To Sketch a Thief Read online

  Good idea, Rory wanted to say, except I live with a ghost who’s got dog issues.

  Cirello paused beside her. “Did you call the pound to come for the mutt?” He said it in much the same way he might have said, “Did you take out the trash?”

  “Don’t worry,” Rory said tightly, “I’m on it.”

  Danny heard the disgust in her voice and lagged back long enough to commiserate. “I sure wish I could take him. He looks like a great dog. But my wife’s allergic.”

  Everyone seemed to have an excuse, but since Rory couldn’t bring herself to abandon poor Hobo at the pound on the night that he was orphaned, she found herself driving home with him once again in the backseat of her car, along with a leash and a twenty-pound bag of kibble.

  Chapter 4

  Rory pulled into her driveway, turned off the engine and sat there trying to figure out the best way to introduce Zeke to their new boarder. Fifteen minutes passed without a single epiphany. Hobo whimpered and snuffled the back of her neck, confused as to why they were still sitting in a car that wasn’t moving. Rory reached up and scratched his head to comfort him, wishing someone would do the same for her. She was tired and in no mood to do battle with an irascible ghost.

  To make matters worse, the house looked far from inviting. She hadn’t left any lights on, since she’d expected to be back in twenty minutes. So much for expectations. The closest street lamp cast only a dim puddle of light that barely reached her property line. In front of her, the house loomed dark and somehow larger than it should have been, as if it had lost its familiar contours and was merging with the night.

  “Stop it! Just stop it!” she scolded herself out loud, causing Hobo to immediately stop nuzzling her neck.

  “Oh, not you, you silly boy,” she said, her voice dropping into the soft, cooing tone she generally reserved for babies. “Not you.”

  What was happening to her? She’d never been one of the delicate, faint-of-heart types. This was her house and it was dark simply because it was nighttime. There was nothing sinister or otherworldly about it. Well, except for Zeke of course. And she had no intentions of letting him wield this much power over her. If she wanted to have a dog, she was damn well going to have a dog!

  She stepped out of the car as if she were setting foot on Omaha Beach. There would be no withdrawing in disgrace. She opened the rear door and Hobo jumped out. She grabbed hold of his leash as he started up the walkway ahead of her. No ambivalence there.

  When they reached the front door, Hobo stopped suddenly and Rory rammed full tilt into him. As she was trying to keep herself from flying headfirst into the door, she wondered what had caused the dog’s sudden loss of initiative. Had he smelled, heard or intuited in his canine bones that all was not as it should be in this house? That someone who had shuffled off his mortal coil still somehow resided here? At that moment, while she was still partially draped over Hobo’s back, the house lit up like an elaborate birthday cake. Every light inside went on simultaneously, as if someone had hit a master switch. Or a certain ghost was trying to make a point. Hobo yelped and danced backward several feet, dislodging Rory in the process. She picked herself up and snagged a handful of his fur before he could flee any farther. On any other night she might have enjoyed the light show, but given the current circumstances a less dramatic homecoming would have suited her just fine.

  It took all of her strength to drag the trembling Hobo indoors, and once there he stuck to her side as if he’d been sewn on to it, his tail tucked securely between his legs. Zeke was standing near the staircase, arms folded, glowering at them.

  “I thought you were taking the dog back where it belonged.”

  “So did I,” Rory said, “but as you might have learned some years back, and in this very house, things don’t always work out the way you’d like them to.” With Hobo matching her step for step, she gave Zeke a wide berth, dropped her jacket and keys on the bench beside the stairs and headed for the kitchen. She unhooked Hobo’s leash and filled a bowl with water for him. He wasn’t interested. His food was still in the car, but she doubted that he was any more hungry than he was thirsty. He was locked into full survival mode, which for the moment seemed to mean cowering under her protection. There was a pretty good chance that the marshal was his first ghost. She could empathize completely.

  Zeke appeared beside the center island, causing Hobo to give a high-pitched yelp of surprise and ratchet his shaking up to something measurable on the Richter scale.

  “I assume there’s more to the story,” Zeke said, his tone reminding Rory of an unpleasant trip to the principal’s office in junior high. “Seein’ as how you were gone for hours.”

  “Only if you consider murder worth mentioning,” she said tightly. “And I’d drop the attitude if I were you.” She pulled a half-full bottle of pinot noir out of the refrigerator and poured herself a glass. She needed a drink even if Hobo didn’t.

  She could tell by the way Zeke’s eyebrows had inched upward that she’d piqued his curiosity. But his jaw was still set hard. He wasn’t going to be bought out of his anger all that easily.

  Fine with her. If he was determined to be in a black mood, she had no obligation to coax him out of it. She took her glass to the table and sank into one of the chairs, her back to him. Now that she had a lap, Hobo wanted to be in it. She tried a variety of commands to dissuade him, before succeeding with “off.” Even then it took a firm voice and a lot of pushing to keep him on the floor. Denied that comfort, he burrowed his way under her legs like a self-guided hassock.

  Zeke was silent. Either he was still standing where she’d left him or he’d gone back to whatever dimension he inhabited when he wasn’t co-opting her life. She didn’t even bother turning around to check. She was finally starting to relax from the tensions of the last few hours, a sweet lassitude hitching a ride on the wine that was spilling through her body. She could almost have convinced herself that she lived in an ordinary house where the paranormal was trapped safely within the pages of books by Dean Koontz and Stephen King.

  A moment later Zeke popped into the seat across the table from her, shattering the lovely fantasy and causing Hobo to renew his campaign to launch himself into her lap. It took her another five minutes to calm the dog from panicked to merely frightened again.

  She thought of asking the marshal to confine his movements to the more traditional kind for poor Hobo’s sake, but he was probably trying to prove that he could make her life miserable too. Of course, in the end she and Zeke both knew that she held the wild card in their little game. That card was the house, Mac’s house, with its precious cache of memories tucked away in every corner. It would be almost like losing him again if she had to sell it, but she would, if living there with Zeke became untenable. Mac would understand. And as hard as it would be for her, it would be even harder for Zeke. He’d once again be subjected to a parade of owners who would pack up and run at the first hint of ghostly goings-on. How long might it take before he found another sympathetic, open-minded buyer who would not only hang around and put up with his antics, but also try to help him solve the mystery of who had murdered him? Rory doubted there was a matchmaking website for lonely ghosts.

  “I’m guessin’ the deceased was the mutt’s owner,” Zeke said casually, as if they’d been having a polite conversation all along.

  In the name of tranquility, Rory decided to accept the scrawny olive branch he was extending. “Brenda Hartley,” she said, between sips of wine. “And the dog’s name is Hobo.”

  “Hobo, right. So, for some strange reason you’re feelin’ obligated to give Hobo here a home?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. For now I’m just boarding him overnight.”

  “Don’t I get a vote?”

  “It wouldn’t matter, since I have veto power,” she said, realizing a moment too late that she probably could have chosen a more diplomatic way to put it. Still, the truth was the truth no matter how you disguised it.

  Zeke’s face c
lamped down again. “So do I,” he growled under his breath.

  So much for détente. Rory was quickly running out of patience and the virtue that came with it. She tried another tactic. “Do you want to hear about the case or not?”

  Zeke took a moment to assess the playing field. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, “I surely do.”

  Rory swore she heard a note of mockery in his voice, but she let it go. She had no interest in spending the rest of the night in a pitched battle with him. Instead, she gave him a quick recap of what had happened at the Hartley home. Having already briefed Cirello and Leah she had the story pared down to its essentials.

  “Any valuables missin’?” Zeke asked, following her lead into neutral territory. “Place torn up at all?”

  “Nothing looked out of order, but I never went upstairs.”

  “It’s a damn shame I don’t know how to get outta this place when I want. I could’ve scouted out the rest of that house for you and no one would ever have been the wiser.”

  Rory almost groaned out loud. With all that had happened, she’d forgotten about his attempt to materialize in Brenda’s house. The last thing she wanted to do at that moment was dig up another bone of contention for them to argue over. Unfortunately the subject needed to be addressed and there was no point in postponing it now that he had brought it up.

  “I’m sure that’ll be a help one day,” she said wearily, “but not until you’ve gotten it down pat and we’ve worked out a way to be sure no one else is around to catch your little ‘beam me up, Scotty’ routine.”

  Zeke’s brows bunched together over his eyes. “I’m not sure I get your drift. Sometimes you make less sense than a hat without a brim.”

  “Sorry, it’s an expression from an old TV series. Just about anyone alive today would understand the reference.”

  “Right there’s your first problem,” he said, doing a slow fade out then in again to underscore his point.

  “There’s a second?”

  “Folks these days spend entirely too much time starin’ at one kind of screen or another.”

  Rory could hardly argue with that nugget of wisdom, nor did she want to. All she really wanted at that moment was to eat the leftover slice of pizza that was waiting on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator and crawl into bed. But she had to make sure that she and Zeke were on the same page with regard to his future travel plans.

  “Remember the media frenzy after Conti said he was caught by Wyatt Earp? That’ll seem like a flea circus once a few well-respected detectives and solid citizens witness one of your entrances or exits.”

  “I suppose as how that might be so,” he conceded in the reluctant tone of one who’s been outflanked by the truth.

  “Okay then, we’re agreed that you won’t try to follow me anywhere unless I’ve determined that you won’t have an audience?”

  Zeke ran his long, calloused fingers through his hair as he contemplated her request. “Just so long as it’s not an emergency,” he said solemnly, holding out his hand as if to shake on it.

  Rory’s heart danced a little bebop up into her throat. She was about to find out what ghosts were made of or risk offending the marshal. She pasted a smile on her mouth and put out her hand, determined to keep it steady. She was inches away from touching him when he pulled his hand back.

  “That’s okay, darlin’,” he said, laughing, “I’ll consider the effort done for the deed.”

  Rory shrugged as if it didn’t matter to her one way or the other, but relief surged through her as her heart settled back into place. She’d let him enjoy this little triumph at her expense. She was satisfied that she’d won the other rounds of the bout.

  “You have yourself a good night there with Hobo the lionhearted,” Zeke said and he was gone while his words still hung in the air.

  Hobo waited a minute, snuffled the air and decided that it was safe enough to leave his hidey-hole beneath Rory’s legs. But he wouldn’t venture far from her side. Together they took the slice of pizza out of the refrigerator and heated it back to crispness in a pan on the stove—a little trick she’d learned from a chef on TV. While it cooked, Hobo rediscovered his appetite and was rewarded with a good portion of the crust.

  After dinner, Rory brought in the bag of kibble and scooped some into a bowl that she left beside his water dish. If she was going to keep Hobo she’d have to buy him proper dog bowls as well as some toys and maybe a bed of his own. But that wasn’t a decision she wanted to make until she’d had a good night’s sleep.

  Chapter 5

  When the telephone rang it awakened Rory from a deep, exhausted sleep to the sound of someone snoring. Who on earth was in her bed? As her eyes snapped open, she burst into laughter, waking the snorer, who yawned and thumped his tail lazily against the quilt.

  She grabbed for the phone on the third ring, before it went to voice mail. The stranger on the other end introduced herself as Tina Kovack and launched right into the reason for her call, chattering so rapidly that each word was partially swallowed by the next. To Rory’s sleepfogged brain she might just as well have been speaking Swahili as English.

  “Excuse me, Ms. Kovack,” she interrupted, “would you please repeat that a bit more slowly?”

  “Sorry I’m sorry I was a friend of poor Brenda Hartley’s and I just found out that she’s dead not just dead dead would be bad enough but she was murdered.”

  Although Tina was making an effort to speak more distinctly, she’d completely abandoned punctuation, as if she were too agitated to concentrate on more than one speech issue at a time.

  “I know, Ms. Kovack, my condolences,” Rory said, sliding out of bed and pulling a cotton robe on over her nightgown. Hobo groaned and stretched out, claiming the vacated pillow.

  “How can I be of help?” She headed for the kitchen. She needed a strong cup of coffee and fast.

  “I know you’re a private investigator you solved those murders a few months back and I need to hire you.”

  Rory filled the coffeemaker and turned it on. “Okay, if you’ll hold for a minute I’ll get to my computer and we’ll set up an appointment.” She made a point of speaking slowly in the hope that Tina would follow her example.

  “Oh, okay.” Tina sighed, as if she were disappointed about having to wait the requested minute.

  Rory started to have second thoughts about a client who wanted instant results. She hoped it was just the unexpected tragedy of Brenda’s death that had spiked the woman’s anxiety level and dealt her common sense a nasty blow.

  She trooped back upstairs to the room that had once been Mac’s study. When she’d moved her office into its new venue in the garage, she’d equipped it with a new computer and transferred the older one out of the living room and into the study again. She sat down at that desk now, pulled up her appointment calendar and took Tina off hold.

  It came as no surprise that Tina was ready to get in her car and drive over right then and there. Rory supposed she should be grateful that the woman had at least waited until dawn to call her. After a bit of negotiating they settled on two o’clock that afternoon and Rory supplied her with directions.

  When she returned to the kitchen, the recessed lights were flashing and Zeke was filtering into the chair he’d occupied the night before, much like sand filling an hourglass. Rory headed straight to the coffeemaker, with barely a glance in his direction. It wasn’t quite done brewing, but she pulled the carafe out and filled the mug she’d left in the dish rack the day before. Without the carafe there, the dripping coffee splashed onto the metal heating element and sizzled as if scolding her. She’d have to clean it up later, but not having to wait for the coffee was worth it. She stuck the carafe back in place and took her mug to the table. No milk this morning. She needed it black.

  “We have a new client?” Zeke asked casually, as if the argument of the previous night had never happened.

  Rory took a bolstering sip of coffee before answering him. It bothered her that the marshal could lis
ten in on any conversation she had in the house, even if it was only her side of a phone call. For that matter, she had no way of knowing if he was watching her at any given moment either. As a precondition of their strange living arrangement, she’d exacted his promise to respect her privacy in the bedroom and bathroom. But she really had no way of monitoring how well he kept his word. It occurred to her that a dog might be able to do just that. If Hobo continued to react to Zeke as strongly as he had at their first meeting, he would make an excellent sentry to guard her privacy. Her very own canary in the coal mine. Of course the downside would be putting up with Zeke’s foul moods.

  “You out gatherin’ wool somewhere?” Zeke prodded. “Do we have ourselves a new client or not?”

  “Could be,” she said, focusing on him. “That phone call was from Tina Kovack, another friend of the late Brenda Hartley’s.”

  “I was wonderin’ if we’d get a chance to work that case.” Zeke sounded pleased at the prospect.

  “Don’t get too excited. I have a feeling Tina isn’t going to be the best kind of client.”

  “I thought the best kind was the payin’ kind.” He smiled. “Success has gone and made you a trifle picky, Aurora.”

  “Cut the Aurora crap, you know I can’t stand it.”

  “Probably why I’m so partial to it.” His mouth stretched into a full-out grin.

  During the few months Rory had known Zeke, she’d learned that he could be charming when he wanted to be, a rough, frontiersman kind of charming. But at that moment she wasn’t interested in being charmed or won over, especially with the question of Hobo still hanging in the balance.

  “Where’s the mutt?” he asked, as if he’d read her mind.

  Rory pushed back from the table, thankful that that wasn’t one of the abilities he’d picked up in exchange for his mortal body.

  “He’s sleeping,” she said, going to the counter to top off her coffee. She didn’t bother reminding him that the dog actually had a name. If he wanted to refer to him as “the mutt,” she would let him. Dealing with Zeke she’d learned to pick her battles, and that one simply wasn’t worth fighting.