In the painting, which was just of Jesse's head and shoulders, he was wearing something Clive Clemmings called a cravat, which was supposedly something all the guys wore back then, this big frilly white thing that wrapped around the neck a few times. It would have looked ridiculous on Dopey or Sleepy or even Clive Clemmings, in spite of his Ph.D.

But on Jesse, of course, it looked great.

Well, what wouldn't?

The letters were almost better than the painting, though, in a way. That's because they were all addressed to Maria de Silva . . . and signed by someone named Hector.

I pored over them, and I can't say that at the time I felt a lick of guilt about it, either. They were much more interesting than Maria's letters - although, like hers, not the least romantic. No, Jesse just wrote - very wittily, I might add - about the goings-on at his family's ranch and the funny things his sisters did. (It turns out he had five of them. Sisters, I mean. All younger, ranging in age, the year Jesse died, from sixteen to six. But had he ever mentioned this to me before? Oh, please.) There was also some stuff about local politics and how hard it was to keep good ranch hands on the job what with the gold rush on and all of them hurrying off to stake claims.

The thing was, the way Jesse wrote, you could practically hear him saying all this stuff. It was all very friendly and chatty and nice. Much better than Maria's braggy letters.

And nothing was spelled wrong, either.

As I read through Jesse's letters, Dr. Clive rattled on about how now that he had Maria's letters to Hector, he was going to add them to this exhibit he was planning for the fall tourist season, an exhibit on the whole de Silva clan and their importance to the growth of Salinas County over the years.

"If only," he said wistfully, "there were any of them left alive. De Silvas, I mean. It would be lovely to have them as guest speakers."

This got my attention. "There have to be some left," I said. "Didn't Maria and that Diego guy have like thirty-seven kids or something?"

Clive Clemmings looked stern. As a historian - and especially a Ph.D. - he did not seem to appreciate exaggeration of any kind.

"They had eleven children," he corrected me. "And they are not, strictly, de Silvas, but Diegos. The de Silva family unfortunately ran very strongly to daughters. I'm afraid Hector de Silva was the last male in the line. And of course we'll never know if he sired any male offspring. If he did, it certainly wasn't in Northern California."

"Of course he didn't," I said, perhaps more defensively than I ought to have. But I was peeved. Aside from the obvious sexism of the whole "last male in the line" thing, I took issue with the guy's assumption that Jesse might have been off procreating somewhere when, in fact, he had been foully murdered. "He was killed right in my own house!"

Clive Clemmings looked at me with raised eyebrows. It was only then that I realized what I had said.

"Hector de Silva," Dr. Clive said, sounding a lot like Sister Ernestine when we grew restless during the begats in Religion class, "disappeared shortly before his wedding to his cousin Maria and was never heard from again."

I couldn't very well sit there and go, Yeah, but his ghost lives in my bedroom, and he told me ...

Instead, I said, "I thought the, um, perception was that Maria had her boyfriend, that Diego dude, kill Hector so she didn't have to marry him."

Clive Clemmings looked annoyed. "That is only a theory put forward by my grandfather, Colonel Harold Clemmings, who wrote - "

"My Monterey," I finished for him. "Yeah, that's what I meant. That guy's your grandfather?"

"Yes," Dr. Clive said, but he didn't look too happy about it. "He passed away a good many years ago. And I can't say that I agree with his theory, Miss, er, Ackerman." I had donated Maria's letters in my stepfather's name, so Dr. Clive, sexist thing that he was, assumed that that was my name, too. "Nor can I say that his book sold at all well. My grandfather was extremely interested in the history of his community, but he was not an educated man, like myself. He did not possess even a B.A., let alone a Ph.D. It has always been my belief - not to mention that of most local historians, with the sole exception of my grandfather - that young Mr. de Silva developed what is commonly referred to as 'cold feet' " - Dr. Clive made little quotation marks in the air with his fingers - "a few days before the wedding and, unable to face his family's embarrassment over his jilting the young woman in such a manner, went off in search of a claim of his own, perhaps near San Francisco...."

It's amazing, but for a moment I actually envisioned sinking those tweezery things Clive Clemmings had made me use to turn the pages of Jesse's letters straight into his eyes. If I could have got them past the lenses of those goobery glasses, that is.

Instead, I pulled myself together and said, with all the dignity I could muster while sitting there in a pair of khaki shorts with pleats down the front, "And do you really believe, in your heart of hearts, Clive, that the person who wrote these letters would do something like that? Go away without a word to his family? To his little sisters, whom he clearly loved, and about whom he wrote so affectionately? Do you really think that the reason these letters turned up in my backyard is because he buried them there? Or do you find it beyond the realm of possibility that the reason they turned up there is because he's buried there somewhere, and if my stepfather digs deep enough, he just might find him?"

My voice had risen shrilly. I supposed I was getting a little hysterical over the whole thing. So sue me.

"Will that make you see that your grandfather was a hundred percent right?" I shrieked. "When my stepfather finds Hector de Silva's rotting corpse?"

Clive Clemmings looked more astonished than ever before. "My dear Miss Ackerman!" he cried.

I think he said this because he'd realized, at the exact same moment as I had, that I was crying.

Which was actually pretty strange, because I am not a crier. I mean, yeah, sure, I cry when I bang my head on one of the kitchen cabinet doors or see one of those drippy Kodak commercials or whatever. But I don't, you know, go around weeping at the drop of a hat.

But there I was, sitting in the office of Dr. Clive Clemmings, Ph.D., bawling my eyes out. Good going, Suze. Real professional. Way to show Jack how to mediate.

"Well," I said in a shaky voice as I stripped off my latex gloves and stood up, "allow me to assure you, Clive, that you are very, very wrong. Jesse - I mean Hector - would never do something like that. That might be what she wants you to believe" - I nodded toward the painting above our heads, the sight of which I was now beginning to hate with a sort of passion - "but it isn't the truth. Jesse - I mean, Hector - isn't . . . wasn't like that. If he'd gotten 'cold feet' like you say" - I made the same stupid quotation marks in the air - "then he'd have called the whole thing off. And, yeah, his family might have been embarrassed, but they'd have forgiven him, because they clearly loved him as much as he loved them, and - "

But then I couldn't talk anymore, because I was crying so hard. It was maddening. I couldn't believe it. Crying. Crying in front of this clown.

So instead I turned around and stormed out of the room.

Not very dignified, I guess, considering that the last thing Dr. Clive Clemmings, Ph.D., saw of me was my butt, which must have looked enormous in those stupid shorts.

But I got the point across.

I think.

Of course, in the end, it turned out not to matter. But at the time, I had no way of knowing that.

And neither, unfortunately, did poor Dr. Clive Clemmings, Ph.D.

CHAPTER 5

God, I hate crying. It's so humiliating. And I swear I hardly ever do it.

I guess, though, that the stress of being assaulted in the dead of night by the knife-wielding ex-girlfriend of the guy I love finally got to me. I pretty much didn't stop crying until Jack, in desperation, bought me a Yoo-hoo from Jimmy's Quik-Mart, on our way down to the beach.

That and a Butterfinger bar soon had me feeling like myself again, and it wasn't long before Jack and I were frolicking in the waves, making fun of the tourists, and placing penny bets on which surfer would be knocked off his board first. We had such a good time that it wasn't until the sun started setting that I realized I had to get Jack back to the hotel.

Not that anybody had missed us, we discovered when we got there. As I dropped Jack off at his family's suite, his mother popped her head in from the terrace, where she and Dr. Rick were enjoying cocktails, and said, "Oh, it's you, is it, Jack? Hurry and change for dinner, will you? We're meeting the Robertsons. Thank you, Susan, and see you in the morning."

I waved and left, relieved that I'd managed to avoid Paul. After my unexpectedly traumatic afternoon, I did not think I could handle a confrontation with Mr. Tennis Whites.

But my relief turned out to be precipitous, since, as I was sitting in the front seat of the Land Rover, waiting for Sleepy to tear himself away from Caitlin, who seemed to have something terribly urgent to discuss with him just as we were leaving, someone tapped on my rolled-up window. I looked around, and there was Paul, wearing a tie, of all things, and a dark blue sports jacket.

I pushed the button that rolled the window down.

"Um," I said. "Hi."

"Hi," he said. He was smiling pleasantly. The last of the day's sunlight picked up the gold highlights in his brown curls. He really was, I had to admit, good-looking. Kelly Prescott would have eaten him up with a spoon. "I suppose you already have plans for tonight," he said.

I didn't, of course, but I replied quickly, "Yes."

"I figured." His smile was still pleasant. "What about tomorrow night?"

Look, I know I'm a freak, all right? You don't have to tell me. There I was, and this totally hot, totally nice guy was asking me out, and all I could think about was a guy who, let's face it, is dead. All right? Jesse is dead. It's stupid - stupid, stupid, stupid - of me to turn down a date with a live guy when the only other guy I have in my life is dead.

But that's exactly what I did. I went, "Gee, sorry, Paul. I have plans tomorrow night, too."

I didn't even care if it sounded like I was lying. That's how screwed up I am. I just could not drum up the slightest bit of interest.

But I guess that was a pretty big mistake. I guess Mr. Paul Slater isn't used to girls turning down his invitations to dinner, or whatever. Because he went, no longer smiling pleasantly - or at all, actually: "Well, that's too bad. It's especially too bad considering the fact that now I guess I'm going to have to tell your supervisor about how you took my little brother off hotel property today without my parents' permission."

I just stared at him through the open window. I couldn't even figure out what he was talking about, at first. Then I remembered the shuttle bus, and the historical society, and the beach.

I almost burst out laughing. Seriously. I mean, if Paul Slater thought my getting in trouble for taking a kid off hotel property without his parents' permission was the worst thing that could happen to me - that had even happened to me today - he was way, way off base. For crying out loud, a woman who'd been been dead for nearly a hundred years had held a knife to my throat in my own bedroom, not twenty-four hours earlier. Did he really think I was going to care if Caitlin issued me a reprimand?

"Go ahead," I said. "And when you tell her, be sure to mention that for the first time in his life, your brother actually had a good time."

I hit the button to roll up the window - I mean, really, what was this guy's damage? - but Paul stuck his hand through it and rested his fingers on the glass. I let go of the button. I mean, I just wanted him to go away, not get maimed for life.

"Yeah," Paul said. "I've been meaning to ask you about that. Jack tells me that you told him he's a medium."

"Mediator," I corrected him before I could stop myself. And so much for Jack keeping the whole thing a secret, like I'd advised him to. When was this kid going to learn that going around telling people he can talk to ghosts wasn't going to endear him to anyone?