"This one works better off-leash. He's very well trained."
"Huh. Well, it looks like he may have found something."
I leaned past Tansy to see Jeremy gingerly raking back the dirt with his claws. He took another sniff, caught a noseful of dirt and sneezed. Then he resumed his careful digging.
A smell wafted up, strong enough for me to recognize. The stink of a rotting corpse. Jeremy lowered his muzzle into the hole and flipped something out. Even before I got close, I could see tiny sticklike bones and needlelike teeth. A mole or large mouse.
"Eww," Tansy said. "You'd better grab that, before he eats it."
I swallowed a laugh. "I made sure he was well fed before we started."
Jeremy looked at me, as if figuring out what we were talking about. He rolled the tiny corpse back into the hole, this time with his paw.
When he started covering it, I hurried forward. "I'll get that. You just keep--I mean, go, boy. Work. Sniff."
Jeremy rolled his dark eyes, leapt from the garden and headed toward the next one as I refilled his hole.
"Here comes Pete," Tansy said. "Wonder why he left his post? Uh-oh, he looks worried."
A gray-haired man hurried down the path, his broad face gathered in concern.
"Where is he?" Gabrielle asked.
"Inside the house. Upstairs I think." Tansy looked at me. "Some of us took up posts, keeping an eye out. This looked like something you wouldn't want to be found doing, so we were keeping watch."
"Oh? That's very thoughtful. Thank you."
"Someone's watching from upstairs," the portly man--Pete--said as he drew up beside us. "The English chap. He's been looking out the window."
"Grady? Damn! Jer--uh--boy?" I called softly. "Stay. Okay? Stay."
Jeremy peeked from the garden a few yards down and dipped his muzzle, telling me he understood. I stepped back farther into the shadows and looked up at the house. Grady's curtains were parted, a dim glow silhouetting his figure.
"Thanks for letting me know," I whispered to the ghost.
"I don't think he saw--" He stopped, looking up. "Oh, he's gone. False alarm. I'll head back."
"Wait," I said. "Your name's Pete?"
"Peter Feeney, miss. Used to work a few blocks away. Chauffeur, gardener, butler..." He smiled. "Whatever they needed."
"And what do you need? From me, I mean," I blurted. Alarm bells sounded in my head. But I steeled myself and pushed on. "I mean, is there anything I can do for you? I'm pretty limited. I can't find your killer or anything like that."
Peter smiled, showing small, even teeth. "My killer was me, miss. Me and my bad habits. Now, I'd love to bring them to justice, the folks who told me all those cigarettes weren't bad for my health, but I know you can't do that." He chewed his lip, the urge to be polite warring with the fear that he'd never get another chance to speak to a necromancer. "There is something, but I know you're really busy..."
"Go ahead."
"It's not urgent, but maybe when you're all done, if you have the time...I'd like to find my son."
"Has he...passed over?"
"Oh, no. At least, I hope not. We had a falling out a few years before I died. Silly thing. They always are, aren't they? But then I passed and when I went to his old apartment to check on him, he'd moved out. I don't want to make contact--just to see him. Finding him is probably as simple as looking through an L.A. phone book or dialing 411 but..." A wry smile. "I can't do that."
"No, of course not. But I will, as soon as I get a chance--"
The whoosh of the screen door sliding open sounded. I froze. Peter motioned for me to stay still and the ghosts fanned out, heading for the back of the house.
"I saw it," Grady hissed, his voice traveling through the still night air. "A dog," Claudia said.