Grave Phantoms
Page 14

“Fainted?” Winter said, completely abandoning the newspaper.
“I knew it.” Greta cupped a hand to Astrid’s cheek and frowned. “It was all that champagne.”
“It was not,” Astrid said, pushing her hand away. Silver glinted on her wrist.
The watch. She was wearing it.
That was good!
And also horrible.
Why was she flaunting it out here, where God and everyone else could see? Bo suddenly felt overwarm and guilty, as if every single perverted, obscene fantasy he’d had about Astrid was on display—and he’d had plenty of them.
And yet . . .
She was wearing the wristwatch. That had to mean something. She wouldn’t wear it out of pity; he knew that for a fact. He’d worried the engraving on the back was too sentimental—that it said too much about how he felt. About her. About them. About his despair over the possibility of a future together. Oh, for the love of God, why wouldn’t she look at him again?
“Bo?”
He blinked. Winter’s mismatched blue and gray eyes stared at him expectantly.
“What’s that? Oh yes. The yacht. Well, this is what happened . . .”
Bo told the whole story, forcing himself to talk over Winter’s rising anger and the suspicion that his boss’s twitching fingers were seconds away from strangling Bo’s neck. But after Winter was assured that Astrid was, by all appearances, healthy and in one piece, he finally relaxed and ate his breakfast. And no one made any other remarks until Bo mentioned the part about the yacht’s owner identifying her maid at the hospital.
“Mrs. Cushing apparently feels so bad about lending out the boat to Miss Richards,” Bo said, “that she’s offered to house her and the other survivors until they can—”
“Ridiculous,” Greta interrupted, her face pinched in disbelief. “What wealthy lady lets her maid borrow a luxury yacht?”
Huh. She was probably right. Bo certainly couldn’t imagine, say, Greta asking to use one of Winter’s boats for a weekend outing. The proud housekeeper would just as soon set herself on fire.
“Maybe it was a special reward,” Aida suggested.
Greta crossed her arms over her chest. “Oh ja,” she said sarcastically. “I will just please ask Winter”—which she pronounced more like Veen-ter with her lilting accent—“if I can borrow the Pierce-Arrow limousine for a big-time champagne weekend with my friends.”
Bo smiled to himself. He rather liked it when Greta got agitated. But she’d made her point, a good one—not to mention that it had temporarily distracted everyone from thinking about Astrid’s trip to the hospital.
“The whole story stinks,” Astrid said. “Those survivors are lying. And Mrs. Cushing knows something about it, because Greta’s ab-so-lute-ly right about the maid borrowing that yacht.”
“It doesn’t make much sense,” Aida admitted. “All of them with memory loss . . .”
Astrid folded her arms over her chest. “My nurse said two of them acted like they were familiar with each other. And that Cushing lady got ticked off when the police chief said they needed to inspect the yacht, right, Bo?” Astrid looked at him again for the first time since she’d walked into the dining room.
“Yes, that’s right.” He glanced at her wrist and made sure she saw his gaze linger there. But she only looked away again, damn her!
Winter sighed heavily. “If anyone cares about my opinion, I think you should just forget all about it. The yacht’s gone. We don’t know any of those people. And I, for one, am staunchly opposed to anything magical or cursed or haunted.”
Aida cleared her throat.
Winter winked his scarred eye at her. “Except you, of course, darling.”
“And your daughter,” Aida reminded him.
“I’m still hoping that maybe we’ll get lucky with her,” he admitted with a grin. “One medium in this family is enough.”
A maid poked her head into the dining room to inform Winter he had a long-distance telephone call from Canada. “That’ll be the captain with the Scotch,” he said, pushing away from the table to stand. “But as for you—”
“Yes,” Astrid said defiantly. “What about me?”
Winter shook his head. “Just try not to give me a heart attack while you’re home. And no more drinking,” he called out over his shoulder as he left the room.
Bo slouched in his chair. That went better than he’d hoped. But he wasn’t entirely convinced he wouldn’t hear more about it later, when Winter and Bo were at work.
Aida straightened the baby’s bib. “Well, you heard Mr. Grumpy. But if it were me, and I daresay I’m more knowledgeable about supernatural matters than my dear husband, I would certainly want to know what kind of ritual those people were doing on that boat. Magic is a funny thing. You might feel fine now, Astrid, but you don’t know what kind of energy you absorbed from that turquoise idol.”
“Well, let’s hope it’s out of my system, because I don’t have time for any more weirdness right now,” Astrid said. “I have a new dress that looks terrific on me, and I’m meeting friends tonight. We’re going to catch up and go dancing before the whole city floods.”
Oh, was that so? Bo didn’t like the sound of her dancing in a terrific dress. In fact, he damn well loathed it, even though he couldn’t get the enticing image out his head. Was she trying to make him jealous, or was he so far gone that he’d lost the ability to function rationally around her without his emotions bouncing all over the place?