Date with a Ghost in Colorado (Cozy Mystery Thriller) (Ghost Mysteries of the Southwest Book 1) Read online

  Back at the cabin, Warren was nowhere in sight. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, so it wasn't unusual for him to be absent. He preferred the hours after sunset. She ate an early dinner of grocery-store pasta, set the Ouija board on the dining table, and napped on the bed.

  She woke up after sunset, disoriented and stiff in the neck, her bladder full. She searched the cabin for him, even whipping back the shower curtain in the bathroom. Was he trying to scare her? That wasn't like him. She usually sensed him a minute before he arrived. Then he'd enter the room near the doorway, just like a living person.

  She packed up the Ouija board and its cheap plastic planchette, then buried the box in a hall closet, under a dusty stack of jigsaw puzzles. Five minutes later, she returned to the closet and pulled out a thousand-piece puzzle featuring fuzzy yellow baby chicks. She'd just sorted out all the edge pieces when Warren appeared by the front door.

  “And here I thought you'd moved on,” she said. “At least you're in time to help me with the very important task of putting these chicks back together.”

  She expected him to join her at the table, but he remained by the door. When he caught her eye, he jerked his head, inviting her to come outside with him.

  “I'm sick of looking at the stars,” she said. “They're pretty, but they don't do anything.”

  He mimed putting his hands on either side of an imaginary steering wheel.

  “I already went to town once today,” she said.

  He mimed taking a drink.

  “Good idea,” she muttered, and she went to the fridge's upper freezer compartment for ice.

  The freezer door suddenly slammed shut on her. Warren stood in front of her, his dark eyes blazing. She'd never seen him like this.

  “I guess you really want to go out,” she said.

  He nodded.

  Her makeup was smeared from the nap, so she excused herself to freshen up. As she fixed her hair, she muttered to herself, “You've really lost it, Samantha. This is a whole 'nother level. I can understand the whole ghost thing—who wouldn't want a handsome boyfriend who's a great listener? But this? Now this figment of your imagination is turning on you, making you do things. This can't be good for your sanity.”

  She had half a mind to get in the car, ask the navigation computer for the nearest hospital, and drive herself right to it for a psych evaluation. Did they even take people for seeing spirits? It wasn't the same as hearing voices. Warren wasn't telling her to do stuff—not in words, anyway.

  She finished getting ready and came out of the bedroom prepared to tell him they were going to a hospital. But then he looked her up and down, smiled, and brought his fingers to his lips to blow her a refined kiss. Magnifique, he mouthed.

  Charmed by his attention, she climbed into the driver's seat of her rental car. He slid into the passenger seat when she wasn't looking. He caught her eye and used his finger to draw a pretend mustache on himself, and then on her. The movement was familiar, but it took a moment to place it.

  “The Watering Hole?” she asked. “You want to go back to where we were on the fifth of May? Where I was?”

  He nodded and smiled, all charm. He'd spent his career working as the man behind the camera, but he could have just as easily been on the other side, modeling or acting.

  As they drove to the tavern, she asked him a dozen questions. Where did he go when he wasn't with her? Why did he want to go out for drinks when he was usually content to stay in the cabin? Was he upset about her buying the Ouija board? How had he slammed shut the freezer door? As usual, he ignored all the questions. He leaned his head against the passenger-side window and then right through the glass. He kept his head there for a while, his gaze on the stars and his ears outside the car, away from her questions.

  Fine. She could take a hint. She stopped asking questions and tried to relax. It had been ten days since Warren's untimely death. Surely she could loosen up and enjoy having a drink at the Watering Hole with his ghost.

  Inside the rustic tavern, the Cinco de Mayo decorations had been taken down, but the place still retained its southwestern charm. Blinking chili pepper lights hung from the roof timbers, along with a piñata or two. The musical entertainment that night was just the jukebox, and the crowd was much thinner than it had been on the fifth, but the laughter and fermented scent of beer in the air immediately put Samantha into a relaxed mood.

  She walked straight toward the bar, making eye contact with the bartender and giving him a smile, but then she abruptly stopped and turned toward a table in the corner. She hadn't tested Warren in front of other people, but she guessed they wouldn't be able to see him. If they noticed her talking to an empty chair, getting checked into a mental ward might happen whether she wanted it to or not.

  When the waitress—a tired-looking Hispanic woman of about forty—came by, Samantha ordered her least favorite beverage, a microbrew beer with a hoppy flavor.

  “Because I'm driving,” she explained to Warren once they were alone. “You wouldn't want me to drink too much and crash my car.” She picked up a warped coaster and fidgeted with it. “Unless that's something you want to have happen. Is it?” She didn't dare look up into his eyes and read his expression in case it was true. “Do you want me to die and be your ghost girlfriend?”

  She finally looked up. He was staring at her as though she'd said something utterly stupid.

  She snorted. “I suppose if I have some weird death wish, there are easier ways to accomplish it.”

  The waitress returned with her beer and two fresh coasters. She set one in front of Samantha and one in front of Warren, who appeared to be surprised.

  “You can see him?” Samantha asked, pointing at the handsome ghost in the crisp tuxedo.

  “Who?” The waitress glanced around, then looked at the second coaster. She snatched it up quickly. “Sorry,” she said. “I thought you were talking to someone, or maybe you said you were meeting someone.” She gave the area above the coaster a furtive look, clutched a gold, coin-sized charm on her necklace, and walked away quickly.

  “That was eerie,” Samantha said to the ghost. “Can anyone other than me see you?”

  He didn't seem to be listening to her. He was staring intently at someone. His eyes moved as he watched someone move around the bar.

  Samantha turned her head and followed his gaze.

  He was staring at the curvy redheaded woman who'd been there ten days earlier, drawing mustaches on people with a black felt-tipped marker. She'd given Samantha a mustache on her finger that had taken two days of showers and washing dishes to wear off.

  “What's going on?” she asked. Of course he didn't answer.

  “Do you want me to talk to that woman?” she asked.

  That, he heard. His eyes widened, and he nodded.

  “Talk to her about you?”

  He held his hand over his heart and tilted his head to the side.

  “Fine,” she said with a sigh. “I'll go talk to some strange woman in a bar. It beats sitting here in the corner talking to myself.”

  Chapter 3

  Samantha Torres was a striking, raven-haired beauty who'd been chatted up by men in bars countless times. Being on the receiving end of so many unwanted advances should have given her insight into how to approach the redhead, but she found herself feeling small and ill equipped.

  “Hi,” she said, gripping the back of an empty chair to give her hands some purpose. “You don't have your pen tonight, do you? I'm in the mood for a finger mustache.”

  The redhead, who'd been checking her lipstick in a compact mirror, snapped the compact shut and gave Samantha a curious look. “What?”

  The music from the jukebox was playing, but not loud enough to drown out Samantha's words. The redhead had simply not understood Samantha's awkward conversation opener, and why would she want to? By the way her cleavage was thrust up in the center of her V-neck blouse, she was looking for the attention of a man, not a thirty-five-year-old lonely woman who consorted w
ith ghosts.

  Samantha glanced over at her own table, where Warren sat in his ever-present gleaming tuxedo. He gave her a nod of encouragement to keep going.

  “You and I met on Cinco de Mayo,” Samantha explained, careful to keep her smile large and her hand motions small and nonthreatening. “You were drawing on people's faces and hands.”

  The redhead wrinkled her freckled forehead. “Sorry about that,” she said coolly. “I thought it was the kind of pen that washed off. I didn't know.”

  Samantha smirked. The woman must have been getting complaints for days from all the people whose swirling mustaches were more durable than expected.

  “You were just having fun,” Samantha said. “People need to lighten up, right? Life is for the living.”

  The redhead leaned back and gave her an appraising look. Samantha did the same. The woman wasn't the forty-something she'd first estimated, but probably closer to the mid-thirties range, like Samantha. She'd been wearing heavy makeup that accentuated the few small wrinkles at the edges of her eyes, but tonight her face was nearly bare and more youthful. She had a bulbous nose and one eye was smaller than the other, yet she had a wholesome look that could be described as pretty, and her body looked sporty, like the stereotypical farmer's daughter.

  The song ended and there was a lull as the jukebox clicked to line up the next song. It was a vintage machine, possibly older than the tavern itself, that played vinyl singles. As the next song, a Beatles classic, started, Samantha extended her hand and introduced herself.

  “Toni,” the redhead said. “Spelled with an I, like Toni Colette, the actress.”

  The name was familiar to Samantha, but she couldn't summon up an image of the actress or what movies she'd been in. It wouldn't hit her until much later that night, when she was brushing her teeth and chatting to her ghost boyfriend, that the actress Toni Colette played the mother of the boy who saw ghosts in the blockbuster movie The Sixth Sense. The realization would stop her cold as she grasped for deeper meaning and found none.

  For now, though, the name simply gave her a shiver of discomfort.

  “Toni with an I,” Samantha repeated. “You can call me Sam for short, if you'd like. Just not Sammy.”

  “Why not?” asked Toni playfully. “Was that the secret pet name some old boyfriend used to call you?”

  Samantha inhaled some saliva by accident and began to cough. Toni used her foot to push the empty bar-height chair away from the table and told Samantha to take a seat. Toni turned and called for the waitress to bring some water. “No, make that sangria,” she corrected. “A medium-size pitcher.” She turned back and asked, “You like sangria?”

  Samantha looked over at the barely sipped bitter beer at her old table. “That sounds great.” She glanced around. “Am I in somebody's seat? Are you meeting someone tonight?”

  Toni shook her head. “That wouldn't be appropriate. I'm in mourning.” She reached inside the shoulders of her V-neck blouse, which was a dark plum color, and adjusted her bra straps, jiggling her cleavage. “I should be wearing black, but this is the darkest color I own.” She wrinkled her bulbous nose, enlarging her nostrils. “Redheads shouldn't wear black—not unless they live in New York City.”

  “I'm sorry for your loss,” Samantha said.

  The waitress arrived with the pitcher of sangria and two glasses. She checked that Samantha was finished with her beer, poured their first two glasses from the pitcher, and left them to their conversation.

  Toni looked off into the distance and said, wistfully, “Warren was such an amazing man. I don't know if I'll ever get over losing him.”

  Samantha nearly choked a second time, on the sangria. She recovered and asked, “You knew the man who had that accident? The photographer who fell off the cliff?”

  “We were dating,” Toni said. She leaned in and whispered, “We were in love. I was carrying his baby when he died, but my grief was just too powerful, and I lost the baby.” She sniffed and dabbed a napkin at the corner of one eye and then the other.

  Samantha turned to give Warren a dirty look, but he was gone. She scanned the bar and didn't spot his tuxedo or his lying, cheating face. He'd told her he was single, hadn't been on a date or touched a woman in over a year. They were going to have some words tonight when she got home. He could pantomime an explanation for how he'd impregnated Toni without touching her.

  “Warren was so talented,” Toni said. “I can barely doodle, but I just know our child would have been an artistic genius. And we would have been so happy together.”

  Samantha sipped her sangria and let the sweetness soften her mood. It had been Warren's idea for them to meet on May fifth at the Watering Hole, in the most densely populated venue in all of Owl Bend. If he'd been keeping his relationship with Samantha a secret, it wouldn't have stayed that way for long.

  “Forgive me for asking,” Samantha said. “Were you planning to meet Warren here on the night he died?”

  Toni pursed her lips around her straw and pretended to drink her sangria. Samantha could see she wasn't really drinking it, because the red liquid only went partway up the straw and stopped. What an odd thing to do, she thought. This woman is nuts.

  Toni finally pulled away from her drink and started stirring the contents vigorously. “Stupid strawberries,” she said. “A chunk is stuck in the straw. Don't you hate that?” She tossed the straw on the counter in disgust. Samantha chided herself for jumping to conclusions about the woman's sanity. Who was she to judge? She would be going back to the cabin tonight to snuggle with a ghost.

  After draining her glass, Toni said, “Warren didn't like crowds. He preferred his solitude and nature, so I wasn't expecting to see him that night.”

  “Did he know you were going to be here?”

  Toni wrung her napkin and dabbed at her eyes again. “Don't think I haven't been over that day in my head a million times. We had a fight the day before, actually. I wanted to come here and be part of the celebration, just like I've done every year since they let me in with my fake ID.” She held her hand to the side of her mouth and whispered, “I was only seventeen, but I matured early, if you know what I mean.”

  “So, Warren knew you were going to be here?”

  The redhead nodded vehemently. “I wouldn't miss it for the world. Cinco de Mayo is my third-favorite party. The second is New Year's Eve, and my top pick is Halloween. How about you?” She grinned and used the pitcher to refill both of their glasses. “What's your favorite, Sammy?” She made a playful shocked expression and covered her mouth. “I mean Sam,” she corrected.

  Samantha's mind went blank. Not only couldn't she think of her favorite holiday, but she forgot Toni's question entirely. Her mind was doing the partition-shifting thing again. She blinked and looked around the bar. The chili pepper lights overhead flickered hypnotically. Red and green. Red and green. She was hot, and she was freezing, too.

  “Caitlyn!” Toni yelled, waving at someone behind Samantha. “Caitlyn! Woohoo! Over here, girl! I've got a table!”

  Given that fewer than a third of the tables were currently in use by patrons, having a table didn't seem like much to be proud of. Samantha remembered what the bartender had said about Toni on the night of the fifth. She can be... enthusiastic.

  A chair scraped on the old wood floor, and they were joined by a third woman, a blonde in her early twenties. She was introduced as Caitlyn Winters and touted as “the most famous person in Owl Bend.”

  Samantha shook Caitlyn's hand and apologized for not recognizing her. “Are you an actress?” Samantha asked.

  Caitlyn snorted cutely and waved her hand. “Just a reporter,” she said. “Radio and TV. I do the local coverage for stuff, unless it's big enough for the bigger stations to send in their own people. Honestly, I hope we never get our own airport. Being two hours away from Pueblo is basically my job security.”

  “That sounds like an actual career,” Samantha said. She'd meant to say “fun career,” but the sangria had made h
er honest. Nothing made her feel like more of a fraud than meeting someone with a real career.

  The other two women took her comment as a joke, and laughed. Samantha was about to ask Toni what she did for work when the waitress returned with another glass and an even larger pitcher of sangria.

  “Courtesy of Charles,” the waitress said.

  Samantha had been studying the younger blonde's expression, and saw a flash of rage cross her face. She recovered quickly and handed the third glass back to the waitress. “Could I get a pear cider instead?” She wrinkled her nose, which was tiny and adorable. “Allergies.”

  Toni twisted at the waist and scanned the bar, stopping when she spotted a short man with a crisp part in his black hair. She waved and shouted, “Thanks for the drink, Charles! I owe you a dance later!”

  The man gave her two thumbs up and climbed onto a barstool. Samantha silently admonished herself for staring, but she couldn't help it. Charles was very short, and she was trying to determine if he had a form of dwarfism or was just short. She managed to look away before drawing a conclusion. She had a female cousin with dwarfism, and knew better than to gawk.

  She turned her attention back to the women, who were discussing famous trios that contained a redhead, a blonde, and a brunette. “There should be two brunettes,” Caitlyn was saying. “Because there are so many more women with brown or black hair in the world. And then there would be more roles for women of color.”

  “But anyone can dye their hair or wear a wig,” Toni said. “Most of the time, the redhead isn't a real one, anyway. I bet you can't name five actresses who are genuine redheads. I bet you can't even name one redhead actress who isn't the daughter of Ron Howard.”

  “Nicole Kidman is a real redhead,” Caitlyn said.

  Toni snorted. “I'm not sure she's human, let alone a redhead.”