The other agent stood back with a congenial smile on his face as Kit showed an unprecedented amount of emotion. I felt it quake within her.

When she pulled back, her eyes shimmered with it as well. “I’m glad you’re doing so well.”

She meant it. It took me a moment to recover from the shock. Also, I was kind of lip-reading, so I was only guessing at what she said. That departed woman had a set of lungs that went on for days. Kit could have said, “I’m mad you’re going to hell,” but I didn’t know why she would say something like that to me. As far as I knew, she didn’t have that kind of insight.

She cleared her throat and straightened her shoulders. “This is Special Agent Guzman,” she said before physically turning me to face him like one would a child. I tried not to crack up.

It was hard to actually see Special Agent Guzman. The woman was in his face. Like in his face. Yelling. Screaming at him. But a hand popped out of her lower back, so I took it, praying it was the agent offering a greeting. It was hard to tell at that point.

“Nguyen,” Kit said as her partner in crime walked in. Agent Nguyen and I had never bonded.

The two male agents shook hands, then it was my turn. Agent Nguyen’s gaze landed on me. I waved a tight hello and got the feeling Nguyen was warming up to me. His smile held less acid than the ones he used to offer me, but that was all the warmth I’d get from him.

I chose a chair and started to sit down.

He pulled the chair out from under me and took it for himself.

Oh yeah. I was totally winning him over. The Discovery Channel had a special that said punking their friends was how the FBI genus showed affection. Their mating rituals were stranger still.

Kit and Guzman took a chair, too, so I walked around Agent Nguyen, who was only slightly glowering at me, and sat opposite, well, everyone. This wasn’t intimidating at all.

All three of them looked at me. Kit expectantly from behind her cup. Nguyen impatiently. And Agent Guzman curiously.

“So,” I said, clasping my hands together and probably speaking a tad louder than necessary, “I bet you’re all wondering why I called this meeting.”

Kit fought a grin while the new guy glanced at her in question.

“Davidson is a private investigator,” Kit told him. “She does some work for us from time to time.”

“You hire private investigators?” he asked, surprised.

“Hire would imply payment,” I corrected. “This is more of a volunteer thing.”

“Ah.” He nodded, pretending to understand why we were all sitting there.

“Mrs. Davidson recently came into some interesting information about your wife’s disappearance,” Kit said, and I had to force my smile to stay put.

Not that I hadn’t figured the woman yelling in his face was a skeleton from the guy’s closet, almost certainly a departed wife, but I wasn’t sure how Kit wanted this to play out. Did she suspect the guy of killing his wife? And since when did she call me Mrs. Davidson?

“I don’t understand,” he said, looking as perplexed as I felt.

Mrs. Davidson.

“Are you having her look into Mandy’s case?”

Mrs. Davidson.

Kit shook her head. “No, I think this information just kind of landed in Mrs. Davidson’s lap.”

It was one thing to know I went by Mrs. Davidson.

“How does information about a missing persons case in D.C. just happen to fall into a private investigator’s lap in Albuquerque, New Mexico?”

It was another thing entirely to hear it spoken aloud.

“Is there a reason you’re getting defensive?”

Maybe I should hyphenate.

“Is there a reason you think I should get defensive?”

Davidson-Farrow.

“You tell me.”

Mrs. Davidson-Farrow.

“Is that why I’m here?” The young agent bolted out of his chair, his movements sharp and on the ragged edge of violence. “Is that why they brought me here?”

Agent Nguyen had risen, too, readying himself to subdue his volatile colleague. But it was around that time that I noticed something else. The woman had stopped screaming. She was staring at me, almost as curiously as the agent had.

“Finally,” she said, crossing her arms, the knife resting across her rib cage. She tapped her toes and waited.

“Well?” Kit asked me, waiting as well.

I dug deep for a nonchalant smile, hoping for a cue from Kit. Any cue.

“Oh, my god,” the woman said, throwing her arms up. “She doesn’t know any more than anyone else.”

I focused on her. “Then tell me.”

“If I had a nickel for every time someone had new information on my case…”

She still had no idea I could see her, and she didn’t seem to give a rat’s ass that I was bright enough to sear the retinas from her eyes. Most departed noticed the fact that I hemorrhaged light like a trophy wife hemorrhaged money right off the bat. That usually led to them wanting to cross. I was the flame. They were the moths.

Maybe her antennae were broken.

“Tell me what happened,” I said softly. It was hard to miss the blunt-force trauma to her head, or the blood that had saturated her hair and pale pink robe.

Everyone had stopped and was staring at me, including the woman.

“Tell me what happened,” I repeated.

“You—” She took an involuntarily step forward and was now standing with her hips halfway inside the conference table. “You can see me?”

I nodded.

“How?” she began, but changed her mind. “Why would—? Wait, no.” She bent her head to think a moment, then looked back up. “What are you?”

I glanced around at our audience. “That’s hard to say at the moment.”

“Who is she talking to?” the agent asked.

Agent Nguyen sat back down and glared at his fingernails. Kit grinned and took another sip of her latte.

“Do you know where your body is?”

The woman blinked at me, turned to look behind her to make sure I was talking to her, then refocused on me and nodded.

“Do you know who killed you?”

“A psychic?” the agent asked, angrier than ever.

“Not a psychic,” Kit said, so calm and pleased with herself, I almost giggled. “A prodigy.”

“In our backyard. And, no, he didn’t do it,” the woman said before I could ask. Then she turned to her husband. “His psychotic, freakazoid sister drugged me, then bashed in my skull with my Miss Kentucky trophy. I can’t believe nobody noticed it was missing.”