Ariel responded with a photo from what appeared to be a high school yearbook. It looked exactly like Jax if he’d been fifteen years younger—except judging from the clothing and the name beneath, it wasn’t Jax. Evie showed it to him. “Your sister has been busy.”
“Aaron Ives,” he read. “Damn. Buzz cut, like mine, except I wore mine long in high school.”
Evie took the phone back and studied the screen. “Same jaw line. Same gray eyes, nice tan. Ives must have dominant genes. I can’t see any evidence of your mother.”
“The tan doesn’t wear off,” he said dryly, chugging his beer. “Mom had dark hair too. Tall, for a woman, if I’m remembering clearly. I was just twelve when they died, so my perspective may be off.”
Another image appeared on the screen. This one showed a serious youth with a narrow, pale face, glasses, and a hank of brownish hair falling into green eyes. She showed it to Jax. “Franklin Jackson, same year.”
Jax looked resigned. “I should probably text the Oswins with the information so they can add me to their genealogy charts. Maybe they can find out more. Or I can wait for the DNA report.”
His phone pinged. They both looked at it.
“We could pretend we’re on the airplane,” Evie suggested.
“It might be Ariel with more pictures.” Jax looked rightfully doubtful, since his sister had been messaging Evie.
“Not unless you texted her first, which you never do. Maybe it’s the Oswin person you met. He’s at least in this time zone. It’s nearly ten. We need to be paying the bill and heading for the gate.” Unlike her mother and Great-Aunt Val, Evie didn’t possess an ounce of precognition, but she still sensed an ominous message behind that ping.
She’d had a bad feeling about cops at Pendleton’s office, and he was dead. She should pay heed to her instincts—except, in Jax’s universe, not checking a text message wasn’t happening.
Finishing his beer and gesturing for the waitress, Jax swept the phone off the table and punched the buttons. “Police report. Reuben’s been hacking.”
“Surely the cops have better security here than in a small town like...” That was a stupid thought. A desert small town wasn’t any different than her hometown just because it was in California.
Grimly, he turned the phone toward her. He had the screen widened to make it easier to read.
Gunshot to the temple, suicide.
“Nope.” Evie pushed away her plate. “Nope. No way. That man had no reason to kill himself. He was murdered.”
She got up and left for the ladies’ room.
She’d wanted to be a detective. She hadn’t wanted to cause murders in the process. Now what the dickens did they do?
Six
“There isnothing you could have done,” Jax insisted tiredly the next morning as they climbed out of the van in Evie’s driveway. Their flight had been uneventful, but without business class seating, he felt like tuna squashed in a can. He’d have to get used to poverty.
Reuben had met them at the airport in the team’s stripped-down utility van for the long haul back to Afterthought, which hadn’t been much more comfortable.
“You said yourself that ghosts seldom manifest immediately after a violent death,” he continued their exhausted argument.
“I could be wrong. It’s not as if I’m that experienced.” Evie heaved her duffel over her shoulder. “Or there might have been other spirits who saw something. I should have gone back instead of running home. Poor Mr. Pendleton deserves better than to be dismissed as a suicide! No wonder I’m only a dog walker. I’m useless.”
Jax agreed with the sentiment about Pendleton, but sending Evie back there wasnotthe solution. Her safety was more important than a stranger’s ghost, but he was argued out—a sad state for a lawyer.
“Ain’t useless,” Reuben called from the back of the van, where he was unloading Jax’s gear. His tribal scars emphasizing his angular jaw, his top knot still adorned by a bone, Reuben matched Roark in scariness, but he was more of a nerd than his partner. “Bubble witch needs you. Your mama needs you. And you gonna be one funky mayor.”
On top of being unable to solve the mysteries they’d left behind, it was damned dispiriting hauling his few possessions to the servants’ quarters of Evie’s—her aunt’s—home. He’d hit some lows before, but this was a new bottom. Afghanistan had probably been more devastating, but at least he’d had a home and job to go to afterward.
Jax loaded up with his gear and luggage, thinking he’d have to sleep on them. They wouldn’t fit under the narrow bed in the bedroom off the kitchen where he’d slept before he’d taken off to California.
“I have no media presence,” Evie informed them, sounding as depressed as he felt. “I won’t be mayor.”
It was all his fault she wasn’t her usual bouncy self. Jax added guilt to his list of miseries.
Loretta ran down the street, presumably from the tarot shop Evie’s mother owned. “You’re back, you’re back! Can we have chocolate milkshakes to celebrate?”