Chris Green - Only the Good Die Young

Randy got a protective scowl on his face. And why not? We’d kind of bonded so far. Sweet.

I told him everything fake Dean had said before sending me through the cracked floor.

“Yup,” Randy said when I was done. “I’m definitely talkin’ to the others about this.”

There was a lull in our conversation as Randy looked at the liquor pooled on the ledge. A tiny wave of it rolled to the edge and tumbled off. He smiled at how he’d manipulated the booze into a new fall of drops and bent down to catch some.

“You do that so easily,” I said.

“What? Drink?”

“Well, that. But… manipulating. I’m not very good at it yet.”

“Ya will be. It takes practice. So do things like causin’ hallucinazions”—he continued his championship streak of word-screwing—“in humans and bein’ able to empathize with ’em.”

I was still back at the hallucination part. “We can make them see things?”

“Oh, sugar, ya don’t even know. Remember when I said I scare jerks?”

“Yeah.”

“I usually do it when I’m downtown, and some guy is handlin’ his girl in the wrong way. All it takes is a long touch and your imagination and, voilà, instant nightmare flashin’ in front of the jerk’s gaze. It never fails to make ’em behave from that minute on.”

Wow. I decided not to tell him about haunting Gavin because I wasn’t sure how Randy would judge that. But this news was bad to the bone.

Immediately, my thoughts started whirring with the possibilities.

“How about empathizing?” I asked. “How do you do that right?”

“A softer, less intense touch. Those are the ones I use on the dames.” He waggled his eyebrows.

Then it was as if a ticking clock had sounded an alarm in Randy, because he whipped his gaze toward the door and float-hopped over the bar.

“Sunrise,” he said. “There’s light enough for me to look for my gal’s letter.”

He must’ve forgotten that I’d told him I’d help, because he was under and out the door before I could remind him.

Drunk ghost ADD.

But honestly, I was excited about the information he’d given me, and I couldn’t wait to put this hallucination and empathy stuff in action.

I smiled, knowing exactly where I’d be going today—a possible murderer’s mind.

And maybe even beyond that .

Gavin wasn’t at the mansion.

For the first time, I felt an energy suck that had nothing to do with traveling too far or putting out too much effort. Sailor Randy hadn’t gotten around to explaining the fact that disappointment could also take a bit of the charge out of a ghost.

But Gavin had to be home sometime—I just hadn’t expected him to be gone shortly after dawn.

I’d already done a sweep of the property, and not only was his door open, but his bed was made. Most of all, I just couldn’t sense his life force—a warmth that always stood out from everyone else’s.

The first thing I wondered was if he’d run off because of last night. I highly doubted that, though, since he seemed the type to stand up to trouble, even if it came at him invisibly. Maybe he’d just gone in to work early, distracting himself from his fears by immersing himself in video game designing. What better way to escape this world than to invent your own?

The bummer was that I had no idea where he might have an office—I’d have to hit the Internet again for that. Or if he’d taken off on another of those business trips Noah and Wendy had been talking about yesterday.

Just on the off chance that he’d run out to get groceries or something—right, like Mr. Rich Pants wouldn’t have his housekeeping staff take care of that—I decided to pay a longer visit to his room before I left.

If I couldn’t try out some empathizing or hallucinations on him, maybe I could at least get to know my person of interest better by playing detective.

More bummerville, though. His bedroom turned out to be like a hotel: all expensive, starched sheets, closed closets, and anonymous vibes. He’d left nothing on the granite desk near the full-length window, and I wondered if he ever even worked in here. There wasn’t a damn thing that showed he had made this room his own and, unfortunately, when I tried to open drawers or cabinets, I didn’t have the skills.

Not yet, anyway.

Even the bathroom didn’t tell me much about Gavin. As I said, I couldn’t get into his cabinets to view even what kind of toothpaste he used, and knowing that he liked Paul Mitchell shampoo wasn’t exactly earthshaking information that convinced me of his murderous guilt. At least his walk-in closet was a little better—full of jeans and casual tops, a few business suits, a tux or two, plus what looked like hiking gear.

A dream date and an outdoorsman, huh?

Had Gavin done any serious walking near the beach on out-of-the-way trails, like the one Elizabeth’s remains had been found by?

Spurred on, I made my way downstairs before anyone in the house was up and about. I didn’t beat the cook to the kitchen, though—she was already laying out a buffet in the dining room.

Ultimately, I discovered a room off the garage that had all kinds of sporting equipment and accessories in it: a kayak, surfboards, wet suits. This gear was way better quality than any boards and suits Dean and I had ever used, but that wasn’t the point.

I’m not sure there was a point, because nothing gave me a clue about Gavin’s relationship with Elizabeth. Even the study I found on the first floor was as neat as a pin, in spite of the computer equipment riddling a few desktops in there.

Then again, had I expected to find, like, a bloody knife lying around? The murder had happened nearly three years ago.

I decided that I would continue my search later, because the cook was done with arranging the breakfast buffet, and that meant people were going to be coming downstairs and there’d be some good eavesdropping to be had.

I settled into a corner near the ceiling. The maid never even paid me the slightest bit of attention.

Farah appeared in the dining room first, her long, thick brown hair trailing down her back, her white silk robe wrapped around her. She smiled at the gray-uniformed maid, who nodded good morning.

“Noah hasn’t been down here for coffee yet?”

“No, Miss Farah.”

She blew out a breath and accepted a steaming porcelain cup of tea with a saucer from the woman. “I told him that he needs to be out of bed early today since Joseph is taking him to school for a newspaper staff meeting.”

Joseph must be their chauffeur or whatever. But… newspaper? Noah with the scruffy hair and attitude was a prep school reporter?

As Farah went to the massive buffet board and grabbed a plate from next to the eggs, fresh muffins, fruit, and cereals, I decided that the socialite wasn’t about to have a profound conversation with the maid, so I took the chimney route outside, to the pool, to see what was in the pool house back there.

A maintenance guy was already using a net to skim the water, and I slowed down as I passed him.

Something was niggling at me, and it had to do with that pool guy. I didn’t know why, because he looked presentable enough—late twenties, blond hair, an entrepreneur dressed in khakis and a polo top with his company’s logo on it.

But he kept glancing at an upper-story mansion window that overlooked the pool, like he was waiting to see something there. He also kept whistling a low tune that I didn’t recognize.

I couldn’t see what he was seeing, even when I flew up to the window to take a peek inside to find a girl’s bedroom, with a king-sized bed and comic-book artwork on the walls.

What was he waiting for?