Текст книги "Ghost Seer"
Автор книги: Robin D. Owens
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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 21 страниц)
THREE
DENVER, COLORADO, THAT NIGHT
A MOANING WOKE Clare and she sat up straight against the curving wood of her headboard.
The figure of a man stood at the end of her bed. In her bedroom! A shadow of shifting grays. From the size of her footboard beside him, she understood he was shorter than average even for the mid-1800s garb that her mind had clothed him in.
His suit and shirt and vest looked to be made of quality materials—good and expensive—and she saw the chain of a pocket watch across his front.
He had no beard or mustache, but his hair seemed darkish and reached his chin. He didn’t appear like a gunslinger or a cowboy, but a businessman. His lowered brows and set mouth showed determination as the illusion stared at her.
I need your help. Each word dripped like cold, small droplets of icy water into her mind. The August night had finally turned tolerable, but she kept her window and ceiling fans rotating at top speed. Tomorrow would be another day in the high nineties.
And the ghost man brought a chill with him, much as Enzo had. Her gaze slid to the bottom of the bed, where the illusionary dog had been “sleeping.” She saw nothing, but a tickle in her mind said Enzo was there.
Again the hallucination spoke, and this time she saw the slight darkness of his lips against his pale, pale skin as his mouth formed the words. I. Need. Your. Help.
“No.” Whispery words spurted from her mouth. She made pushing motions with her hands. “No. Go away.”
Events cycle. It must be soon that you help me. I am trapped. His mouth twisted. Not where I died, but where I lost my sanity and sinned the most. Help me.
Fear dried Clare’s throat so she couldn’t swallow, and she had to raise her voice past the rawness. “No!”
Enzo coalesced into whiteness even as the other faded. The dog lumbered up the bed and snuffled in her ear, whining.
She gave him two pats with trembling hands before she realized she was trying to pet a nonexistent mutt.
He licked her cheek again, and she felt the clamminess and she slid back down and pulled the sheet over her—all the way over her head—then turned on her side and curled up, hoping her quivering would soon still. Enzo poked his muzzle through the sheet and stared at her with wide, dark eyes.
Clare made a strangling sound.
I will protect you! he said mentally, and barked.
He couldn’t protect her from her own mind . . . and, and, another whispering part of the back of her brain that accepted the illogic of night visitations told her that the ghost man wouldn’t consider a dog much of a threat, neither in his current condition nor when he’d been alive.
As the steel bonds of fear loosened around her, she considered the apparition again, realizing that she’d seen a picture, or maybe a drawing, of him before. Her brain had picked an image to hang the illusion on. So he must be featured in one of her books on the history of the American West. She’d loved that time period. Once.
She wasn’t going to look him up. In any way, shape, or form.
But since her physical exam had proved her vision and hearing okay, she’d have to set up an appointment with the top shrink in Denver.
• • •
By the time Clare left to pick up the last box of her things at her old job in downtown Denver the next morning, she’d begun muttering to Enzo as if he might really be there. Talking to herself. Another really bad symptom of the strangeness going on in her life . . . in her mind.
But the figment of Enzo was so damn cheerful, insistent in talking to her, interacting with her—getting those bone-chilling pats when she reached out and touched him—that she could hardly say no.
As she drove downtown, she began seeing shades and shadows of people again. Approaching LoDo, lower downtown, the visions of gray folk around her—in the street ahead of her, crowding around the car, striding on the sidewalks—distracted her so much she wasn’t driving safely.
Especially since Enzo sat in the passenger seat. He commented about the city and talked to the shadows . . . thankfully only she “heard” Enzo. She circled around to the Capitol end of the Sixteenth Street Mall to approach the high-rise that held the accounting firm she’d worked for. Even there, filmy people crowded the area.
With sweat beading along her hairline and down her spine, she pulled into the first parking lot she saw—expensive!—near Civic Center and parked.
Enzo barked excitedly. We are going out! We are walking with other ghosts! Hooray! Sandra stayed at home a lot and the ghosts came to her. She was a professional.
Clare gritted her teeth. Sandra had been a professional crazy person. Then Clare found herself actually answering the dog before she knew it. “Enzo, I am not talking to you when we are out of this car.” Even in the vehicle was iffy since people must have seen her mouth move—but maybe they’d thought she was singing along to music or on a hands-free phone call.
Enzo grumbled but didn’t vanish as she was hoping he would when she stepped out of the car into the searing August heat. He kept a running commentary as she took the shuttle to her former place of business.
She’d given her notice as soon as she realized she didn’t need the money from a job anymore, and someone else would. She’d spent time handing off her accounts, and today was just to pick up the last of her belongings.
Fear hopped along her nerves; her neck muscles had tightened into a rigid column, since she didn’t turn her head, trying not to see Enzo and the other specters strolling along the sidewalk. Not ghosts. No. Ghosts simply weren’t real.
Lately she’d spent too much time in Sandra’s house, handling her great-aunt’s New Age objects, glancing through her “business” papers. Yes, Sandra had made “seeing” ghosts pay very well . . . and embraced the whole psychic lifestyle along with burnt-velvet flowing caftans. With fringe.
Clare had packed those off to her sister-in-law, who might wear them for fun, or at a country club costume party.
As Clare left her old office with a medium-sized box of personal items, she fought back tears. She’d loved her job and liked the people she’d worked with.
The words that echoed in her head as she walked back to her car were from one of the partners. “We’ll miss you. You made a real contribution to this firm.”
That’s what she always had wanted to do, always needed to do: to contribute to the community and to society. Not live off a trust fund like her parents, flitting around the world at whim, involved with no one but themselves.
She’d been happy being an accountant, really. So, maybe she’d gotten into a rut, but she’d liked that rut, even though now it seemed as if it had risen around her and blocked out all other possibilities in life.
But it had been secure. And growing up in a flaky family like hers, she’d needed secure.
Walking back to the car in her suit had her strained and dripping.
I like this city very much, Enzo said, sniffing lustily and wagging the whole lower half of his body as a ghostly businessman petted him. Clare cut her gaze away.
That ghost appeared vaguely familiar and wore expensive clothes. Her mind no doubt summoned the image of a mover and shaker in early Denver, since she was near the Capitol.
She hesitated, eyeing his clothing—later in style, she thought, than the vision she’d seen the night before. The ghost man she didn’t want to think about.
This one does not need your help, Enzo said, leaning against her a little. He brought cool relief.
The man smiled, shook his head, and said, The timing is wrong for me.
Clare jerked at the deep masculine voice resounding in her mind that ramped up her anxiety at the visions. She started walking again.
He raised a dark brow and fell into step with her. You don’t know much about us, do you?
Juggling the box and her purse, Clare grabbed her cell from the outside pocket of her bag, checked a text. Yes! Her new psychologist had a free hour and was only a couple of blocks away.
It is not polite to ignore us, young lady, the imaginary guy said, then repeated, You don’t know much about us.
Addressing the phone, ignoring the prickles on her skin that announced strange-stuff-happening, she muttered, “No. And I don’t want to learn.”
She could have sworn she saw amusement on the pale face.
I hope to see you later.
Not if she could help it. She disregarded the gray illusions, stuck her box in the car, and hurried away—not nearly as hot now. This had been a real mistake. She should have damn well hired a car and driver.
Enzo passed through her as he barked and greeted a transparent woman. Clare flinched. The ghost dog ran off to chase real squirrels in Civic Center Park. They squealed and skittered away from him, and Enzo’s barks echoed eerily and triumphantly through the hot yellow summer sunshine.
She also ignored the huge and beautiful Denver Public Library, which had a special section on Western history. She was sure she’d find the guy who’d visited her in there, if she bothered.
And as she walked, nearly ran, filmy people gathered around her as if she were a magnet.
Terrible.
Panting, she entered the building where the psychologist’s office was, and a few minutes later, the office itself, a pale, sterile place.
After her appointment, she stomped away. She didn’t like the office. She didn’t like Dr. Barclay. She really didn’t like his questions and had crossed her arms and couldn’t open up to him, even as he donned a soothing manner.
She’d paid an outrageous amount for nothing.
And despairingly made another appointment for a couple of days later.
When she and Enzo returned to her hot little starter house, she took one look at the pile of paper on the dining room table pertaining to Aunt Sandra’s estate and walked right past it.
For the first time since she’d been an adult, she didn’t buckle down and do her duty. Instead she collapsed on the bed with a headache. She hadn’t gotten all the results in from her physical yet. Maybe she had a brain tumor. That would be easier to deal with.
Maybe the ghosts would leave her alone.
Enzo hopped onto her bed, settled at the end, and said, We have to help the man who comes at night before those we met today. It’s his time.
Clare was afraid to ask what that meant. She pulled a pillow over her face and curled up, hoping everything would go away.
BOULDER, COLORADO
Zach rolled his shoulders to relieve the tension after visiting his mother in the way-too-serene mental health facility.
He couldn’t get out of the place soon enough. The smells reminded him all too closely of the hospital he’d just been released from. Hell, all of his muscles were tense.
Before . . . before, he’d have hit the gym a few blocks away and worked out the anger and pity and guilt. But though the shooting had made news in Montana, he didn’t think it would have traveled down here two states away. He wasn’t in any sort of emotional shape to explain his disability to others who’d only pity him.
He’d spent an agonizing two hours with his mother, sitting with her, taking a small walk around the grounds. She’d retreated to a time before his brother Jim had died and didn’t seem to know Zach.
A lovely, sparkling woman who broke his heart. At least he’d aged enough that she didn’t call him “James” and ask him to take her away from the place. No, she didn’t think he was his brother anymore. Thankfully, his features were a combination of hers and the General’s, so she didn’t believe he was his father. She’d come to accept he was her younger son.
The visit had been as wrenching as ever. None of them would get over Jim’s senseless death.
Time to tuck that away again, get back on the road. His father’s family home was here, but neither the General nor Zach could handle the New Age ambiance of Boulder, so the place was rented out to a prof who taught at the university. The Slades did better in the more conservative Colorado Springs.
And he wasn’t going all the way into Denver, even though his mind played with the idea of giving that private investigator his former boss had mentioned a call. What kind of justice or closure could be found from someone you paid?
Zach’s lip curled. And the thought chomped hard that he might not even be adequate for a PI job.
He left rubber on the street as he got out of Boulder.
DENVER, THAT AFTERNOON
Clare’s teleconferencing program on her laptop rang with an insistent, asymmetrical buzzing beat that got her groggily out of bed. She staggered to the little back bedroom and opened the top of her computer, saw the icon of her brother, Tucker. He was taking care of closing up Aunt Sandra’s house, dividing up the furniture and shipping it off to three places.
No way was she letting her handsome big brother see her all pale and sleep-wrinkly. She zoomed to the bathroom sink and scrubbed her face with tepid water, letting it run over her hair well enough for him to think she’d just gotten out of the shower instead of having a midday nap.
Hurrying back to her small office, she hit the icon. “Hi, Tuck—”
“Hey, Auntie Clare!” Dora, nine years old, grinned out at Clare.
“Hi, Dora.”
“Dad wants to talk to you. He’s here somewhere.” Dora glanced around.
“How’s it going?” Clare asked.
“Good.” Dora’s expression turned serious. “It’s an a-mazing house. We’re sad and missing weird G.G. Aunt Sandra, but it’s good to see the house one last time.” For an instant Clare strained to look beyond Dora to the house itself.
The house was the one thing Tucker had asked to help out with the estate, and Clare had taken him up on the offer.
Dora hefted a sigh. “I’ll miss it.”
“Hey, pumpkin.” Tucker swept his daughter up in his arms, hooked his ankle around a chair and slid it over, and sat. “Hey, Clare.”
“Hi, Tucker.”
Stroking Dora’s head, Tucker said, “I know that the estate and house are yours since you didn’t take any payout from G.G. Uncle Amos’s trust, but is there any way we can keep it?”
Clare tried to keep her clenched jaw from showing. She’d sold the house, had a contract and a closing, and would take a substantial penalty for withdrawing. “Sure, we can keep it. I can deed it over to you.”
Tucker’s mouth turned down. “Not the folks?”
“Sure, if I knew they’d take care of it.” They wouldn’t. Tucker was ten times the father her own was, and Beth, Tucker’s wife, was a great mother. Dora was growing up knowing she was the center of their lives, and very loved.
Smiling with a hint of teeth, Clare said, “You get Mom and Dad to give me a call today or tomorrow and I’ll cancel the contract. Where are they now? I haven’t heard from them in a year.” They sure hadn’t come to Great-Aunt Sandra’s memorial, months ago. Too busy playing on the coast of Italy, or maybe France, or perhaps in the Greek islands.
Tucker’s square face took on color. “I haven’t heard from them, either.”
“Where are you sending their portion of the furniture?”
A sigh from her brother, and then he said, “I’ve been dealing with Terrence, G.G. Uncle Amos’s trust’s attorney. He’s found a storage unit in White Plains, New York, for the parents’ share of the furniture, and his office will handle the transfer on their end.”
“Has he heard from our parents?” Clare asked softly.
“No.”
Dora looked at Clare with owlish eyes. “Jal and Viva are in the wind again. They sent me a present for my birthday, though.”
She saw the lie of that in Tucker’s eyes. He covered for the parents when Clare wouldn’t.
“Tucker, if you want the house, it’s yours,” Clare said.
“I like the house,” Dora said. “But I like our home in Williamsburg better!”
Tucker eased. “That’s good, baby.”
Clare said, “We sold it to a nice family, Tuck.”
His smile curved. “Kids?”
“Four.”
“They’ll love this place,” Dora enthused.
Enzo barked. Yes, they will! Children always loved Sandra’s and my home!
Clare turned her head sharply to look at the ghost dog.
“Clare?” asked Tucker.
She blinked and rubbed her right ear. “I’m here.”
His eyes narrowed. “You okay?”
“Maybe overdoing it a little working on the estate,” she mumbled.
“Well, that’s mostly done, and I’ll handle the work here.” He squeezed his daughter. “I feel better knowing there’s a family moving in, don’t you, kiddo?”
Dora nodded. “For sure.”
Everything’s good! Sandra would like them.
Clare hadn’t thought that Enzo had even met them, and didn’t want to ask.
“I love you, Auntie Clare.” Dora puckered and made a loud smooching sound. At least it wasn’t “weird Aunt Clare” . . . yet.
“I love you, too, Dora, and Tuck.”
“Love ya, sis.” Tucker winked. “Bye.”
“Bye.”
BYE! Enzo shouted. Dora frowned a little before Tuck closed the program.
Clare sagged in her seat.
• • •
Enzo barked in the middle of the night; a wave of chill air yanked Clare from sleep. She blinked, and her hand went out toward the dog, fingers turned frigid.
You must help me!
The apparition was back.
FOUR
ONCE AGAIN THE gray and black and white and transparent man stood at the end of her bed. You’ve got to get it. YOU’VE GOT TO GET IT!
Panting with cold and fear, Clare huddled against the headboard and drew up the comforter. She should add a blanket . . . in the hottest August on record. Yes, something was wrong. She should be grateful that this illusion didn’t move close to her and try to interact with her the way the dog did.
He looked a little different, a little rougher. Was he fraying around the edges? What did that mean?
You must get it. The one I put in a box. Get it first. His lips twisted as he looked down at himself. Then we will work to find the one I misplaced.
Again his stubborn chin lifted and she felt the cold pressure of an intense gaze—or thought she did.
This is the right time. You are the right person. Things are falling into place. It’s HERE, and finally the time is right and I may be able to go on, if you help me. She didn’t like the desperate plea in the glittering rounds that might be eyes. Maybe this was a dream.
She stared hard, trying to catalog every detail of this vision, and she found darker spots in him. Without thought, she said, “What are those?”
He glanced down again. Buckshot, a couple of bullets.
“You died of gunshot wounds?”
His lips compressed into a line. No. They were just still in me. The words continued to come to her mind and she shuddered. Please. He stretched out a pale hand. I did wrong, I admit it. I was a bad and mean drunk, I admit that, too. But I’ve been here more than a century and a half and don’t deserve to stay so long! His expression changed to despairing. Away from my beautiful wife. She isn’t with me. I can’t find her. Help me, please.
Enzo yipped and whined, turning large, pleading eyes on Clare.
She cracked . . . mind, heart, something. Sloughed off a piece of her that might deal with this insanity . . . just for now. The psychologist could help her put herself together, eventually, when she trusted him more . . . but for now . . . Wetting dry and cold lips, she whispered, “What do you need?”
I have found the box, a box my wife had that I used. Get it for me, please, I beg of you. That is the first step in freeing my tormented soul.
He should have sounded melodramatic, but the emotions she thought she felt rushing from him were so sad, too sad. She swallowed.
We can go now, the manlike vision . . . illusion . . . ghost? . . . said.
“Now? Right now?” Clare glanced frantically around the bedroom. It was tiny, hardly enough room for the bed, the transparent dog-thing, and the man-shadow. And if the city during the day spun out pale visions, what would night bring? “I don’t think so.”
The man-shape floated to the footboard of her bed and hitched a hip on it, balancing somehow, though she could see the curved wood through him. He crossed his arms.
“You’re going to stay?” she asked, appalled.
He nodded, not speaking. Was that better or worse?
Maybe if she closed her eyes and tried to sleep, he would go away. Enzo hadn’t. It looked like she had another imaginary friend she didn’t want.
She sniffed in disdain and slid back into bed. She hadn’t turned on the fans tonight. Though the heat wouldn’t fall to the midsixties until four A.M., she was barely warm.
Three times that hour, she awoke, opened her eyes, and saw the ghost man staring at her.
Finally she sat up. “Where is this box?”
I can show it to you. Come.
Driving at night, when, if you were someone who believed in ghosts, undead spirits gathered. “No.”
He sat on the far corner of the bed, staring at her with a black gaze that yet seemed to burn with determined fire. Enzo crept closer to her and thumped his cold tail on her thigh.
“Oh, all right. Let’s get this over with.”
She’d been right about the night. She drove slowly, creeping, really, through a fog of phantoms, ignoring shapes and wide mouths and pleading hands, shivering all the way. She turned on the heater.
Finally the specter who’d been leading her stopped, miles from her home. Mercifully there were fewer people here, probably because it had been outside city limits during the era that she was sensitive to.
The human mind can only comprehend ghosts from one slice of history, said the man, uncannily reading her thoughts.
Enzo barked. Right, right, right! He bolted through the car door and in front of a building.
Reluctantly, Clare got out of the car. The thunk of the door closing was muffled.
I am very lucky you are here to help me, the vision continued. He waved a hand that showed calluses in places that didn’t look normal and modern to Clare. The box is in there; you must get it.
“Oh, no, I won’t.” But now she was close, she saw it was an auction house. She scanned the hours posted on the window and the flyer for the next auction.
It is in THERE!
Clare headed back to the car. “The next sale is tomorrow night. The place lists a website. We can look for your box there.”
The ghost appeared confused.
“I’m heading back home. You can stay or go.”
He walked into the building—as did Enzo—and Clare sighed with relief. She didn’t admit that she missed the dog on the way back through weird white-shadowed Denver.
But both dog and man awaited her in her living room. Her shoulders slumped.
I saw the box! Enzo panted, drool as usual falling and not hitting her shabby rug.
I will see you tomorrow night. Lines grooved in the apparition’s forehead. This costs me much energy, but to be free, I will do anything. Promise me you will get the box!
Enzo barked, You need to do this Clare. For yourself and for him. HE is your first project! PROMISE HIM! For the first time, that Other spirit she sensed also inhabited Enzo’s body came to the fore, looked at her with dark, dark fog moving in the eye sockets, thundered in her mind.
Clare reeled back at the blast of cold, and hit the closed door.
PROMISE, they shouted together—or her own mind insisted.
“I promise,” she said weakly, shivering.
The man vanished.
She went into the tiny second bedroom that held her ruthlessly organized home office, complete with a new computer. Enzo followed, circled and circled again, and when he looked up at her, his eyes were all innocent dog. Then he stared at the notebook.
I know that toy! It shows pictures and places. Let’s look now!
Dragging up a chair, they found the auction house’s website. There was a lot of antique furniture, some in excellent shape that made Clare’s mouth water—but Aunt Sandra’s house had just sold. Clare’s brother was supervising closing it up and dividing the furniture. Clare could expect a truck with her share within the week. Other trucks would go to her brother in Williamsburg, Virginia, and a storage unit in New York.
Rubbing her eyes, which seemed to do nothing but move around grit, Clare zipped through the photos until Enzo barked. I see it!
Clare stared at it dubiously: a puzzle box made of plum wood of unknown origin and date. It didn’t look like much. Pretty battered. At least she might be able to get it cheap. She wrote down all the information, turned off the computer, and trudged to bed, accompanied by the imaginary dog. She should get a real one.
Maybe. When she was sane again.
Enzo looked up at her sorrowfully. You still don’t believe in me.
Clare opened her mouth and shut it, then said, “Not really.”
He shook his head and for an instant he didn’t look like the image of a dog, but a skeleton dog. . . . She wrapped her arms around herself.
Only a little bit of you believes in me. That is not enough, Clare.
The echo behind his voice scared her, as if he were once again more . . . or less . . . than a dog . . . spirit.
She got back into her nightgown, folded her comforter—doubling, then quartering the queen-sized cloth—turned off the lights and curled under the cover.
Enzo blinked down at her, head through the comforter and sheet. You aren’t doing good.
What do you mean? Clare thought back at him, feeling drained of energy herself.
Enzo cocked his head as if listening, then drooped a little and said, If you don’t accept your gift that you can see ghosts, then you will die. And if you accept that you see them but don’t help them, you can go crazy.
Clare sobbed. Exactly what she’d always feared—madness.
• • •
The next morning, Clare couldn’t throw off the night fears, or the fact that she’d made a really odd promise to something that might be an aspect of herself.
Her great-aunt’s death had shaken her, for sure.
But a promise was a promise. Since her parents had casually made and broken so many, she made a habit of keeping all of hers. Even promises to herself—a hot fudge sundae if she said no to overwork, for instance.
Now she had no work, but destiny had rung in her mind and reverberated throughout her body.
And to remind herself of her promise, she took Aunt Sandra’s perfume spritzer and sprayed scent on her neck and wrists . . . and sniffed. It wasn’t too heavy. Tears welled in Clare’s eyes at the fragrance of sandalwood, tuberose, wild berries . . . she’d looked up the mixture once. That dark and mysterious fragrance that meant “Aunt Sandra” to Clare, in all her weird kindness. The perfume that meant Gypsy to Aunt Sandra.
Clare gulped, shook the thought away, and moved on. She decided to buy a larger house, move to one of the more charming areas of Denver. She’d always liked the ambiance of Cheesman Park, but nothing would get her there now. She completely dismissed that idea. Everyone knew Cheesman Park had been a graveyard, and when they’d added the parking garage to the Botanic Gardens they’d found more graves.
Even if she didn’t believe in ghosts, she didn’t want to be in an area with a lot of dead people that was right in the time period now haunting her. . . . She did a quick check on her tablet computer. Yes, burials at Cheesman began in 1858. No way, nohow was she moving there.
Much of the Capitol area and LoDo had been built in that time period. Then there was the area around the Molly Brown house, but most residential homes around it had been demolished.
Looked like she’d be going to the Western floor of the Denver Public Library after all, just to find out what area might be . . . safe. And—she nerved herself at the thought—she might have to put in some hours driving around the city to find out where she could live. Even the suburbs and the plains might be touchy—Indians roved and camped on the plains.
Yes, she’d be doing some research.
With a huff of breath, she admitted she might as well research the vision of the man.
She needed to move fast since even at a high-end price, Sandra’s house had been snapped up. Clare could put the items she wanted in her new house, instead of the storage area she’d planned. Finding a home would be a project to take her mind off her poor mental health.
She felt better after the decision. She’d always prided herself on her quick decision making—unlike the rambling conversations of her parents discussing all their options that had driven her crazy in her childhood.
Just one of those personality traits she didn’t share.
She figured out exactly how much she wanted to spend on a house and had made a list of three columns: one of things she MUST have, like a landscaped yard; one with the features she’d prefer; and the last, “extras.”
Before heading off to the library, she organized her briefcase with pen and paper, tablet computer, and her new top-of-the-line smart phone. This time she called a cab to drive her downtown. She wouldn’t have to deal with traffic, parking, or apparitions who got in her way.
Or handle any imaginary figment other than Enzo, who ran through the house and the door of the cab, barking all the way.
Clare gritted her teeth. She would not talk to him, no matter what outrageous thing he said.
So, where are we going? Are we going to find the ghost man? We are going back into the city? I LIKED the city. Will the ghost man be there? Those remnants of ghost squirrel energy are YUMMY! Will you take me to the park again, huh, huh?
I AM GOING TO THE LIBRARY FOR THE REST OF THE MORNING. YOU CAN PLAY IN THE PARK! she “shouted” mentally.
Hurt doggie eyes. He turned and seemed to look out the window. She wouldn’t feel guilty.
Once inside the clean and organized library with exceedingly helpful librarians, Clare felt more in control. Since the fifth floor housed the genealogical section as well as the Western collection, there were more people there on a weekday morning than she’d anticipated.
From the quiet conversations around her, she learned there were people researching their family trees, students, a writer or two, and a couple of research assistants of local professors.
She approved, smiling at the lovely environment. Imaginary Enzo had remained in the park.
She set up her tablet computer with Wi-Fi keyboard and accepted from the librarians the basic biographies on men who’d been in Colorado more than 150 years ago.
Instead of just flipping through the works for old photographs—or the drawing she half recalled—she sank into the stories.
And found Jules Beni, the founder of Julesburg, Colorado, who was not her guy.
But his killer was.
The infamous Jack Slade. The Jack Slade whom Mark Twain and Sir Richard Burton had written about. The first bad guy who defined all other American West bad guys. But not one most people knew.
