Bitter Spirits
Page 27

He rolled it and groaned. “Not dislocated. Just hurts like hell. It’ll be fine.”
Metal squawked behind her as the driver’s door of a white and black Checker Cab opened. He’d hit a telephone pole and dented the grille of his car, but nothing was on fire. No broken glass that she could see. “Are you folks okay?” the driver called out from across the street.
They exchanged brief answers, confirming that no one was seriously injured, as a porch light flickered on in a nearby house—neighbors curious about the crash. Aida scanned the street looking for the ghost. She found it a few feet away, bending over in the middle of the road.
“Behind you,” Aida warned Winter as she pushed herself up.
The ghost was seemingly unaware of them. It was fixated on something round lying on the pavement. Something gold and shiny and small.
Another glinting object lay just behind Winter, and a third near his hip.
The ghost picked up the first object, admired it, and then focused his attention on the next one, shuffling a couple steps closer.
“What the hell?” Winter murmured, warily watching the ghost bending again.
As he grunted and sat up, Aida squinted at the object closest to them: a gold coin with a square hole in the center that was bordered by familiar characters. “Chinese coins.”
“Shit!” He pushed himself to his feet. “I heard something clink in here when I pocketed your lancet.” He rummaged inside his tuxedo jacket pocket and pulled out a fourth coin.
“They must’ve spilled into the street when you pulled me out of the taxi’s path.”
“They aren’t mine. Someone put them there.”
The ghost had two coins and was now bending over the third. Bizarre, but the show was over. Aida started toward the ghost with the intent of getting rid of it, but Winter’s hand gripped her arm. “He’s solid, Aida. Feels like electric flesh.”
“Solid?”
“I knew this man when he was alive. Whoever poisoned me sent him.”
“The coins are the magnet,” she said. “Velma removed the magic in the Gu poison. Whoever is after you is trying something new.”
The ghost stood, holding the third coin. Its head snapped toward Winter, and then it lumbered toward them.
“It wants the magnet,” Aida shouted. “Throw the damn coin!”
Quick as lightning, Winter hurtled the coin into the street. The ghost immediately changed directions and lunged for it. The moment he had the coin in his grip, he . . . disappeared.
Aida’s breath returned to normal. It worked. Would she have been able to send the spellbound ghost away on her own? She didn’t know. She’d never encountered a solid ghost.
They stared at the street, both of them wary, but when it was clear that the thing was truly gone, she turned to him. “Someone put those coins in your pocket to attract that ghost.”
“It must’ve happened at Florie’s.”
“Someone at that séance isn’t your friend.”
The taxi driver was heading toward them, a young boy in a gray uniform, his pants tucked into tall black boots. Up the sidewalk, several guests from Mrs. Beecham’s began spilling out of her house. Someone called out to them, inquiring if everyone was okay.
“Winter?” Aida asked in a low voice.
He made a vague noise in acknowledgment.
“You said you knew the ghost when he was alive . . . ?”
He nodded his head once, then looked away. “I couldn’t place him at first, but I realized where I’d seen his face when he started picking up those coins.”
“Where?”
Winter waited so long to answer, she almost thought he wouldn’t. “He was a spy working for a small bootlegger out of Oakland. Pulled a gun on my father when we caught him snooping around one of our warehouses.” Winter turned his head and looked Aida in the eyes. “His name was Dick Jepsen. He was the first man I ever killed.”
NINE
SOBER AND BROODING, WINTER ACCOMPANIED AIDA BACK TO Golden Lotus after calling for his own car. They did not discuss the ghost’s identity any further.
They also did not discuss the kiss.
Granted, it wasn’t an appropriate topic for conversation after what transpired in the street. Aida shouldn’t have even been thinking about it. And she tried not to; after all, the man was clearly upset. If she were a decent person, she’d be upset, too—she’d kissed a killer. That’s what he was, wasn’t he? He did say Dick Jepsen was the first man he’d killed, implying there was a second. A third? Fourth? How many? It was easy to forget the dark side of what he did for a living. He’d said he was defending his father’s life the night he shot Jepsen, but maybe there were other times when he was the aggressor.
Could it be possible Winter was bloodthirsty like the racketeers and gangsters reported in the newspapers? No. She didn’t believe that. Not after the gentleness he’d shown when he’d kissed her . . . the restraint he’d used to tease her.
Goodness, how he’d made her body melt.
She tried to tell herself that it wasn’t the absolute best kiss she’d ever had, but that was too monumental a lie for her poor heart, which was madly pitter-pattering beneath her dress the entire way home.
Before she made her way up to her apartment, he stepped outside the car and gave her a business card that said MAGNUSSON FISH COMPANY, with an address off the Embarcadero, on a pier that housed his legitimate business. He penciled his home telephone numbers on the back: a private line that rang directly to his study, and the main line that his housekeeper Greta answered.