When I got home after destroying some pork, Cezar was sitting in my living room in his swim trunks, looking bored and anxious. He was biting the fingernails on his meaty hand. “Where have you been?” he asked, like he was my father and I was out past curfew. “I’ve been worried sick about you.”

“It’s only nine o’clock, not four in the morning. Plus you don’t even know me,” I pointed out, dropping my handbag on the console table by my sofa.

“You’re kind of the only person I know right now.” Cezar looked glum. He crossed his arms over his bare chest. “Being dead is crap.”

“I’m sorry,” I said automatically. “But I have news for you. Your body was found in a warehouse on the east bank of the Flats. Or was it the west bank?” I suddenly doubted myself. “No, east. I think. Anyway, someone found your body and the cops are there now, so that’s good, right?”

That sounded stupid but it was what he had wanted.

He perked up at that information. “What? How do you know that?”

“My boyfriend (okay, I was dropping that label quite freely now, wasn’t I?) is a homicide detective. He called me because my number was on your cellphone as a recent call.”

I refused to admit I was the last call he had made, because that skeeved me out.

Cezar’s eyebrows shot up. “Well, well, well. In bed with law enforcement, huh? I thought you said you didn’t have a boyfriend.”

“I said it was complicated.”

“Is he your boyfriend or not? Quit jerking me around, kid.”

Why was he getting hostile with me? I kicked my adorable nude pumps off with a sigh of relief. That was a lot of walking today. “He’s basically my boyfriend, we’re a thing, whatever, but it’s really none of your business. Let’s focus here on what is important—you wanted me to find your body and I did, so let’s shake hands and you can move on to whatever is next for you.” And remove himself from my sofa, which was straining under his girth.

“Finding the body is good. But where is the money? We need to get our hands on that. And I want to know who did this and why they would go to the trouble to move my body from my lake house forty miles away to a warehouse. What was the point if they knew I’d be found right away? It doesn’t sound like I was hidden.”

I opened my mouth to give an opinion but he cut me off, sticking his finger out and shaking it. “I’ll tell you why. It’s a statement. A lesson. A warning. That’s how it works.”

“It’s not a very good warning if no one knows what it means.”

“The people it’s meant for know. This is a warning that you can’t get away with testifying against a colleague.”

Colleague was an interesting choice of words. I would have said co-conspirator. Fellow thief. But whatever. “So this is about the trial, not the money?”

“Probably.”

“Well, that sucks that you were an example.” I massaged the back of my head, tired. “It’s been a long day. I’m going to bed. You can see yourself out, right?” Hint, hint, mega-hint.

Cezar looked offended. “How can you sleep knowing I’m dead?”

“Uh…” If the situation weren’t so macabre I would have laughed. “Why don’t you stop by tomorrow around two? I’m done with work for the day then.” I didn’t want him stopping by at all, but I knew he would, so I might as well establish parameters.

“Ah.” He waved his hand at me angrily. “Go to bed. See if I care.”

You didn’t have to ask me twice. “Great. Goodnight.”

“I’m not going anywhere!” he called after me as I retreated up the stairs to my bedroom.

“Go home, I’ll see you tomorrow!” I was getting frustrated. I didn’t want a total stranger sitting in my house all night. It was creepy, especially since he was dead.

“You told me you would help me.”

If he said that one more time, I was going to scream. This was why I was constantly on the fence about having children. They pestered you until they got what they wanted. Cezar was trying to wear me down and it was going to start working if I didn’t hotfoot it upstairs. Much preferable to screaming.

But I did actually scream when after dozing on and off for several hours I woke up just after midnight to the sound of my phone vibrating. Groggy, I pried my eyes open and realized Cezar Wozniak was lying in bed next to me. He covered his ears as I let out a startled shriek and sat straight up, yanking the covers over my chest. I was in a tank top and shorts but I didn’t need him seeing me without a bra.

“Zip it, Red. Can’t a guy have some peace and quiet to think?” he complained.

Retrieving my heart from my throat, I took a deep breath. “What the actual hell are you doing? Get out of my bed.”

Cezar was lolled out next to me, lit by the moonlight streaming through my skylights. He was thankfully on top of the comforter, not under it, so there was no risk of his dead body touching mine. But this also gave me an unparalleled view of him in a far too intimate setting. He was rolled onto his side, propping his head up over my pillow, his belly coming perilously close to me. I wished I could figure out a way to get him a ghostly T-shirt. I wasn’t asking for a lot, just an undershirt. It was like being on a cruise ship and the guy crammed up next to you in the elevator is in nothing but swim trunks. It’s just a bit awkward and far too personal. Added to the lack of clothing was the fact that he was in my bed and I was more than a little uncomfortable.

“I’m making a point.”

“What, that you’re the most annoying ghost on the planet?”

“That I’m not going anywhere. We got work to do, kid.”

My heart was still racing, but now mostly from anxiety, not fear. “I can’t do anything if I don’t get some sleep, and there is no way I’m sleeping with you next to me.”

Cezar winked at me. “I won’t tell your boyfriend.”

Gross. “He doesn’t believe in ghosts.”

“No?” Cezar looked surprised. “So how do you explain your little woo-woo talent?”

I shrugged, pushing my hair out of eyes. “I tried to once, but he was skeptical. So I keep it on the down-low.”

“You have to be honest in a relationship.”

“Thanks, Dr. Phil.” I was tired and cranky and the hushed darkness of my room should not be shared with Cezar Wozniak. This night could have ended so much better if Marner hadn’t gotten that stupid text calling him back to work. It made me vow to get revenge on Cezar’s killer, because not only had that man taken Mr. Wozniak’s life, he had totally inconvenienced mine.

That should be Marner lying next to me, not Cezar’s spirit. There really was no comparison. On a scale of one to ten, one being awful and ten being super mega awesome, I imagined Marner was hovering around a nine. Cezar was whatever numeral one would ascribe to the confines of hell.

“Don’t project onto me,” Cezar said. “I’m not the one lying to a cop. You are.”

I eyed him. “You’ve never lied to a cop?”

There was a pause. “We’re not talking about me here.”

“We’re not talking about me either. We’re not talking at all. You being here is not cool.” My phone lit up in the dark room and I glanced over at it. It was a text from Marner. At this hour? I grabbed it.

Body not Cezar Wozniak. Just a guy with Wozniak’s wallet. Let me know if Wozniak contacts you at all. Don’t respond to him without talking to me.

Huh. This posed a moral dilemma. Did I tell Cezar, knowing he would keep me awake with further questions, or did I withhold the information until a more reasonable time of day? Not to mention until we were somewhere other than my bedroom. This was the most action this room had seen in ages, and that was really just the saddest thing ever.

My conscience wouldn’t let me keep quiet though, damn it. I blamed my mother. She had a death stare that could guilt me into confessing all my mortal sins as a child. “It turns out that wasn’t your body in that warehouse. It’s someone else with your wallet.”

Cezar sat up. “What? Damn it. What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. It would seem like the person who killed you would have your wallet, probably because he was robbing you, or he didn’t want your body readily identified. But then who killed him?”

“Ask the cop who the stiff is.”

“I’ll ask him tomorrow. He’s going to think it’s weird that I’m still awake if I respond now.”

Cezar started singing a Britney Spears song. Off-key. About getting lost in the game. I wanted to stick my head in a blender to make it stop. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to get you to break.” He grinned at me. “I hear they use Britney Spears music to break terrorists.”

I refused to hate on Britney. She would always be my jam. But in the middle of the night, coming from a half-naked mobster with excessive chest hair, it wasn’t working.

“No. It’s not going to work.” I wasn’t giving in. One, I didn’t want Marner to think that I was awake in the middle of the night waiting for texts from him. Two, I had to set boundaries with Cezar.

Thirty agonizing minutes later, the boundaries toppled like the Berlin Wall. I had tossed and turned, trying to plug my ears as he ran through a multitude of pop songs, and then through a caterwauling rendition of Whitney Houston’s greatest hits. I had put a pillow over my head until I was in danger of asphyxiation. I had attempted to go downstairs and sleep on the couch, but Cezar just followed me and perched on the edge. It was like having Santa the Mobster creeping on me. Horrifying. Exhausted and beaten down, I pressed my hand to my forehead, a headache pressing behind my eye sockets. “Please. Stop. I’ll do anything.”

Cezar cut out mid-note on a Tom Jones song. “I like you, kid. Here’s what I’m going to do. I’ll let you sleep, but I’m going to be back at eight. Then we need a plan of attack that involves you tracking down Big Eddie and getting the key to the storage unit.”

“Sure. Fine.” I would have agreed to anything that involved him being quiet and me being allowed to sleep. I’m an eight hours a night kind of girl. I need my z’s in order to function and not be the world’s biggest crank. I had no desire to go seeking out someone named Big Eddie, but it was fast becoming apparent I didn’t have a choice. “But I have an appointment at eight-thirty and I’m not canceling.”

“That works for me. We just need a few minutes to figure out how to get this done.”

What we were getting done I still wasn’t sure of, but I waved my hand and nodded my consent. I was too weary to speak.

Cezar disappeared in that ghost way I was oddly getting used to. It wasn’t like a snap. It was a wavering dissipation. It happened quickly and I gave a sigh of relief. I decided to sleep on the couch because the flight of stairs seemed like Mount Everest at the moment, and I needed to wash my bedding before I slept in my bed again. Cezar may be a spirit with no actual physical form, but I still felt like he had sullied my sheets.

I slept like the dead.

Meaning, restless and agitated.

---

I was woken up by a voice whispering, “Wakey, wakey, eggs and bac-ey!” in my ear.

Brushing the sound away, I groaned. But when I opened my eyes, it wasn’t Cezar serving as the world’s most annoying alarm clock, but Ryan. I could have hugged him, except that wouldn’t work because he was dead. “Oh my God,” I blurted. “Ryan! Where have you been?”

After Cezar, seeing my old friend was like waking up on Christmas morning. I had gotten used to Ryan popping in and out at will, so when he had stopped coming around I had been worried about him. Also, compared to Cezar, he was easy on the eyes. Ryan had always been good-looking, with that rugged, manly man vibe. He had died in a flannel shirt, work boots, and jeans, and it had been his off-duty uniform in life, so it made sense in death.

Ryan grinned. “I got caught up in a sweep. Told I was in violation of some code of conduct. It was bullshit, whatever. But I’m back, baby, and I’m better than ever.”

“I missed you,” I told him truthfully, propping myself up to a sitting position with my elbow.

“Whatever. You’ve been getting all hot and heavy with Marner. You don’t need me.”

I let that slide, because we could go around and around on this. Ryan and I had the sort of friendship where we never saw to eye to eye on anything, but it never mattered. He had been the one to force me to lighten up and I had kept him on time. “Listen, there’s a ghost that is going to be showing up here at eight. He’s been harassing me to find his body. I think he has mob connections.” I wanted to get his advice before Cezar was there, bossing me around.

Ryan’s eyebrows shot up. “The mob? What is this, the seventies?”

“What, there’s no mob anymore?”

“I mean, organized crime is technically everywhere, but it’s kind of small potatoes in Cleveland.”

“Don’t tell him that. He’s very impressed with himself. He does have the bank account that says he’s making money somehow. I was staging his lake house out east when I thought I found his body, shot in the chest. But it was really just his ghost.”

“What’s his name?”

“Cezar Wozniak.” I said it quietly, afraid that somehow Cezar was listening. Which was stupid. He didn’t have an invisibility cloak. If he were there, I would see him.

“Never heard of him.” Ryan sat down in the easy chair across from me, sinking back into the plush cushions. “I don’t think you should be running around looking for dead bodies.”

Said the man who had insisted I look for his girlfriend Hannah’s body. Which had led me into the field where I had found a severed hand and become the target of Nick the Prick, your friendly neighborhood sociopath.

“For whatever reason, since you showed up in August, I’ve become the chick that dead people come to. Specifically, murdered dead people. I don’t exactly have a choice, you know. But you need to tell me how to go about looking for his corpse. Marner said last night they found a body, but it was a guy with Wozniak’s wallet, not him. So now what do I do?”

“Go to the places the guy is always at. Then branch out from say, his favorite restaurant, to the woods nearby. You have to find his haunts.” Ryan gave me a grin. “His haunts. Damn, that was a good one.”

Hilarious. “That’s your advice? I’m just supposed to wander around town looking for his body? I feel if it’s out in the open, someone will stumble across it and that will be that. But if it’s hidden, I’m screwed. I can’t fan out in the woods solo and search for it. And why do you think some other guy had his wallet?”

Ryan shrugged. “I don’t know.”

I sat up. “This was very helpful, thanks.”

“Look, I’m sorry, but I don’t know anything about the situation. Ask Marner.”

Why was he getting attitude with me? In some ways, I felt like Ryan had opened up some weird portal that allowed ghosts to attach to me like starfish. There had never even been an inkling of the paranormal in my life before he showed up in my kitchen, acting like nothing had ever happened. “Is there a specific reason you’re here?” I asked after a long pause. “Because I need to jump in the shower.” I glanced at my cellphone on the end table. “It’s already ten to eight. Damn it. This day is going to suck.”

“What, I can’t want to just hang out? I need a reason to be here?”

Brushing my hair back off my shoulders I gave him a look.

“Okay, fine, yes, I have a reason. I need you to vouch for me.”

“What does that mean?” Vouch for him with who?

He just pointed upward. “You need to sign an affidavit that I’m assisting you in solving your cases.”

“Are you for real? You just tried to fob me off on Marner for this one. You’re not helping me at all.” I stumbled into the kitchen, knowing this was a three cup of coffee kind of day. Okay, four. Don’t judge. Coffee is all natural. I opened the cabinet for my pricey but oh-so-tasty coffee.

“What kind of coffee is that?” Ryan asked, wrinkling his nose. “It smelled like chocolate.”

“It’s fair trade. Some kind of coffee meets chocolate miracle blend. It’s basically heaven on drip.” Waxing enthusiastic about the subject now, I bent over and sniffed the ground beans deeply. “I would pay twice as much for this.”

“Well, if you have money to burn.” Ryan leaned back against the countertop and crossed his ankles. “So you have access to this guy’s house, right? Did you look around the house at all? If it happened a couple of days ago, it’s going to smell by now.”

There was a pleasant thought. “I was all over the house. Except the basement. And honestly, I didn’t look in the closets and the bathtub.” The police hadn’t even gone in the house at all, but had stayed in the yard. “That was just yesterday though. I don’t know if enough time has passed for, uh, odor to occur.”

Ryan shrugged. “Depends on how much the air conditioning is cranked up. You might not have been able to tell. You might want to swing by the house again. Or have the guy tell you his passwords. Check his bank account and credit cards and see where he was last.”

“That’s a good idea.” I could do that. It wasn’t sneaking around empty warehouses or stumbling across fields strewn with body parts.

While my coffee brewed I answered Marner’s text from the night before informing me the body wasn’t Cezar.

Okay, will do. Do you know who the dead man is?

I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but it might help Cezar connect the dots if it was someone he knew.

Jake didn’t answer me, so I went for coffee creamer and a mug, ready to go the second the coffee was ready. “Why do people kill?” I asked Ryan. I didn’t mean it rhetorically. I was searching for motivation, which could give me an angle to start. “Like what’s the standard motivation for murder?” I was pretty sure we had had this conversation before but I was exhausted and I needed a recap.

“Love and money. Love covers the range of jealousy, love turned into hate, and wanting to impress someone. Money is simple. Just plain old greed.”

“This is definitely about money. I don’t think Cezar is inspiring jealousy in anyone.” Something nailed me in the back of the head right as I was going lift the coffee pot up and pour. “Ow, what was that?” I whirled around and saw Cezar. I had no idea what he had hit me with, but if history was repeating itself, most likely a penny.

“After everything I’ve done for you, you’re going to make fun of a dead guy? Geez, you don’t know who may or may not want to have a little Cezar love.”

My cheeks flushed. I hadn’t meant for Cezar to overhear my not-so-nice words. “Sorry.”

Cezar grunted and looked over at Ryan. “Who the hell are you?”

Ryan had pushed off the countertop and was standing straight. “You can see me?”

The best we had figured was if ghosts hadn’t known each other in life, they couldn’t see each other in death. It made me an annoying middleman. But this was interesting, because clearly Ryan and Cezar were staring each other down.

“Yeah, I can see you. What am I, blind?”

Ryan shot me a look like he understood now why I wanted to be rid of Cezar. “I’m Ryan. Who are you?”

“Cezar Wozniak. Kid’s been staging my lake house. How do you know her?” He sounded territorial about me, which was somewhat amusing.

Ryan didn’t look amused at all. He looked ticked off. “I’ve known her since she was nineteen. We’re very, very good friends.”

Cezar’s bushy eyebrows shot up. He gave Ryan a once-over then looked over at me. “You get around, kid.”

I rolled my eyes. “He really does mean just friends. We never dated.”

“Doesn’t mean you didn’t—" he made a whistling sound “—you know what I’m saying.”

“We didn’t,” I said flatly. Once my greatest regret (okay, that’s a lie, my Catholic guilt has caused me to regret many things in my life) the fact that Ryan and I had never been together was now a relief. That would have been an awkward history to have hanging around between us now, post-mortem.

“She’s not my type,” Ryan said with a shrug.

That wasn’t the first time he had said that, and I didn’t know why he felt the need to constantly beat a dead horse. He had also told me during an argument that I had a flat butt, and I have to admit, that got under my skin. Not everyone was J. Lo. Had he ever seen an Irish woman with a booty? No. It’s genetics. “He’s not my type either,” I said, just to drive home that it was a mutual choice.

“Yeah, cops are your type.”

Ryan snorted. “I’m a cop too.”

Cezar laughed, amused. But then he seemed to realize that could have greater implications. “Do I know you?”

“I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

“Do you know Big Eddie? Sammy the Salami?”

“No.”

Cezar ran through a list of about ten names. Ryan repeatedly shook his head.

Meanwhile, I had zoned out, having had the pleasure of my first sip of coffee, followed by my second and third.

“Hey, kid, pay attention!” Cezar yelled, snapping his fingers in front of my face.

So much for the relaxing beauty of my morning java. “What?” I asked, irritable. “This has nothing to do with me. I don’t know those people.”

“If you don’t remember where you were in the hours before you bit it,” Ryan said, “I told Bailey you should check your bank account and cellphone records. It might give you a clue as to your last location, and your body.”

“Here’s the thing—don’t you think if I was at my house when I woke up or whatever the hell you want to call it, we can assume I was at my house when I bit it? I mean, look at my outfit. I was down by my dock at the lake drinking a beer.”

“Then Bailey should check the woods around the house, assuming there are woods. Or the lake.”

“How am I supposed to check the lake?” This was all ridiculous. “I told you, Cezar. You’re probably in the water. We just have to wait for you to pop back up like a pool floatie.”

He looked morose. “You may be right. Damn it. I hate sitting around. If we can’t find my body, then you need to look into the money. We need to check the storage unit. But without my body, there’s no key, so you need to lift Eddie’s.”

We were back to that. “At the Schvitz?”

“Yeah.”

I thought about Cezar lying in bed beside me. His repertoire of pop music, diva high notes, and the Rat Pack songs of seduction while I prayed for quiet and sleep. I couldn’t repeat the night before without losing my sanity.

Weekend plans? One covert sweat bath infiltration operation, coming up.