"Tomorrow."
"What? Are you kidding me?"
"What"s the big deal?"
"The big deal, big deal, M.J., is that my night-vision camera is still in the shop. And I think my spectrometer is on the fritz and needs a tune-up. The only things that are working with any sort of regularity are the thermometer and the monitors in the van." M.J., is that my night-vision camera is still in the shop. And I think my spectrometer is on the fritz and needs a tune-up. The only things that are working with any sort of regularity are the thermometer and the monitors in the van."
"Why can"t you just go to the repair shop in the morning and see if they can hurry it up? Steven has some things to wrap up at the hospital, so we won"t be leaving until late afternoon."
"Fine," Gilley said moodily. "Give me the deposit check so we have some cash and I"ll get it out of hock."
Oops. "Uh ... yeah, about that deposit check..." "Uh ... yeah, about that deposit check..."
Gilley narrowed his eyes. "Please tell me you got a deposit check."
"I got a deposit check."
"Really?" he asked, his voice sounding hopeful.
"No, Gil. I didn"t. I forgot, and I"m sorry."
My partner glared at me. "Maybe if you had your head on business rather than on playing tongue tag I"d have a check right now."
"I"ll call him in the morning and have him cut one right away, okay?" I said, exasperated.
"Good for you. Now, how was dinner?"
"It was good."
"What"d you eat?"
"Shrimp scampi over angel hair pasta."
"Was there wine?"
"Yes, a really good chardonnay."
"Did he like your dress?"
"The way he checked out my cleavage suggested he did."
"Was there dessert?"
"Nope. We talked business and I came straight home."
"How was the kiss?"
"Really good, he"s got great li- Hey!"
"Gotcha!" Gilley laughed.
"I"m going to bed," I said, getting to my feet.
"Good idea," Gilley said, standing up himself. "If we"re going on this little excursion I might as well get in some nightlife."
"You"re going out? Now?" Now?"
Gil gave me a winning smile. "A boy"s gotta have his fun, sugar."
"Fine. But I"m going to be in your kitchen expecting you to be ready to roll at nine a.m."
"Oh, please," Gil said with a flip of his hand. "You"ll be in my kitchen expecting coffee and cinnamon rolls."
"Well, as long as you"re baking," I said, smiling, then headed to my bedroom as Gil walked toward the door. Remembering something, I paused and turned back to Gilley. "Listen, can you do me a favor in the morning?"
"What"s that?"
"Can you do your computer hacking thing and dig up any dirt you can find on Steven and his father? The one person he hasn"t mentioned to me is his dad, and how he fits into all of this. See if you can find out anything about their relationship for me."
"Father and son don"t get along?"
"I"m not sure. The fact that he failed to mention him at any point in our conversation suggests it, and Andrew had to leave the bulk of his estate to someone. It might be that he left more to grandson than to son. Can you also do some digging about how much the old man left to each of them?"
"Anything else?"
"Yeah, if you can hack into the Back Bay"s police department, I need the scoop on a break-in at Steven"s place. He mentioned that there was an attempted burglary there recently, and tonight I saw someone in his bushes."
"Someone in the bushes? Did you call the police?"
"Yes. Might want to check out the results of that too. It"s just too much of a coincidence that he"s had two incidents in such a short period of time."
"So, I"m supposed to get the equipment ready, pack the van, and do all this research?" Gilley asked me as his hands went to his hips.
"Yeah. Right. Way too much on your plate. Let me take care of the equipment and the bank. We can both pack the van, and that should leave you enough time to find out what you need."
"Deal. See you in the morning," he said, and breezed out the door.
When he was gone I peeked under the canvas that covered Doc"s cage. The bird was perched with his eyes closed, his breathing slow and steady. "Night, Doc," I whispered, and blew him a kiss. He opened one gray eye, then closed it again and went back to sleep.
Walking down the hall to my bedroom, I ran a finger over my lips. They felt warm and a little swollen. I allowed the teeniest of smiles for myself, and trotted off to bed.
The next morning promptly at nine I was in Gilley"s kitchen, mug in hand and ready to eat some rolls. I found Gilley already up too, dressed in a white terry-cloth robe with hair damp from the shower. And even though I knew he"d had only a few hours" sleep, he honestly looked no worse for the wear.
"Have fun last night?"
"No, I had Bradley last night," Gilley said, giving me a wink.
"Isn"t he that real estate broker you"ve been working for leads?"
"The very one," Gilley said happily.
"Well, gee, Stella. I"m glad you got your groove back, not that you ever lost it in the first place," I said with a grin.
Gilley came over to where I was standing and poured me a cup of coffee while he gave my hip a playful b.u.mp with his. "One last fling before we ship out," he said.
"Uh-huh. Say, I"ve got to ask you something," I said. "And you"re not going to like it."
"Sounds serious," Gilley said as he peeked into the oven to check on the rolls.
"No, it"s not. It"s just that I may need you to help me inside the house when we do this bust rather than staying in the van."
It was a little-known fact that Gilley was terrified of ghosts. He was totally open to the idea of having me venture into spectrally inhabited places, but he"d be the last one to set foot in a haunted house until the ghost was clear. Lately he"d been begging off the smaller jobs and going with me only on the bigger busts, where his role was to drive me to the location and monitor my progress from the comfort and safety of the van. Gil had three monitors set up inside so that he could watch the feed from my night-vision camera and record the readings from my spectrometer and thermometer, but it was my firm belief that he turned off the video feed and only looked for spikes in temperature and electromagnetic energy.
We never spoke about it in public, so as not to embarra.s.s him, but Gilley was clearly terrified of things that might go b.u.mp in the night. "You must be joking," Gil said, his voice tinged with a little panic.
"No, buddy, I"m afraid not. I need you to run interference with Steven so that he doesn"t get in my way. My impression of him is that he"s the curious type, and that he"ll want to ask me all kinds of questions, so if you think it"s okay for him to come along, then I"ll need you to babysit him."
"Why can"t he stay in the van with me?" Gilley asked, and I noticed an even sharper rise in his voice.
"You can try that, but my guess is that he"ll want to be where the action is, and he won"t like sitting in a van watching monitors all night."
"But... but... but..." Gilley stammered. I almost felt sorry for him, especially when I knew how scary some of my expeditions could be.
"No buts, Gil. I need you. End of story."
Gilley moved over to the small table in his kitchen and, sitting down with a thump, he gave me a rather pained expression. "But what if a ghost attacks me?" he asked.
I suppressed the urge to laugh. "Gil," I said softly. "No ghost is going to attack you. It"s just Steven"s grandfather, after all. I"ll protect you." Gilley didn"t look convinced, so I offered, "Listen, if Steven gets scared and wants out, you can leave too, okay?"
"You promise?"
"I promise." Just then there was a ding and Gilley jumped up from the chair. "That"s our breakfast. M.J., while I get the rolls would you mind getting my slippers? My feet are freezing."
I looked at Gil"s bare feet. "Sure," I said as I headed into his bedroom. Once there I stopped short. There was a snoring sound coming from under the covers. Tiptoeing over to Gil"s bed I took a closer look and saw the top of a messy strawberry-blond head. Shaking my head, I grabbed the slippers and left the room. When I had traded Gil"s slippers for a steaming-hot breakfast roll, I asked, "Is that the famous Bradley in there?"
Gil looked puzzled, then asked incredulously, "Is he still here?" here?"
"Yep. Snoring up a storm." I giggled as I popped a bite of bun into my mouth.
Gilley sighed wearily. "Honestly," he said. "I mean, it was bad enough that he wanted to stay and cuddle last night, but I thought for sure I"d woken him with all the banging around I did before getting into the shower. You"d think he"d have the decency to wake up and leave, already."
"Aww," I said, laughing at him. "A gay man"s love. Is there a sweeter, more romantic kind?"
Gil heaved a sigh and said, "You know what I think it"s time for?"
Knowing where this was going, I said, "You wouldn"t wouldn"t."
"I think it"s time for a fire drill," Gil said, and with that he walked determinedly into his bedroom as I followed, trying to stop him, but it was too late. He reached the head of the bed and shouted, "OhmiG.o.d! Fire! Fire!"
Bradley sat bolt upright from the covers, his eyes wide and panicky as he looked around the room. "Wha... ?" he managed.
"Fire! " Gilley hollered, waving his arms wildly above his head. "My G.o.d, man! Run for your life!" Gilley hollered, waving his arms wildly above his head. "My G.o.d, man! Run for your life!"
Bradley threw the covers to the side and leaped out of bed, buck naked as he darted first one way, then the other in a clear search for his clothes. Gilley, meanwhile had moved over to the foot of the bed and was tossing a shirt and pants at Bradley. "Here!" he said, hurling a pair of shoes at the poor man. "Now get out before the smoke gets too thick!" For emphasis he added a few loud coughs.
Bradley caught clothes, and rushed to shove his skinny legs into the pants, hopping around on one foot as he tried to edge toward the door. "What about you?" he asked as he finally got his pants up.
"We"re right behind you!" Gil said, grabbing my hand and moving quickly toward the door. Bradley dashed ahead of us, rushing through the condo until he stopped cold in the living room and looked this way and that, as it appeared he was looking for something.
"Move, man!" Gilley shouted, waving him toward the door.
"My keys!" Bradley said frantically. "I can"t find my friggin" keys!"
Gilley rolled his eyes and scooted over to the kitchen counter. "Here!" he said with another loud cough as he tossed the keys across the room. "Now run before we all fry fry to a crisp!" to a crisp!"
Bradley nodded and plunged toward the door that Gilley held open for him, still hugging his shirt and shoes to his chest. I couldn"t help but feel sorry for him. That is, until he paused a moment in the doorway and looked wide-eyed at Gilley to ask, "So you"ll call me?"
Gilley stood smugly with his hand on the door handle and all sense of panic gone as he replied, "Of course," and shut the door in Bradley"s face.
"That was terrible," I said to him, trying really hard to look serious.
"Welcome to the gay man"s one-night stand," he said, stuffing a cinnamon bun into his mouth.
After giving Gilley a short lecture about his deplorable behavior, I went back to my place to pack enough clothes for a couple of days, get Doc ready for travel, and organize the equipment to load into the van.
Although Bill Murray and his gang needed lots of bells and whistles when they went on a call, true ghostbusting really requires only a couple of gadgets. Night-vision video cameras are neat little devices, but wicked expensive. We"d purchased ours on eBay, and the thing never really worked right. Digital cameras were an absolute must, as most spectral beings love saying, "Cheese!"
In fact, Gilley and I had quite a collection of interesting photographs. We had pictures of orbital lights in all colors, dark shadows, and even one or two transparent portraits where the facial features of the ghost in question show up remarkably well.
For proper ghost hunting one should also have several digital thermometers, voice-activated recorders, laser trip wires, and a good deck of playing cards-though these are used more to cure boredom, as ghostbusting can be a long, dull job at times.
After loading the van I called Steven to confirm our departure time and to slip in the fact that I needed a check to cover expenses. He told me he had to go out and run some errands, but that he"d leave an envelope with my name hidden under the welcome matt and I could pick it up anytime.
I"ll admit that I was a little disappointed I wouldn"t run into him that morning, then quickly shook that thought from my head and tried to focus on my lips-I mean my job. Yeah ... my job.
I hit the ATM once I"d retrieved Steven"s check and then raced across town to Reese"s Camera and Video, where I retrieved our night-vision camera. "Hey, M.J.," Joe, the manager, said.
"How ya been?" I asked him as he placed the video camera on the counter.
"Good now that it"s starting to warm up. I thought May would never get here. You and Gilley on another job?"
"Yeah, got one upstate, and I"m going to need this baby. Is she fixed?" I asked, indicating the camera.
"Sort of," he said skeptically.
"That doesn"t sound fixed, Joe."