Second Glance: A Novel Read online

  Meredith smiled. "That might be Kalahari."

  "When are you coming home?"

  "Soon."

  There was a beat of silence. "Before it gets dark?"

  Meredith closed her eyes. "I'll be back for dinner," she promised. "Tell Granny Ruby. And no more Oreos until I get home."

  Lucy sucked in a breath. "How did you know I was--"

  "Because I'm the mom. Love you." Meredith hung up, then twisted her hair onto the top of her head. She scrabbled through her drawer for a rubber band, but could only come up with a few paper clips, which worked about as well as bobby pins. Her glance fell on the release the De la Corrias had signed. On impulse, Meredith slipped the form into the lower drawer of her desk. She would lose it, temporarily. Just in case.

  She pushed the button of her intercom and a moment later the door swung open, revealing the Albertsons. They looked beaten and drained, like most of the other couples who came through her office for the first time. Meredith held out her hand. "I'm Dr. Oliver. I've reviewed your case. And," she said briskly, "I can help."

  Az knew that if push came to shove, he wouldn't be able to chase a squirrel out of Angel Quarry, much less give full pursuit to an armed intruder. The owners kept him on as a security guard out of kindness, or pity, or maybe because he only bothered to pick up half his paychecks, not having much use for them in the long run. Luckily, there was only one access road into the quarry, not that Az paid much attention to it. He sat in the small illuminated booth at the quarry office, where three closed-circuit televisions monitored activity at different locations, and kept his eye instead on the fourth monitor, tuned to the Red Sox.

  "Ha," Az snorted at the batter. "They pay you eleven million bucks a year for that?"

  The quarry was one of Vermont's granite mines, veins of rock etched into the cliffs like the deep lines of Az's face. A long time ago, they'd drilled the charges by hand, blasted, and milled the stone for export. These days, it was mostly computerized. Working alone at night, he never saw another soul . . . for all he knew, it was like that at peak hours too. Az sometimes wondered if he was the only human employed there.

  In the thirty years he'd been working at the quarry, he had filed only two security reports. One involved an electrical storm that set off an explosion intended to detonate the following day. The second was about a suicidal man, who scaled the protective wall and tried to jump off one of the cliffs into the jagged rubble at the base. The fool broke both legs, recovered, and started a dot-com business.

  Az liked working at night, and he liked working alone. If he was quiet when he made his rounds, he could hear buds burst; he could smell the turn of the seasons. On occasion he would lie on his back, his hands propping up his head, and watch the stars reconfigure themselves into the constellations of his life--an angry bull of frustration, the imbalanced scales of justice, the twin loves he'd lost ages ago.

  He wondered what was going on at Otter Creek Pass. In the week Rod van Vleet had been on the site, the Abenaki protest had intensified, and the public had noticed. It helped that Thule Abbott, the town drunk, had awakened one morning with all his straight hair gone curly, and he'd spent a day in the church getting a dose of Jesus and blaming the ghosts for his misfortune. Rumors flew through Comtosook like the occasional dusting of rose petals, which fell like pollen on the cars parked at the Dairy Twirl and clogged the drains in the outdoor showers at the town pool.

  If Rod van Vleet had half a brain, he'd roll his construction equipment in during the night, when most of the Indians were snoring in their tents a distance away. Good thing the frontman for the Redhook Group was a fool. Given the habitual disorganization of the Abenaki protest, it put them on equal footing.

  A small firefly winked past Az's left eye. Then he realized it wasn't a June bug at all, but a small bobbing light on the pitch-dark screen of one of the satellite TVs, the one that viewed the mine's northern wall and most active stripping site. A flush of heat ran down between Az's shoulders--it took a moment for him to recognize excitement for what it was. Jamming his hat on his head, he struck off toward the spot where the light had been. The years fell away with each footstep, until he was once again straight and strong as an oak that punched the sky, until he was needed.

  Ross didn't know whom he blamed more: Ethan, for planting this seed in his mind; or himself, for bothering to listen. Angel Quarry is haunted, his nephew had said, everyone says so. He walked softly along the narrow path until he felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle. This, then, was where he would set up. He didn't dare use his flashlight yet--something he'd learned early from the Warburtons. Authorities usually left ghost hunters alone, but trespassing was trespassing. If you were exploring a graveyard, you learned to back in with your headlights off, so that you could make a quick escape. Likewise, if you were creeping through private property in the middle of the night, you did everything possible to keep from calling attention to yourself.

  Thinking of Aimee this afternoon had made him want to try, one last time, no matter that he'd told Shelby he'd hung up his paranormal shingle. So from Lake Champlain he'd gone to Burlington, to a discount electronics store, where he bought a new infrared video camera. When Shelby put dinner on the table, he told her he had a date that night.

  "Really?" She'd smiled so brightly it hurt Ross just to look. "Who is it?"

  "None of your business."

  "Ross," Shelby answered, "this is exactly what you need."

  He hated that he'd lied to his sister. He hated the way she had reached into the window of his car before he left to straighten the collar of his shirt, how she told him the door would be open whenever he got home.

  Now, while his sister wondered which eligible female he was meeting, Ross balanced his flashlight on an outcropping of rock, so that he could set up the tripod for the video camera. "I am not going to see anything," Ross murmured as he peered through the viewfinder. He hesitated, then swore.

  He was retired.

  He didn't believe in ghosts, not anymore.

  But what if this was the time that something materialized? What if he walked away now, without finding out for sure? If Ethan was right--if someone had been murdered at the quarry--there was an excellent chance that a restless spirit was hanging around. The ones who didn't go on to heaven or whatever came next were the ones who had unfinished business left--people who had died violently, or committed suicide without communicating a message. Sometimes they stayed because they didn't want to leave someone they loved.

  Ross knew that if luck was on his side when he ran the camera, he might get some zipping lights, maybe a globule or two. He might catch some EVPs--electronic voice phenomena. And if there was any evidence at all that something paranormal existed in this quarry, there was a chance Aimee was somewhere, too.

  Going by his senses, Ross pointed the video to a spot in the quarry that his eyes kept coming back to, although he had no idea if in fact that was where a murder had occurred. He loaded a fresh tape and checked the battery, then sat back to wait.

  Suddenly he was blinded by a beacon. "I can explain," he began.

  Whatever Ross was going to say, however, died on his lips as he found himself face-to-face with an ancient man wearing a vintage security guard's uniform; a man who held so much of the world in his eyes that Ross was certain he was looking at a ghost.

  "Who are you?" the man whispered to Az. He was gawking like he'd never seen anyone native before, and frankly, that pissed Az off.

  "You're trespassing," Az said.

  "This used to be your land?"

  Sweet Jesus, and they talked about Indians being hooked on peyote. Granted, Az was old, and he was rigged out in a security guard's uniform he'd owned for twenty-five years now, but still . . . The guy looked normal enough--maybe even had a little Abenaki blood, what with that long, dark hair. It was enough to make Az feel pity for him, anyway. "Look, tell you what. You pack up whatever it is you're doing and get out, and I won't tell anyone I saw you."