Bonefinder

I brought a cigar along tonight because I knew Alan would want to light it...and if I did nothing else, I was going to make it his final act.

The last time I visited old Linton's Food & Mercantile in my hometown of Richmond, Texas, was a week ago, and the resident ghost tried to light me up with some pretty interesting pyrotechnics. Damn near brought the place down. I thought everything was pretty well settled, until I heard Renn Komenski's voice on the phone at one a.m. - "Deirdre Maddox, you're in deep shit..." - then I knew it was my last chance to get any kind of control over the troublemaker.

I hadn't said anything about that last visit to Renn. You see, I'm an archaeology instructor at the local junior college with a pretty decent reputation in the community. I'm not exactly someone who should be poking around crime scenes or forbidden property. Having said that, my bud, Renn, is the fire marshal for the area and sometimes he employs me for a particular skill I possess. We've known each other since high school and I get the skinny on all sorts of things; but he'd haul me off to jail if he knew I was in the habit of visiting this particular site without permission. That's why I rushed down to Linton's like a bat out of hell this wee hour of the morning. Guilt's a good motivator that way. So's losing my cell phone in Linton's. If Renn found it in the debris, it was over, friendship and everything.

Irregardless, asking me to meet him at this moment, at that location, definitely had to do with Alan Zehnder...and this time, I was going in prepared.

So here's the problem: Alan is a ghost. An intriguing, intelligent, all too realistic ghost...but a ghost nonetheless. You'd think he'd be easy for me to brush off, since I've moonlighted with the dead for many years now. This spook...well, he's different...and it bugs the hell out of me. He has a tenacious hold on this realm and he knows it. I realize I should be focused on unshackling him from his ties here, but the truth is, I'm fascinated. He's not a demon of any sort that I'm able to tell, but he does love fire. And flirting. God, what a flirt!

Oh, I know what you're thinking, and you can just get your mind out of whatever gutter you like to rollin. I do not make a habit of becoming some lost soul's girlfriend just because he blows ectoplasm up my skirt. This ain't my first paranormal rodeo, you know.

I just wish Alan wasn't so hell bent on making it my last.

"About time you showed up, Red," said Renn as I clambered out of my range rover. It was parked in front of the Quail Hollow Restaurant two blocks away and one block over from Linton's. In the sodium lights that lined the main street, the Victorian era buildings were more sinister than sleepy in humid washes of sepia. Linton's own yellow brick seemed to absorb the tone and reflect it back, a silent testimony to family tragedy.

The mercantile, a turn of the century edifice in the dead center of downtown, had been a bustling force of economic good in the 1930s - until Jay Linton's luck with the law ran out. After that, the store was boarded up, investments hustled to other parts, and the task of management passed to none-too-grateful children, all of whom did whatever they could to forget their family. While upscale cafes, clothing boutiques, lawyer offices, and art galleries ushered in revival efforts, the Linton family boarded up the store's bay windows, painted the transom glass, and resolutely refused to join the 21st century. Only when an alarm went off did anyone see the decaying inside, and then it was a fireman or police...or, in my recent case, a shovel bum playing ghost-buster.