Another One Bites the Dust

Book 2: Jensen Murphy

by Chris Marie Green

Genres: Urban Fantasy

Synopsis

Jensen Murphy is back in the spooky sequel to Only the Good Die Young.

Some people think that ghosts are spirits that refuse to go to the other side because they have unfinished business. Take my word—that’s true. I should know. I’m a ghost.

I was an ordinary eighties California girl, dead before my time, until psychic Amanda Lee Minter pulled me out of the time loop where I was reliving my death over and over. Now I’m Jensen Murphy, Ghost for Hire. I decided to put my spooky talents to use in helping Amanda Lee track down bad guys and killers (including my own).

It’s taken time to figure out exactly how that will work (our first case was definitely a learning experience for all involved), so when a young woman asks Amanda Lee for help convincing her best friend to leave a dangerously hot-tempered boyfriend, I’m ready and willing to use our collective powers on her behalf. But some people are dangerous not only to the living—especially when there are darker forces involved....

Release date: November 4, 2014

Publisher: Ace

Print pages: 416

Sample

In the Beginning . . .

“I know you have no idea who I am,” said the college-aged girl standing on Amanda Lee Minter’s porch, “but I really need your help.”

The psychic and medium was looking through the peephole at her visitor as the morning sun burnished the girl’s straight, dark brown hair. Her eyes were a cherub’s blue, and she had on a long-sleeved, baggy gray shirt that covered the top half of her jeans, the light jersey material swallowing her hands. She had a solid form and didn’t appear to be a materialized version of one of the invisible spirits who had been knocking on the doors and windows lately.

Spirits who were terribly curious about the woman who had worked with a ghost to bring down a murderer nearly a month ago.

Since Amanda Lee was clearly dealing with a human, she opened the door. The girl hitched in a breath, then launched into an introduction.

“My name’s Heidi Schmidt. I’m here because I know Wendy Edgett from some forum boards online—”

“Wendy Edgett?”

Heidi bit her lip, then nodded.

Amanda Lee’s hand slid down the door. Fifteen-year-old Wendy Edgett. The last time Amanda Lee had seen her was . . .

Shame breathed over her. It had been the night of the séance in the Edgett mansion—an event that had flushed out a dark spirit that had disappeared and never returned. Not yet, at least.

A chill covered Amanda Lee’s shame like a shadow crawling over a patch of heat. She searched her yard—the late spring–leaved trees, the pathway to her house. But everything was as seemingly safe and as perfect as ever, no darkness looming.

“You are Ms. Minter, right?” Heidi asked, no doubt wondering why Amanda Lee was acting so strangely. “Because this is really embarrassing if I’ve got the wrong house. I used a reverse phone number lookup on your address because you haven’t been answering my calls, so . . .”

“You have the right one. Did Wendy . . . send you here?” Why would she do that? She had been avoiding Amanda Lee like the pox, in spite of the apologetic phone calls she’d been making, revealing her real identity to Wendy, telling her that she had only wanted to make the world right again by catching a killer during the séance.

Heidi was shaking her head. “Wendy didn’t actually send me, Ms. Minter.”

“Is she all right?”

“Yes. It’s just that she didn’t want to come with me.” Heidi shuffled her sneakers. “She’s still not up to seeing anyone socially. She said she and her brother moved to one of his other properties, and she’s doing schoolwork from home. She doesn’t even go on the chat board anymore, but she sends e-mails to me. I think I’m the only one she really talks to. It’s the grief, you know? Seeing her sister Farah kill her brother because he knew too much about the murder she committed, then dealing with the knowledge that Farah was evil . . .”

Amanda Lee gripped the edge of the door, her knuckles whitening. “If she didn’t send you, then why are you here?”

Heidi pulled at her sleeves. “Over a month ago, Wendy started posting on a social San Diego paranormal chat board I hang out on, too—you know, the kind for fans of reality ghost shows and stuff? Well, back then, she said she couldn’t believe it, but she thought there was a spirit in her house. The last time she checked in with us as a group, just before the crap hit the fan with Farah, Wendy said there was a psychic coming over to help make contact and see what the entity wanted. It was all so cool to her.”

“You want me to make contact with a spirit, then.” Amanda Lee itched to close the door, shut herself in among the antiques and the dusky rooms where the shades were drawn. It was only intuition that had told her to respond to the doorbell, and she always listened to her inner guide, even if it occasionally steered her in odd directions.

Heidi rushed on. “Wendy said that you hang with the ghost who was haunting her old house, and during one of your phone messages, you told her that the ghost is the one who uncovered Wendy’s sister as a murderer. This Jensen ghost girl went inside all the suspects’ heads and figured them out, then flushed out the true killer. It’s true, right? This ghost drove Farah to a confession?”

“Yes,” Amanda Lee said, her heartbeat quickening for some reason she couldn’t pinpoint yet.

“Wendy . . .” Heidi’s face was red. “She said that you would help me because the two of you owe her.”

Oh.

Amanda Lee took that in, realizing just how true it was. Obviously, this girl had seen Wendy’s ghost adventures on the chat boards, asked for her help, then come here because something was scaring her and she needed Amanda Lee and “her ghost” to intercede.

Was this fate’s way of granting absolution for everything Amanda Lee had done wrong with the Edgetts?

All she had wanted was a reckoning for the woman Farah Edgett had killed—Elizabeth Dalton.

God. Her Elizabeth . . .

But there were also many other spirits in need of justice. Jensen, the ghost Heidi had been talking about, was one. Was Heidi leading her to another?

Fear of ruining more lives during an investigation made Amanda Lee’s heart beat even faster. Fear in general had been keeping her inside the house, full of doubt, frozen. But at this girl’s anxious expression, Amanda Lee stepped outside, feeling the sun on her skin for the first time in weeks. Now that she was closer to Heidi, she could sense the girl’s nerves screeching.

“Why is it that you’re on edge?” she asked.

Heidi seemed relieved that Amanda Lee wasn’t shooing her off. “I’m really worried about someone I care about, and I can’t go to the cops about it. And I definitely can’t go to my best friend Nichelle because she’s the one in trouble, and she won’t accept that reality.”

Yes. A chance for absolution had arrived on Amanda Lee’s doorstep.

Heidi took a deep breath, exhaling harshly. “After I heard what you and your ghost did, I realized that I could use at least one of you to go inside the head of Nichelle’s boyfriend to see if he’s capable of killing her.” She swallowed. “Because I’m pretty sure that’s what’s going to happen if nobody does anything about it.”

To any other person, it would have been a nearly insane request, but Amanda Lee understood perfectly.

She closed the door behind her, then placed her hand on Heidi’s shoulder, leading her to the little casita at the side of the bigger house.

When she opened the door and guided Heidi into the antique-rich room, the girl peered around, as if intuiting that something was off about it. As if feeling a coldness that wasn’t coming from any air conditioner.

She obviously couldn’t see the ghost who’d looked up from her spot near the car battery on a table, getting a charge from it, her normally grayish color high, her energy strong.

“Heidi,” Amanda Lee said, her voice more animated than it had been for a while. “Meet Jensen Murphy.”

1

When I’d encountered Amanda Lee for the first time a month and a half ago, I’d already been dead meat for about thirty years. Supposedly, I’d only gone missing but . . . nope. It was more like I’d been murdered in the early eighties after a party up in Elfin Forest in North County, my killer unknown, my body never found.

But now, as Amanda Lee stood next to this Heidi girl, giving me the basics about why an unexpected visitor was in my casita, Amanda Lee was the one who came off like the dearly departed, garbed in a dark ruffled skirt and boots, with a matching blouse hanging limply from her tall frame. Her usually perfect red hair with the white streaks framing her face was even as drab as a black-and-white B-horror movie.

And why not, when the woman was as haunted as anyone I’d ever met?

I could tell Heidi wasn’t sensitive enough to see me, because she kept peering around the room, her eyes wide. The only humans I knew who could get a lock on me were Amanda Lee and Wendy Edgett. It’s not like I would’ve made any kind of awesome impression on Heidi, anyway—I’d died in tennis shoes, jeans, and a pale blue button-down rolled up to my elbows with a white tank underneath. Just your average twenty-three-year-old American girl with my strawberry blond hair, green eyes, and freckles. A Tom Petty song in the flesh . . . or not.

By this point, I had a few questions for Amanda Lee. And, by the way, it’s pronounced “A MANdaley” with a Southern flair she’d brought with her from Virginia when she was young. Quirky as hell.

“So Wendy’s been talking to this chick?” I asked her. I’d mostly been concentrating on the Wendy parts of the story I’d just been told.

“Yes,” Amanda Lee said. “They’ve exchanged e-mails.”

“I noticed that Wendy does spend a lot of time on her computer.” I’d been watching over her and her older brother Gavin, who I’d nearly driven insane while trying to decide whether he was guilty of killing Elizabeth Dalton. That’s mainly why Wendy was pissed off at me, and I didn’t know if she was ever going to forgive me. Even so, it was my duty to see that the two of them were okay, that the dark spirit Amanda Lee had summoned during that asinine fake séance was leaving them alone.

I wasn’t all that sure it would stay away from them since I had a bad feeling that Amanda Lee had accidentally released their very deceased craphead father from wherever naughty people went after they died. Being a ghost, you’d think I’d know exactly where that was, but no. No matter who I asked, no one ever had a good explanation.

Boo World wasn’t exactly a place where every question you’d had as a mortal was answered.

Speaking of sketchy things Amanda Lee had done, I should mention that she’d also lied about why she’d recently resurrected me from the residual haunting phase I’d been in for nearly three decades—a time loop where I’d been living my death over and over again because I’d been so traumatized by it. She’d wanted me to haunt the truth out of the man she’d suspected of murdering her lover, Elizabeth Dalton. See, Amanda Lee had told me she didn’t know Elizabeth, that she was only seeking justice for a friend. None of that turned out to be true, because Amanda Lee had been very close to the victim, indeed; she’d been manipulating me—the dumb new ghost—the entire time only to make me do her bidding.

Needless to say, trust wasn’t exactly high on my Amanda Lee To-Do list.

I float-walked closer to Heidi, and she crossed her arms over her chest, warming herself.

“I meant to ask before,” she said to Amanda Lee. “Exactly how much do you charge to help people?”

“Charge?” Amanda Lee and I asked at the same time.

“Yes, I want to hire you.”

I didn’t need money, and Amanda Lee’s spine straightened at the very mention of it because she was what was known as “affluent.”

“There’ll be no charge,” she said.

“Oh. Okay. I only thought . . .”

“No charge,” Amanda Lee repeated, and she said it with such dignity that I knew the topic was as dead as disco.

While Amanda Lee was bristling, something caught my attention at the window. Movement, outside. And when I saw an old man’s grayish, bearded, ghostly face peering in, I flew over and waved bye-bye.

Dammit, there’d been ghosts swirling around here a lot lately, drawn by all the rumors of what me and Amanda Lee had done with the Edgetts. Apparently, we were high entertainment for the bored denizens of Boo World.

The old man stuck out his tongue and zoomed away. In the meantime, the curtains were stirring with the wind I’d caused. Heidi looked ready to do a Major Tom and shoot into space, fueled by fear.

I have to say that her fear did charge me up a tad.

Amanda Lee strode toward the window. She probably hadn’t seen the old man—I was the only ghost she’d ever fully connected with—but she’d noticed my reaction to him, so she could make an educated guess.

She shut those curtains. “That was only Jensen brushing by the window, dear. Don’t mind her.”

Heidi’s voice shook as she continued, but the kid was brave to stay. I’d give her that.

“It’s all good, Ms. Minter.”

Excellent. Then the girl wouldn’t mind a little of this.

I turned on the computer by manipulating the electricity in the atmosphere. Ghosts were pure energy, after all.

Heidi made a surprised sound.

With a lowered glance at me, Amanda Lee took the hint, sitting down in front of the computer. “Getting a little pranky, are we, Jensen?”

“Me?” Hmph. I wasn’t the pranky type—that was for the ghosts who’d already gotten bored with their existence, looking for stimulation from the responses pranks got from humans.

I wasn’t bored. Or maybe I was. After the Edgett situation, I’d been, well, dying to move out of the casita, just to put some space between me and Amanda Lee. But all the annoying ghosts and the threat of the dark spirit had kept me here to watch over her as much as I could.

I’d leave soon, though, I kept telling myself. Someday I’d find an abandoned house that was just right for me.

“What is your friend’s name?” Amanda Lee asked Heidi, her fingers poised over the keyboard.

“Nichelle Shaw.”

“And her boyfriend?”

“Tim. Tim Knudson.”

“Address, please?”

Heidi rattled off a place in Pacific Beach, and Amanda Lee typed it all in. The search engine came up with several links, and she clicked on one of them.

My energy was humming, mostly because I was feeling the growing apprehension in Heidi. “Why does she think he’s going to kill Nichelle?” I asked Amanda Lee.

After she translated for Heidi, the girl answered, “It’s just . . . a hunch. I read a book once, and they called this kind of intuition the gift of fear. And that’s why I can’t go to anyone else, because all I have are creepy suspicions about this guy. He and Nichelle have been with each other for a couple months now. They live together. At first, he was fascinating for Nichelle. She hasn’t had a lot of boyfriends, and Tim rides a beat-up motorcycle and has a blue-collar thing going on, so he’s edgy and kind of wow for her. And he had a steady new job in a department store warehouse, working the swing shift. I found out a week after they were dating that he has a spotty work history, though. When I told her, she asked him about it, and he said that the past didn’t matter—he was going to make himself better for her.”

Amanda Lee had brought up a profile on that Facebook thingie. Frankly, I couldn’t stand the site. It was the type of distraction I would’ve hated when I was alive, too. I had true, close, dear friends that I used to go out and toke with and drink with every once in a while, face-to-freaking-face. That, and my waitressing gig at Roundtable Pizza, had been enough of a social life for me.

Anyway, Tim’s picture showed a handsome guy in his twenties with buzzed sandy hair and a Tom Cruise smile. He was a smaller man. I could tell because he was posing near a bar, and it provided some scale as he toasted the camera with a draft beer.

Amanda Lee said, “He looks harmless enough, but that’s always the problem. We know better than anyone that bad people are good at hiding who they really are.”

“Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt right now,” I said. We didn’t know Heidi very well, and I was eager to get an empathy reading off her to see if she was on the up-and-up with us. Besides, I didn’t need to remind Amanda Lee about Gavin Edgett and how we’d rushed to judgment with him when she’d suspected him of killing Elizabeth.

Just at the thought of Gavin my ghost-heart sank, beating with a longing that was invisible, but real just the same. Regret, attraction, fascination . . . I hadn’t expected to feel any of it, being a dead girl and all.

Maybe I was a little obsessed because of my guilt. I’d trespassed into his mind, as well as the heads of other suspects. Sure, I’d been inside of them for good reason—I hadn’t taken it lightly because messing with them was hard on their bodies and psyches—but the major fact was that me and Amanda Lee had gone rogue, taking the law into our own hands.

It was just that, when you died a victim like I had, you refuse to live your eternal afterlife as one, too, or to see it happen to others. So I’d become a justice-seeker, just like Amanda Lee. I was even going to solve my own murder someday, as soon as I figured out how to get around the whole lack of witnesses, suspects, and evidence dilemma. There wasn’t even blood at my death spot to tip off the authorities to where I’d died, for God’s sake. Still, I’d spent the last month collecting data, looking up all my old friends on the computer, hoping to locate them so I could get readings off them and see if they had any clues about what’d happened to me that night.

Heidi was peering over Amanda Lee’s shoulder now, hugging herself as she stared at Tim’s computerized profile.

“He’s very well behaved on this Facebook page,” she murmured. “But he’s got a temper in real life. Gets in fights at bars and with his so-called friends. One of them even told me that he stole a credit card from a former girlfriend. Nichelle didn’t want to believe that, and he told her it was a lie.”

Amanda Lee asked, “What is Nichelle like?”

“Strong-willed. Won’t take any guff. But she’s got a naive side that Tim sensed or something. She thinks she’s not very attractive—which isn’t true—so she was wide-open to his limited charms.”

“Is he outright cruel to her?”

“Well, let’s just say that they fight like cats and dogs sometimes. And Nichelle tells me things that he does in private that disturb me.” Heidi went back to rubbing her arms. “I thought that maybe a ghost could watch him in those private moments, when he thinks no one is looking. Or a psychic could read him, even if it’s just for my own peace of mind.”

I got closer to the computer, wanting a better look at Timmy Boy’s profile. It fizzed with some screen-snow, but I could still make out that he had been born in Montana and he liked to play guitar. I backed away when Amanda Lee shot me a you’re-causing-interference glance.

She asked, “So you think he’s violent enough to hurt her badly one day?”

“Yes, and if I’m wrong about that, then I’ll lay off him.” Heidi shook her head. “It all sounds so melodramatic, but I swear, it’s not. I’m taking general ed classes at SDSU, and one of them is abnormal psych. He’s got qualities that point to antisocial behavior.”

Okay. Time to see if she was overreacting.

“Amanda Lee,” I said. “Ask her if it’d be all right if I did an empathy reading.”

“Heidi, would it be fine with you if Jensen read your thoughts?”

“Oh. Sure. Is that safe?”

“Yes. And you’ll be cold only for a short time. Jensen won’t push it.”

If I did, then I’d go farther into her psyche than I needed to, draining her and me more than necessary.

Heidi breathed out, holding her hand up so I could touch it. I took that as an all systems go.

As I made contact with her skin, a shiver zinged through her. It was as if I’d connected with a power outlet while her thoughts slammed into me . . .

Nichelle’s voice on the phone. “I can’t go to the movies tonight, Heidi, okay? Tim wants to stay in. I know this is the third time I’ve canceled this week, but maybe tomorrow?”

Walking by Nichelle’s bedroom on the way to the bathroom, overhearing Tim’s quiet, private-time voice. “This is what you’re gonna wear tonight. I’m throwing away that trashy blue dress. It makes you look like a slut.”

At lunch with Nichelle. A ringing phone. Tim’s voice on the speaker. “Who’re you with? Get home, Nich, no ifs, ands, or buts, got it? I want you here, with me.”

I unlinked from Heidi, then went to the car battery. Empathizing always took a little juice out of me. Meanwhile, she held a hand over her chest, shivering.

“Da-mn.”

Amanda Lee tapped away on the computer, bringing up more information about Tim on that Twitter thing now. “I told you, Heidi. Only a slight chill.”

“More than slight. That was . . .” Heidi huddled into herself. “I think I’ll sit down.”

She walked across the room, pointedly away from my coldness, to a rose-upholstered love seat. She pulled her sleeves all the way over her hands like they were two turtle heads disappearing into shells.

I hoped Heidi would never have to experience a ghost making her hallucinate or going dream-digging if she was asleep. That would be intense.

I spoke to Amanda Lee. “I got definite hints about a controlling relationship. Heidi’s been around when Tim does things like keeping Nichelle from seeing her friends. It also looks like he checks up on her, chooses her clothes, and seems to get jealous that she wants to spend time with other people.”

Amanda Lee turned from the computer to survey Heidi, who still didn’t seem comfortable with knowing that a ghost had been inside her.

“She’s got a good aura,” Amanda Lee said quietly.

“I do?” Heidi asked.

“And good hearing,” Amanda Lee said, standing, going to Heidi. She gestured toward the girl’s hand. “May I?”

Heidi seemed skeptical, and after the chill of my touch, I couldn’t blame her. Then she pulled the sleeve away from her hand, and Amanda Lee clasped it in her own, closing her eyes, psychically riding the girl’s skin while her thoughts were still on Nichelle.

It was over in under a minute.

“So Nichelle really doesn’t tolerate Tim’s behavior,” Amanda Lee said. “She stands up for herself, and that seems to frustrate him.”

“Right. When they fight, she’ll come over to my apartment and sometimes stay while I’m at my classes. But by the time I get home, she’s usually gone back to him. I told you—her self-confidence could improve.”

“What’s that girl even thinking?” I asked Amanda Lee.

“That she has Tim in hand,” she said. “And that his good qualities outweigh everything else. It seems like a chemical attraction. You know what love is like.”

I didn’t want to think about love.

Heidi seemed more desperate to sway us now. “Please, I know all this doesn’t sound that dangerous. But I’ve heard him on the phone with Nichelle when he’ll go deathly silent during a fight. I can’t help thinking he’s going to explode one of these days.”

I traded glances with Amanda Lee, seeing that, like me, she would never be able to forgive herself if we ignored this. We had the power to prevent something bad from happening. We also had a responsibility.

We also had a hell of a lot to make up for because of how we’d almost ruined Gavin. Not that he was a pristine guy. No way. He had blood on his hands for sure, but in a righteous way since he’d secretly killed his and Wendy’s father, an abusive bastard . . . and, quite possibly, the dark spirit Amanda Lee had unleashed during that séance.

To tell the truth, I was yearning to do some right with my abilities. I’d never done much of anything as a human, and now . . . ?

I could finally be someone who mattered.

Amanda Lee seemed to feel those vibes from me, and she smiled at Heidi. “We’ll tell you what we find out soon. Rest easy until then.”

Heidi returned Amanda Lee’s smile; then, by some miracle, she seemed to find me and give me the same sunny thank-you.

It charged me up better than any battery ever could.

• • •

After our business was done with Heidi, I stuck with her until she was safely in her Honda, then watched her drive down the treelined street. The sun was climbing in the sky, bringing a few more curious ghosts along with it since our kind didn’t mind the light.

I told them to scram, and they must’ve seen that I meant it since they gave me no lip. Weird, but I’d never been a tough girl when I was alive. I guess it took a murder or two to sharpen a ghost up.

Back in the casita, Amanda Lee was on the computer again, doing more research on Tim Knudson.

“I guess we’ve got our work cut out for us,” I said, hovering above her, close enough to the computer that the screen danced with interference.

Amanda Lee blinked her eyes, coming out of her myopic online search. Then she said, “You’re not angry with me about committing to Heidi before I even asked you, are you?”

“No, but . . .”

She fixed her gray gaze on me. “You don’t have to say it. I’ve felt it for a while. You’re not going to be around here much longer for me to bother you.”

Having a psychic in your life could be such a bitch. “I’ve been planning to look for a comfortable, abandoned place. Part of it has to do with all the attention we’ve been getting from Boo World, with those nosy ghosts hanging around. It shouldn’t last much longer because they’ll get tired of us soon, but I hate being such a freak show to them.”

“You’re not the freak show, Jensen. From what you’ve told me, ghosts are more fascinated with humans who do things such as accidentally opening portals and letting in malevolent entities.”

A pall hung over the room, weighed down by Amanda Lee’s obvious guilt about what’d happened during the Edgett situation.

“Do you think,” I asked, “Wendy was reaching out to us in a way? By sending Heidi here?”

“I wouldn’t set my hopes on that.”

“You know what I should do? Talk to her. See what she thinks about Heidi since she knows her from online. . . .”

“And how will you manage that? Rap on her window, ask for her forgiveness, then dive right into a relatively normal conversation? We nearly sent her brother into a mental spiral, Jensen.”

“But she’s thankful for what we did, deep down, don’t you think? We couldn’t save Noah from Farah, but Gavin came out all right in the end. So did Wendy herself.”

“You can’t know what she’s thinking by watching her through a window.”

True. I didn’t want to get too close to Wendy, wanting to respect her by keeping my distance. But I wondered if she’d ever seen me lingering outside her new home, watching over her and Gavin, longing for them to just open a window and let me in.

Amanda Lee had turned to me, her hands folded in her lap. “You realize, of course, that devoting time to this Tim Knudson situation will postpone our investigation into your own killing.”

“Oh, you’re ready to go forward with that now?” I wasn’t being sarcastic. I’d known that Amanda Lee was in no shape to do much but stay in her house, mourning Elizabeth all over again, as well as everything else that had gone wrong during the investigation.

Amanda Lee nodded. “If you’re ready.”

Hell, yeah, I was. And after I solved my murder, I was also hoping to look up any relatives I had who might be cruising around Boo World. But it wasn’t like there was a spook directory that would speed that up or anything. “As far as Tim Knudson goes, it sounds like a pretty easy thing—go to Nichelle’s place, observe him, check out what he’s all about, then . . .”

“We should talk about the ‘then’ portion.”

“You mean, wha