Raintree: Haunted (Raintree 2)

No big deal. He’d thought himself in love once before. The woman in question had seen a small hint of who he really was, and that had been the end of that. That short relationship had really screwed up his ideas of having anything normal in his life. In the end, he’d gotten over her well enough, and he would get over Hope, too.

“It’s Emma who’s got my head all twisted around,” he muttered to the mirror, studying his too-bare chin. “Dante and his damned turquoise.”

All of a sudden he saw Emma’s reflection in the mirror and instinctively grabbed a towel to wrap himself in before he turned. Appearing maybe five years old today, she was floating above the tub, dressed all in white again. Her dark hair curled a bit and was fashioned into two long pigtails.

“Hi, Daddy. Did you call me?”

“No, I didn’t call you.”

“I heard you say my name,” she protested, with all the innocence and persistence of a stubborn little girl.

A horrifying thought crossed his mind. “Were you just here?”

“No,” she said, wide-eyed and growing more and more substantial as he watched. “I was waiting, and then I heard you call my name.”

“Waiting for what?”

Emma smiled. “Be careful, Daddy,” she said as she began to fade away. “She’s very bad. Very, very bad.”

“Who’s very…?” Before he could finish the question, Emma was gone. Surely she was warning him about Tabby. A warning last night before he’d gone to the riverfront would have been nice. Not that it would have stopped him from going.

By the time he returned to the bedroom, Hope was gone. He heard her moving around in the guest bathroom down the hall. After a few minutes the bathroom door opened and she shouted, “Raintree, you wouldn’t happen to have an extra toothbrush, would you?”

“Second drawer to the left,” he answered.

Gideon chastised himself as he pulled his clothes for the day from the closet. At least Hope wasn’t being emotional about this. She recognized this morning for what it was: fun, in a world where there wasn’t nearly enough fun. Release for two adult, apparently neglected, bodies that needed it. Just another day in along line of days.

Yeah, Hope was hot; she was gorgeous; she was brave. But he couldn’t love her, and this couldn’t last.

“You must have more clothes around here that would fit me. I’d rather wear something of yours than this!”

“My clothes are too big for you,” Gideon said sensibly. “Echo’s fit just fine.”

“That’s a matter of opinion,” Hope grumbled as she tugged on the hem of the cutoff T-shirt that revealed her belly button. She was a good three inches taller than Echo Raintree, so it was a miracle anything the other woman had left here would fit.

They’d both showered and changed clothes, but then she’d been stuck with choosing between the wrinkled blouse she’d slept in and the even more wrinkled trousers Raintree had thrown on the floor last night, or something from the drawer of clothes his cousin had left here on one of her infrequent visits.

The man didn’t own an iron, or so he said. Everyone owned an iron! Hope thought as she tried to tug up the waistband of the hip-hugger jeans. Gideon claimed the dry cleaner took care of all his ironing.

Her choices were a couple of bikinis, two T-shirts with the hems ripped out to display a belly button ring Hope did not have, and either a pair of cut-off shorts that would allow the cheeks of her butt to hang out or the tight pair of faded and ripped jeans she would normally have tossed in the garbage. For today the jeans were the lesser of two evils. They must have dragged on the ground when Echo wore them, given the frayed ends, but they were better than the cutoffs.

And not only would wearing the same clothes she’d worn yesterday be inappropriate and their hopelessly wrinkled state raise questions she didn’t want to answer, this morning she’d discovered more than one spot of blood on the sleeve of her blouse and on the trousers. She didn’t have a proper explanation for that, either, so she had no real choice but to make do with Echo’s clothes.

At least Gideon had dressed casually, to keep her from feeling like a complete fool. His jeans actually looked good on him, and so did the T-shirt that entirely covered his belly button.

“We’ll stop by your place later and you can change clothes,” he said, turning his back on her to pour a cup of coffee.

“We’ll stop by there first,” she said.

“Maybe not,” Gideon said thoughtfully. “Someone must’ve seen Tabby hanging around the club where Echo’s band played, or at the coffee shop, or checking out the apartment building. She hasn’t been invisible. The suits put some people off. People get defensive and just want to get rid of us as soon as possible, so we end up with squat. We’ll go in more relaxed today, just following up with a few more questions.”

Judging by the way Gideon was acting, a casual observer would have thought nothing out of the ordinary had happened this morning. He wasn’t distant, but he wasn’t exactly warm and cuddly, either. He was all business, and he hadn’t touched her at all since he’d left the bed this morning.

Maybe having incredible casual sex with a partner he barely knew wasn’t out of the ordinary for Gideon. It was certainly out of the ordinary for her, but she didn’t necessarily want him to know that. Not if he thought what had happened was casual and unimportant.

The plan for the day was to get one of the other detectives—probably Charlie Newsom—busy collecting mug shots of anyone who matched Tabby’s general description, while she and Gideon interviewed Sherry Bishop’s friends, coworkers and neighbors once again. Maybe one of them had seen Tabby in the days preceding Sherry’s death. Maybe one of them knew her last name. Unless they were very lucky, they wouldn’t get far with nothing but “Tabby” to go on. This afternoon Gideon was meeting with a sketch artist. She wasn’t sure how he would explain how he knew what the killer looked like, but somehow he would manage. She also had the washcloth she’d used to wipe away whatever Tabby had used to drug him. It was a long shot, but she planned to get that washcloth to the state lab. Unfortunately it would take weeks to get the results, and they didn’t have weeks.

“My sister’s coming in later today,” she said. “She makes jewelry for t