Free Ghost Seer by Robin D. Owens Page B

A.M. ,” Zach said.
    Mrs. Magee stopped and glanced over her shoulder, smiling. “Exactly.”
    As soon as she turned a corner into the back of the house, Zach closed the door that separated the apartment from the rest of the house. And realized his leg ached like fury.
    Leaning on his cane, he scanned the large main room, getting the idea that a guy had lived in it not too long ago. The colors seemed too neutral for a woman. He wondered a little about Clare Cermak. She had that contradictory thing going . . . the bold Eastern European name . . . he wondered if he could do a little research on her . . . and the cool and tidy accountant manner. He could see her in red . . .
    Picking his feet up carefully as he reached a faded but thick oriental rug—with fringe, for God’s sake—Zach half fell onto the lushly cushioned leather couch. The audiovisual system was bad: small screen, only about twenty inches, old recording components. The place sounded quiet enough for him, no sense of a large and busy city,
that
was good . . . if he stayed . . .
    His cell rang and he took it out of his jacket pocket, saw it was Rickman. “Slade.”
    “I’ve got a little information from the auction house on the con man. And he
is
a con man.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Yeah. Name is Lawrence Whistler, or current alias. The guy told our local auction company, Compass, which has a good rep, that he is from Massachusetts and handed them an auctioneer’s license and names of references. He just wanted to use their space on the way to the West Coast to set up his own place. Paid them a fee for storage of his stuff and asked to put his items on consignment in this auction.”
    Zach made a disgusted noise. “They believed all that?”
    “The license was from one of the schools the local auctioneers went to. I followed up on that; no guy by the name of Lawrence Whistler ever attended. The phone numbers of the references checked out when the auctioneer called them a couple of weeks ago—they aren’t so good right now.”
    “Huh. I can just tell Mrs. Flinton that Whistler didn’t check out.”
    Stretching, Zach put the cell on the thick padded arm of the couch, leaned down and kneaded at his sore leg, clenching his teeth with pain as he massaged around his ankle.
    “That won’t work,” Rickman said. Zach could visualize the man shaking his head. “Aunt Barbara will believe only what she wants to believe, and she really wants these antiques to be her family’s. She’ll insist on going to the auction, maybe even confronting the asshole. Your job isn’t done.”
    Zach grunted, then decided that a phone call needed more than a sour expression, like words. “All right.”
    “Keep Aunt Barbara away from Whistler. We don’t know who he is or whether he’ll get violent if the deal goes bad.”
    “Right.”
    “And walk in with that cop arrogance, use that cop gaze on him.”
    “What?”
    “You know what I mean. Your whole attitude is ‘cop.’ One of the reasons I hired you. Most of my men can really intimidate—you know they’re bad dudes the minute they step into a room—but you have the cop style. Better for scaring the crap out of some people.”
    Zach laughed, and didn’t hear much bitterness lacing it.
    “You
are
a deputy sheriff, a peace officer, Zach. You always will be.” A pause. “My business . . . and my guys need you.”
    Zach’s mouth fell open. He had no doubt that Rickman had some ex–special forces men in his business. He respected those men—well, those not associated with his father, the Marine.
    Silence hung, then he heard Rickman’s huffed breath. “Different approaches to problems. Just take care of Aunt Barbara tonight, all right?”
    “You got it,” Zach said, and Rickman cut the call.
    A hard ball of tangled emotions loosened a little in Zach’s chest, unraveled a little more. The first thread had come undone when Clare Cermak had looked at him with appreciation in her eyes for a man