The Trouble with Twelfth Grave (Charley Davidson #12)(4)

And he was gone. Just like that.

I’d stood there for what seemed like hours until the sun came up, watching the smoke slowly clear from my apartment. And for the first time in a long time, I had absolutely no idea what to do. Until I did. Until I’d been given a new case.

Before receiving the summons from the frazzled Mrs. Blomme, I’d been hunting.

Charisma jumped to her feet. “I have to pee.”

“Okay, have fun,” I said to her back as she rushed out of the room.

I still wondered why Mrs. Blomme couldn’t see her. Not for long. Maybe, like, seven seconds. I had too many other things on my plate to wonder overly long, but it did tickle the back of my brain.

“I told you,” Mrs. Blomme said. She was still using my shoulder as a protective shield. “My house is haunted. You saw them, right? The woman and the boy?”

“I did. But, Mrs. Blomme—”

Before I could continue with the bad news, my phone dinged. I dug it out of my back pocket. My uncle Bob, a detective for the Albuquerque Police Department, had texted me about a case we were working together. I sometimes consulted for APD, mostly because my uncle knew what I could do, and solving cases was a thousand times easier when the murdered victim could tell the police whodunit. This case, however, was far more disturbing than I’d led my uncle to believe.

Two bodies had been found mutilated and burned. But mutilated in a very unusual way and scorched in random spots. The burns didn’t kill them. Internal damage and blood loss from the mutilations did them in. It was as though they’d been beaten and clawed to death, but the ME said the attacks were not from an animal. He said they were human.

Or, I had to wonder in the back of my mind, perhaps they were made by a god inhabiting a human body. An angry god made of lightning and fire and all things combustible. His temper, for example.

A pang of anxiety caused my stomach to clench and my cheeks to warm.

Uncle Bob’s text asked simply, “Any luck?”

I texted back. “Not yet.”

It would not be the answer he wanted, but it was the only one I had to give. I’d been using all my resources on the case, and no one, dead or alive, knew anything about the murders.

I turned back to Mrs. Blomme. One of her curlers had worked loose and hung lackadaisically over an ear. “Mrs. Blomme,” I said, softening my voice.

She glanced up at me from behind my shoulder.

“I’m so sorry to tell you this, but you’re right. Your house is haunted.”

She swallowed hard and nodded, taking the news well.

“But, hon, it’s haunted by you.”

Straightening a little, she leveled a curious stare on me. “I don’t understand.”

“You died thirty-eight years ago.”

She blinked, and I gave her a moment before continuing. To absorb. To process.

After another couple of minutes where she stared at the floor, trying to remember, I said, “It took me a while to find your death certificate. Your husband found you unresponsive on the floor in your kitchen. Massive stroke. He was devastated. He died a year later, almost to the day.”

“No. That’s not right. I live here.”

“You did, yes. I’m sorry.”

She leaned back against the wall, sorrow consuming her.

My chest squeezed tight. I took her hand into mine. “But the mother and son you’ve been seeing?”

Without looking up, she nodded.

“That’s your granddaughter and your great-grandson. See?” I pointed to a wall where Mrs. Blomme’s picture hung, a faded color photo of her and her husband.

She stood slowly and walked to the massive mantel that displayed generations of Blommes and, now, Newells. They’d kept the house in the family. Updated it over the years. And allowed one branch of the Blommes’ children’s children to grow up here.

She turned back to me, her eyes wet with emotion. “I had no idea.”

“I know.” I stood and walked to her. “It happens more often than you think.”

A soft laugh accompanied a melancholy smile.

“You can cross through me. I’m sure you have tons of family waiting for you, including your husband.”

“He didn’t remarry, did he? He was always threatening to marry Sally Danforth if I died first. He knew I detested that woman. She stole my pickle recipe and won a blue ribbon at the state fair with it.”

“She didn’t,” I whispered, scandalized.

“I wouldn’t lie about pickles, Miss Davidson. Serious business, that.”

I grinned. “No, he didn’t marry anyone else, Mrs. Blomme. He died miserable and alone.”

“Oh, well, good. He deserved it. Man was horrible.” She turned when emotion slipped through her lashes and slid down a weathered cheek.

“I’m sure he was wretched.”

As her reality sank in, her physical state became an issue. She smoothed her housecoat and patted the curlers in her hair.

“Good heavens, I can’t go nowhere looking like this.”

“What do you mean? You’re perfect.”

“Nonsense,” she said, smoothing her housecoat once more. But something captured her attention, and her gaze flitted back to the door leading to the hall.

I turned to see that Charlie was back. Arms full. Fists restocked.