She blinked, as if suddenly woken up from hypnosis, and looked around the Patterson's yard in vague disorientation. The phone rang again and when she pulled it from the pocket of her jacket to check the display, Kurt McVeigh glowed back at her. Her stomach jumped a little as she jabbed at the accept button with her index finger.
"Hello," she said cautiously.
"Hey," came his reply. "I...ah...I just wanted to see how you were doing."
"I'm fine," she said, though it was a lie because she definitely was not fine. Right at the moment she was returning to her car as quickly as she could manage in her high heels in the damp, slippery grass without falling on her behind. What had she been thinking, going down into the yard like that? "How are you?"
"Fine," he said.
"Oh, well good. We're both fine then," she said, a bit impatiently, arriving back at her car and flinging the door open. This stoically silent thing he had going on didn't play nearly as well by telephone.
Just as she opened her mouth again to tell him so, he spoke again. "Look, Diane. I was thinking about you...about your case, and what happened, and... Can we get together and talk?"
Eyebrows rising in surprise, she slid behind the wheel and closed the door before speaking again. "Yes," she said. "Of course we can. I'm at the Patterson's now. Do you want to meet me back at my office in about 45 minutes?"
"I'll be there," he said, and before she could reply, he disconnected.
Smiling and shaking her head, she started the car.
"How did it go with Daisy?" Diane asked Cary when she arrived back at the office, sticking her head in the conference room as she passed.
He looked up from the notes he was making on a copy of the artist's sketch and shook his head. "No dice. She said the same thing as Karen. Could be anyone. But then Kalinda called and said she has something from Mr. Patterson's agenda that we got from his assistant." He glanced at his watch. "She should be here any minute."
He raised an eyebrow in question, but Diane had to shake her head. "I have another meeting, but interrupt if it's anything urgent," she told him before backing out of the room and continuing on to her office.
Kurt was already there, sitting outside of her office in the chair by her assistant's desk.
"Mr. McVeigh," she said as she approached.
"Ms. Lockhart," he replied, standing up.
Her mouth quirked into a small, private smile at their feigned formality and she thought she saw an answering flash of amusement in his eyes, but it was hard to say for sure. "Follow me," she invited, walking past her openly fascinated assistant and into her office, closing the door when they were both inside.
"She likes you," she said, nodding to Melissa on the other side of the glass.
Kurt looked confused. "What? Why?"
She laughed. "The boots. I think she figured out where they came from." Instead of going behind her desk, she took a seat on the couch.
Kurt followed, sitting in the armchair beside her. A short chuckle escaped him and he shook his head briefly, looking over at her. "Not the woman I was trying to impress," he admitted.
It was Diane's turn for slightly startled laughter. "Good," she said. "Because she wasn't the only one impressed."
They stared at each other, both unsure of the sudden turn in the conversation, but pleased at the possibilities opening up. After a moment, Diane cleared her throat. "But perhaps we should put a pin in that for the moment?"
Kurt nodded. "Yep."
She waited then, for him to explain his reason for wanting to see her, but he remained silent. As that was not entirely unexpected, she prompted him readily. "What are you thinking?"
He inhaled deeply, then stood up and walked several paces away from her, turning to face the window. Diane watched with barely reined in curiosity, but she knew somehow that this was not the time for another prompt. He would say what he needed to when he was ready to say it and not a moment before.
He turned back around to face her before he spoke. "I'm thinking we need to go back."
"Back," she repeated.
"To the woods," he clarified. "We need to go back to the woods and find out what that thing was. Because the more I think about it, the more I wonder if someone wasn't trying to scare us, throw us off the trail. And if that's the case…"
"If that's the case, Karen might not be guilty," Diane finished.
"She might not be guilty," Kurt conceded, "or she might be the one behind it, but either way it's another avenue to pursue and I'd like to help you do it."
"Okay then," Diane said.
The sun was already starting to go down when they arrived back at the Patterson home. Diane had called ahead to warn Karen of their arrival and the other woman, clearly bemused by the frequency of her visits, told her to enjoy her hike. Her client obviously did not understanding why her high-powered attorney seemed to want to spend so much time traipsing around in the woods, but didn't really want to ask either, for which Diane was eternally grateful. "Because the ghost of your murdered husband may be haunting those woods," was not a conversation she wanted to have with her still-fragile client.
Kurt parked the truck behind Karen's car, and they both got out and met on the grass beside the driveway. There was a slight chill in the air, as there always seemed to be when they got close to these woods. For the first time, Diane wondered whether that was a purely meteorological phenomenon or whether there could be something else at play. Whatever it was, she was glad she put on a warm sweater when they stopped off at her home so she could change.
Now properly shod, the walk through the backyard was less treacherous than it had been earlier. The gardening supplies still laid abandoned in the same place; the brightly colored gloves were tinged red and orange by the setting sun.
"Are you ready," she asked Kurt when, without discussion, they both paused at the entrance to the woods.
"No," he said honestly. "Are you?"
She shook her head. "But I don't suppose that matters much."
He paused, looked at his feet and then back up at her. "Matters to me," he said, holding out his hand.
Smiling, she reached out and took it, and together they ventured once again into the forest.
The setting sun cast odd, colourful shadows all around them and the cool breeze coming through the trees was refreshing. If it weren't for their purpose in being there, Diane thought she would enjoy this walk very much. The scenery, the fresh air, the attractive man holding her hand, if only she could just enjoy it instead of wondering what they might run into around the next bend in the trail.
"Nice evening," Kurt commented, almost as if he had read her mind.
"Yes," she agreed.
"Next time we'll go somewhere without ghosts."
Startled by his forthrightness, she glanced over to find him looking straight ahead. She made no comment, but when he squeezed her hand, she squeezed back.
They walked in silence for what seemed like hours, but was probably only fifteen minutes or so, passing by the crime scene and continuing along the same path they followed that strange night a couple of weeks earlier when they saw whatever they saw.
So far there had been no figures in white running around just a little too far away for them to see, and no strange lights coming from around bends in the trail. It had been later the previous night, the sun had been almost fully set, and Diane wondered aloud if that mattered. Perhaps they wouldn't see anything until it was darker.
Kurt shrugged. "It'll be dark soon enough." And true enough, the reds and oranges of the setting sun were almost gone and the shadows were growing deeper.
Diane shivered again, though not from the cold this time. Just up ahead was the bend in the path where they had first seen the oddly florescent light that signalled the ghost's presence.
Kurt stopped walking suddenly, pulling Diane to a halt. Not dropping his hand, she turned to face him, standing with her back to the trail ahead. She reached out and took his other hand. "Whatever happens up there, we have to stay calm and try to think logically," she said.
He nodded, stepping closer to her. "I'll look for a projector, wires, anything that proves it's fake. You try to figure out what it's saying."
"Oh..okay," she said, her voice falling to a whisper as he took another step closer. "That's a good plan."
"Yep." His hands released hers and moved to her hips, and she took the final step forward, completely closing the gap between their bodies. He lowered his head, approaching her slowly, almost tentatively, but when their lips finally met, there was nothing tentative at all about his kiss. Her eyes closed as she slid her hands up his back, blocking out everything else around them and focussing only on this moment. His moustache scratched against her upper lip providing a pleasing contrast to the softness of his lips. She never would have imagined the combination could be so pleasurable.
When they finally broke apart, she lifted her eyes to find him staring at something behind her.
"Diane. Look." He inclined his head forward, and when she turned, she found the path up ahead was once again glowing with strange, unearthly light.