For a moment, he was so shocked that his entire body seemed to go weak; luckily, the sofa was behind him, and when his knees buckled he simply sat down.
Richard moved away from the fireplace. He faded somewhat, but came and sat by Aidan on the sofa. The man looked at him with trust—trust Aidan wasn’t sure he deserved.
“I’m not that good yet at...at keeping form, I guess,” Richard said. “These people here, these very nice people, Candy and Daniel, have tried to advise me. It’s in the concentration, they tell me. I’m learning. But you’ll know I’m not being rude if I disappear.”
Richard seemed to find the wry humor in his situation.
“I swear, we’ll get to the truth,” Aidan told him. He tried to regain his senses.
He’d always known that there was something more, that the dead could reveal themselves, that they could talk.
He had just denied it for so long. Denied his ability to see and to hear.
He tried to make his voice stop shaking. “It would’ve helped a lot if you’d told me more in my dream that night. Or if you’d shown up here—before we had to go tearing vaults and mausoleums apart.”
“Sorry! I’ve been, er, coming to terms,” Richard said. “But it seems you’ve had a good companion in Mo.”
“Thank you.” Mo nodded politely. “Let’s get down to it, shall we? While we still have you, Richard.”
“I don’t know how much more I can tell you,” Richard said. “It’s true that I believe J.J. might be mine. But Wendy wasn’t seeing anyone, hadn’t seen anyone in years. So there was no jealous boyfriend—or ex-boyfriend—in the picture. And why would anyone kill over that, anyway? If anything, my political enemies would be pleased. There’d certainly be talk, whether it turned into a scandal or not. At the very least I’d be the no-good bastard who walked out on a pregnant woman.”
“Did you receive any threats?” Aidan asked him.
Richard shook his head. “No, I’ve never gotten anything that sounded even slightly like a death threat.”
“So,” Aidan said, “you came here and you’d planned a romantic reunion with Wendy. Do you think the fact that she’d been working as a stripper had anything to do with...your deaths?”
“Why would it? Again, that would only please my enemies,” he replied. “To the best of my knowledge, my life was moving forward. My personal life was about to be good again. I was coming home in the ways that really matter.”
“Had you ever been out to the Haunted Mausoleum?” Mo asked. “Either when you lived here or more recently?”
“Oh, the old mortuary out on the farmland? Yes, once as a kid, on a class excursion. It was all about history at that time. We didn’t call it haunted, although we all thought it was cool. We wanted to see the gruesome parts, but our teachers wanted to discuss history.”
“That would have been when?”
“Almost thirty years ago. An old lady owned it back then—she sold it to the tour company soon after.”
“Did you know Sondra Burke?” Mo asked.
“I never met her when I was alive,” Richard answered. “Nor have I seen her...now.”
“We may need to start looking at people who are obsessed with the old legends,” Aidan said to Mo.
She smiled. “That’s half of Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow.”
“Some people here don’t care in the least,” Richard told her. “My mom hadn’t even read ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.’ She just loved that the place was so beautiful.” As he spoke, Aidan could gradually see the sofa through Richard.
The specter was fading.
“You’ll come back?” Aidan asked.
“I will,” Richard promised. “And thank you, old friend,” he said quietly.
Then he vanished.
Aidan looked over at Mo. She was adorable and sensually beautiful at the same time. She wore one of her long T-shirt nightgowns. Her feet were bare and her hair tousled. She looked like someone who had just been rousted from bed.
He stood up and walked over to her, coming so close he was only an inch away.
“Thank you,” he said gently.
Warmth emanated from her. Her eyes were on his, and a smile curved her lips. “You’re welcome,” she said.
Neither of them moved. He wondered if they were both hesitant, each waiting for other to make the next move.
Be a man, he told himself.
He stroked her cheek and felt the silky smoothness of it. She moved toward him, drawing even closer. She rose up and touched his lips with hers. He pulled her into his arms. She smelled as sweet as a spring day in the woods, with a hint of the earth about her. Desire came instinctively to life in him and he could have sworn his own body temperature spiked a thousand degrees as their lips met and melted, as he tasted her mouth. He felt the pressure of her hips against him, the crush of her breasts.
He took his mouth from hers and looked down into her eyes. He had no real idea what he was going to say. Probably something that would give her an out.
But he didn’t.