“Huh?”

Okay, so it wasn’t the most probing question, but it was all I could think to say before I blurted out, “Channeling? Like changing the channels on TV?”

“Channeling like capturing my spirit and making me do what he wants me to do.”

I thought this over, but it didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Then again, I was a woman who didn’t believe in ghosts until they started butting in on my life. I was quickly finding out that taking a walk on the spooky side meant learning about a whole bunch of things I never knew existed and never would have believed in before my Gift reared its ugly psychic head.

“You mean Vinnie makes you write songs for him?” I asked Damon, trying to get it all straight. “Even though you’re dead?”

“Sort of.” Damon may have been a genius when it came to dark lyrics, but it was clear this was hard to explain, even for him. “As far as I can see, this is how it works. The body is sort of like a car, and a car needs energy from a battery to run, right?”

I knew as much about cars as I used to know about ghosts. Still, I couldn’t argue with this. I nodded.

“But a car doesn’t care where that energy comes from. You could buy a battery anywhere, from any manufacturer, and your car would still work.”

“And this is the same as channeling because…”

“Because it’s the same thing as what happens when Vinnie channels my spirit. His body still works, but the energy comes from me.”

I was getting dizzy again. To chase away my confusion, I started walking and since I didn’t have a whole lot to say, this worked out perfectly. We walked. Damon talked.

“Vinnie’s been doing it for years,” he said. “He’s got it down pat. He calls on my spirit, and like it or not, when he calls, I have to go. I get drawn into his body, and I become the energy that runs it. When I do, he makes me write songs for him.”

I thought about the green Magic Marker lyrics on the pizza box. “So why isn’t this a good thing?” I asked him. “I mean, you’re a songwriter, right? And songwriters are all about hearing their words come to life. Shouldn’t this make you happy?”

“You actually get it.” He said this like it was something exceptional, and I basked in the glow of the compliment. “There aren’t many people who understand. You must be an artist yourself.”

Only when it came to accessorizing fashion. I would have pointed this out if I didn’t remember that back in Damon’s day, fashion was pretty much defined by how many love beads a person wore with dirty jeans and raggy T-shirts. Needless to say, I shivered at the very thought.

“I’m making you cold.”

Damon’s comment caught me off guard, but I answered instantly. “No. That’s not it.”

“Then maybe I’m making you hot?”

When he said this with a little growl in his voice, it wasn’t easy to deny. I tried, anyway, with a tight smile and a quick detour back to the original subject. I was helped out because by that time, we were back in the lobby of the Rock Hall and face to face with the poster of Mind at Large that advertised their upcoming concert.

“Which one is Vinnie?” I asked.

The Rock Hall employee standing nearby—a young, perky blond whose nametag said she was Sarah—naturally thought I was talking to her. She pointed at the poster, left to right. “Vinnie, Ben, Alistair, Mighty Mike, Pete. I think.”

I scanned the poster and the five guys on it. Every single one of them must have been at least sixty, and I thought about how different they looked on the poster outside the building, the one that showed Mind at Large back in Damon’s day, before they had forty years of hard rockin’ under their belts.

Back then, Alistair had been the cute one. Now his hair was silver, his jowls drooped, he wore glasses as thick as soda bottles. Mighty Mike (I’d heard tell the nickname came from female fans who couldn’t get enough of his wide shoulders and broad chest) had a stomach that pouched over his belt, and Pete was so thin, I’m pretty sure a brisk wind could blow him away. As for Vinnie…

I shifted my gaze and took a closer look at the dark-haired guy who sat at the outside of the picture. His hair was as long as Damon’s, but on Vinnie, the style was more grungy than appealing. He wore a tattered T-shirt, beat-up jeans, and a wide smile.

“I’ve got to tell you, I’m not a big fan.” Sarah said this in hushed tones. Like she couldn’t afford to let anyone at the Hall know it, but she didn’t want me to get the wrong impression. “I mean, their stuff, it’s pretty hokey, isn’t it? I guess a lot of people like it, though. You know, old people. Somebody told me that Vinnie writes all the band’s music. But then, you probably know that. Not that I think you’re old or anything,” she added, before I even had a chance to get offended. “I just figured everyone knows that!”

“Everyone in this world and beyond,” I told her.

She thought I was kidding. “They’re going to set up the stage right out there.” She pointed toward the plaza out in front of the building. “We figure there will be tens of thousands of people here. They say it’s going to be the biggest thing to happen in Cleveland since I don’t know when.”

I remembered the last biggest social event to happen in Cleveland and how I’d attended it so that I could investigate. That investigation led to the debunking of one of the biggest icons in the literary world. It was a little intimidating to think that if Damon had his way, I would have the same effect on the music industry.

Speaking of investigating, this struck me as a good time to start. “Has Vinnie always written the band’s music?” I asked Sarah.

Sarah got big points for honesty. She shrugged.

“I guess. Vinnie Pal—that’s what they call him, not Vinnie Pallucci, just Vinnie Pal—I’ve heard people around here say that he’s a genius. You know, that his songs are brilliant.”

“His songs are shit.”

Since the songs in question were allegedly Damon’s songs, this comment from him surprised me. I knew better than to question him within earshot of Sarah, so I excused myself, hurried into the gift shop, and ducked behind a rack of Rock Hall lunch bags.

“I’m getting confused,” I told Damon. “I thought the songs were your songs.”

“They are my songs. Or at least they’re versions of my songs.”

I didn’t bother with the huh this time. My expression said it all.

“It’s like this,” Damon explained. “Vinnie channels me, and whether I want to or not, I gotta go. Wherever he is. When I get there, I slip into his body, and he makes me write songs for him. But when he does…hell…” His mouth thinned with disgust. “Inside my head, every single one of my songs is damned near perfect. But when they come out of me and pass through Vinnie, somehow they get all watered down. It’s a bummer, man, and it’s just plain embarrassing.”

“You’re dead, you can’t be embarrassed!”

A mom and her little boy were just about to check out the lunch bags. She put a hand on her son’s shoulder and ushered him away.

Damon hardly spared them a look. “I can be sick and tired of the whole thing. And I am. I want you to go and talk to Vinnie. I want you to tell him to stop. Maybe if he does…” Damon looked away.

I guess I was getting good at reading between the lines. Case in point. I sensed that there was more going on than Damon was willing to talk about.

Being the polite person that I am, I knew to leave well enough alone and allow Damon his privacy. But it would take more than civility to get me in on this case. Honesty, for one thing. And a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T for another.

If Damon wasn’t telling me the whole truth and nothing but, then I wasn’t getting either.

“Maybe if he does…” I jumped back into the sentence, hoping Damon would finish it for me, and when he didn’t, I narrowed my eyes and pinned him with a look. “You’re leaving something out, and you should know this right now. I won’t work for you. Not if you keep secrets.”

Did I know one of the gift shop employees was refilling a shelf nearby? He heard me and glanced over. “You want to work here? Applications are up at the cash register.”

I smiled my thanks. And turned my back on him. There was a stage nearby, one of those makeshift ones that looked as if it was set up and taken down as needed. I scrambled over to it, eager to finish my conversation in private.

I turned to face Damon and made sure I kept my voice down. “Maybe if Vinnie stops channeling you…what? What will happen then?”

Damon twitched his shoulders. “I don’t know for sure.”

“But you have a hunch.”

He looked away and back into the lobby with its wild displays. When he looked my way again, his face was as gray as it had been back in the movie theater. “He’s the reason I’m still here, Pepper,” he said. “Vinnie Pal has this hold on me, and he won’t let go. Because of him, I can’t leave this plane and move to the Other Side.” A young couple passed by near where we stood. They were holding hands and singing along with the music that blared from overhead speakers, bumping hips to the beat of the music.

“It’s different being…you know…”

“Dead?” When I supplied the word, the young man and woman gave me weird looks. They walked in the direction of a security guard, and call me paranoid, I didn’t like the thought that they were going to report me as the resident weirdo. I moved away from the stage and toward the front doors.

“We’ve got to talk somewhere else,” I said, my teeth clenched around my words. “You’re buried at Garden View. We can just meet there. Tonight after work.”

Damon’s face, already ashen, got a shade paler. “You could just come here.”

We were close to the front doors and the security guard, who, I noticed, was watching me a little more carefully than he was anyone else. I grabbed a brochure about the hall, held it up in front of my mouth, and kept my voice to an impatient hiss. “Except the Rock Hall isn’t open late tonight. And before you can suggest it, no, I’m not going to try my hand at breaking and entering. I work until five. I’ll make some excuse to stay late. That will make my boss very happy. Let’s say seven. Your grave.”

“But—”

“Do you want me to take your case?”

“Yes, but—”

“Seven tonight,” I said, and I punched my way through the revolving doors. “Your grave.”

I can’t say for sure, but I think right before he disappeared in a puff of smoke that smelled a whole lot like pot, Damon nodded.

And a new thought struck.

For the first time in as long as I could remember, I had a date. A date with a hot, sexy guy.

Too bad he was dead.

 

I did actually make it to the County Archives that day, though by the time I waited for someone from a nearby garage to change my tire, it was pretty late when I got there. Still, I managed to do a smidgen of the research Ella had lined up for me, and when I arrived back at Garden View, I had a pile of copies of immigration papers to prove it. My fear and loathing of research aside, they were the perfect excuse I needed to explain why I was still hanging around when Ella stuck her head into my office a few minutes after five.

“That’s my Pepper!” Ella beamed me a smile from across the room. “You’re staying late to enter all the information you gathered today into our resident database, aren’t you?”

I might be willing to take a little credit where it wasn’t due, but I wasn’t delusional. I looked from the pile of papers on my desk to Ella. “Well, maybe not all the information.”

“I’d love to help.” She wasn’t kidding. I prayed that by the time I was her age, I’d have more of a life than that. “But we’ve got Meet the Teacher Night at school. The girls say I should just forget it, that there isn’t anything any of their teachers can tell me that I don’t already know, but you know I’m not buying into that.”

I did. Ella was the most conscientious parent I knew, and I told her so. She said good night and left me to my database entering, and I checked the clock against the size of the stack of papers. If I didn’t make too many mistakes, I could get at least some of it out of the way before I had to leave for my date with Damon.

I caught myself and grumbled a stern lecture. “You have to stop calling it a date. Dead men don’t date.” And live women who think they can date dead men? It was too sick to even consider.

Rather than think about it, I got down to work. I turned on my computer and accessed the cemetery database. I was about halfway through the stack of immigration records when my phone rang.

“It’s after five. I’m surprised you’re still there.”

For a couple of seconds, the comment caught me off guard. Until I recognized the voice.

Then my throat closed. And my heart stopped. And the hormones I’d been telling to behave since the moment Damon spooked his way into my life sprang back into action, jumping up and down and shouting hoo-ray!

It was Quinn Harrison on the phone, a man I’d last seen the night a few months earlier when a goon with more muscles than brains tried to throw me off a bridge.

Did I say man?

Well, there’s no denying that Quinn is certainly that. And a gorgeous one, to boot. But he’s also a cop. A Homicide detective, to be exact.

Hence our penchant for running into each other.

Not that I’m complaining. In the great scheme of things, running into Quinn is right up there on my wish list along with a trust fund, an end to the annoying hauntings caused by my Gift, and a red Jag that arrives with no strings attached. Trouble is, Quinn thinks I should mind my own business when it comes to investigating murders. And me? I’m not exactly in a position to explain that murders are my business because I’m working with the dead victims.

The results are predictable.

Though he is as hot for me as I am for him (and believe me when I say this is plenty hot), in his heart of hearts, Quinn believes I’m a meddler who sticks her nose where it doesn’t belong, gets in trouble, and thus, gets in his way.

Hotness aside, I think Quinn is hide-bound, bullheaded, and too quick to judge. Okay, so I do have the tendency to get in his way. And he does have the tendency to show up now and again and save my life. That doesn’t mean I owe him explanations, does it? Especially when any explanation I could offer is only going to make him think I’m certifiable.

After our last encounter there on that bridge, he’d handed me his card with his home phone number and told me to call when I finally decided to come clean about what was going on in my life. Believe me, since then, I’d brought out that card a dozen times or more, my cell phone in my hand.

But I never made the call.

Crazy, I know. But Quinn wanted answers. And answers were exactly what I couldn’t give him.

Which made me wonder why he was calling now.

I erased the surprise from my voice. “If you didn’t think I’d be here, why did you call?” I asked him.

“You got me there.” His chuckle was deep-throated. “You’re the one who likes to pretend she’s a detective. So get to work! You tell me, why did I call?”

I hated playing games. But then, I suspected Quinn did, too. He didn’t have the temperament for it. Quinn was more the take-no-prisoners type. He didn’t just not like to beat around the bush, he refused to acknowledge the bush even existed. And if he ever did admit it, he’d sooner plow straight through the middle of it than worry about going around.

All of which made me think that whatever was going on, it wasn’t something he was comfortable with. I latched on to the clue like my aunt Sally’s terrier with a bone. Quinn was uncomfortable, huh? Well, too bad. For all the sleepless nights he’d caused me when I sat there staring at his phone number, I owed him.

“Why did you call me?” I said this in a thoughtful way designed to make him believe I was actually wondering about it. “Maybe because you’ve finally decided you can’t live without me? That’s it! You’ve spent months thinking about me, dreaming about me. You’ve been waiting for me to call, waking up at night in a cold sweat, wondering when the phone is going to ring. You just can’t stand it anymore.”

Typical Quinn. He didn’t confirm or deny. “You wouldn’t have said that if it wasn’t exactly what you’ve been going through these past months.”

“But I’m not the one who made the phone call.”

I could just about see through the phone to the way he smiled in response. It wasn’t an oh-boy-am-I-happy smile. Quinn didn’t own that expression. This was more like you-got-me-there-but-I’m-never-going-to-admit-it.

I couldn’t hold it against him.

I’d never admit it, either.

“So…” I stood because sitting still while I was talking to Quinn was next to impossible.

To get rid of the nervous energy that suddenly buzzed through my bloodstream like a drug, I did a quick turn around my pint-size office. While I was at it, I took a second to move the phone away from my ear and hit the button on the receiver that showed the caller ID. It said “private caller” which meant he hadn’t called from the Justice Center where the Cleveland Police Department was headquartered and where Quinn had his office. He was calling from his cell. Or from home. Either way, this wasn’t business. It was personal.

The buzzing got louder.

“You have been thinking about me, haven’t you?” I made sure I kept my words oh-so-casual so I didn’t give away the fact that I’d been thinking about him, too.

“Did I say that?”

“You didn’t have to say it. You proved it. You called me.”

“I called you because…” Like a man prepared to jump into the deep end of a pool, he took a long breath. “I’ve got this CI, see.”

He paused, waiting for me to ask what a CI was and thus prove myself a rookie when it came to the detective game. Little did he know that when I wasn’t out hunting evildoers, I was home in front of the TV. I’d watched my share of Law & Order and CSI reruns, and none of those hours had been wasted; I’d learned my share of cop jargon. “A confidential informer, huh?” I said this like it was no big deal, even though I expected him to be impressed. “A Homicide cop doesn’t have much use for a CI. That’s for cops who work Vice. Or Narcotics.”

“Well, I used to work Narcotics.” It was the most he’d ever told me about his past, and I considered that a minor victory of sorts. “He’s not my CI now. He used to be my CI. And he still comes in handy once in a while.”

“So let me see if I’ve got this straight. Your CI called and he told you to call me.”

“He didn’t tell me to call you. He doesn’t know you exist.”

“So you don’t talk about me at the office, huh?”

“He never comes to the office.”

“So why did he want you to call me?”

“He didn’t.” This time when Quinn drew in a breath, it was one of pure annoyance. “He called to tell me he had some tickets. To the baseball game. The Indians are in the playoffs, you know.”

This was news to me. But then I wasn’t much of a sports fan. In fact, I wasn’t a sports fan at all. I didn’t point this out simply because this was the aha moment. Finally I had it figured out, and I knew what was coming. Tickets to a game and a phone call I’d been praying for practically since the moment Quinn finished putting the cuffs on the perp and walked off that bridge.

I was about to get asked out on a date.

By a guy who was actually alive.

It wasn’t easy, but I played it cool. “Your CI gave you tickets, huh? What do they call that? Graft? Or a bribe?”

“It wasn’t graft or a bribe. I paid for the tickets. Full price.”

“And you’re looking for someone to take to the game.”

Quinn was glad to get the messy do-you-want-to-go-out-with-me part out of the way. I could tell from the relief that swept through his voice. Which doesn’t mean he was about to confess to undying love. Or even affection. “I could have called a dozen different people over at the Justice Center, you know. Any one of them would have been glad to go with me. The game’s sold out.”

“But you didn’t call any of them. You called me.”

“I thought—”

“What? That I’m a sports fan?” The way I laughed pretty much told him the possibility was a long shot at best.

“Give me some credit! I knew you weren’t a sports fan. But that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t have a nice time. Dinner downtown before the game and drinks in the Warehouse District after…I’m thinking that will help sweeten the offer.”

“Considerably.”

“You’ll come with me?”

Up until this point, things were going pretty well. Of course I had to go and open my big mouth and ask the logical question. “When?”

“Tonight.” The sound of my gulp was drowned by Quinn’s voice. “I know it’s short notice. I just got the call about the tickets. But since you’re still there at the office, it’s obvious you’re not busy. I can come by and pick you up there, and—”

“I can’t.”

There was a nanosecond of silence on the other end of the phone. “You’re blowing me off again.”

“I’m not. Really. I just can’t go. Not tonight.”

“Because…”

I debated about telling him the truth. For about a second and a half. “I’ve got a date,” I said.

This, of course, may not have been the complete truth, but it was a version of the truth, and the least Quinn could have done to show his appreciation for my candor was to say something.

“What?” When it cut into the silence, my voice was a little sharp. Who could blame me for being defensive? I’d just come clean. Sort of. The least Quinn could do was be gracious about it. “You don’t think I have dates?”

“I don’t think you have a date tonight. If you did, you wouldn’t still be at the office.”

“Maybe I’m at the office waiting for my date.”

“Waiting at the cemetery? Don’t tell me, let me guess. Your date is dead.”

He thought he was being funny. Or sarcastic. He couldn’t have possibly known how close he’d come to the truth. Call me a glutton for punishment, I decided right then and there that if Quinn wanted me to come clean about my after-hours investigating, this was as good a time as any.

“As a matter of fact,” I said, “he is. Dead, that is. And since I don’t know how to contact him, I have to wait for him to show up. So you see, I’m going to have to pass on the ball game. But if the offer of drinks in the Warehouse District after is still open…”

Any self-respecting guy would have caved at the little purr in my voice. I guess Quinn wasn’t self-respecting. “I’m not looking for a part-time date,” he said. “Or bullshit excuses. You’ve got a date tonight. I can accept that. You don’t need to try and humor me with silly stories.”

“Stories that might not be so silly after all.”

“Whatever.”

Quinn had been willing to swallow his pride and call me. I figured the least I could do in return was meet him halfway. “Look,” I said, “we could do it another time.”

“I thought this was the other time.”

“It would have been the other time if you gave me time to make time.”

“Whatever.”

“You said that before.”

“You make me lose track.”

“We can do it again?”

“Sure.” Before my ego and those pesky hormones could rejoice, he qualified the response. “But next time, you’re going to have to call me.”

“But—”

“I’m erasing your number from my cell phone.”

“But—”

“I’m taking you out of my Rolodex at the office.”

“But—”

“Goodbye, Pepper.”

“Goodbye,” I said, the reply automatic even though the sound of the dial tone was already blaring in my ear.

So that was that. One live guy down and one dead guy to go. Could my love life get any more pathetic?

There was only one way to find out.

I checked the clock, grabbed my sweater, and went out in the pitch-dark cemetery to look for my date.