Page 43 of Dead to Rites

When I entered the bar, I didn’t see anyone at first. Then I realized they must be in the back, since I heard voices coming from the kitchen.

Sure enough, Detective Ruiz and two uniformed officers were standing with Roz near the side door to the alley that separated us from our neighbors to the south. That door was splintered and hanging off its hinges.

It didn’t take an expert to figure out that someone had broken in.

“I want to check the rest of the building,” Detective Ruiz told me as I approached. “You can let me know if anything’s missing.”

Honestly, Roz would have probably been a better candidate for that job, but I could tell he wanted me to do it.

She nodded, as if giving me her blessing, so we went out to the bar, where I showed him that the till was empty. Likewise, the safe in the office didn’t appear to have been tampered with, and the bottles of wine and mead were untouched. The only sign of the break-in was the busted door.

Well, and one other thing.

In the back hallway, near the bathrooms, I saw some fresh scuff marks on the floor. It sure looked to me as if someone had tried to access the sealed-up door Roz had told me about.

Ruiz noted it as well, and wrote down something on the pad he carried in his jacket pocket.

“Do you know why someone would want to target the bar like this?”

“No,” I said, the only answer I could possibly give. I had no idea what the hell was going on.

“Did Father Frank or anyone else ever mention something to you about the bar’s history?”

There, I was on slightly shakier ground, just because I had heard a few things from Mack Donovan. However, I didn’t think it was a very good idea to say a ghost was my source of information, so I only replied “no” again and then waited.

Detective Ruiz gazed at me for a moment, eyes narrowed ever so slightly. But he only said, “You need to be careful. Whoever did this may not be done.”

Well, that was comforting…and way too close to the same warning Hazel had given me just the day before.

He went off to confer with Roz and the two uniforms, who I assumed were gathering what evidence they could from the splintered door.

As soon as he was gone, Mack materialized in the hallway a few feet away.

He looked furious, which surprised me. Most of the time, he seemed like the most laid-back ghost I’d ever met. And okay, so far I’d only met three, but he’d had the most time to get used to his current condition.

“Doll, I saw the whole thing,” he told me. “The intruder wore a hood. I could tell they were tall and slim, but not much more than that.”

“Man or woman?” I asked. “A tall, slim person in a hoodie could have been almost anyone.”

Mack shrugged, but I could tell he was frustrated by how little he’d been able to see. “Couldn’t tell for sure, doll, not with their hood up and their hands covered. The lighting wasn’t so great.”

No, I supposed it wouldn’t have been. We left one dim light on in the kitchen when the bar was closed, but that wouldn’t have been enough to provide any real illumination in the hallway.

“The intruder came in through the door in the kitchen,” Mack went on, obviously trying to be helpful. “Went straight back to that old sealed door — ran their hands along the seam, dug at the edges, like they were checking it over or hunting for something they might’ve left behind. Didn’t try to force it, though. It was more like they already knew it wasn’t going to open from this side. Then they walked through the bar like they were looking for something specific. Whatever it was, they didn’t find it, and they left the same way they came in. Whoever it was, they knew their way around the place pretty well.”

None of that sounded very good. However, I tried to keep my voice as calm as possible as I asked, “Did you see anything else?”

“Nope,” Mack replied immediately, which was sort of what I’d been expecting but found disappointing anyway. “That’s all I got.”

Which wasn’t a whole hell of a lot. I wasn’t about to give Mack grief for that, though. He’d tried. It wasn’t his fault that the intruder had made sure their identity was safely hidden.

I thanked him, and he disappeared.

About twenty minutes after that, Detective Ruiz and the two uniformed officers headed out, presumably having collected whatever evidence they needed. Roz looked over at me. Her expression was calm enough, but her dark eyes blazed with anger.

Father Frank appeared out of nowhere. “This is my fault.”

“No, it’s not,” I said aloud before I could think, and Roz stared at me as if I’d just lost my mind.