Read Online Gray Ghost by William G. Tapply - Free Book Online

mean?”
    “About what I just said,” she said. “Do you have an opinion?”
    “What do you want me to say?”
    “You could—you could tell me I’m wrong. You could argue. You could have some emotion. You could … fight for what you want.” She was still crying. Or maybe she’d stopped and had started all over again. “You think I’m doing the right thing?”
    “I’m pretty sure you’ve given it a lot of thought, honey. Nobody knows what the right thing is. Like you said, you consult your heart and make your best guess.”
    “Don’t you care?”
    Calhoun shook his head. “That ain’t really a question, is it?”
    Kate smiled at him through her tears. “There’s nobody like you, Stoney Calhoun,” she said. Then she turned and continued down the steps.
    Calhoun started to follow her.
    At the bottom of the steps she turned and looked up at him. “Don’t come down, Stoney. Please. Just stay right there and wave to me when I go.”
    “Sure,” he said. “Okay.”
    She swiped her wrist across her eyes. “I’ll see you at the shop tomorrow.”
    “I’ll be there.”
    “We’re still partners, don’t forget,” she said.
    He nodded. “Partners. You bet.”
    She got into her truck, backed around, and started up the driveway.
    Calhoun lifted his hand, and Kate flicked her headlights.
    He stood there on his deck until the sound of the Toyota’s engine faded away in the distance. Then he collected the knives and forks and plates and glasses from the table and took them into the kitchen.
    Calhoun was back out on the deck sipping coffee and looking at the stars and listening to some blues from the radio in the house. It was about an hour since Kate had left, and already he was feeling lonely and bereft. He wondered how he was going to work beside her, knowing she didn’t want them to be anything more than business partners.
    Ralph, who had a good sense for Calhoun’s moods, had curled up right under his feet, trying to give him comfort.
    When he heard the car engine out on the road half a mile away downshifting and turning into his driveway, he hoped it was Kate, coming back to say she’d changed her mind, or that it was the sheriff, saying he’d been wrong to be upset and wanted to be friends again.
    But Calhoun’s ears told him the engine wasn’t Kate’s truck or the sheriff’s Explorer. It was that damn Audi sedan, which meant the Man in the Suit had come back.
    Calhoun went inside, took his Remington twelve-gauge autoloader off the pegs, made sure it was loaded with Number 8 bird-shot, and went back out onto the deck.
    The Audi pulled into the place next to Calhoun’s boat where Kate had parked earlier. Its headlights went off, the driver’s door opened, and the Man in the Suit stepped out. He looked up at the deck, shielded his eyes against the glare of the floodlights, and said, “You can put that damn shotgun down, Stoney. I’m not here to rob you.”
    “Shoot all trespassers,” Calhoun said. “You’re the one who gave me that advice.”
    “And damn good advice it is,” said the Man in the Suit. “Except I’m not a trespasser. I’m your friend.”
    “Friend,” said Calhoun. “Not hardly. Well, come on up. It ain’t even midnight yet. Good time for a visit.”
    The Man in the Suit was wearing a gray suit with a pale blue shirt and a dark blue necktie and shiny black shoes. He always wore a suit, and it was generally gray, just like the rest of him. Gray, indistinct, utterly forgettable. He’d never mentioned his name to Calhoun, and Calhoun didn’t want to suggest he had any interest whatsoever in the man by asking. He just thought of him as the Man in the Suit. He’d been dropping in at odd, unexpected times ever since Calhoun moved to the woods in Maine. His mission was always the same: to try to determine what Calhoun remembered about the time in his life before he’d been zapped by lightning.
    Calhoun understood that he’d known things—secrets, he guessed,