Max passed a tired hand over her eyes and leaned her head against the driver’s side window, the glass cold against her cheek. The weather had turned yesterday. October was so unpredictable. Sometimes hot like summer, sometimes cold and wet and blustery. She hated October. So many bad things happened in October. Black Monday, the day the stock market fell in the 80’s, and wow, again, just a couple of years ago. The Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989. The Oakland firestorm. Her birthday; she’d be thirty-three this year. Cameron’s murder at the corner 7-11 two years ago. Yeah, October was a really bad month.
Dammit, why was this happening to her again? “Cameron, you get in here and talk this woman out of me right this minute.”
She didn’t care that someone might see her. They’d think she was talking to herself. Maybe she was, since she was the only one who heard Cameron. Then again, maybe she was crazy. As with Cameron himself, the question had never been laid to rest.
The air shifted in the close confines of the car, and the scent of peppermint wafted past her nose. “Her?”
“Bethany Spring. She’s in me, I can feel her. I won’t stand for it this time, Cameron.” Brave words. She didn’t have a clue how to exorcise the woman now, without first finding her killer. “Use your ghostly wiles on her.”
A soft sigh across her nape. She closed her eyes briefly.
“How many times must I explain, my sweet? She’s on another plane. She isn’t even aware of me. You’re the only one who can oust her. By finding her killer.”
Her stomach growled. “She’s hungry.”
“Feed her.”
“I will. Turkey.”
“I think I resent that.”
“I meant I’m having turkey for dinner.”
He laughed softly. “Ah yes. Dinner with Witt’s mother. How pleasant.”
She swallowed her sudden panic. “Cameron, I can’t go through this again. I really can’t.”
“You can, and you will. You get better at figuring out the truth every time. Run with her feelings. Let her go deep inside you. Find out all her secrets.”
The idea terrified her. Bethany Spring was the third phantom to haunt her dreams. The third victim crying out for justice. The third ghost trying to take over her mind and her body.
“I don’t want to let her in.” The statement was just short of admitting she was scared to death of these soul intruders.
“That’s not what you’re really afraid of.”
She rolled her eyes. He always thought he knew her mind better than she did. “I know you’re dying to tell me, aren’t you? Well, go ahead. I’m ready, Dr. Freud.”
“You’re afraid of Witt’s mother.”
Her blasé laugh resembled a mouse squeak.
“You’re afraid of getting serious about Witt. You’re afraid of meeting his mother. You are, in short, afraid of this weird little relationship that’s cropping up between the two of you.”
“He’s a cop. He’s helping me out with these investigations. Hey”—she stabbed a finger in the air as if she could see him—“you’re the one who said I had to solve their murders before these ghosts would leave me alone.”
“You don’t need him for that. You’ve got the answers all up in your head if you’d just let them come.”
“He’s helping me on the technical aspects.” Like breaking alibis and finding missing witnesses.
“When are you going to have sex with him?”
She strangled a frenzied laugh. “Not. I’m still pining for my late, lamented husband.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.” She waited for his usual double whammy, her heart stuck way up in her throat.
“Maybe I’m just another excuse not to commit?”
The thought was more than frightening. It clenched her heart and squeezed until her eyes watered. “I’m not interested in committing to Witt.”
“You sure weren’t acting disinterested out there. Straightening his tie. Nuzzling his palm. You’ve got it bad, sweetheart, and you don’t even know it.”
She stabbed her finger again. “That was her. Bethany. She needs a man. She needs romance. She needs to be wanted.” Which is why she took the calls, waiting for Prince Charming, waiting for the one guy who would fall in love with her voice, waiting ...
Cameron’s sigh floated through the interior of the car. “You’re still in denial.”
She looked up. The blue lady watched her instead of what was happening in and around 452 Garden Street. Max lowered her hand and said nothing.
“It’s all right to find someone new, Max, someone to fill your life, someone to love, to laugh with.”
She clenched her teeth. The backs of her eyes ached.
“You don’t have to feel guilty.”
She wasn’t guilty. She was ... afraid.
“Because he’s a cop, and you’re afraid he’ll get killed in the line of duty?”
Because she’d watched Cameron die. Because she’d lost him once and was terrified she was losing him again. Because losing him the first time had almost killed her.
“But it didn’t.”
No, it didn’t. His death had simply robbed her of the will to enjoy life. She’d sold their condo, their furniture, the motorcycle, and his car. She’d given away his clothes, his artwork, his books, her cat, quit her job, and left her friends.