Page 29 of Ghostlighted (Ghost Townies #2)

“Put it on your list, Jillie.” He shot me a sidelong glance and mouthed her very long list .

“We’ll talk about it later.” After she sprinted across the room and flung herself onto the window seat, Dominik gestured for me to step back out of sight.

His expression was a combination of defensive and embarrassed.

“Sorry. She’s just really excited to finally nest. While I was away at college, she and Bernadette moved three times in five years, trying to keep one step ahead of Bernadette’s ex.

Every time she thought she’d shaken him, he’d show up again, like some drug-resistant bacteria. ”

“He’s stalking her?”

“He’s extorting her. Trying to squeeze money out of her by threatening to sue for custody of Jillie.

” He snorted. “As if. No family court judge with half an ethic would let that guy near a kid, and now that I’m back, he’ll keep his distance again.

” He leaned closer and dropped his voice.

“Jillie doesn’t know. I probably shouldn’t have said anything, but I didn’t want you to judge her too harshly or think she’s some entitled brat. ”

Although terror for Ricky had all but paralyzed me, I managed a smile. “No worries there. She seems like a great kid.”

His shoulders dropped about an inch as tension visibly drained from him. “Thanks. She is. But we shouldn’t take up more of your time. Jillie,” he called, “let’s keep moving. We still have to stop at the bakery.”

“Okay.” Jillie made the word sound as though she was the furthest possible from okay.

“Drama llama,” Dominik said. “Comes with being eleven.”

Sure enough, when Jillie emerged from the library, she was dragging her feet as though they weighed a ton. Each. But then she spotted one of Gil’s catnip mice and bloomed like a morning glory.

“You have a cat ?”

“I do. His name’s Gilgamesh. Gil.”

She turned to her uncle. “Uncle Dom, can we get?—”

“Jillie. Slow your roll. We’ll talk about it after we’ve had more than ten minutes to settle in, okay?”

She faced me again, her clasped her hands under her chin. “Can I meet Gil? Please?”

“You can tomorrow. He’s not here right now. Visiting next door.”

“With Mrs. Vargas? Is she better now? We had dinner at the Taqueria last night and they said she was in the hospital.” She scrunched her face just as Dominik had. “I hope she doesn’t have to deal with that blond jerk right after she’s been sick.”

“Jillie!” Dominik said. “Manners.”

“What? It’s not like you thought he was nice, either.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Blond jerk? What— Oh, right. You were here when Liam arrived, weren’t you?”

Jillie bobbed her head emphatically, her nose still wrinkled. “Yeah, but I saw him before that. Like a week before. While Mom and Uncle Dom were talking to the B & B owners.”

I glanced between Dominik and Jillie. “But… Aren’t you the B & B owners?”

She gave the typical pre-teen seriously-can-you-believe-how-clueless-adults-are eye-roll. “Not ours . The one in Richdale .”

“There’s a B & B in Richdale?”

Dominik nodded. “The people who run it are really nice. They offered to let us pick their brains about the business.” He nudged Jillie’s shoulder with his elbow. “But we didn’t make Jillie listen to all the boring logistical talk.”

She gave another epic eye-roll. “I told you, Uncle Dom. I don’t mind.

I want to know this stuff. Jenkins House is gonna be my home, too.

” She grinned, a little slyly. “But the muffins were really good that morning, so I decided to pass on the meeting and just grill you both later. Plus, it gave me a chance to observe the breakfast service. And that ”—she punctuated the word with a jab of her finger toward me—“is where I saw the blond je— that guy. He rolled into the room and started complaining about everything. The coffee. The muffins. The bacon.”

Dominik frowned. “They didn’t serve bacon.”

“I know ,” Jillie said. “ That’s what he was complaining about.

He insisted that they make some for him.

” She peered up at the ceiling as though she expected a replay of the scene to unroll there.

“I’m not sure, but I think they had to send someone out to buy some, because the server disappeared for a while before I smelled bacon cooking.

That je— guy spent the entire time sitting at the only six-top in the room by himself and scrolling through his phone.

He even took a call once and talked really loud about legal stuff. ”

My jaw had slowly dropped as Jillie spoke. I snapped it with a click of teeth. “Let me get this right. Liam was in Richdale a week ago? Are you sure?”

Jillie nodded. “Positive. Plus, the server told me he’d already been there for two days and was making everyone’s life hell?—”

“Jillie,” Dominik said with the time-honored parental-equivalent warning tone.

“What? It’s what they said, and it’s not like we believe in that superstitious stuff, anyway. I think that’s why the owners were so glad to meet with you and Mom all the time. It gave them a chance to get away from him.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose, doing the mental math as heat built in my chest and behind my eyes. Nine days. Liam had been in Richdale for nine days.

Never mind what he was doing in Oregon during the last weeks of his final semester—class requirements could vary, after all. But Sofia maintained an entire suite for him and set a place at her table for him at every meal, yet he’d chosen to stay an hour away at a B & B, for Pete’s sake.

He’d been there when he’d chastised her for losing her phone. When he’d thrown shade at her for inconveniencing him during graduation week just by being in the same city. Hell, when she’d collapsed in the garden and been hospitalized .

Liam was Sofia’s only blood relative, and she’d financed his entire Harvard education in cash , yet he didn’t bother to show up even once to share a meal or give her a hug or just say hello.

If he’d been terrorizing the poor B & B hosts in Richdale for nine freaking days , he should have had plenty of opportunities to pop over to Ghost for an hour or two.

Granted, it might have cut into his busy bacon-eating/phone-scrolling time, but was it too much to ask for him to make the effort?

Ice rolled through me from throat to belly.

What if he had made the effort ? What if he’d made the effort more than once ?

Taryn told me that Ricky’s and my fingerprints were the only ones on the bottles and pill minder. But with two of the case’s compartments open, there was another set of prints that should have been there but were notably absent.

Sofia’s.