embarrassing part out of the way,” I said. Best to get these things out in the open. “I’m hoping, since you guys could see him, I didn’t look ridiculous like I probably did to Cookie and Swopes. I mean, you saw him, right? It didn’t look like I was fondling air?”
When they glanced at each other, seemingly confused, I asked, “You did see him?”
“Sure we did,” Elizabeth said. “But you weren’t fondling anything. You didn’t move, if that’s what you think. Not much anyway.”
I leaned forward. “What do you mean?”
“You just stood there,” Sussman said, sliding his glasses up with an index finger, “with your back against the wall and your palms plastered to it at your sides. Your head was thrown back, and you were panting like you’d just run the Duke City Marathon, but you didn’t move.”
His description sidetracked me for a moment. My arms were at my sides? My head was thrown back? “But he was there. You saw him. We were…”
“On each other like green on guacamole?” Barber asked.
“Well, yeah, I guess.”
“I’m not complaining,” he said with a negating wave of his hands. “Far from it. That shit was hot.”
Somehow, trying not to blush makes me blush brighter. I felt heat travel over my face and could only hope it wasn’t clashing with the blues and purples already there.
“But you didn’t move,” Elizabeth said. “Not physically.”
“I’m sorry, I still don’t understand.”
“Your soul, your spirit, whatever you want to call it. That moved. You looked like us only with better coloring.”
“Yeah,” Barber said, “you separated from your body to … be with him. It was amazing.”
I sat stunned. No wonder it’d felt like a dream. Did I do some kind of astral projection thing? I hoped not. I didn’t believe in astral projection. But maybe, just maybe, astral projection believed in me.
“How on Earth did I manage to leave my body?” I asked, dazed and confused, though not from anything illegal.
“You’re the grim reaper,” Barber said with a shrug. “You tell us.”
“I don’t know.” I looked at my palms as if they held the answers. “I didn’t know such a thing was possible.”
“Don’t feel bad. I had no idea
“I’m so floored,” I said. I was supposed to be the knowledgeable one. How was being a grim reaper advantageous if all the good stuff was on a need-to-know basis? I was a portal, dammit. I needed to know.
“But he was superhot.”
That brought me rocketing back. I looked at Elizabeth. “Seriously? Did you guys get a good look at him? I mean, I have to be totally honest here: I’m not sure what he is.”
“You mean besides superhot?” Elizabeth asked.
“Actually, that part I got.”
She laughed softly. We stopped talking while Dad brought over my sandwich, offered me ten thousand dollars to off Uncle Bob, then left with my butter knife tucked into his pants, apparently planning to shank the man himself. I thought about warning Uncle Bob, but where was the fun in that?
“Elizabeth, I have to ask you something,” I said, pushing my sandwich aside for a moment.
“Sure, what’s up?”
“I just feel like … well, ever since this morning, you’ve seemed a little distant.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, accepting responsibility without offering an explanation. In other words, trying to get out of one.
“Oh, don’t apologize,” I added quickly. “I was just worried. Did something happen?”
She sucked in a long, deep breath — another physiological superfluity — and said, “It’s just, that guy who was able to materialize out of thin air, your guy, he was … he was so beautiful.”
“Tell me about it,” I said, nodding my head in agreement.
“And amazing.”
“Still with you.”
“And sexy.”
I leaned in. “I like where this is headed.”
“But…”
“Uh-oh.”
“I just thought it odd.”
“Odd?”
“Yes.” She leaned in as well. “Charlotte, he was wearing … a prison uniform.”
CHAPTER 7
Genius has its limitations. Insanity … not so much.
A prison uniform? What did that mean? Had he gone to prison? Then died there?
The muscles around my heart clenched at the thought. He’d had such a hard life; that much had been painfully clear from the moment I first saw him. Then for him to end up in prison. I couldn’t imagine the horrors he’d had to endure.
While I wanted nothing more than to rush off to the prison, I had no idea which prison he’d been in. He could have been in Sing Sing, for all I knew. I needed to cool my jets and focus on the case. Uncle Bob went to work on the warrant and court transcripts, and the lawyers went to check on their families, so I drove to the Metropolitan Detention Center to talk to Mark Weir, the man Carlos Rivera said was innocent.
The female corrections officer at the sign-in desk studied my APD laminate. “Charlotte Davidson?” she asked, her brows furrowing as if I’d done something wrong.
“That’s me,” I said with an inane giggle.
She didn’t smile back. Not even a little. I totally needed to read that book on how to win friends and influence people. But that would involve an innate desire to win friends and influence people. My desires were a tad more visceral at the moment.
The officer directed me to a waiting area while she called back for Mr. Weir. As I sat pondering my visceral desires, specifically the ones earmarked for Reyes, I heard someone sit down beside me.
“Hey, Grim, what are you doing in my neck of the correctional system?”
I looked over and smiled before fetching my partially charged cell phone. Flipping it open, I made sure it was on silent before I spoke. “Dang, Billy,” I said into the phone, “you’re looking good. Are you losing weight?”
Billy was a Native American inmate who’d committed suicide in the detention center about seven years prior. I tried to convince him to cross, but he insisted on staying behind to help dissuade others from following his asinine example. His words. I often wondered how he might manage such a thing.
A bashful grin spread over his face at my compliment. Despite the fact that the departed couldn’t lose weight, he did look a little slimmer. Maybe there was something I didn’t know. Either way, he was a good-looking man.
He elbowed me playfully. “You and your phones.”
“I gotta do this or they’ll lock me up for talking to myself, Mr. Invisible.”
A deep chuckle rose from his chest. “You here to get in my pants?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Figures,” he said, disappointed. “I always attract the crazy ones.”
Sucking in a sharp breath, I was smack-dab in the middle of an Oscar-worthy performance — feigning offense with such emotion, such realism — when my name was called.
