That was nothing less than suspicious with a capital S.

  Missing my phone like the desert misses the rain, I sat there and waited, thinking. This would have been an awesome time for Ryan’s ghost to show up. He would walk me through what the hell I was supposed to do. Instead I was just spinning and felt like I had a game show host in my head.

  How is your vacation going, Bailey?

  Dead bodies? Check.

  Lost luggage, phone, and boyfriend? Check.

  Life in danger? Double check!

  The door to the bank opened and Captain Mark and Unknown Female strolled out, smiling million dollar smiles.

  Or one hundred grand smiles.

  They didn’t even notice me.

  I followed them with the enthusiasm of a child eating peas.

  It occurred to me as they turned down a street off of Duvall, I was running the risk of getting lost. Because, you know, I had no phone to guide me.

  Which was ridiculous. I should be able to survive on my wits alone.

  It was asking a lot of my wits.

  Twenty minutes later, I’d lost sight of Mark and I had no clue where I was.

  Eight

  How could I lose a man and a woman walking in broad daylight in a densely populated area, you ask?

  Let me tell you, it’s not easy.

  But apparently, I have mad skills. You should be jealous of how readily and handily I can lose focus and screw up a project.

  We were in a more residential area, with a mixture of nice restaurants, upscale shopping, and adorable cottages.

  I blame a boutique for losing sight of my mission. I didn’t want to stay too close to Mark so I had to meander and pretend to window shop. That was good detective work. Hang back. Except my pretend window shopping became very real when I spotted the most adorable macramé handbag with a walnut handle. I popped in to take a closer look at it (superfast, I didn’t even touch it, I swear, just glanced at the price tag) and when I came back out there was no sign of Mark.

  Walking quickly in the direction he had been going, I cursed my love of the handbag. It wasn’t even my fault. I simply can’t resist the siren call of retail.

  I fast-walked like a senior at the mall on Sunday morning, arms up and pumping, glancing down every side street left and right. No Mark.

  Which meant he had to have gone into a street or a restaurant. Deciding to throw caution to the wind, I just started peering into shop windows and pulling open doors and sticking my head in. In the third shop, I actually saw him. He was at the counter, back to the door.

  It was a shop filled with antiques and collectible coins. Expensive stuff that I knew nothing about. Once upon a time my Grandpa Burke had collected coins but I didn’t have a fond memory of him sharing that hobby with Jen and I. More like him spreading it across the dining room table with a magnifying glass and being grouchy as shit if we expressed any interest in what he was doing. One time, Jen, more precocious as a child than me, had dared to pick up one of the card sleeves that held a gold coin. She’d gotten a hand slap and her ass handed to her.

  That had been the end of either of our interest in knowing anything about rare coins.

  Grandpa Burke had been old school. He’s spent his entire adult life working in a factory, had gone straight to the bar after work, and went to church on Sunday. He’d given Grandma Burke four children and a head of gray hairs, though she had always described him as hard-working, loyal, and the love of her life. I didn’t doubt it, but sometimes I wondered if that was just because they never saw each other.

  At any rate, besides Captain Mark, everything about the shop felt like I needed to be quiet and expect a hand slap at any given moment.

  Captain Mark, from the snatches of conversation I heard, as I picked up a nautical sailor statue and studied it, was buying gold coins. To the tune of five grand. It didn’t seem like an impulse buy. More like he was taking his coins and going south of the border.

  Or was he lying to the bank guy about Mexico?

  There was no telling.

  “It’s so dusty in here, I feel like I need to wash my hands.”

  I turned at the sound of the female voice. It was Mark’s companion. “Part of the charm, I guess,” I murmured.

  It was the first time I’d really gotten to see the woman from the front. I’d seen the back of her head for the last hour, but now I could gauge she was most likely in her thirties, way younger than I would have expected Mark’s girlfriend to be. Why it still shocked me that a crusty dude in his sixties would be with an attractive woman thirty years his junior I don’t know. It was a story written every day.

  “Charm is overrated,” she said flatly.

  She wore heavy makeup, with thick Instagram eyebrows. It was the kind of look that would attract followers on a YouTube makeup channel and make men feel like they’d really scored a glamour queen. I’d thought about Mark’s comment that I was a looker and realized he’d probably been blowing smoke up my ass because if this was his type, I was not.

  “No purchases for you then?” I asked, trying to be casual as I probed for information, without being overly friendly.

  “Nope. He’s buying coins,” she said, jerking her thumb in Mark’s direction. “Like, why? Who even says those things are worth anything? I should just be able to be like ‘so this granola bar is worth a thousand bucks because I said so.’”

  “Now that would be amazing. I approve this plan.”

  She laughed. “I’ll call the president and let him know.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be happy to take your call.”

  For a second I had the crazy thought that I should ask to borrow her phone but then I wasn’t sure what good that would do. I didn’t really want Mark to see me. I decided I wasn’t going to learn anything else unless I asked it directly. “Are you on vacation?” I set the sailor statue back down.

  “No. I live here. You?”

  “Vacation. I seem to have misplaced my boyfriend though. I lost my phone and we got separated.”

  “Damn, it’s a little early in the day for that. How did you end up in this shop?”

  “Wandering around lost. Can you tell me how to get back to Duvall?”

  “Sure.” She gave me directions that I was only vaguely listening to. I was trying to hear what Mark and the clerk were saying, but they were speaking too low for me to understand.

  My whole adventure in stalking was an epic fail.

  Aside from the fact that it was a miracle that I hadn’t been busted.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I guess I’ll head out. I don’t see anything here that fits my decorating style.”

  She gave me a smile, then stepped in front of me. A switchblade opened with a snick in front of her chest. “Before you go, care to tell me why you’ve been following us?”

  So, never mind. My undercover skills sucked. Are we really surprised?

  Positioned so my body blocked the clerk from seeing her knife, she gave me a smile as steely as the blade.

  I had two seconds to decide what to do. It seemed to me an innocent person (unlike me) would be terrified and deny they had done anything. I had no clue what a criminal would do in this situation but I decided going on the offensive was my best bet. I was not going to get shived in an antique shop in the middle of the day. My grandmother would be so disappointed in me.

  Instead of trying to run for the front door, which would mean going past her and that knife, I let out a mighty yell and dodged left, putting the rack between us. Then I ran for the back check-out area display counter and dove for the cell phone belonging to the clerk. Even though it was in his hand.

  “Call 911,” I said breathlessly. “She has a knife. They’re going to rob you.”

  He didn’t even hesitate. He reached under his counter and pressed an alarm button. It went out full blast. Mark swore. The clerk put his phone to his ear. Mark pulled a gun.

  My heart sank. Rookie mistake. I’d put the clerk in danger along with myself. Shit, shit, shit. This was so not good.

  But to my relief, the woman just yelled to Mark, “Let’s go!”

  He grabbed a velvet box with coins displayed on it, dropped them all into his pocket, and turned and ran. He made no sign of recognizing me. Then again, he’d barely glanced at me. I ran behind them and locked the front door after their exit.

  “Oh my God, that was close. I’m so sorry I didn’t see her knife sooner.”

  To my shock, the clerk narrowed his eyes. “Who do you work for?”

  Uh-oh.

  “I work for myself.” I unlocked the door and bolted. This was something way over my head.

  Of course, I realized almost immediately I’d made myself sound like Batman. Like I was involved, just gone rogue. Though no one could genuinely believe I knew what the hell was going on, right? I look like Strawberry Shortcake, not a criminal.

  Now I was faced with a dilemma. Which way did I go? I had exactly no clue where I was and I didn’t want the shop owner following me. Nor did I want to collide into the backs of Mark and his knife-wielding paramour.

  Austin was standing in the street waving me toward him. “This way.”

  I briefly hesitated. How did I know he was on my side? “Why?”

  “Because you’re about two seconds away from getting shot.”

  I glanced behind me and saw the shop owner charging toward the door. Time to follow Austin. I ran across the street and down between two houses, following him. “Do you know where you going?” I asked, breathless, vowing yet again to start going to the gym (lie.)

  “Yes. Before we bought our boat, Jamie and me lived in this neighborhood for six weeks while we were sorting out our business.” He was weaving through the narrow space between the two houses, passing straight through foliage.

  I was smacking leaves out of my face and stumbling on the uneven pavers. Austin pointed to a gate and I opened it, went through and quickly closed it behind me. Trying not to get nervous about the fact that I was trespassing, I took in a small yard. The fencing was only on the one side.

  “This way.” At the back of the yard, Austin led me down the side of a house behind the first, and we popped out onto the next street over. “Go right.”

  I followed him with blind faith because I wasn’t sure I had an option. But my ghostly companion didn’t steer me wrong. I burst onto Duvall and into a crowd of people. “Thank you,” I said, lungs burning from running.

  “You need to work on your survival skills,” Austin said. “Like, I’m kind of worried about you.”

  “Join the club.” I looked around me, trying to figure out where exactly I had ended up. I wanted to go back to the bar and see if Jake was there. “Where’s the bar with the outside patio?”

  “Are you for real? There’s like twenty of those.”

  “It had a pig or a boar or a hog in the name.”

  Austin nodded. “This way.” He started to do hand gestures like the guys out on the airport tarmac. Lots of hand circles and arm extensions.

  “I feel like you’re mocking me.”

  “Not at all. Just trying to lighten the mood. You were about to join me on the other side there and I don’t think you even realize it.” He fell in step beside me. “Hey, if you did die, would you like be chilling here in Key West with me? It’d be cool for me, not so cool for you.”

  The idea made me blanche. “I can’t spend eternity in a city where I know no one.”

  “You know me.”

  “Not really. We just met.” I was murmuring, my hand over my face, but I realized no one was really paying attention. If I was talking to myself, I wasn’t sure anyone here would think that was weird.

  “I feel close to you though. You’re my only connection to the living world. As opposed to the dead world.”

  “I’m sorry for you then. In case you haven’t noticed, I suck at being a medium. Did you know in real life I’m a home stager? I take empty or ugly rooms and make them look attractive. I’m not a detective. I’m not a crime stopper. I’m not even a puzzle solver. I can organize the ever-living crap out of your pantry, but I can’t get into the head of criminals. It really limits my ability to help a ghost, you know what I mean?”

  “I can feel your anxiety rising with every word you speak. I think you need to focus on your positive qualities and not your negative ones.”

  “I agree, in theory.” I kept an eagle eye all around me, searching for Jake, Captain Mark, and Instagram Eyebrows. “But I think right now my flaws are more on display than my talents.”

  “Bailey!”

  I turned and saw Jake charging toward me. He looked pissed. Frantic. Relieved. All the things.

  “Jake, thank God! I couldn’t find you anywhere.”

  He was directly in front of the bar but now he crossed the street, stepping right in front of a guy riding his bike. “Watch it!” the man said.

  Jake didn’t even respond. He just came right to me and grabbed my shoulders and pulled me into a tight hug. “Where the hell did you go? I almost had a fucking heart attack.”

  F bomb alert. Marner was seriously stressed.

  “I came out of the restroom and you weren’t there so I was hanging around the inside bar and the bartender ID’d me. He looked at my license and didn’t believe I was twenty-one and threw me out of the bar.” I was speaking into Jake’s T-shirt because he had me pressed tightly against him. “I waited outside the bar but you didn’t come out. My plan was to go to the hotel and use their phone to call you. Where were you?”

  Jake finally released me and set me a little in front of him, pushing my hair back in a way that was not tender. It was more like hard petting, as if he needed to reassure himself I was solid. “I ordered conch fritters and I had to go to the window and pick them up. I was eight feet from the bar.”

  “I never saw you.” I’d been distracted sure, but to be fair, he could have waited until I came back from the restroom. That might have been logical.

  “You got thrown out of the bar?” For the first time, the frown between his eyebrows eased up. “That’s kind of funny.”

  “Yeah, hilarious.” I rolled my eyes. “I need to login to my phone account and have one sent overnight. All of this could have been avoided if I hadn’t lost my phone on Captain Mark’s floating scam. Speaking of, I saw him. I followed him to the bank, where he withdrew a hundred grand.”

  “Excuse me, what?” He shook me a little. “Why would you do that?”

  “Can we go sit down? I’m thirsty and Austin is standing next to me and people keep walking through him. It’s very distracting.”

  “Christ,” was Marner’s opinion on all of that but he took my hand like he was afraid I might disappear right out from under him. He started leading me back toward the bar I’d been bounced from.

  “I don’t think we can go in there. I got kicked out, remember?”

  “It’s fine.”

  For being the cop, Jake was way more inclined to break rules than I was. I was the neurotic worrier who always said, “Do you think—

  And he always cut me off with “It’s fine.”

  It was his standard response to about forty percent of what I said. About half of the time he was right. Which meant only twenty percent of the time anything was fine. The rest of the time he wasn’t right so this was dicey, but I rolled with it because what would be the odds of Captain Mark returning to the same bar? Frankly, I was more worried about the mean bartender who thought I was a teenager.

  Jake took me right back to the same stools we’d been sitting at previously. He’d clearly given directions to the patio bartender to hold the seats. Conch fritters were sitting there in a paper sleeve. I touched one, hungry. It was cold.

  Austin sat on my right, Jake on my left.

  “Can you start from the beginning?” Jake said. “From when you went to the restroom and subsequently disappeared?”

  “You disappeared first.” I wasn’t taking the fall for the whole debacle.

  “I didn’t disappear. I went to order conch fritters. I told the bartender to tell you where I was.”

  “I couldn’t ask the bartender because I got trapped inside when I saw Captain Mark and some chick. They were basically between me and where you were sitting and I thought it might be wise if he didn’t see me. I hung around inside but I must have looked suspicious because then I got thrown out.”

  “So how did you go from being afraid of Mark seeing you to following him to the bank? And how do you know how much money he withdrew?”

  I bit a conch fritter despite it being cold. I chewed to delay my response. It was nothing Jake was going to want to hear. “Well.”

  Austin tried to touch a conch fritter but his finger went through it. “You need to tell him about the woman with the knife.”

  “I’m getting to that.”

  “Getting to what?” Jake asked.

  “Nothing. Austin just mentioned something. By the way, I kind of got lost and without a phone to use GPS Austin guided me back here.”

  Jake just looked at me. “You could have just asked a living person. I don’t think you were at risk because you were wandering around Old Town. I think you were at risk because you were following a potential murderer.”

  “I had a difficult decision to make. I couldn’t find you. I was worried about you. I don’t know! I just decided to follow him and see if we could get some answers.”

  It didn’t sound entirely reasonable now that I was saying it out loud.

  But I would die on this hill. Jake should have waited until I got back to go and order fritters. We were mutually at fault for the last hour.

  “Do you even want to know what Captain Mark was doing after he left the bank?”

  “No,” Jake said shortly. “No, I do not.”

  “Your boyfriend’s pissed,” Austin pointed out.

  Now we had Captain Mark and Captain Obvious.

  Nine

  “Can we just enjoy our damn vacation?” Jake asked.

  “I didn’t start any of this!” I protested. “You’re the one who booked us on the death boat.”

  If I had a phone I would text Grandma Burke and tell her she was going to lose five bucks. Whatever Jake’s original intentions had been before we’d left Cleveland, I didn’t think anyone was getting engaged on this trip. No one was getting anything on this trip.

 

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