Just then the waiter arrived to take their order. Charlie realized that while her mind had been occupied elsewhere, everyone else had made their decision about what to eat.
Easy enough, she discovered: it was a buffet, so the waiter only wanted to know about drinks. Charlie could really have gone for a bourbon and Coke—or something even stronger, under the circumstances—but since the agents were on duty and thus not drinking, she settled for iced tea. While the waiter went to fetch the drinks, they hit the buffet. Getting in line, she surreptitiously swept her eyes over the men responsible for refilling the buffet dishes: no way any of them were the Boardwalk Killer. So far, in fact, none of the staff with whom she had come into contact even fit into the category of remotely possible.
Unless it was a copycat. Or unless everything she knew was wrong and science and statistics went totally out the window.
That was a world in which she couldn’t function. Everything in life and death had rules that governed them, including ghosts and serial killers. Banished ghosts couldn’t come back. And serial killers fit within certain parameters.
Or the universe—to say nothing of her head—had gotten seriously screwed up.
It wasn’t until Charlie got within range of the heavenly smells of shrimp and grits, slow-roasted barbecue and corn on the cob, fried chicken and pecan pie—that she realized how hungry she was.
Unfortunately, with her stomach now in a knot, she was afraid to put too much in it. The flash she’d gotten of Garland had caused it to clench up. The last thing she wanted to do now was fill it and risk an attack of full-blown upchucking if another spirit—and please God, if she had to have an encounter with a spirit, let it be another spirit—should show up.
“Is that all you’re going to eat?” Behind her in line, Bartoli looked down at her plate and shook his head. It held a spoonful of this and a little dab of that, because, sadly, that was all she dared attempt. “Getting to eat this well while on the job is a rare treat in our line of work. You probably want to take advantage.”
“I’m dieting.” Which was just one more lie she’d told him. Still, it was better than admitting the truth. He—all of them—would never believe the truth. Not for the first time, Charlie felt a surge of fierce resentment about the confining aspects of her unwanted ability. Her choices were extremely limited: lie, or tell the truth and have people think she was nuts; isolate herself, or suffer sudden-onset, flu-like bouts of debilitating illness every time she interacted with the newly, violently departed. Frequently being scared to death and grossed out by phantoms with horrific injuries were part of the package, too. To say nothing of the off chance of having a dead serial killer whom she had tried and failed to banish from this plane of existence come hunting for her, possibly with vengeance on his mind. Charlie gave an inward snort. Anyone who thought it would be fun to be able to see ghosts didn’t know the half of it.
God, did you ask me if I wanted to be able to see dead people?
“You ate a Big Mac for lunch!” Kaminsky, in front of her, turned around to point out.
Instead of grinding her teeth, which was what she really felt like doing, Charlie managed a saccharine smile. “Which is why I’m dieting now.”
“Better you than me.” Kaminsky turned back to the buffet with a shrug.
“You’re pretty slim. You should be able to handle a Big Mac and a decent supper,” Crane told Charlie cheerfully. “Especially considering your height. Now, if you were short, you might have something to worry about.”
Kaminsky’s head snapped around. “Is that some kind of a dig at me, Crane?”
Crane looked as taken aback as if one of the shrimp on his plate had suddenly snapped at him. “No.”
“Because if it is, you know what you can do with yourself.” Well-filled plate in hand, Kaminsky turned and marched back toward their table. Crane looked at Charlie and Bartoli, who were behind him, with an expression of bewildered appeal. Its silent message was, What did I do?
“You dug your own grave,” Bartoli told him with a shrug. “Women and weight don’t belong in the same conversation.”
“Holy Mother of God,” Crane said in disgust, and turned away to follow Kaminsky back to the table.
Charlie lifted her eyebrows at Bartoli. “I take it there’s something going on between those two?”
“He was engaged to her sister for a while this spring. Broke it off two weeks before the wedding. Kaminsky wasn’t happy, to say the least. I doubt the sister was, either, but the sister’s not my problem, thank God.”
He gave her a crooked smile as he said the last part. Looking up at him, Charlie registered that the top of her head just reached the base of his nose and that his shoulders were broad and his body was lean and fit in his FBI-guy suit, and felt a pleasant little tingle of attraction. Bartoli was a good-looking man who was gainfully employed, and she liked him. She’d had more than one relationship that had started off with a lot less going for it than that. Probably she ought to think about—
“Miss me, Doc?” drawled an unmistakable voice in her ear. Garland! Charlie jumped so high and so fast that her plate went flying. It landed with a wet plop right in the middle of a big crystal bowl full of scrumptious-looking banana pudding, spilling its contents across the creamy surface. Yellow blobs of pudding went flying everywhere. Wide-eyed with horror, Charlie watched them land on a couple of individual ramekins of crème brûlée, a carrot cake, a plate of petits fours, and a chocolate pie.
“I am so sorry,” she gasped to the servers on the other side of the table, to Bartoli, to the diners around her in line. “I just—I don’t know what happened.” Even as she turned seven shades of red and stammered out more apologies, she glanced covertly around for Garland.
He was nowhere to be seen.
The sun was setting in a swirl of pinks and oranges over the purple waters of the Sound. Tiki torches were lit and their flames swayed in the breeze. Candles glowed like hundreds of fireflies from the centers of the white-clothed tables. Posh people in their Friday-night-out clothes were everywhere: in line at the buffet, sitting at the tier upon tier of tables, walking along the verandah and paths. The band was playing now. Charlie recognized the song: “Forever Young.”
There were lots of sounds, lots of auditory and visual stimuli. Maybe she’d made a mistake.
Maybe it hadn’t been Garland that she’d heard at all.
Even as she told herself that, and hoped, desperately, she’d just imagined it—first, Garland’s appearance, and second, his voice—she knew better: she didn’t know how or why or where exactly, but she was now as sure as it was possible to be of anything that he was there.
Toying with her like a cat with a mouse.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“No worries, ma’am,” one of the servers (who clearly didn’t know the half of it) assured Charlie, while the other nodded his head. They whisked away the ruined pudding and got busy cleaning up the mess she’d made, while Bartoli gently pulled her away from the scene.
“I can’t believe I did that,” she told him, genuinely mortified, even as her gaze darted hither and yon in a fruitless search for Garland. Others in the buffet line who had witnessed her clumsiness made sympathetic faces at her as Bartoli took her back to the first buffet table and supplied her with a clean plate and silverware. “I’m not usually such a klutz.”
“Anybody can have an accident. Didn’t you get some of that shrimp stuff?” His tone was soothing as he pointed out a dish she’d helped herself to before. Charlie dutifully scooped up another serving. She didn’t miss the speculation in his eyes when he thought she wasn’t looking, however. Bartoli was wondering what was up. Well, she would be, too.