He was alone at the table, reading the menu. But when he saw Brent, the man rose, and his smile was natural and welcoming. “Hi, Joe. Good to see you again.”
The two men hadn’t seen each other since shortly after Leslie’s funeral. Leslie had liked and trusted Brent, just as she had his wife, Nikki.
Blackhawk was a decent guy, Joe knew. He was smart, assertive without being aggressive, and he liked sports. He was a man’s man. What the hell was not to like about him?
How about that he believed in a world around them that most people didn’t see? And Joe had no intention of becoming someone like that.
“It’s good to see you, too, Brent,” Joe said, but words were stiff, even though he tried hard to hide his wariness. “How’s Nikki?” he asked.
“Very well. She’ll be right here—she just stopped off in the ladies’ room.”
“Oh.” Joe sat, wondering what the hell he was supposed to say now.
“How have you been doing?” Brent asked, picking up the slack.
“You’re here because Adam called you, so I’m sure you know what I’m doing.”
“I didn’t ask what you were doing. I asked how you were doing.”
“You mean, do I see Leslie in my dreams at night? No,” he said. He didn’t add that he did hear her whisper at strange times, that he even thought his cousin, gone two years now, had talked to him.
He knew he was being offensive, but Brent didn’t seem to be bothered. His shrug was easy.
At that moment Nikki walked over to the table. She was a beautiful woman, with light breezy hair, fine features and, like her husband, a natural ease of movement.
Both men rose.
“How are you, Joe?” Nikki had a radiant smile. She was so light and delicate. Brent was so dark and solid. They made a beautiful couple, Joe decided, and he couldn’t help liking them. There was simply nothing about them to dislike, even if they did believe in ghosts.
“Great,” Joe said. “But the circumstances in which we meet don’t get any better, do they?” There was that damned hostility in his tone again, he thought.
“The point is that we have to make the current circumstances better,” Brent said.
“We didn’t do so well last time, did we?” Joe asked, then winced. “God, I’m sorry. We all tried. So hard.”
“It’s all right,” Nikki said, laying her hand gently over his.
He looked into her eyes. They were large and filled with empathy. Not pity, empathy. “Yeah, well…So are we going to try some kind of hocus-pocus? Is that what this is all about?”
A look flashed from Brent to Nikki, and Joe thought the other man’s normal equanimity was about to break. Brent looked as if he were about to say something pointed, but apparently his wife kicked him beneath the table.
“Brent’s great with intuition—and a computer,” she said.
“Nikki, it’s all right,” Brent said. “We all know where you and I…come from. But at the moment, I gather Joe’s been having some different experiences of his own.”
There was an edge to Brent’s final words, and Joe had to admit, he deserved it. But as for his own “different” experiences…he would be damned if he was going to admit to them.
“Have you shown him the articles yet?” Nikki asked her husband.
“What articles?” Joe asked sharply.
Brent reached down for a briefcase beside his chair, pulled out a folder and pushed it toward Joe, who opened it to see several photocopied pages.
“What are these?”
“Read them.”
Joe looked down. The first article was from a Richmond paper, dated three years earlier. The headline read, “Poe Scholar Found Dead in Own Basement.”
Joe glanced up. Brent’s face was impassive, so he went back to reading. According to the article, a literature professor named William Morton had been found dead inside his brick-walled wine cellar. He had been strangled. There was no mention of a note being found with his body, but given the Poe angle, a connection to the murders of Thorne Bigelow and Lori Star had to be considered.
“Did the killer leave anything?” Joe asked the other two. “Was there a note found with the body?”
“I know the cops who worked the case,” Brent said. “It’s gone cold, but it’s still open. And no, there was no note found with the body.”
“Did you, um, work the case yourself?” Joe asked.
“I just happen to know the cops who landed it,” Brent said. “Check out the next article.”
It was from a Baltimore paper, and it was dated a year ago. This headline read, “Professor Found in Family Tomb. Noted Poe Scholar Dead of Heart Attack.”
Joe read quickly through the article. Bradley Hicks, fifty, had been found lying on the floor of his family’s mausoleum. The door had been unlocked, but the coroner’s supposition was that the man had thought he was trapped, and that his terror had brought on the heart attack that killed him.
Joe looked up at Brent Blackhawk and his wife, who looked back at him without saying anything, allowing him to reach his own conclusions.