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Golden leaves on more elms rustled a little in the cool morning breeze. I hadn’t put on a sweater because the day had promised to be a mild one, but now I shivered and wished I was wearing something heavier than my long-sleeved T-shirt.
“Danny?” I ventured, my voice hushed. Even though I hadn’t seen anyone as I came in, I still didn’t think it was a very good idea to be bellowing out a dead man’s name for the neighbors to hear.
Nothing. I crossed my arms and wondered if this had been such a great idea after all. Although Danny had told me he was camping out in the house in between the times he was dropping in at my place or just generally floating around Globe, that didn’t mean he necessarily had to be here right now.
“Danny?” I said again, a little louder this time.
“What?” he said right behind my ear.
I think I must have jumped about a foot. “Don’t sneak up on people like that!” I snapped as I turned to face him.
He hovered a few feet away, looking amused. “Well, you’re the person standing in my yard, calling my name. I guess I just sort of thought you were expecting me to show up.”
Which was a valid argument, I suppose. I crossed my arms and said, “Sorry. When you didn’t answer me at first, I guess I just assumed you weren’t here.”
“Oh, I was here,” he replied. “But I was up in the attic.”
“What were you doing in the attic?” I asked.
That question got me a somewhat bemused lift of his shoulders. “I don’t know for sure,” he said. “I guess I thought that ghosts are supposed to haunt attics or something.”
I got a sudden flash of Danny wandering disconsolately around in his attic, in limbo until I could reveal his killer and give him the closure he needed. “I’m sorry,” I said.
His eyebrows lifted, and crinkles of amusement appeared at the corners of his brown eyes. “You don’t need to be,” he said. “I was also up there because I realized that Alison left a bunch of her crap in the house, and I was wondering about who was going to have to come in and clear it all away after the house is sold.”
That reply relieved me a bit. I should have known that Danny Ortega simply wasn’t the brooding Lord Byron type. “Can’t Alison get it out herself?”
“I doubt it,” Danny replied. “My parents won’t even speak to her, and my brother Miguel can’t stand her, so I don’t know who would make the call. I have a feeling it’s all going to end up in a dumpster.”
Privately, I thought it served her right. Leaving your unwanted junk behind at an ex’s house wasno buenoin my book, no matter how hostile the breakup might have been.
“Anyway,” he went on, “what brings you over here?”
“I need to ask you a question.”
Danny rocked back on his heels and sent me a curious look. “About what?”
“About the women you were seeing,” I replied, doing my best not to stare at the way he seemed to be floating about an inch or so above the frost-yellowed lawn. “Did any of them have any jealous boyfriends or ex-boyfriends?”
“I don’t think so,” Danny said. His answer had come so fast that I had a feeling it could only be the truth. “If they did, I sure never heard anything about it. The guy Jennifer dated before me got a job offer in Las Vegas and moved out of Globe months ago, and Susan dumped her previous boyfriend rather than the other way around.” He paused there, a spark of hope showing in his eyes. “Have you seen something?” he asked eagerly. “Do you think I was murdered by a jealous lover?”
“I did a card spread,” I told him. “One of the cards seemed to indicate an element of jealousy, but I can’t seem to figure out where that would fit in.”
His expression had fallen a bit when I mentioned the Tarot cards. While I could understand why he wasn’t a big fan of the Tarot at the moment, I hoped he would get past that. They really were a helpful tool for getting closer to the truth of a situation.
“I don’t know, either,” Danny said, and then his face brightened again. “Unless the jealousy was on the part of one of the women I dated.”
Only Danny Ortega could be cheered up by the prospect of one of his girlfriends murdering him out of pure jealousy. I did my best not to roll my eyes, then said, “I thought of that, but wouldn’t it make more sense for one of them to have murdered one of their supposed rivals and not you?”
“Oh, right.” He paused there and glanced over at the yard to our right. I stiffened, but I didn’t see anyone, and hoped he was just checking to be safe. “Then I don’t know what to tell you. I’ve been thinking and thinking, but I can’t seem to come up with anything. I even wandered through Mike Harrison’s house, just in case it really was him who slipped the poison into my glass, but the guy doesn’t even have any bug spray in his house. I couldn’t find a shred of incriminating evidence.”
Maybe so, but then again, I knew if I’d murdered someone using some kind of common household poison, I would’ve made sure to get rid of it before the police came sniffing around.
Then again, it was entirely possible the Globe police department had no reason to investigate Mike Harrison.
“Does anyone else know about your affair with Taylor?” I asked abruptly.
“It’s not common knowledge, if that’s what you mean,” Danny replied. “If it were, the school board would have fired me in a New York minute. I think Mike and his wife did their best to keep it covered up — they didn’t want their daughter’s reputation ruined.”
