Casey Daniels - Pepper Martin 02 - The Chick and the Dead

AVONBOOKS

An Imprint ofHarperCollinsPublishers

ISBN: 978-0-06-082147-0

ISBN-10: 0-06-082147-7

First Avon Books printing: March 2007

Contents

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Dedication

This book is for all the in-laws

and all the out-laws:

Peg & Tim

Jim & Cindy

Michael & Chris

Karen & George

Nancy & Art

Bill & Joann

Mick & Jim

Chapter 1

It all started with Gus Scarpetti.

More specifically, it all started when I was leading a tour at the cemetery where I work and smacked my

head on the marble step of the mausoleum where Gus Scarpetti's mortal remains were resting, but not in

peace.

High heels. Uneven ground. Gravity.

Not a good combination.

If I didn't know it when I woke up in the emergency room with doctors peering at me and asking me if I

knew my name and what day of the week it was, I sure did after that. Because after that…

Well, after that, I started seeing dead people.

Did I saypeople ? Let me correct myself. After that, I started seeinga dead person . Singular. As in one

gone-but-not-forgotten Mafia don—the aforementioned Gus Scarpetti.

Luckily, the whole ghostly experience didn't last more than a few weeks. I did some investigating and,

thanks to me, Gus's unfinished business here on earth got finished. After thirty years of his restless spirit

looking for someone who could help, his murder had been solved. By me. Gus had finally gone to the

Great Beyond. Or the white light. Or wherever it was that ghosts went after they served out their time

here.

And like any logical person, I figured that was—as they say—that.

Except apparently it wasn't.

Because just minutes after I said my final goodbyes to Gus, I walked into my office

atGardenViewCemetery and came face-to-face with a blond wearing a cardigan sweater and a poodle

skirt. Saddle shoes or no saddle shoes, I knew we were not talking twenty-first century.

The awareness stung like a shot of Botox, and for a couple of long seconds, all I could do was stand

there and listen to my blood rush in my ears and my heart slam against my ribs.

That, and stare.

At the woman perched on the edge of my desk, her legs crossed and one foot—and the saddle shoe on

it—swinging. At her bobbed, wavy hair. And the pink chiffon scarf tied around her neck. At her pink

cardigan, the one with the loopy D written in rhinestones over her heart.

She was a ghost. I knew it as sure as I knew my own name was Pepper Martin, and realizing it made

me feel, well… I'll leave out the part about being pissed, exasperated, and leery, and just settle with

saying I was not a happy camper.

I backed away, but my office isn't very big and there wasn't far to go. The doorknob poked my butt.

"No. No. No. No way can I see you." I held one hand out in front of me, emphasizing my point. "No

way can you be here. You're not Gus."

She snapped her gum and blew a big, pink bubble. "Don't have a cow! Of course I'm not Gus. Do I

look like Gus?" The woman sat up and pulled back her shoulders, the better to emphasize a bust-line that

was nearly as ample as mine. "No way Gus has a chassis this classy," she said. "Gus is the one who sent

me."

"But Gus is dead." Okay, it was an understatement, but I thought I should mention it, just in case she

didn't know. I looked toward the far wall. If I had a window—which I didn't—I would have been able to

see across Garden View—which I couldn't—toward the mausoleum that was as flamboyant as Gus was

himself. "I solved Gus's murder. This is the rest-in-peace part. For him and for me. No more ghosts."

"You think?" She grinned. "I've got news for you. That's not how it works."

I didn't have to ask, I knew theit in question was my ability to see and talk to the dead. As far as I

knew—at least until right then and there—thatdead meant Gus and only Gus.

Which meant that with Gus gone, I was officially out of the private-investigation-for-the-dearly-departed

business.

Or at least I should have been.

Struggling to make some sense of it all, I ran a hand through my carrot-colored hair. "No way this is

happening," I told the woman. "I hit my head on Gus's mausoleum. Not on yours. I don't even know who

you are. I shouldn't be able to see you."

"But you can, right?" Her smile was perky. Have I mentioned that I hate perky? She hopped off my

desk. "Thanks to that accident of yours, you have what's officially known as the Gift."

"Oh no!" I sidled along the wall until I was standing on the opposite side of the desk from where the

woman stood. "Whatever this Gift thing is, I don't want it. Take it back. No Gift. Not for me. I just want

my life back. My regular, old life."

"Really?" She fluffed her skirt and adjusted the knot on the gauzy scarf around her neck. "That's not

what Gus says."

"In case you haven't noticed, Gus is a mobster. One of the bad guys. That means he's not exactly the

most honest person in the world. Whatever world he happens to be in. And besides, when did you have

time to talk to him?" I thought back to what had just happened out near Gus's mausoleum. One second

he was there, the next… poof! "He just went to the big spaghetti dinner in the sky."

She shrugged like it was no big deal. "Time doesn't work the same here as it does there. Gus, he told me

all about you. He said he was pretty sure you'd moan and groan about how much you hated working for

him but that deep down, you're really grateful that he showed up. After all, before he did, I hear your life

was dullsville."

"He told you that?" So, Gus was over on the Other Side talking behind my back. You think he'd give me

a little more credit. After all, I was the only one capable of seeing him. I was the only one able to hear

him and talk to him, too. Without me, Gus Scarpetti would still be hanging out over in his mausoleum

watching the guys in his old crew bring him fresh roses every Thursday, the day he was gunned down

outside his favorite restaurant.

Of course, before Gus showed up, I was pretty much sitting on the sidelines watching life pass me by,

too.

A dead-end job here in dead city.

A fiance who dumped me rather than risk hurting his social status when my dad traded his medical

license and our more-than-comfortable upper-middle-class lifestyle for prison pinstripes.

A mountain of unpaid bills and a social life that gave dullsville a whole new meaning.

None of which made me feel any better about being bad-mouthed by the bigmouthed dead.

"What else did Gus tell you?" I asked the woman.

She grinned. Like she'd known all along that my curiosity would get the best of me. "He said that before

you met him, you never had to prove yourself. And that now, you finally realize how smart you really are.

He said before you met him, you thought your life was good for nothing but sitting by a swimming pool

and getting a really good tan."

And that's a bad thing?

I didn't bother asking the question, mostly because I didn't really care what this throwback from the last

century thought. Partly because after spending a few weeks with Gus dogging my every step, I was

sensitive to the fact that ghosts might be sensitive to how they couldn't tan.

Then again, I suppose I might have kept my mouth shut because there was a kernel of truth in what Gus

had said.

Before I met him, I had resigned myself to my not-so-happy fate. Go-nowhere job. Go-nowhere life.

Before I met Gus, I never would have dreamed that I was capable of solving any murder, much less one

that gave a whole new meaning tocold case .

Of course, before I met Gus, I never had to deal with mobsters, dodge the FBI, or worry about hit men,

either.

Ice settled in the pit of my stomach, and I dropped into the guest chair opposite my desk. I swallowed

down my misgivings and eyed the woman carefully. I didn't want to hear the answer, but I had no choice.

I had to ask the question. "You're telling me that I can't see just Gus, right? I can see—"

"Other ghosts. Sure." This ghost didn't seem nearly as disturbed by the news as I was. "It's cool, isn't it?"

"Yeah. Cool." My assessment of the situation was not nearly as enthusiastic as hers. "But what if I don't

want to? See ghosts, I mean."

There was that shrug again. "I told you, honey. That's not the way it works. We don't get a choice about

who lives, who dies, and when. If we did, do you think I'd want to be dead?"

She had me there.

"So you're—"

"Didi." She answered the question before I could ask it. "You'll pardon me if I don't shake hands. You

know how that works, too, right?"

I did. After all, that was precisely why Gus had needed my help in the first place.

Being incorporeal, ghosts can't do anything for themselves. Not anything that has anything to do with our

world. They can't touch things. They can't feel things. And the one time Gus had tried to latch on to my

arm to pull me out of the path of an oncoming car… well, I found out the hard way, that didn't work,

either. His hand went right through me, and the instant it did, I was left chilled to the bone for days.

No way was I going to risk that again. I waved away Didi's apology and asked another question I knew

I should have left unspoken. "And you're here, why?"

"Because Gus said you could help me."

"Gus is crazy."

"Some people would say you are, too."

She didn't need to remind me. I'd spent the better part of the first weeks of my relationship with Gus

wondering if I'd gone off the deep end. That was right before I spent the next few weeks being

ambushed, followed, and shot at. Yeah, call me crazy. No way was I going to do that again.

"Look… " I rose to my feet, the better to look commanding and in control. "I don't know what exactly

Gus told you, but whatever it was, he's got it all wrong. I'm not playing detective again. Been there, done

that. It may have been exciting, but it was dangerous, too, and how dare Gus, anyway?" The thought hit

out of the blue and sent my temper soaring. "The nerve of that man, thinking he can send people… or

spirits… or whatever you are… over here and just assume that I have to help them. You can go back to

wherever you came from and tell Gus that he's not the boss of me."

I sounded like I meant it, even though I did leave out one vital fact: Technically, Gus was my boss.

He'd paid me nine thousand dollars from a secret stash he kept in his mausoleum back when he was still

alive.

Of course, on the flip side, I'd kept my part of our bargain. I'd solved his murder. I'd unraveled a

mystery even the cops couldn't figure out. I'd earned my nine thousand bucks, damn it, and I deserved a

break.

My mind made up, I breezed past Didi and headed for the door. It was close enough to quitting time to

justify a hasty exit, and besides, I knew how ghosts could be, dead set—pun intended—on getting their

own way. I stopped at the door to deliver my parting shot.

"It's not going to happen," I told Didi. "Not now. Not ever. So you'd better face the facts. I'm not going

to risk getting killed again."

Remember that part about being commanding and in control? It should have worked. After all, I was a

hairbreadth away from scraping six feet, and Didi couldn't have been more than five two. Still, she wasn't

the least bit intimidated. I could tell because instead of giving up and apologizing for ruining what should

have been my Gus-is-finally-gone celebration, she grabbed her purse and fished out a compact and a

tube of lipstick. She added a little peachy color to her lips and smacked them together. "You're the only

one who can help me," she said.

"Not my problem."

It wasn't, and just to prove it, I took another step toward the door, distancing myself from the whole

thing. "I'm not the one who chose this goofy Gift thing. I'm not the one who decided to help Gus, either. I

wouldn't have given him the time of day if he wasn't such a pain in the ass. But that was then and this is

now and Gus is right, I'm way smarter now than I used to be. Smart enough to know that I'm not going

to do it again. No way! No bad guys are going to take potshots at this girl again." I poked my thumb

toward my chest. "In case you're not getting the message, that means that if you want someone to solve

your murder—"

My office door opened, and I jumped out of the way at the same time I gulped down the rest of my

words. Instantly I felt heat rise in my cheeks. My boss, Ella Silverman, stepped into the room, and I

knew there was no way she could have missed the fact that I'd been in there talking to myself.

While I scrambled to come up with something that sounded even vaguely like a justification for my

behavior, I watched Didi fade like a bad TV picture. She disappeared in a wisp of what looked like pink

cigarette smoke.

Breathing a sigh of relief, and hoping it was the last I ever saw of Didi, I turned my attention back to Ella

and wondered what I could possibly say to explain myself.

It was only then that I realized I didn't have to.

Explain myself, that is.

Something told me Ella hadn't even noticed that I'd been carrying on a conversation with thin air.

Ella's eyes were bright and her pupils were huge. Her cheeks were as red as the ankle-skimming skirt

she was wearing along with a white peasant blouse embroidered with colorful flowers. If that wasn't

enough…

Well, it didn't take a detective to see that Ella couldn't stand still. She just about line-danced across my

office, each step making her red and blue bead earrings twitch and sway as if they were alive.

"Ella?" Automatically I stepped toward her, wondering what was wrong at the same time I told myself

thatwrong didn't usually make people act like they'd just won the lottery. "Ella, are you all right?"

"Oh, Pepper!" Ella's eyes twinkled in the light of the buzzing fluorescents on the ceiling. "I hope you don't

mind me coming in at this time of day. After all, you should be leaving for home right about now."

I checked the clock that hung on the wall opposite my desk. She was right. Sometime while I was busy

dealing with Didi's annoying ectoplasm, the big hand had ticked its way past the twelve. It was officially

after five and I was officially free to leave.

Which didn't explain why I stayed right where I was.

What did explain it was that I knew that aside from being my boss, Ella was a real trouper. She'd even

shown up at Garden View with clean clothes for me the night I was a hit man's intended target. He'd

missed me, but he didn't miss the thug standing just a couple of feet away from me.

I had no idea how much blood could spurt from a bullet wound.

Hence the need for a change of clothes.

Cleanliness aside, Ella was a nice woman. A nice, normal, middle-aged woman who took her job as

community relations manager here at the cemetery as seriously as she took her responsibility to her three

teenaged daughters. She was levelheaded and professional, which didn't mean she didn't have a fun side,

too. She could tell jokes with the best of them. Sometimes they were even funny. And I'd heard from

other members of the staff who had worked here longer than me that she threw one hell of a

Hanukkah-Christmas-Kwan-zaa party.

But she usually didn't hyperventilate.

"Something's up." Didn't take a detective to see that, either, but since Ella didn't know I was a detective,

I figured I didn't have anything to be ashamed of. "Ella, what's wrong with you? You look like you're

about to shoot into the air like a rocket."

"Do I?" Ella laid a hand on her cheek. "I'm burning up!" She didn't sound upset by the realization. She

didn't look worried, either, the way you'd expect someone to who'd just discovered that her temperature

was up in the stratosphere somewhere. She paced to the far side of my office (it didn't take long) and

came back again, grinning from ear to ear and fingering a button pinned to the front of her blouse. It was

the first I'd seen the button, and I took a closer look. It was the size of a quarter, with a turquoise

background and the letters SFTD written on it in bright yellow, showy script.

"Pepper, I have such exciting news!"

The announcement drew my attention away from the button and back to the woman wearing it. She

shuffled in a little dance pattern across my office.

All this back-and-forthing was starting to make me nervous. I waved her toward my guest chair. "You

want to sit and tell me?"

"I couldn't. Sit, that is. It's just…" She clutched her hands at her midriff, right below a swath of

embroidered flowers. "Well, I hardly know where to begin. I suppose at the beginning, right?" Ella

giggled. It was something she didn't do often, and it was that more than anything that worried me.

"Do you need water?" I asked her. "A cup of tea? Maybe I should see if Jim is in his office and—"

"Jim's meeting with the cemetery trustees," she said. "And I don't think he'd appreciate this anyway. I

mean, he knows about it, of course. Since he's the chief administrator here at Garden View, I had to clue

him in. But he doesn't understand. Not the way I know you will. That's why I wanted to share my news

with you. And while I'm at it…" Ella pulled in a deep breath and let it out again slowly. "Well, I have

some good news," she said. She looked away. "And I'm afraid I have some bad news, too."

Bad news as in I just found out I had the Gift and could be eternally bugged by the eternally undead?

I thought not.

"Whatever it is, I suppose you should tell me," I said to Ella because I knew that no matter what she had

to say, it couldn't be as bad as everything I'd heard from Didi. "Start with the bad news. Get it over with."

"But it won't make any sense. Not until you hear the good news."

"Then start with the good news."

"Which isn't really fair because then you'll think I'm insensitive and you know I'm really not, Pepper. I

think of you the way I think about my girls. I mean, you're a good worker and a fine young woman and

I—"

"Ella!" I screeched. It was the only way I could get her attention. "Spit it out, will you! Not knowing is

way worse than any news you could ever tell me."

"Yes. Of course. You're right." Ella pressed one hand to her heart. She forced herself to stand still, and I

could tell the effort cost her dearly. All that nervous energy, and Ella looked like she was going to burst at

the seams.

"The good news." She cleared her throat and raised her chin. When she spoke, her face was

transcendent. Like she really had just won the lottery. Or gotten her lousy ex, Jeffrey, to finally pay all the

back child support he owed. "The good news… are you ready for this? The good news is that Merilee

Bowman is coming. ToCleveland !"

Chapter 2

I would have lied if I had the energy.

If I hadn't spent the day exposing a killer, saying goodbye to Gus, and getting up close and personal with

another ghost—and the realization that this Gift thing just might plague me until I was a ghost myself—I

might have managed some bit of bullshit that would have made Ella believe I shared in her excitement.

The way it was, the only thing I could do was chirp out a confused "Who?"

Ella's expression dissolved like my social contacts had once my plastic surgeon dad had been convicted

of Medicare fraud. She blinked at me in stunned disbelief.

"What do you mean, who? Merilee Bowman." Ella pronounced the name very carefully, as if she was

sure I simply hadn't heard her correctly. She touched a hand to the button pinned to her blouse. "The

Merilee Bowman," she said. "You know.So Far the Dawn ?"

I looked at the yellow, flowing script, and suddenly the button on Ella's blouse made sense. Even if all

the pieces still didn't connect. "SFTD.So Far the Dawn . That's a movie, right?"

Big points for Ella. When she sighed with exasperation, at least she didn't do it too loudly. She couldn't

stop herself from rolling her eyes, though. "Pepper, Pepper, Pepper." She shook her head. Clearly, I'd

gone from fine young woman and model employee to world's biggest disappointment in no time flat. "I

can't believe you young people these days. Yes,So Far the Dawn is a movie. But it was a book before

that. Don't tell me you've never read it?"

The way she asked the question, I knew she was convinced there wasn't a soul on earth who hadn't

read the book. Who was I to burst her literary bubble? "I saw the movie," I said instead, deflecting the

whole question of book reading before I was forced to confess that the only thing I'd read in as long as I

could remember were the sex quizzes inCosmo .

"At least I think I saw the movie. Once. A long time ago. It had something to do with women in gowns

and guys in uniforms and… " I knew this was important to Ella, so I thought really hard. "Horses?"

This time, she didn't even try to muffle her sigh. Her excitement smothered beneath what was apparently

my suffocating cultural deprivation, she went over to my guest chair and plunked right down. "Maybe we

should start at the very beginning," she said.

I wasn't convinced it was the best idea. Especially since it was after five o'clock. But since I'd already

taken Ella's excitement and ground it under the soles of the adorable silk and lizard T-strap pumps I'd

bought with some of the money I earned from Gus's investigation, I didn't want to do any more damage.

Dutifully, I took a seat behind my desk.

"I'm right, right?" I asked her. "So Far the Dawnis a movie, isn't it?"

I could just about see Ella fight to retain her composure. She closed her eyes, drew in a breath, let it out

slowly. "It's not just a movie," she said, giving me a look that told me she was about to set me straight,

whether I wanted it or not. "It'sthe movie.The single most romantic and wonderful movie ever made.

Based onthe single most romantic and wonderful book ever written."

"And this Bowman woman?"

"Is the author of the book." There was only so long Ella's nervous energy could be contained. She

hopped to her feet. "She's coming here, Pepper. ToCleveland . Because this is where she lived when she

wrote the book. This is where the book is set. It's a classic, the story of a Union family's lives and loves

during the Civil War. Now do you remember it?"

Casey Daniels - Pepper Martin 02 - The Chick and the Dead

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