Cassie Miles - Criminally Handsome

Miguel. She sighed. Miguel Acevedo. She wouldn’t mind having him as a houseguest. He was definitely handsome with those green eyes and strong features, but his greater appeal came from his quick mind. She had to be alert when she was around him. He was a challenge.

Also, she needed him to find Aspen. To follow the trail. But where was this trail? Discovering the necklace in the snow was a start, but Emma had no idea what came next.

In the mirror, standing beside her, was Grandma Quinn. The resemblance between her and this blue-eyed, elderly lady made her smile.

Grandma said, “Why don’t you change that shirt, dear?”

Emma didn’t need fashion tips from the other side. “You know I had a vision about Aspen.”

“About time.”

“I’m supposed to follow a trail or a path. Do you know anything about that?”

“Change the shirt.”

Grandma faded and vanished, leaving Emma frustrated. All too often, her spirit visits were cryptic hints and vague impressions instead of direct instructions. Why couldn’t Grandma Quinn give her a street address or a phone number?

Grabbing the baby monitor, she hurried to the front door and onto the porch to wait for Miguel and his brother. Jack had finally fallen asleep, and she didn’t want the baby wakened by two grown men tromping through the house.

When the car pulled into her driveway, a shiver of anticipation went through her, making her realize how glad she was to be seeing Miguel again. He gave her a lopsided grin that made her heart beat a little faster.

His twin brother resembled him, but she would never confuse these two men. There was something about Miguel that drew her closer. His was a healing presence, like the words inscribed on the back of his silver Chimayo medal.

As she shook hands with Dylan—whose handsome face was somehow enhanced by the scar on his chin—she had the impression that he was kind of scary. His eyes looked haunted. Not in the sense that he had ghosts hanging around him, but he had secrets, many secrets. And he had seen terrible things.

“I hope you two don’t mind,” she said, “but I’d rather stay outside. The baby’s asleep, and I don’t want to wake him.”

She directed them to a flagstone path that led to the covered patio behind her house. The afternoon sun warmed this western exposure, and there were only a few patches of snow left behind from the blizzard. Within the month, she hoped to start planting her vegetable garden. Most of her other landscaping was shrubs and annual flowers, indigenous to the high plains so they didn’t need much watering in drought years.

She sat at the round wrought-iron table with one twin on either side. Miguel held the piece of paper upon which she’d written her impressions from her first vision this morning. “We wanted to talk about the VDG symbol,” he said.

With the V standing for Virgin? She sucked in a breath to keep from blurting an embarrassing comment. “I really don’t know where that came from.”

“How does that work?” Miguel asked.

“It’s called automatic writing,” she said. “Another way the dead communicate through me. I’m holding the pen, but they are directing the strokes. Some people call it channeling.”

Watching her intently, he asked, “Does the name Vincent Del Gardo mean anything to you?”

She probed her memory and shrugged. “Nothing comes to mind.”

“He’s from Las Vegas.”

“I’ve only been there twice.” The memory made her smile. “I went to visit Aspen while she was going to college there. She thought, because I’m a medium, that I might be able to beat the odds at gambling. We tried roulette, craps and blackjack. I was lousy at all of them.”

Dylan leaned forward. “Your cousin might have mentioned Del Gardo. He had interests in several casinos. Maybe she worked for him.”

“I don’t recall.” In her mind, she repeated the name. Vincent Del Gardo. “Are you looking for him? Is he missing?”

“Maybe you can find him,” Miguel said. “When you do that missing persons thing with the sheriff, what’s the process?”

“Everything I see or hear in a vision comes from someone on the other side. When I’m asleep, they come to me as if in a dream. When I touch something connected with a missing person, I sometimes intersect with the psychic energy of someone close to them who has passed away. I see them. And hear them.”

“Give me specifics,” Miguel said. “Last fall, when you told the sheriff that the missing boy was with his father in a motel in Durango, how did you do it?”

“I touched some of the boy’s clothing. My vision came from his dead grandmother. She showed me a vision of the room, a wagon wheel and the number seven.”

“You’re a medium,” Dylan said. “The FBI works with mediums. I get it.”

Miguel asked, “Were you always like this?”

“When I was ten years old, Grandma Quinn appeared to me. I was old enough to know that my grandmother was dead and to understand what that meant.”

“What did she look like?” Miguel asked.

“Just the way she looked in life. But not solid. The best comparison I can make is a hologram. Grandma Quinn wasn’t scary, she hadn’t come to frighten me. She gave me a warning. It saved my life.”

Grandma Quinn had told her there was danger, told her that Emma and her mother had to leave the house. Though ten-year-old Emma wept and pleaded, her mother wouldn’t listen.

Later that night, when her mother’s abusive boyfriend came home, Emma fled. She ran next door to the neighbor’s and hammered on the door. Remembering caused her hands to draw into fists. Sobbing, Emma had begged them to call the police.

They arrived too late. There was a fire in her mother’s bedroom. Both she and her boyfriend were killed.

“Emma,” Miguel said, “what are you thinking about?”

“A memory.” She met his gaze and saw his struggle to accept what she was saying. “A real-life memory. I’m not crazy.”

“We get it,” Dylan said loudly, demanding her attention. “You knew the missing woman. Aspen Meadows.”

“I grew up with her. After my mother died, I went to live with my aunt Rose on the rez.” She gestured to her brown hair and blue eyes. “I didn’t fit in with the other kids. Aspen used to tease me, and she resented that I was taking Aunt Rose’s attention away from her. My main goal in life was to get off the reservation. I studied hard and got a full scholarship to University of Colorado when I was sixteen.”

“You sound like my brother,” Dylan said.

“El Nerdo Supremo,” Miguel said.

“Perfect description.” She laughed on the inside. “Anyway, Aspen and I got along better as adults. I kept pushing her to go to college, and she had finally finished her studies. She was coming back to the rez to be a teacher.”

A cry from the baby monitor alerted her. “Excuse me? It’s almost time for Jack’s feeding. I need to get a bottle of formula ready.”

She hurried into the house through the back door. Still listening to the baby monitor, she went through the motions of preparing the bottle and measuring the formula. Vincent Del Gardo. A casino owner from Las Vegas.

She glanced through the kitchen window. Beyond the patio where the twin brothers sat in conversation, she saw a third person—a man with a shaved head and a white beard. A ghost.

When he looked toward her and waved, she saw his black-framed glasses. He returned to his task, digging with a spade in the area where she would soon plant her garden. The hole grew quickly. He reached inside and pulled out a handful of gold coins.

She blinked, and he was gone.

The noises from the baby monitor grew more insistent, but she rushed outside to the patio table. “Buried treasure. Does Del Gardo have something to do with treasure?”