Linda Miller - Arizona Heat

“How did you find out?” he asked.

I closed my eyes. Opened them again. Logged off the internet. “I’m a detective,” I said lamely. “I have my sources.”

Tucker thrust out an exasperated sigh. “Yeah,” he retorted. “Your sister, Jolie, the crime-scene tech. She’s so lucky you’re not talking to any other cop on the planet right now. Look it up in one of your Damn Fool’s Guides, Moje—this is a serious breach of ethics.”

“Got it,” I said. “But isn’t it a breach of ethics for you to call and tell me about Alex’s death before the next of kin has been notified?”

He laughed, but it was a raw, broken sound. “You have a point,” he said. “I hate it when you’re right.”

“Get used to it,” I replied. “It happens at least sixty-five percent of the time.”

“Damn Fool’s Guide to Stupid Statistics?”

“Very funny. Hilarious, in fact.”

“I’m going crazy, Moje. I need to see you.”

“Are you still living with Allison?”

“Yes.”

“Sorry,” I chimed, with a brightness I certainly didn’t feel. “All booked up.”

“Moje, be reasonable, will you? I’m not sleeping with her.”

“So you say.”

“You don’t believe me?”

My eyes started to burn. “I want to. I really do. But the map of that emotional territory is clearly marked ‘Here be dragons.’”

Tucker didn’t answer. What could he have said?

“How’s the investigation going?” I asked, to get things started again. I wanted to hold Tucker in my arms, get naked with him and lose myself in the wonderful world of multiple orgasms. I couldn’t, because even if he wasn’t having sex with Allison, he was in too deep. So I settled for stretching the conversation as far as I could, just so I could hear the sound of his voice.

Pitiful.

“It’s not,” Tucker said glumly.

I decided it might be in my best interests to be forthcoming about my plans to visit Helen Erland that evening, though I wasn’t about to let him know she was trying to arrange for me to see Vince in jail. He would have blocked that, on general principle. He’d hear about it after the fact, of course, but by then it would be too late.

I threw him a bone. Part of the truth. But, hey, that’s better than nothing, isn’t it?

“Mrs. Erland asked me to investigate Gillian’s murder,” I said, and braced myself for meteor impact. Oceans were going to overflow. Continents would shift. A new ice age would begin.

And here’s me, the flash-frozen mammoth with fresh grass in its mouth.

“When,” Tucker countered evenly, “did you speak with Helen?”

“Today at the convenience store where she works,” I answered after swallowing. “Gillian appeared in my car at Walmart, and she wanted to see her mother. So I took her there.”

“Mojo, if you compromise this case—”

“I might solve it, you know.”

“As far as the sheriff’s office is concerned, it is solved.”

“Not what you said on the news this morning, Detective Darroch.”

“Look, Mojo, there’s an official investigation going on here, and it’s delicate.”

I ignored that. I was in charge of the unofficial investigation. “Helen doesn’t think he did it. Vince, I mean. And neither does Gillian.”

“Helen is out of her head with grief, and she doesn’t want to believe Erland’s guilty. As for Gillian—well, I hate to tell you this, Sheepshanks, but ghost testimony doesn’t hold up in court.”

I glanced in Justin’s direction, hoping he’d left.

He was still sitting on the couch, and he was listening. For all I knew, he could hear Tucker’s side of the conversation as well as mine.

“It’s not easy being a ghost,” I said.

Tucker sighed again. He sighed a lot whenever we talked about my strange new talent for seeing dead people. I could only conclude that he wanted me for my body, not my mind.

It was a sure bet it wasn’t my detective skills.

“Moje,” Tucker said. “I’m not sleeping with Allison.”

I would have replied, “And I’m not sleeping with you,” if Justin hadn’t been there, taking it all in.

“Whatever,” I answered.

“Stay away from Helen Erland.”

“No. But thanks for the input.”

“Mojo—”

I hung up.

“I could find out if he’s sleeping with her,” Justin said.

“Justin,” I answered, “don’t help.”

He grinned. “It’s not like I don’t have time on my hands,” he reasoned. “I could help you solve the case, too.”

“How?”

“By spying on people. I’m invisible to most of them, remember. That could come in very handy.”

“I’ve got a better idea, Justin,” I said. “Go home.”

“I can’t. My mom’s too sad. It’s a bummer.”

“That isn’t the home I was talking about.”

“I have to wait for Pepper,” he told me decisively. “He’s old and he might get lost or something. It won’t be long, and I might as well make myself useful in the meantime.”

My throat closed and my sinuses clogged up instantly.

“Do you think they let dogs into heaven?” Justin asked. “Because I’m not going if they don’t.”

I started to cry.

Justin blipped out.

Alive or dead, men can’t stand tears.

* * *

JOLIE ARRIVED WHILE I was rooting through the cupboards looking for something that could reasonably be expected to morph into lunch.

“You look terrible,” she said after letting herself in.

“Do you think dogs are allowed in heaven?” I asked.

“Sit down,” Jolie ordered. “You’re a train wreck.”

I slumped into a chair at the kitchen table.

Jolie washed her hands at the sink—a good thing, since she’d probably been dropping pieces of Alex Pennington into evidence bags all morning—and opened a can of soup. “Greer’s not back from shopping yet?” she asked, getting out a saucepan.

I shook my head.

“It will be interesting to see how she reacts to the news,” Jolie said, plopping the contents of the soup can into the saucepan. “Do you ever buy groceries?”

I ignored the grocery gibe. Jolie cooked. It made sense that she had a fixation with supermarkets. To me, they were just places where I ran into crazy stalkers and dead people. “Greer,” I said evenly, “did not riddle Alex with bullets and leave him to rot in the desert.”

“Don’t be so free with the gory details, okay? I could get fired if anybody finds out I called you from the crime scene.”

Guilt washed over me. I bit my lower lip. Who needs collagen when you can get the plump look by gnawing on yourself? “I might have let something slip to Tucker,” I confessed.

Jolie stared at me, her eyes going huge and round. She was beautiful, even clad in khaki shorts, a Phoenix PD T-shirt and hiking boots. Her long hair, done up in about a million skinny braids, was tied back with a twisted bandana. “Mojo Sheepshanks,” she said, “you didn’t tell him I told you about Alex?”

“He guessed,” I said.

“Right,” Jolie snapped, glaring.

“Not to worry,” I said, holding up two fingers pressed close together. “He and I are like that.”

Jolie swirled an index finger around one temple. “You and Tucker are like this. Both of you are crazy!”

“Tucker isn’t,” I said.

Jolie turned back to the soup, her spine rigid.

“You’re going to have to sit with Greer tonight,” I told her. “So I hope you don’t have any plans.”

Jolie didn’t look at me. “And where will you be?”

“I have some investigating to do.”

Jolie muttered something I didn’t quite catch, but I thought I heard the words real job in there somewhere.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I said. “And how hard can it be to hang out with Greer for a couple of hours?”