Ghost Hunter

Chapter 26

"LET'S TAKE THIS FROM THE TOP," COOPER SAID, HALTING in front of the kitchen window. "Why would Stuart Griggs have tried to break into your shop? What was he looking for?"

Seated at the table, Elly watched him across the top of her mug. The first thing she had done when they had returned to her apartment was brew up a pot of Balance Tea to soothe her edgy nerves.

"I suppose," she said slowly, "that he might have been looking for money, but somehow, it doesn't seem likely, does it?"

"Given the really big coincidence we're dealing with here, no."

"Coincidence?"

"He's the owner of the shop next door to Bertha Newell's business, and he turns up dead only a couple of days after someone tries to murder Bertha."

She shuddered. "I see what you mean. I hadn't thought about that connection."

"When did Griggs open his shop on Ruin Lane?"

"I'm not sure. My friend, Doreen, across the street, mentioned that the floral shop has been around forever. But Griggs was a dour sort and very much a loner. None of us knew him well. He never got involved in any of the neighborhood activities."

"Looks like he may have had his reasons." Cooper shifted his attention back to the foggy alley below the window. "Did he buy herbal products from you?"

"He came in a few times and bought some moonseed tisane. But the only time I had what you might call an extended conversation with him was the day I took one of Rose's flowers to his shop to ask him if he recognized it."

She looked at the green flower on the windowsill.

Cooper followed her gaze. "When was that?"

"Just a couple of weeks ago," she said quietly. "As I told you, I'd had no luck researching the blossoms in my herbals. I'd hesitated to ask anyone else about the flowers because I was afraid that Rose was snatching them out of some local gardener's hothouse. But I finally got so curious I decided to take one to Griggs."

"You told him that Rose had brought it to you?"

"Yes." She winced. "And immediately regretted it."

"Why?"

"Just a feeling. I had Rose in my tote that day and I didn't like the way Griggs looked at her. I could tell that Rose didn't like him very much, either."

Cooper picked up the green vase and held the flower closer to the light to examine it. "Did you and Griggs ever meet again?"

"He came into the shop a few days ago and made a show of buying another tisane. While I was preparing it, he asked me if Rose had brought me any more flowers. Rose growled at him. It was embarrassing."

"What did you tell Griggs?"

"I lied through my teeth and said that there hadn't been any more flowers. But I don't know if he believed me." She gripped the mug a little more tightly. "Do you think Griggs came here that night to steal the flower? Why?"

Cooper shrugged. "He was a florist. Obviously he had a special interest in flowers, and you say this one is very unusual. You said orchid growers can be obsessive. Maybe Griggs became fixated on your flower."

A thought struck her. "Or maybe he was like me, sensitive to plant psi. The energy buzz off that flower is very strong. There's no reason to think that I'm the only one in the world who can sense it."

"No." Cooper looked at Rose, who was hunched over her food dish, munching on cheese and crackers. "But if he was obsessed with the green flowers, it's possible that he came here to get the one character in this mystery who knows where to find them."

"Oh, my lord." Elly sat up very straight, shoulders stiffening in alarm. "Do you think he came here to steal Rose?"

Rose batted her eyelashes at the sound of her name.

"What I think," Cooper said quietly, "is that I need to have a look around his shop. The sooner the better."

"Tonight?"

"Yes, but not until after your neighbors have gone to bed." He went back to the window to study the fog-shrouded buildings. "Folks around here seem to be just as nosy as the ones you had back home."

She got to her feet. "I'll come with you."

"No," he said, flat and final.

"You'll need Rose. She's an excellent watch bunny."

He gave Rose a thoughtful look. "You've got a point."

"Where Rose goes, I go," she said, closing the deal.

"Damn it, Elly, I said no."

She went to the refrigerator. "We'll need to fortify ourselves. I'm going to make some pasta with pesto sauce. Why don't you whip up a nice salad to go with it?"

"Not sure whipping up nice salads is in the Guild boss job description."

She opened the refrigerator and reached into the vegetable drawer for the lettuce. "A good Guild boss should be able to handle any challenge that comes along, I always say."

"That's strange. I don't recall ever hearing you say that."

"The lettuce is already washed. Olive oil and vinegar are on the counter. Don't worry, I'll talk you through this, big guy."

He smiled faintly. "Promise?"

"Yep." She opened a cupboard door and took out a package of pasta. "And while you're at it, you can tell me what would make an intelligent, extremely well-educated young boy from a respectable family of distinguished academics decide to pursue a career as boss of the Aurora Springs Guild."

For a few seconds she thought he was going to change the subject. Then, to her surprise, he went to the sink to wash his hands and started to talk.

"Growing up as a dissonance-energy para-rez predisposed me to want to become a hunter." He dried his hands on a towel and removed the lettuce from the plastic bag. "My parents were not keen on the idea."

"Of course not. Joining the Guild is not exactly at the top of the list of great careers as far as most well-educated, mainstream parents are concerned."

"I think they'd had a few hints," Cooper said, eyeing the lettuce. "Once the full range of my parapsych abilities came in, they realized there was something different about me, even for a dissonance-energy para-rez. I started sneaking out of the house and going down into the catacombs alone to experiment with blue energy. My father followed me one night and saw what I was doing."

"How did he react?"

"There had been a few hunters in the family over the years. Although he was a college professor, Dad knew enough Guild lore to recognize that I was working blue ghost light." Cooper paused. "Do I need a knife to cut this stuff?"

"No, you tear lettuce, you don't use a knife." She pushed a large salad bowl toward him. "Go on with your story."

"Dad did what any parent would do when he realized he had a dissonance-energy para-rez freak in the family. His first instinct was to hide me from the Guild."

She glowered. "You aren't a freak."

"Well, let's put it this way. Regardless of how you describe it, my variation of dissonance-energy talent is definitely not normal. My folks were pretty sure that if they consulted the local Guild authorities, things would get complicated in a hurry. At the very least there would have been a tremendous amount of pressure to let the Guild oversee my para-rez training."

She filled a pan with water from the faucet. "No doubt about it."

"Dad and I had a very long talk that day. He explained the facts of life concerning what little he knew about the risks of working blue energy. Mostly he tried to make it clear that it had to be kept secret, even from my best friends."

She smiled wryly. "Sounds like the same talk I got when my folks realized I could pick up plant psi."

"See? I knew we had a lot in common."

She decided to let that go. "Okay, so you kept your talent a secret while you were growing up. I can understand why you might have wanted to try being a ghost hunter. Every kid with para-rez talent wants to find out what it's like to use it down in the catacombs, at least for a while. But what made you so determined to become a Guild boss, instead of, say, a history professor?"

He tore some lettuce very neatly and dropped it into the bowl. "That decision was probably due to another little-known Boone family secret."

"This is getting interesting." She folded her arms and leaned against the counter. "Are you going to tell me that secret?"

"I think the time has come," he said. "Remember the legend of Wild Watson Whittaker?"

"Of course." She plucked a tomato out of the bowl on the counter and gave it to him. "Every kid in Aurora Springs knows the story of Watson Whittaker. He was the hunter who saved the town almost single-handedly during the Era of Discord. The big cities were too busy fighting Vance's legions to be able to spare any dissonance-energy para-rezzes to guard the outlying villages and communities. Small towns like Aurora Springs were left on their own."

He examined the tomato as though it were a strange alien artifact. "What do I do with this?"

"You slice it." She handed him a paring knife. "With this."

"Knew there would be a knife involved in this thing sooner or later."

"I want to hear the rest of your story about Watson Whittaker."

Cooper positioned the tomato on the counter. "You said you knew the legend?"

"Sure. Vincent Lee Vance assumed that Aurora Springs had sent what few hunters it had to the main battle sites at Resonance and Cadence. He figured he could use the tunnels under our town as a staging point. He sent a contingent of his followers to take control of the catacombs beneath Aurora Springs. But Watson Whittaker, who had been left in charge of the town's defense, set a trap."

"Vance's followers walked right into it."

"Most of the rebels wound up brain-fried," she concluded on a note of triumph. "The rest fled in disarray. To this day, no one know exactly how Whittaker managed to pull off the victory."

Cooper cut cautiously into the tomato. "After the Era of Discord, Aurora Springs founded its own Guild, just as the big cities did. They selected a Council and chose the town's first Guild boss."

"My ever-so-great-grandfather, John Sander St. Clair," she said proudly. "May he rest in peace."

"At the time," Cooper said, continuing his deliberate slicing, "there were some who expected that Watson Whittaker would get the job."

"Hah. Not a chance." She chuckled, thinking of the books and films she had seen over the years. 'They didn't call him Wild Watson Whittaker for nothing. He was one of those larger-than-life heroic types who comes through in a crisis, but he certainly wasn't management material. The founders of the Aurora Springs Guild recognized that."

"They pinned a lot of medals on Whittaker, held a parade in his honor, and put up a statue in the park." Cooper sliced boldly into the tomato. "Then they gave the Guild boss job to John Sander St. Clair."

"They sure did." She opened a box of croutons for him. "And Whittaker went right out and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the founders had been absolutely right to pass him over. He vowed revenge on the Guild and the town. Went from being a legendary hero to being the most notorious catacomb raider in the history of the colonies."

"Yeah, Whittaker was pretty pissed," Cooper said, looking thoughtful.

"And the rest, as they say, is history. In the six months following the establishment of the Aurora Springs Guild, a fortune in alien artifacts was stolen from excavation teams working in the sectors that the Aurora Springs hunters were responsible for protecting. The raids were all daring and brilliantly executed. The raider was never caught, but everyone knew it was Watson Whittaker. Then, one day, he did what all great legends do, he vanished into the realm of myth."

Cooper reached into the box and helped himself to a crouton. "Over the years, the official version of the legend has lost a few details in the telling."

She frowned. "You're not supposed to eat those straight out of the box. You sprinkle them on the salad."

"Yeah?" He fed one to Rose, who was drifting around the floor at his feet. "Thought maybe they were an hors d'oeuvre or something."

"Forget the croutons," she said. "You know, sometimes I forget that you really do have a background in history and archival research. Tell me what's missing from the official version of the Watson Whittaker story."

He scooped up the sliced tomatoes and arranged them in neat rows on top of the lettuce. "Among other things, there was a woman involved."

"Really?" She got some cheese out of the refrigerator. "I never heard that."

"Probably because the lady ended up marrying your ever-so-great-grandfather, John Sander St. Clair."

"What?" Dumbfounded, she straightened abruptly, packet of cheese in her hand. "Watson Whittaker and St. Clair were rivals for my multi-great-grandmother's hand?"

"Yes. When Whittaker realized he wasn't going to be given control of the Aurora Springs Guild, he tried to convince your ancestor to run off with him. She declined and married St. Clair, instead." He took the cheese from her. "That was when Whittaker went rogue and became a blue freak."

She whistled softly. "Watson Whittaker could work blue ghost energy?"

"Yes."

"That certainly explains a few things, like how he managed to save Aurora Springs pretty much all on his own during the Era of Discord."

Cooper unwrapped the cheese. "Right. The Guild knew that if the truth about the blue ghost light got out, it would make folks nervous. So they hushed up the facts."

"That wouldn't have been hard to do, seeing as how it was primarily Guild historians who wrote the official accounts concerning the Era of Discord."

"You know what they say, history is written by the winners."

"This is fascinating." She watched him study the hunk of cheese he had uncovered. "You've done some serious research on Wild Watson Whittaker, haven't you?"

"Oh, yeah." He crunched another crouton and dropped one into Rose's waiting paws. "You might say I had a personal interest in him."

She nodded. "Because he had a rare parapsych talent like yours. Makes sense. So what actually happened to Whittaker? Did he die alone somewhere underground, or did he live to enjoy his ill-gotten gains?"

"He changed his name, built a new identity for himself in one of the big cities, got married, and started a family."

"Sounds a trifle boring after all his adventures in Aurora Springs."

"Even guys like Watson Whittaker have to settle down sometime." He examined the cheese closely. "Now what?"

"Cut off a chunk and crumble it," she said absently, her thoughts on what he had just told her. "What about the fortune in artifacts that Watson Whittaker stole? What happened to the relics?"

"Let's just say that Watson Whittaker showed more business acumen than the members of the Aurora Springs Guild credited him with having."

"Aha. He invested well?"

"Very well. Unfortunately, few of his descendents displayed the same gifts for finances. Over the years, Whittaker's offspring managed to fritter away the empire that he built." He dropped a piece of cheese to Rose. "But, hey, easy come, easy go."

"What about Whittaker's descendents? What happened to them?"

"A few became hunters, but for the most part they were fairly standard para-rez talents. The majority of his offspring showed no dissonance-energy para-rez talents at all. They chose other careers."

"Were there any more who could work blue ghost light?"

"Eventually there was one." Cooper crumbled cheese into the bowl. "But he didn't come along for quite a while."

"Did he turn out to be notorious like Watson Whittaker?"

"Depends on your point of view." Cooper crumbled cheese onto the salad. "He recently became the boss of the Aurora Springs Guild."

She had been so wrapped up in the story that it took a second or two before she got it.

"You?" She dropped her arms in shock. "Watson Whittaker was your direct ancestor?"

"Yeah." He studied the bottles of oil and vinegar. "What do I do with these?"

She stared at him, openmouthed, and then she felt the ironic humor of the situation strike her full force.

"Oh, my," she said. "Oh, my goodness."

She was suddenly laughing so hard, she had to grab the edge of the counter to steady herself. "This is priceless. The funniest thing I've heard in ages."

"I live to amuse. Part of the Guild boss job description."

She reeled against the kitchen counter, slapping a palm across her mouth in a vain attempt to stifle the giggles. "If only the Council members back home knew about this." She flapped a hand. "Wait. Do any of them know? Or is this still a deep, dark family secret?"

He watched her with an unreadable expression. "It's still a deep, dark family secret."

"Not anymore. Now I know it. Oh, wow. This is so cool. I know your deepest, darkest family secret. I know that you are the descendent of the most notorious man in Aurora Springs history. I have you in my power, Cooper Boone."

"The way I figure it, you're going to be family one of these days, so it's okay for you to know the secret."

That stopped her laughter as effectively as if he had suddenly pumped all of the oxygen out of the air.

"You figured what?" she sputtered.

"You heard me."

She put up both hands, palms out. "Oh, no you don't. There has been no change in the status of our relationship regarding marriage."

"That hurts. We've been living under the same roof for a couple of days. We've dined together, we've danced together, and we've had some great sex."

"Once. We had great sex one time. That's all."

"Whatever. My point here is, can you blame me for thinking we were making progress?"

"Having sex one time is not progress."

"What do you call it?" he asked.

"Sex," she yelped.

"What about the fact that I've just told you my deepest, darkest family secret? As far as I'm concerned, that's the kind of secret only a wife should know."

"Relax, Guild Boss. You have my word of honor that I won't tell a soul about your connection to Watson Whittaker." She winked. "Frankly, though, I doubt if the story would do you any real damage if it did get out. Might even give you a major boost in the popularity ratings back home. People love legends."

"I'm not really into popularity ratings," he said in a musing tone. "But I do take secrets seriously. The way I look at it, if you don't marry me, you've got only one other option."

"Oh, yeah?" She gave him a challenging smile. "What would that be?"

"You'd better run like hell."

She blinked. "You're teasing me."

"I'm a Guild boss, remember? I have no sense of humor."