Darkest Hour

“And, of course—” Father D. looked really odd. I realized why when the next words that came out of his mouth were, “We’ve got to decide what’s to be done with Jesse’s remains.”

  Jesse’s remains. The words hit me like twin punches. Jesse’s remains. Oh, God.

  “I was thinking,” Father Dominic said, still choosing his words with elaborate care, “of putting in a formal request with the coroner’s office to have the remains transferred to the church for burial in the Mission cemetery. Do you agree with me that that would be appropriate?”

  Something hard grew in my throat. I tried to swallow it down.

  “Yes,” I said. It came out sounding funny, though. “What about a headstone?”

  Father Dominic said, “Well, that might be difficult, seeing as how I highly doubt the coroner will be able to make a positive identification.”

  Right. They didn’t have dental X rays back when Jesse’d been alive.

  “Maybe,” Father Dominic said, “a simple cross… ”

  “No,” I said. “A headstone. I have three thousand dollars.” More if I took back all those Jimmy Choos. Good thing I’d saved the receipts. Who needed a fall wardrobe, anyway? “Do you think that would cover it?”

  “Oh,” Father Dominic said, looking taken aback. “Susannah, I—”

  “You can let me know,” I said. Suddenly, I didn’t think I could sit there on the street anymore, discussing this with him. I opened the passenger door. “I better go. See you in a few.”

  And I started to get out of the car.

  But not soon enough. Father D. called my name again.

  “Father D.,” I began impatiently, but he held up a hand.

  “Just hear me out, Susannah,” he said. “It isn’t that I don’t wish there was something we could do to bring Jesse back. I, too, wish that he could, as you said, have found his own way to wherever it was he was supposed to have gone after death. I do. I truly do. I just don’t think that going to the extreme you’re suggesting is…well, necessary. And I certainly don’t think it’s what he would have wanted, your risking your life for his sake.”

  I thought about that. I really did. Father D. was absolutely right, of course. Jesse would not have wanted me to risk my life for him, not ever. Especially considering the fact that he doesn’t even have one anymore. A life, I mean.

  But let’s face it, Jesse’s from a slightly different era. Back when he was born, girls spent all their time at quilting bees. They didn’t exactly go around routinely kicking butt the way we do now.

  And even though Jesse’s seen me kick butt a million times, it still makes him nervous, you can totally tell. You would think he’d be used to it by now, but no. I mean, he was even surprised when he heard about Maria and her knife. I guess that’s kind of understandable. Come on, little Miss Hoopskirt, poppin’ a blade?

  Still, even after a century and a half of knowing she was the one who had ordered the hit on him, that completely blew his mind. I mean, that sexism thing, they drive that stuff down deep. It hasn’t been easy, curing him of it.

  Anyway, all I’m saying is, Father D.’s right: Jesse definitely would not want me to risk my life for him.

  But we don’t always get what we want, do we?

  “Fine,” I said again. You would have thought that Father D. would notice how accommodating I’d become all of a sudden. I mean, didn’t he realize that he wasn’t the only person in town who could help me? I had an ace up my sleeve, and he didn’t even know it.

  “Be back in a flash,” I said with a full-on, hundred-watt smile.

  Then I turned and went into the offices of the Carmel Pine Cone like I was just going in there to place a personal ad or something.

  What I was doing, of course, was something way more insidious.

  “Is CeeCee Webb here?” I asked the pimply kid at the reception desk.

  He looked up, startled. I don’t know what freaked him out more, my slip dress or the fact that I’d asked to see CeeCee.

  “Over there,” he said, pointing. His voice wobbled all over the place.

  “Thanks,” I said, and started down a long and quite messy corridor, passing a lot of industrious journalists who were eagerly tapping out their stories on the recent spate of wind chime thefts off people’s front porches, and the more alarming problem of parking in front of the post office.

  CeeCee was in a cubicle in the back. It appeared to be the photocopier cubicle, because that was what she was doing: photocopying.

  “Oh my God,” she said, when she saw me. “What are you doing here?”

  She didn’t say it in an unhappy way, though.

  “Slumming,” I said, and settled myself into an office chair beside the fax machine.

  “I can see that,” CeeCee said. She was taking her role as girl reporter very seriously. Her long, stick-straight white hair was coiled up on top of her head with a number-two pencil, and there was a smudge of toner on one pink cheek. “Why aren’t you at the resort?”

  “Mental health day,” I said. “On account of the dead body they found in our backyard yesterday.”

  CeeCee dropped a ream of paper.

  “Oh my God!” she gushed. “That was you? I mean, there’s a mention of a coroner’s call up to the hills in the Police Beat section, but somebody said it must have been a Native American burial site or something….”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “Not unless the Native Americans around here wore spurs.”

  “Spurs?” CeeCee reached for a notepad that was resting on top of the copier, then pulled the pencil from the knot on top of her head, causing her long hair to fall down around her shoulders. Because she is an albino, CeeCee keeps the vast majority of her skin protected from the sun at all times, even when she’s working inside an office. Today was no exception. In spite of the heat outside, she was wearing jeans and a brown button-down sweater.

  On the other hand, the air-conditioning in the place had to be on high. It was like an icebox in there.

  “Spill,” CeeCee said, perching on the edge of the table that supported the fax machine.

  I did. I spilled it all. Everything, from the letters Dopey had found to my trip to Clive’s office to his untimely death the day before. I mentioned Clive’s grandfather’s book and Jesse and the historically significant role my house had played in his murder. I told her about Maria and Diego and their no-account kids, the fact that Jesse’s portrait was now missing from the historical society, and my suspicions that the skeleton found in my backyard belonged to him.

  When I was through, CeeCee raised her gaze from the notepad and went, “Jeez, Simon. This could be a movie of the week.”

  “Lifetime channel,” I agreed.

  CeeCee pointed at me with the pencil. “Tiffani-Amber Thiessen could play Maria!”

  “So,” I said. “Are you going to print it?”

  “Heck, yeah,” CeeCee said. “I mean, it’s got everything. Romance and murder and intrigue and local interest. Too bad almost everybody involved has been dead a hundred years or more. Still, if I can get confirmation from the coroner that your skeleton belonged to a male in his twenties…Any idea how they did it? Killed him, I mean?”

  I thought about Dopey and his shovel. “Well,” I said, “if they shot him—you know, in the head— I doubt the coroner will be able to tell, thanks to Brad’s ham-fisted digging technique.”

  CeeCee looked at me. “You want to borrow my sweater?”

  Surprised, I shook my head. “Why?”

  “You’re shivering.”

  I was, but not because I was cold.

  “I’m okay,” I said. “Look, CeeCee, it’s really important you get them to run this story. And they have to do it soon. Like tomorrow.”

  She said, not looking up again from her notepad, “Oh, I know. And I think it’d go great alongside Dr. Clemmings’s obituary, you know? The project he was working on when he died. That kind of thing.”

  “So,” I said, “it’ll run tomorrow? Do you think it’ll run tomorrow?”


  CeeCee shrugged. “They won’t want to run it until they get the coroner’s report on the body. And that could take weeks.”

  Weeks? I didn’t have weeks. And though CeeCee didn’t know it, she didn’t have weeks either.

  I was shaking uncontrollably now. Because I had realized, of course, what I’d just done: put CeeCee in the same kind of jeopardy I’d put Clive Clemmings in. Clive had been just fine until Maria had overheard him telling his dictaphone what I’d said about Jesse. Then faster than you could say The Haunting, he was suffering from a massive, paranormally induced coronary. Had I just sentenced CeeCee to the same gruesome end? While I highly doubted Maria was going to ransack the offices of the Carmel Pine Cone the way she had the Carmel Historical Society, there was still a chance she might find out what I had done.

  I needed that story to run right away. The sooner people found out the truth about Maria and Felix Diego, the better my chances of them not killing me—or the people I cared about.

  “It’s got to run tomorrow,” I said. “Please, CeeCee. Can’t you call the coroner and get some kind of unofficial statement?”

  CeeCee did look up from her notebook then. She looked up and said, “Suze. What is the rush? These people have been dead for, like, forever. What does it matter?”

  “It matters,” I said. My teeth were starting to chatter. “It just really matters, okay, CeeCee? Please, please see what you can do to put a rush on it. And promise you won’t talk about it. The story, I mean. Outside these offices. It’s really important that you keep it to yourself.”

  CeeCee reached out and laid a hand on my bare shoulder. Her fingers were very warm and soft. “Suze,” she said, peering down at me sort of intently. “What did you do to your head? Where’d that giant bruise under your bangs come from?”

  I pushed self-consciously at my hair.

  “Oh,” I said. “I tripped. I fell into a hole. The hole they found the body in, isn’t that funny?”

  CeeCee didn’t seem to think it was funny at all. She went, “Have you had a doctor look at that? Because it looks pretty bad. You might have a concussion, or something.”

  “I’m fine,” I said, standing up. “Really. It’s nothing. Look, I better go. Remember what I said, will you? About the story, I mean. It’s really important that you don’t mention it to anyone. And that you get them to run it as soon as possible. I need a lot of people to see it. A lot of people. They need to see the truth. You know. About the Diegos.”

  CeeCee stared at me. “Suze,” she said. “Are you sure you’re all right? I mean, since when do you care about the local gentry?”

  I stammered, as I backed out of the cubicle, “Well, since meeting Dr. Clemmings, I guess. I mean, it’s a real tragedy that people so often overlook their community’s historical society, when you know, really, without it, the fabric of the—”

  “You,” CeeCee interrupted, “need to go home and take an Advil.”

  “You’re right,” I said, picking up my purse. It matched my slip dress, pink, with little flowers embroidered on it. I was overcompensating for all the days I’d had to wear those khaki shorts. “I’ll go. See you later.”

  Then I got the hell out of there before my head exploded in front of everybody.

  But on my way back to Father Dominic’s car I realized that the reason I’d been shivering back in the photocopying cubicle hadn’t been due to the excessive air-conditioning, the fact that Jesse was gone, or even the fact that two homicidal ghosts were actively trying to kill me.

  No, I was shivering because of what I knew I was about to do.

  When I got to Father Dom’s car, I bent down and said through the open passenger window, “Hey.”

  Father Dominic started and hurled something out the driver’s side window.

  But it was too late. I’d already seen what he’d been up to. Plus I could smell it.

  “Hey,” I said again. “Give me one of those.”

  “Susannah.” Father Dominic looked stern. “Don’t be ridiculous. Smoking is an awful habit. Believe me, you do not want to pick it up. How did things go with Miss Webb?”

  “Um,” I said. “Fine.” I’m pretty sure it’s a sin to tell a lie to a priest, even a white lie that can’t possibly hurt him. But what was I supposed to do? I know him, see. And I know he’s going to be completely rigid on the whole exorcism thing.

  So what else could I do?

  “She wants me to stick around, actually,” I said, “and help her write it. The story, I mean.”

  Father Dominic’s white eyebrows met over his silver frames. “Susannah,” he said. “We have a great deal to do this afternoon, you and I—”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know. But this is pretty important. How about I meet you back at your office at the Mission at five?”

  Father Dominic hesitated. I could tell he thought I was up to something. Don’t ask me how. I mean, I can be quite the angelic type, when I put my mind to it.

  “Five o’clock,” he said finally. “And not a minute later or, Susannah, I’m telling you right now, I will telephone your parents and tell them everything.”

  “Five o’clock,” I said. “Promise.”

  I waved as he drove away, and then, just in case he was looking in his rearview mirror, made as if to go back into the newspaper building.

  But instead I slipped around the back of it, then headed toward the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort.

  I had some unfinished business there.

  chapter

  thirteen

  He wasn’t in the pool.

  He wasn’t eating burgers at the Pool House.

  He wasn’t on the tennis courts, at the stables, or in the pro shop.

  Finally, I decided to check his room, although it didn’t make any sense at all that he’d be there. Not on a gloriously sunny day like this one.

  But when the door to his suite swung open to my knock, that’s exactly where I found him. He was, Caitlin informed me tersely, taking a nap.

  “Taking a nap?” I stared at her. “Caitlin, he’s an eight-year-old, not an eight-month-old.”

  “He said he was tired,” Caitlin snapped at me. “And what are you doing here, anyway? I thought you were supposed to be sick.”

  “I am sick,” I said, pushing past her into the suite.

  Caitlin eyed me disapprovingly. You could tell she was jealous of my slip dress and delicate pink sandals, not to mention my bag. I mean, compared to her, in her regulation Oxford T and pleated khakis, I looked like Gwyneth Paltrow. Only with better hair, of course.

  “You don’t look very sick to me,” Caitlin declared.

  “Oh, yeah?” I lifted up my bangs so she could see my forehead.

  She sucked in her breath and made an oh-that-must-have-hurt face. “My God,” she said. “How’d you do that?”

  I thought about saying it was a job-related injury of some kind, so I could milk some disability out of her, but I didn’t think it would work. Instead, I just said I’d tripped.

  “So what are you doing here?” Caitlin wanted to know. “I mean, if you’re not here to work.”

  “Well,” I said. “That’s the thing. I felt really guilty, you know, saddling you with Jack, so I got my mom to drop me off here after she took me to the doctor. I’ll stay with him for the rest of the day, if you want.”

  Caitlin looked dubious. “I don’t know,” she said. “You’re not in uniform—”

  “Well, I wasn’t going to wear my uniform to the doctor’s office,” I squealed. Really, it was amazing how these elaborate lies were tripping off my tongue. I could hardly believe it myself, and I was the one making them up. “I mean, come on. But look, he told me I’m fine, so there’s no reason I can’t take over for you. We’ll just stay here in the suite, if you’re that nervous about people seeing me out of uniform. No problem.”

  Caitlin glanced at my forehead again. “You’re not on any kind of painkiller for that, are you? Because I can’t have you babysitting all whacked u
p on Scooby Snacks.”

  I held up the first three fingers of my right hand in the international symbol for scouting.

  “On my honor,” I said, “I am not whacked up on Scooby Snacks.”

  Caitlin glanced at the closed door to Jack’s room. “Well,” she said hesitantly.

  “Oh, come on,” I said. “I could really use the dough. And don’t you and Jake have a date tonight?”

  Her gaze skittered toward me. “Well,” she said, blushing.

  Seriously. She blushed.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Actually, we do.”

  God. It had only been a guess.

  “Don’t you want to cut out a little early,” I said, “to make yourself, you know, all glam for him?”

  She giggled. Caitlin actually giggled. I am telling you, my stepbrothers ought to come with government warning labels: Caution, hazardous when mixed with estrogen.

  “Okay,” she said, and started heading for the door. “My boss’ll kill me, though, if he sees you without your uniform, so you’ve got to stay in the room. Promise?”

  I had made and broken so many promises in the past twenty-four hours, I didn’t think one more could hurt. I went, “Sure thing, Caitlin.”

  And then I walked her to the door.

  As soon as she was gone, I put down my purse and went into Jack’s room. I did not knock first. There is nothing an eight-year-old boy’s got that I haven’t seen before. Besides, I was still a bit hacked with the little creep.

  Jack may have been told to take a nap, but he certainly wasn’t doing so. When I walked into his room, he thrust whatever it was he’d been playing with under the blankets and lifted his head from the pillow with his face all screwed up like he was sleepy.

  Then he saw it was me, threw the covers back, and revealed that not only was he fully dressed, but that he’d been playing with his GameBoy.

  “Suze!” he shouted, when he saw me. “You came back!”

  “Yeah,” I said. It was dark in his room. I went to the French doors and threw open the heavy drapes to let in the sunlight. “I came back.”

  “I thought,” Jack said, jumping up and down excitedly on the bed, “that you were mad at me.”