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Chapter Thirteen

A very welcome message pinged Caleb’s phone early Monday afternoon.

Can we meet for dinner at my place? I’ll order takeout.

He honestly hadn’t expected to hear from Delia today, since he knew she had a full schedule, what with balancing both her mother’s clients and her own.

She hadn’t said exactly when her parents would be back from their anniversary trip to Hawaii, but it sounded as if they were going to be gone all this week as well.

Not the greatest timing in the world, considering how their vacation lined up with the tournament, but sometimes you just couldn’t do much about those sorts of coincidences.

At least Delia had reached out, though, which seemed to indicate she had something important to discuss. She was friendly, sure, but she also didn’t generally invite him to hang out just because.

Whatever her motivations, he wasn’t about to turn down the invitation.

Sure. I’ll bring the wine.

Her reply came back almost at once, so even if she wasn’t camped on her phone, she must have had it somewhere nearby.

Seven o’clock okay? I’ve got a house showing at five-thirty, and I have to go to the office to do some paperwork afterward.

It’s fine. See you at 7.

She replied with a thumbs-up, which seemed to indicate that was the end of the convo.

He didn’t mind, however. Now he had unexpected dinner plans with Delia, so he only had to worry about filling up the remainder of the afternoon.

Which wouldn’t be a problem, since he’d already decided to hit the poker tables again and keep that part of his brain sharp. He’d been watching reruns of past poker tournaments to get some more insight into strategy, but there was a lot to be said for actual in-person interactions.

But he had a few things he wanted to handle first. Although he’d gone back and forth with himself, trying to decide whether he should even bother with a private investigator, in the end, he’d figured it couldn’t hurt to have a professional take over his admittedly slapdash sleuthing.

Maybe the guy wouldn’t find anything at all, but at least then Caleb could tell himself that he’d tried and that it seemed his suspicions hadn’t amounted to much in the end.

Just Paul Reeves and Ty Carter, though. Delia hadn’t said a peep about Aaron Sanchez in her text, but Caleb had still been able to read between the lines.

He sort of doubted that Delia would have asked him to come over for takeout the very next night if her evening with Aaron had gone well.

No, they probably would have tried to go on another date right away.

That obviously hadn’t happened, though, and Caleb didn’t even bother to quell the sense of satisfaction the insight gave him.

He didn’t have any say as to who Delia dated — they were friends, but he knew doing something like that would be stepping way over the line — but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be happy when it seemed pretty clear she was going to stay safely single for now.

Since it was now a little past one in the afternoon, he figured he shouldn’t have any trouble reaching out to one of the private detectives he’d looked up the day before.

All of them seemed about equally qualified, so it came down to just putting his finger next to one of the names and hoping for the best.

The man he called, though — a guy named Jim Whitaker — sounded competent enough on the phone.

Caleb explained that he was about to enter into a real estate deal with Paul Reeves and Ty Carter, but he wanted to do his due diligence first and make sure they were on the up and up before he signed on the dotted line.

Jim Whitaker didn’t seem to have a problem with any of this. “I’ll look into them,” he said. “My rate is two hundred a day, plus expenses.”

“‘Expenses’?” Caleb repeated. Not that he couldn’t afford the man’s fees, but he didn’t want to be paying for the guy to be slipping five-dollar bills into a stripper’s G-string or something just because he’d decided to follow a lead at a “gentleman’s” club.

“Gas and food, mostly,” Jim replied. “I’ll provide receipts, of course.”

Well, that seemed reasonable enough. “Sounds good.”

“Then I’ll go ahead and email you my standard contract. Once that’s signed and you’ve paid the retainer, I’ll get started.”

“Got it.”

They ended the call, and only a moment later, Jim Whitaker’s contract landed in Caleb’s inbox.

Since he guessed it would be easier to read through and sign on his laptop, he went into his office, downloaded the document and looked it over, and then used the auto-sign feature in Adobe Acrobat to fill it out.

Afterward, all he had to do was pay the electronic invoice for the retainer — five hundred bucks, no big deal — and send the signed contract back to Jim.

A few minutes later, the man replied, saying he’d gotten everything and that he’d start his investigation tomorrow morning.

Very efficient. Quite possibly, he wouldn’t turn up anything at all, but now Caleb felt as though he’d done pretty much everything he could.

Now he just needed to wait.

That Monday was quiet enough, which made Delia happy.

Sure, she’d been busy from basically the second she set foot in the office until she walked out the door at a little past six, but it was a normal kind of busy, whether signing up new clients, looking over offers, or sending information on listings that had popped up over the weekend to those who still hadn’t found their dream homes.

No voices in her head, nothing to show that anything weird had occurred the night before.

Except it had. Or at least, she thought it had. With almost twenty-four hours elapsed since that strange moment when she could have sworn she’d heard Aaron Sanchez’s voice in her head, she was ready to say the whole thing had been nothing more than her imagination.

But she still wanted to talk to Caleb and see what he thought.

A few months ago, she would never have believed that Caleb Lockwood would turn out to be her sounding board and confidant.

And sure, there were plenty of matters she would prefer to talk over with Pru, but when it came to anything remotely supernatural other than Delia’s ghost-whispering sideline, Caleb was her go-to guy.

She also wanted to talk to him about what had happened at the home Ty Carter had summoned her to on Sunday afternoon. Yes, sending ghosts to the next plane so they wouldn’t hang around a house was kind of her bailiwick, but something about that encounter still felt not quite right.

Maybe Caleb could help her untangle all the weirdness of the past couple of days.

He rang the doorbell promptly at seven, and she hurried over to answer it.

Because she’d only gotten home a few minutes earlier, she hadn’t bothered to change out of her work clothes, although she’d switched her heels for a pair of much more comfortable flats.

Maybe one of these days, she’d say the hell with it and wear more practical shoes all the time, but her mother still wore three-inch heels to the office every day, and Delia wasn’t sure if she wanted to let her mom show her up.

“Come on in,” she told Caleb, who stepped into the foyer and waited as she closed the door. As promised, he held a bottle of wine, although since it was in a fabric gift bag sort of thing, she couldn’t tell what it was.

Probably a blend of some sort. They hadn’t decided what kind of takeout they wanted, so it made sense that he would have brought something to drink that could go with a variety of dishes.

“What’re you in the mood for?” she asked as they headed into the living room.

“Anything,” he said with a grin. “Lunch was a while ago, so I’m open.”

That made things easier. So far, it didn’t seem as if there was any particular type of cuisine he actively avoided, so she felt okay with suggesting a Mediterranean place that wasn’t too far away, one that offered DoorDash.

Caleb was amenable to that, so soon enough, they’d placed their order and then opened the bottle of wine he brought. As she’d guessed, it was a red blend from California, and the first sip told her it should go perfectly with their kabob and shawarma.

They sat down in the living room to wait for the food to arrive. After he’d sipped some wine, he said, “So, what happened?”

She blinked at him. Was he asking about her date?

“Something must have happened,” he said reasonably. “Or you wouldn’t have called me over to have takeout on a Monday night.”

“You’ve been here for takeout before,” she pointed out, but his mouth only quirked.

“True, but usually not after you’ve had such a full day at work. So I figure something must have gone down yesterday, something you didn’t want to wait to talk about.”

Well, he had her there. “A couple of things, actually,” she replied. “But now I’m starting to wonder if it was just my mind playing tricks on me.”

He drank some more wine before he responded. “From what I’ve been able to tell, you’re not the kind of person whose brain messes with them too much. So…what happened?”

Where to start? With that unexpected summons from Ty Carter, of all people…not that she’d known at the time who had sent the text…or the weird way she’d possibly heard Aaron Sanchez’s thoughts after what had seemed like an utterly prosaic first date?

She decided that talking about the ghost in the updated ’90s house was probably a better place to start, simply because that incident had occurred earlier in the day.

And also because it seemed much less fraught than discussing her date with Aaron, for whatever reason.

However, she’d barely opened her mouth to answer Caleb’s question when the doorbell rang.

“Let me get that,” she said, then set down her glass of wine so she could go to the door.