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Before I could hang up, though, the detective asked, “What exactly did Father Francis say to you when he mentioned wanting to talk in private?”

My stomach tightened a little, even though I knew logically that this was what detectives did — they asked the same question in different ways, hoping it might jog some memory, might illuminate something that had been hidden.

Or maybe make the killer say something incriminating in an unguarded moment.

But I wasn’t guilty, and I didn’t have anything to hide…or anything new to say. “Just like I told you before,” I replied. “He said he wanted to talk to me about Hazel and that he wanted to wait until next week, when he’d have a chance to talk to me alone. That’s all.”

“Did you set up a time?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t know if he was thinking of waiting until I had a day off or what.”

“And what are your days off?”

My lips pressed together for a second, but I answered evenly enough, “Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Roz and I decided on that because I didn’t want to act like I was pulling rank and trying to get the weekends off or something.”

“I see.”

I wasn’t sure if he did, but certainly, there wasn’t anything sinister about not working those two days.

Well, unless he’d decided that I’d used those two free days to stay at home and plot how to bash Father Frank over the head when no one was looking.

Honestly, even if I’d had the motivation, I didn’t know whether I would have been physically capable of such a thing. I was neither tall nor short, standing at five feet five and three-quarters in my bare feet, and although I was in decent enough shape, it wasn’t as if I pumped iron at the gym or anything. The priest had had a good four inches on me at least, and he’d been almost wiry in build, the kind of guy I could imagine cycling or swimming or doing something else like that to stay fit.

Maybe I could have knocked him out cold if I’d gotten the jump on him, but I wouldn’t have given myself very good odds on that, either.

But Detective Ruiz didn’t ask any more questions, only wished me good luck with the bar reopening, and I set the phone down on the kitchen counter and stared at it for a moment.

He hadn’t sounded suspicious…but I knew he still was.

That night, I ordered takeout from the pizza place around the corner from Copper State Cellars and ate it in the family room, where I’d lit a small fire. Or rather, I put some logs in the fireplace and turned on the gas, which was much more my speed when it came to lighting fires. The house in Scottsdale had two fireplaces, but they were both the glass-encased gas kind with fake logs, the sort of thing that only required you to flip a switch.

Hazel had looked vaguely disapproving at the way I’d sat down on the couch to eat, but no way was I going to sit at that enormous dining room table by myself. The table in the kitchen was a little friendlier, but the room didn’t have a fireplace, and since the gray skies of this afternoon had given way to actual rain, I wanted to be somewhere cozy, someplace where I could try to pretend that I wasn’t all alone in this very big house with only a ghost and a dachshund for company.

Chauncey was thrilled by the pizza, and even more thrilled when I pulled off strings of mozzarella and fed them to him, along with the occasional bite of pepperoni.

“Not too much,” Hazel warned me. “It’s very rich, and dachshunds have sensitive stomachs.”

“I’ll be careful,” I said, and made sure the next bite was a little smaller.

The dog didn’t seem too thrilled by that restriction, but I could tell from the way he glanced over at Hazel that he knew her word was still law, even from beyond the grave.

I sat for a minute and watched the flames dance in the fireplace. Rain pattered on the windows, but I’d pulled the heavy curtains shut, so inside here it was all firelight and warmth, with a dog begging for pizza and the ghost of my great-aunt to keep me company.

Part of me wanted to relax into it, to let the stress and worry of the past twenty-four hours slip away, but I knew I couldn’t do that. Not with Father Frank dead and his unknown killer still out there.

When I was able to get into the bar — and when I could find a moment to speak to Mack in private, since I knew talking to thin air would raise a few eyebrows — I’d corner him and ask what he’d seen that night. And poor Father Frank, even if he couldn’t recall anything of the attack, might finally want to unburden himself and tell me what had been bothering him for the past few months, the secret he’d been unwilling…or unable…to share with Hazel.

“I’m going to figure it out,” I said aloud. Chauncey tilted his head, clearly wondering whether the declaration I’d just made had anything to do with pizza, but Hazel only looked at me with anxious eyes nearly the same dark gray as the stormy skies outside.

“Be careful, Lorelei,” she replied. Her tone was quiet enough, but I could still hear the worry in it. “Whoever did this might not be done.”

Maybe not. But I’d made up my mind. I might not have known what I was doing…might not have had the first clue how to go about finding Father Frank’s killer…but for the first time in longer than I wanted to admit, I felt as if I had a purpose, a reason for being here.

And that was all I needed for now.

Chapter 7

Hollow Words