“Oh, well, I’m sorry that my coming here caused distress.”
Elsie shook her head. “No, no, we’re happy to have you. If you don’t mind...please don’t mention that you had to bring your own tray in.”
“Of course not,” Jane assured her. “Why did the producer of the ghost show run out in the middle of the night?”
“He said she was standing over his bed, that she touched him, that—”
“She? You mean Sage McCormick?”
Elsie nodded.
“But what made him think she wanted to hurt him?”
“What?” Elsie was obviously mystified.
Jane smiled. “I thought ghost shows tried to prove that places were haunted.”
“This whole town is haunted. Bad things, really bad things, have happened over the years. The ghost-show people got all kinds of readings on their instruments. And the Old Jail next door! People leave there, too, even though they don’t get their money back if they do. This place is...it’s scary, Agent Everett. Very scary.”
“But you live and work here,” Jane said gently.
“I’m from here, and I don’t tease the ghosts. I respect them. They’re on Main Street, and they’re all around. I keep my eyes glued to where I’m going, and that’s it. I do my work and I go home, and if I hear a noise, I go the other way.” She rubbed her hands on her apron. “Well, a pleasure to meet you. And we’re glad you’re here.”
“Me, too. And don’t worry about cleaning the room—no one has to clean it while I’m here. I’ll just ask you to bring me fresh towels every couple of days. How’s that?”
Elsie looked as if she might kiss her.
She nodded vigorously. “Thank you, miss. Thank you. I mean, thank you, Agent Everett.”
“Jane is fine.”
Flushing, Elsie said, “Jane.” She turned and disappeared down the hall, heading for the stairs. Jane closed her door, locking it behind her as she’d been told to do.
*
When Sloan arrived at the Gilded Lily, the servers had yet to come in for the night. He had to knock on the doors—the solid doors behind the latticed ones that had been preserved to give the place its old-time appearance—to gain entry. The bar didn’t open until five.
Jennie let him in, smiling as she did. Jennie was always in a good mood. “Sloan, hi. You’re here for Jane?”
So...Agent Everett was already on a first-name basis with people at the Gilded Lily. But then again, was she like most agents, or was she an artist—with the credentials to work on FBI cases? He gave himself a mental kick; even though he’d made the call to Logan that had brought her to town, Sloan wasn’t pleased about her being here, but he wasn’t sure why.
Yes, he needed to find out who the skull belonged to. But logically, in his opinion at least, the skull should have been sent off to a lab where such things were done or to the experts at a museum. In the end—after arguing with Henri Coque about procedure—Sloan had been the one to call Logan to ask for a forensic artist and Logan had sent her. He’d trusted Logan to send him a good artist, but he was also aware that Logan was a different kind of lawman.
Sloan was, too.
He and Logan had shared secrets that they hadn’t let on to others. Working cases together, they’d both had occasion to follow leads because they’d spoken to the dead.
Sloan didn’t walk around interacting with spirits all the time. But there’d been occasions... He and Logan had recognized the ability in each other. And they’d been good partners.
True, he sometimes argued that the dead he saw were his particular form of talking to himself. And while it might seem that talking to the dead should solve everything, it didn’t work that way. But now Logan wasn’t a Ranger anymore; he was a fed. And he was the head of a unit. A special unit that was informally called the Texas Krewe.
Jane Everett was part of that Krewe. Did that mean she shared Logan’s secrets? Or that she knew about Sloan? He doubted it. Logan never spoke to anyone about anyone else’s business. But, somehow, Jane Everett made him uneasy.
Was he worried that she was only an artist—and not really much of a law enforcement agent?
Or was he worried that she was an artist and an agent and might find him incompetent?
He’d just had an odd feeling that they needed to get the skull out of Lily. It was almost as if the skull could be a catalyst for bad things to come.
Ridiculous, he told himself. Still, he didn’t like it.
But he’d been the one to call Logan Raintree.
In keeping with what Sloan knew about his old friend, he wasn’t surprised, when he’d looked up his recent work, that Logan’s Krewe worked with strange, supernatural cases.
In fact, it was one reason he’d decided to approach him.
Because there’s more to this than meets the eye and it may be important—but do I really want to know? he asked himself. He’d called Logan because he wondered if they might need help from the dead while not wanting it to be true.