said, trailing off.

"Oh God. You don't know 'whose,' do you?"

"You know me too well."

"What do you have for me? A name? An age? Date of death?"

I hesitated before I said, "She has wavy hair that's sort of blonde and sort of brunette. And she's tall. And skinny."

CeeCee didn't say anything for what felt like a full minute.

"You still there?" I asked.

"You've got to be kidding me," she said finally.

"If you find out who she is, then it's the first step on the road to cracking open the robbery case. Think about it, CeeCee. We both saw the video on YouTube. This is beyond the eyes of Carmel now. If you're the first one to get the scoop on this, they'll probably make you head of the entire paper."

"Fine," CeeCee said, in a voice that let me know that it absolutely was not fine but that she had resigned herself to her fate. This voice was standard fare when it came to answering these sorts of requests from me.

"Thanks," I said. "And sorry about calling so late."

"It's fine." And this time, CeeCee's voice on the word "fine" was genuine. "I'm out right now anyway."

"Out? Where?"

"Just grabbing a drink."

I paused for a second and then said, "CeeCee, are you on a date?"

"It's not a date!"

"Is it with Hugo?"

"I'll see what I can find, and I'll get back to you later," CeeCee said quickly and hung up the phone.

I couldn't help but grin as I put the car in drive and went home.