The eyebrow rose higher. “A pink Lexus. What’d she get? A pink Caddie instead?”
David’s cheeks flamed. “No. A purple Hummer.”
Radford’s left eyebrow joined his right. He turned to Officer Sherman. “Is that ID for real, or did he get it in a gumball machine?”
Sherman scanned it again. “Looks plenty kosher to me.”
David glared at Lauren. “Call the office. I’m for real. I’m just not sure what she is.”
“She,” said the female EMT as she returned, “is just fine. Oh, she’ll have a doozy of a bruise on her hip by tomorrow, all right, and I’ll bet she scraped her knees good under those pants, but otherwise she’s fine. Not even a bump on her head.”
“Then she’s nuts,” David said before he could stop himself.
Lauren glared back. “I’m not crazy, but I am fine, as I told you over and over again.” She turned to Radford. “He shouldn’t have made such a fuss. I’m sorry he bothered you, sir. But as you heard, I’m fine. You can all go home now. It’s getting late, especially for my nephew.”
Radford glanced at David. In that quick look, he saw the same alarm he’d felt at Lauren’s urgent objections. Something was up with this woman. And he wasn’t about to let her go until he had a good idea what it might be.
David crossed his arms and pinned Lauren with his stare. “Listen. I don’t buy a word of your ghost story, so why don’t you try telling me the truth? What’s going on here? What are you trying to hide?”
At his side, Radford cleared his throat.
David winced. He was stepping on the locals’ toes, and he was off duty, but by now he’d lost his patience. He had to know what Lauren DiStefano was up to.
Instead of answering, though, she helped her nephew stand before she stood, as well. Only then did she meet David’s gaze. “I’m sorry. I’m absolutely exhausted. And I’ve been under a great deal of stress these last few weeks. I’m sure it’s all taken its toll on my sanity.”
David caught himself before the spontaneous “Yeah, right” popped out. “So in your world exhaustion and stress lead to hit-and-runs and ghosts.”
She had the decency to blush. “I suppose it does sound stupid when you put it that way.”
“What way would you rather I put it?”
The shrug made her wince. She was hurt, no matter how hard she tried to deny it. What he wanted to know was why she was so determined to do so.
“Well?” he prodded.
Radford’s pencil scratched across paper.
The ambulance pulled away, this time minus the theatrics.
Officer Sherman joined them.
Still, Lauren didn’t speak. By now, she’d grown visibly uncomfortable with the triple scrutiny—just what David had hoped for. Maybe that discomfort would make her decide to talk.
She took a deep breath, clasped her nephew’s shoulders, pulled the boy close to her side. “The last three weeks have been very hard on us. My older brother Ric died twenty-three days ago. A car accident.”
That did explain stress, and the stress probably explained the exhaustion.
“But how do we get from grief and mourning to a Lexus-wielding ghost?” he asked. “Are you sure your brother’s dead? That you didn’t…uh—”
“No, Mr. Latham,” she cut in, her green eyes bright with indignation. “I didn’t imagine my brother’s death. I could never have done that. Besides, I have plenty of evidence of his passing.”
“I didn’t mean that you might have imagined his death.” David shifted his weight from one to the other foot. “That evidence you mentioned would be…?”
“The usual,” she countered. “I have a death certificate, the obit from the newspaper, the tasteful gravestone I had to order, a casket and fresh burial plot, the unending funeral bills I still have to pay and none of those is even the most heartbreaking bit of proof you could ever want. I have a grieving five-year-old nephew who only wants to know where his daddy went.”
David’s gaze dropped to the boy. The tears in Mark’s large green eyes, so like those of his aunt, filled him with guilt. “I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t be asking these questions with…ah…him here.”
“You shouldn’t be asking them period,” she said.
“Amen,” added Radford.
Although their objections didn’t have the same meaning, David got where they were coming from. He shot the cop an apologetic glance, but then his attention flew back to the woman and child in the blink of an eye. “Maybe you shouldn’t be talking ghost stories, either.”
To his satisfaction, she glanced down at the boy, and frowned. “You’re right. I’m going home.”
“Not so fast, lady,” Radford said. “I need your name, address, telephone number, and the full name of that maybe-dead, maybe-not-so-dead brother of yours.”
David didn’t let his gaze stray as Lauren responded. But then, when she got to her brother’s name, a touch of recognition tickled the backside of his memory.
Ric DiStefano.
He knew the name. But he couldn’t quite place it. Not right away, at any rate. He’d have to think about where he’d heard it, how he came to know it.
Then, to his surprise, after Radford’s okay, Lauren walked to the large, three-story brownstone mansion two doors from the corner, unlocked the door and slipped inside. She lived there and she complained about funeral bills?
Something still didn’t add up.
While he stared at the double mahogany doors, someone tugged on the back of his shirt. He turned around and groaned.
“You okay, Davey?” his grandmother asked.
Oh, boy. Was he ever in trouble now! His grandmother at the scene of a crime.
“I’m fine, Gram. What are you doing here?”
“Sure you’re fine?”
“Yes, I’m sure. So why are you here?”
At nearly six feet of statuesque height, Dorothea Stevens Latham rarely looked anything but her usual competent, eccentric self. Right now, though, under the weak glow of the streetlight at the other corner, his grandmother looked shaken.
Guilt filled him. He opened his arms wide, and she stepped into his hug. He felt her shivers in the deepest corner of his heart.
“Aw, Gram,” he said as he patted her sturdy back. “You shouldn’t’ve worried. I’m fine. It’s just that I witnessed a hit-and-run.”
Then
