Eduardo was on the Internet, reading old newspaper articles about his own father’s death. He was at a loss to understand his own motivation for doing so; he had been telling the truth when he told Carl he wanted to move on from the tragic incident. He also wondered at his own feelings about the fate of his father’s killer. In truth he didn’t care whether Sandy Drake lived or died. However pictures of the man’s sister and elderly mother in an old edition of the New York Times reporting Drake’s trial told Eduardo that he had been right to disagree with his brother on the matter. If Drake died on Monday, it made no difference to Eduardo or to any of his family. However it would make a tremendous difference to Maggie Drake and Lucille Welch.

A further Google search of these two names revealed that Drake’s younger sister Lucille was recently widowed, leaving her with two small children to take care of. She had been twenty years old at the time of Alberto’s shooting by her brother; she must be thirty-four now. Her sons were five and three. Eduardo had been eleven when his father died, and he wondered whether it would have been better, worse or exactly the same if he had been as young as these two kids had been when they lost their dad. Carl had been twenty-eight. As for Sandy, he had been twenty-four at the time, so he must be thirty-eight now. What Eduardo had told Kylie was correct: Drake was about forty. He had practically grown up waiting to die.

His stomach suddenly decided to perform a somersault and Eduardo hastily shut down the computer. Then he sat in a state of catatonia until the shrill summons of the alarm bell brought him sharply back down to Earth.

Within minutes the Extreme Ghostbusters were speeding through Manhattan in the Ecto-1, Janine explaining their mission over the radio. “It’s a bit of a strange one,” she said apologetically, as though this was somehow unusual in a paranormal investigation. “I’m afraid it concerns a prisoner on… Death Row.”

“Death Row?” Kylie repeated incredulously. “You’re kidding!”

“No I’m not,” Janine returned. “As a matter of fact he’s up for execution on Monday. His name’s Alexander Drake.”

To Roland and Garrett the name meant nothing, but on hearing it Kylie froze. She had never heard Sandy Drake referred to by his full name before, but surely this was the same man. Eduardo was sitting on the front seat between her and Roland. Taking a deep breath, Kylie cautiously glanced sideways at him. She didn’t know how to feel when she saw that he was just sitting there, staring into space.

“He’s got a ghost,” Janine was saying. “It won’t let anybody go near him, except to take his meals, and whoever brings those is forced out of the cell straight afterwards. Sounds like some kind of polter-…”

“Stop the car,” Eduardo suddenly said, in firm yet somehow distracted tones.

“What?” queried Roland. “Why?”

“Stop the car.” It was Kylie who spoke this time. “Pull over in that side street.”

Roland was understandably confused, but Kylie had been adamant in her tone, so he did as he was told. Once the car had stopped, Eduardo and Kylie both scrambled out and disappeared a few yards down the street.

“What do you suppose that’s about?” queried Roland, turning in his seat to look at Garrett.

“I don’t know. Maybe one or both of them have some kind of problem with Death Row,” Garrett replied with a shrug.

“Well, don’t you?”

“I never really thought about it,” Garrett confessed. “I take it you’re an anti.”

“You bet I am,” Roland answered gravely.

“Still, there’s no excuse for murder, is there?”

As the debate continued inside the Ecto-1, Kylie stood with Eduardo on the darkened sidewalk, gripping onto his arms for fear of him toppling over. It was early summer and the heat in the car had been stifling; she was grateful to be outside, even though the atmosphere in the street smelt positively stagnant. As they stood in silence, Kylie peered up at Eduardo and looked searchingly into his dark brown eyes. She could not begin to imagine what must be going on inside his head.

“You don’t have to hold onto me like that,” he said at last. “I’m not going to fall over.”

“Sorry.” She didn’t let go.

“This can’t be a coincidence,” he went on. “You… you don’t suppose it’s…” He was unable to finish.

“Hopefully we’ll find out when we get there,” Kylie answered solemnly. “You don’t want to come with us… do you?”

“No.”

“Ok. I’ll be discreet. They don’t need to know it was him who…” She left the sentence hanging in midair.

“Right,” Eduardo agreed monotonously.

“What will you do?”

“I don’t know,” Eduardo shrugged. “Jump on a bus and go back to the Firehouse, I guess.”

“Ok.” Kylie craned her neck to plant a kiss at the base of his throat, and then she pulled away. “Are you sure you’ll be ok?”

“I’ll be fine, don’t worry about me,” he insisted, even managing to summon a faint smile.

“All right. See you later then.”

Kylie made her way back to the Ecto-1 and climbed into the passenger seat. It was no surprise to her to find that Roland and Garrett were debating the ethics of capital punishment.

“Still,” the latter was saying, “imagine if somebody had killed… I don’t know… your brother. Wouldn’t you want him dead?”

“It wouldn’t bring your brother back,” Kylie pointed out, her tone dry. “Eduardo’s not coming.”

“Why?” asked Roland, as he started up the car’s engine.

As there was no way she could tell the truth in any way, shape or form, Kylie had to answer with an outright lie: “He… thought one of us should be at the Firehouse if Kevin took the kids there. We’ll be all right on our own, won’t we?” she added in almost challenging tones.

“Um… sure,” Garrett shrugged, secretly suspecting that there was more to this than met the eye. For one thing Eduardo’s sudden decision to vacate the car had been most unorthodox. Maybe Roland was right: maybe Eddie just had some kind of problem with Death Row. Nevertheless Garrett made a mental note to keep an eye on the situation and the effect it had on Eduardo.

* * *

Bearing in mind his suspicions, Garrett was faintly surprised to see Carl Rivera talking in hushed tones to one of the prison guards. He aimed a furtive glance in Kylie’s direction. She did not seemed surprised to see Carl, but her eyes were narrowed as though in suspicion, or even resentment.

Carl spotted her, apparently made some apology to his companion and then turned and looked expectantly at Kylie, arms folded across his chest. Curiouser and curiouser, Garrett thought to himself as Kylie grudgingly approached the waiting police officer. Then he silently rebuked himself for quoting “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”: a book that he had not read in at least fifteen years.

Whenever Kylie stood next to someone of Carl’s proportions she felt about six inches high. However she determined not to lose in a battle of wills against her would-be brother-in-law. Size, she told herself, was not an issue.

“What are you clowns doing here?” Carl demanded hotly.

“I’m not sure I should tell you,” Kylie said evenly.

“I assume Eddie told you.”

“Yes,” Kylie replied. Then she gestured towards Roland and Garrett and went on, “But they don’t know anything about it. As far as they’re concerned, Sandy Drake is no different from all the other prisoners here.”

“Do you have any idea what’s going on with him?” Carl asked grudgingly.

“We haven’t seen him yet, but it sounds to me like someone doesn’t want him dead.”

“Like who?”

“I don’t know like who. I don’t know anything about this guy. It could be his great uncle Julius for all I know.”

“Well can you put a stop to it?” demanded Carl. “That guy dies on Monday, even if I have to kill him myself.”

Kylie furrowed her brow and looked up at him, regarding him strangely. Finally she asked, “What are you doing here anyway? I wouldn’t have thought they’d tell you about Drake’s welfare.”

“Yeah, well. They did, and here I am. Where’s Eddie, anyway? Couldn’t face it?”

“Never you mind.”

“Yo Ky!” Garrett called, from a short distance away. “This guy’s taking us to see Drake. You coming?”

Kylie swivelled round to see that her two companions were being led away by a prison guard. Looking at the guard from a distance, she did not think he was the same one that Carl had been talking to. Well, why should he be? That place was probably crawling with prison guards. She was about to follow, but Carl spoke to her again.

“Go on,” he said coldly, “go and sort this thing out. I don’t want to have to wait around any longer.”

“Have you just spent the last fourteen years waiting for this guy to die?”

“It’s not as simple as that, but if that’s the way you wanna put it... Look Kylie, we don’t need to get into a debate about this now. I don’t really care what you think about all this. Just go and do your job, ok?”

Kylie’s eyes narrowed with anger, and she had to press her lips together to prevent a tirade of abuse from pouring out of her mouth. She turned away from Carl a second time and stalked off towards the door her two friends had been taken through. As she walked, she counted to ten in her head and then gave herself a mental shake to calm her nerves. Carl had said quite openly that he didn’t care what she thought. Well, she reasoned, she didn’t care what he thought either.

Even so, she resented being spoken to like that by anyone.

* * *

Conchita was usually happy to frolic with Lucy for hours on end. Despite her brutal size, the Labrador knew her own strength and always took care to play gently with small children. Therefore she walked round in circles backwards with the utmost care in the rather dubious game of dragging around a sizeable stick by the teeth, the other end of which Conchita clung to with her fat little fingers.

Kelly watched with furrowed brow to express her doubt about whether this activity should be allowed to continue. Conchita was laughing hysterically, but her carer couldn’t help but wonder what effect the rough wood was having on her childish hands, and the grass on her bare brown knees. Kelly inclined her head towards her companion and asked, “Do you think that’s safe?”

Kevin shrugged and said, “Lucy wouldn’t let anything happen to her.”

Kelly held Lucy’s incapacitated lead in her hand and therefore had lost any control she may once have had over the independent minded dog. She wondered if Kevin was crediting the playful animal with too much intelligence. It was clear that he wasn’t paying much attention to Conchita, as he was shaking Rose’s pram by the handle in an attempt to stop the baby from grizzling.

“What do you want?” Kevin asked his younger cousin pleadingly. “She’s not hungry, she doesn’t need changing…” He racked his brains in search of other possibilities.

“Maybe she just wants to be held,” suggested Kelly, leaning over the pram to lift the baby into her arms. “You know it’s probably quite hot in that thing.”

Kevin had no idea where Kelly had acquired such expert baby handling skills, but she really was very good at it. She held Rose expertly in her arms and swayed her to and fro, trying to pacify the unhappy baby with, “Come on Rose, you wouldn’t cry if you knew what a great life you had.”

Within moments Rose had stopped crying, and began staring at her surroundings in stupefied silence. However she soon tired of this, and began to gurgle delightedly as she caught a clump of long, fair hair in her podgy little fist.

“Ow, Rose, stop that,” laughed Kelly, vainly trying to disentangle the baby’s tiny, fragile fingers from strands of her own hair. Then a sudden movement from her dog caught her attention, and she saw the massive animal advancing upon a small, frightened looking blond-haired boy.

“Oh ssh… shoot!” she exclaimed, looking frantically around for somewhere to unload the baby in her arms (oddly enough the pram did not occur to her as a possibility). “Lucy, no!”

Before the anxious little boy could feel any more like one of the unfortunate victims in “The Hound of the Baskervilles” Kevin sprinted towards the excitable dog and managed to grab hold of her collar. Lucy jerked to a halt, surprised by the sudden force pulling her back, and then turned to look piteously at her captor.

“Don’t you look at me like that,” scolded Kevin. “We’ve warned you before about terrorising kids.”

A blond woman, presumably the boy’s mother, was rushing towards them with a smaller child in tow. By this time Conchita had caught up with Kevin and the impulsive canine, and she sensed that trouble was afoot for poor Lucy. Indignant on the dog’s behalf, she was quick to leap to the defence of her animal friend.

“She wouldn’t have hurt you,” she told the boy who had so narrowly escaped a coating of dog drool.

“I’m really sorry,” Kevin said to the mother as she approached and put a possessive hand on her child’s shoulder. “She really likes kids, and she’s very excitable, but she doesn’t usually do this.”

Kelly approached with Rose’s pram hurriedly hooked Lucy’s lead onto her collar in an attempt to look like a responsible dog owner. Talk about locking the stable door after the horse has bolted, she thought to herself.

“That’s all right,” the mother said to Kevin with a smile that flooded both him and Kelly with relief. There were two basic ways in which people might react to an encounter with an over-excited dog: badly or well.

“She really is harmless,” Kelly put in, and then she noticed the chocolate bar in the small boy’s hand. “I uh… think she was after your candy rather than you.”

While Kelly continued to apologise profusely, Kevin studied the woman closely. There seemed something not quite right about her. She looked pale and drained; he could almost see a rain cloud hovering over her head. She looked middle-aged, well over forty, which Kevin supposed she might be; but her children’s ages seemed to indicate that this was unlikely.

The older child, who had had the close encounter with Lucy, seemed to be over the shock now, and was even allowing Kelly to introduce him to his attacker. The younger boy had started talking to Conchita. With a slight lisp that was cute in one of his age he asked her, “Is that baby a boy or a girl?”

“A girl,” Conchita answered matter-of-factly. “She’s my sister.”

Looking up at Kevin the small boy asked, “Is that your daddy?”

“Yes,” Conchita replied definitely, not yet tired of tired of that particular game. However she may have answered more sensitively if she knew this boy had a special and personal interest in daddies.

On hearing this snippet of the kids’ conversation, the boys’ mother turned her attention away from Lucy and looked questioningly at the two teenagers.

“Um… she’s not really our daughter,” Kevin explained hastily. “It’s just a game. She’s my cousin.”

“What’s your name?” demanded the younger boy, jabbing a threatening forefinger at Conchita’s chest.

“Conchita,” the girl answered proudly. It had taken her quite a long time to wrap her tongue around her own name.

The boy pulled a face. “That’s a stupid name,” he said disapprovingly.

“Billy!” scolded the boy’s mother. “That’s very rude.”

“Don’t worry,” Conchita assured the woman with a sweet smile. “I can be rude back if I need to,” and as though to prove it she stuck her tongue out at Billy.

“Chita!” Kelly laughed. She crouched to Conchita’s level and twisted her left ear slightly, which magically caused the little girl’s tongue to pop back into her mouth.

“This one’s Rose,” Kevin gestured towards the pram, in which his younger charge now lay sleeping. “I’m Kevin, and this is Kelly. You already know Lucy.”

Lucy barked indulgently at the sound of her name and then flatly refused to stop. Kelly smiled an apology and then led the noisy animal a few yards away to allow the introductions to continue.

“I’m Lucille,” the blond woman smiled politely. Then she put a hand on her older son’s head and said, “This one’s Andy. He’s a little shy.”

“I’m not shy,” Billy said to Kevin in accusing tones.

“I noticed,” Kevin returned with a crooked smile at Billy.

“I’m sorry,” Lucille said, sounding suddenly jumpy, “but we were on our way to see someone. We’d better get going.”

“But Mommy!” Billy protested. He had been hoping that Kelly would introduce him formally to the dog.

“But nothing,” his mother returned flatly. “We’ve got to go and see Grandma.”

“There you go, you’ll like that,” Kevin smiled at the two boys. “Maybe we’ll see you around sometime.”

Lucille smiled politely, Billy and Conchita pulled faces at each other and Andy tugged at his mother’s sleeve. The two boys waved goodbye to Lucy as she was led back to the group by Kelly, having calmed down considerably. However she soon started barking again when she saw that her new friends were leaving.

“Did she seem ok to you?” Kevin asked Kelly, once Lucy and Conchita were occupied again.

“Who?”

“The Mom. Lucille, she said her name was.”

“How do you mean?” asked Kelly.

“I don’t know. I just got the impression there was something wrong.”

Kelly hadn’t noticed, and she wondered at Kevin’s concern. He must be even nicer than she had thought, she decided, if he cared so much for the well being of strangers.

* * *

Kylie was understandably more than a little curious to get a look at this Sandy Drake. She wondered if Eduardo had ever seen him outside newspapers, and seriously doubted that he had.

Their guide stopped outside one of the prison cells, nodded towards it and said, “This is his cell.”

Roland ran his PKE meter up and down the length of the door. “Wow, there’s something here all right,” he observed. Then politely he asked, “I wonder if we might go in?”

The prison guard shrugged, brought to hand his vast set of keys and said flatly, “You can try.”

He opened the door to reveal a man of medium build with blond hair, dark blue eyes, about two days’ worth of stubble and a worn complexion. Kylie narrowed her eyes and looked him up and down carefully. He was sitting up on his bed, seemingly engaged in the task of doing absolutely nothing. Apart from the drained look on his face, this Drake just looked like an ordinary guy. Of course there was no reason why he shouldn’t look that way; murderers were only human after all, Kylie reflected. Still, she felt somehow cheated at not being faced with the wild-eyed gibbering lunatic of her imagination.

Drake squinted at the logo on Garrett’s left arm and said expressionlessly, “Ghostbusters, huh?”

All three of his visitors were at a loss to know what to say. How should one address a convicted killer? Garrett glanced up at his two colleagues. Roland looked shell-shocked and Kylie looked very distracted. Neither of them was going to break the ice, and he was damned if he could think of anything to say. Best just to get on with the job, he decided.

He pushed his wheelchair forward, but found that his way was blocked by an invisible force in the doorway. It felt like a solid wall, yet there was nothing there that was visible. Obviously this was some kind of magical force field. Garrett gave Drake his best frown and demanded, “Are you responsible for this?”

Drake shook his head. Kylie was studying him closely, and noticed that he was making no attempt to be either friendly or hostile. He seemed to be in a constant state of acceptance, not even lifting an eyebrow at anything that happened or anything that was said. For a brief moment she felt sorry for him. It couldn’t be nice waiting to die. This guy had two days to live. It was an unnerving thought.

“Someone’s protecting you,” said Roland, his tone etched with disapproval. “Who?”

Drake shrugged. “How would I know?” He didn’t look any of them in the eye.

Roland looked at Kylie and said, “Whoever’s protecting him could be dead or alive. I don’t see any way of finding out who it is.”

“Do you want to go inside?” Kylie asked, holding her proton gun at the ready. With a great effort she had turned her head to look at Roland, but very soon her gaze was focused back on Drake.

“I don’t know.” Roland pursed his lips. “I wonder if there’s anything in there we can take to Egon?”

“Yo Drake,” Garrett addressed the prisoner. “Have you got anything there that seems particularly haunted to you?”

With total compliance, Drake let his tired blue eyes circulate the room. With the same expressionless tone he said, “Um… you can have my shoes if you like. I find them under the bed every morning, but I don’t put them there.”

“That’ll do fine,” Roland approved. He turned to the guard. “May we?”

The guard nodded and with slow, deliberate movements Drake removed the regulation black lace-up boot from his right foot, then his left. In a trance-like state he then levered himself off the bed and made for the door where he passed one hand out into the corridor, holding the shoes out in offering.

In a similar trance Kylie took the boots in both hands and then watched as Drake backed towards the bed. In the instant that she had accepted his shoes from him Kylie had felt strange. That was actual physical contact… well almost. She had accepted an offering from her children’s grandfather’s killer. As she mulled the thought over in her mind an unpleasant chill ran up her spine – but despite all this the man seemed so ineffectual… and so chillingly vacant, as though his mind was constantly on other matters. She supposed that was the effect Death Row had on people – or at least on him – but still it was hard to imagine him shooting anybody.

“I’ve recorded the PKE readings of this force field,” Roland’s voice cut into her thoughts. “We can go now.”

By this time Drake had noticed the strange looks Kylie was giving him, and in the last instant that she saw him his dark, watery eyes locked onto hers. They seemed almost questioning, and somehow sad. In a way it was a relief to Kylie to see some trace of feeling left in the stranger.

Then the door slammed shut on Sandy Drake and the prison guard said roughly, “Look, Drake should die on Monday, but at this rate that doesn’t look much like happening. Can you people do anything about it?”

“We’ll take everything we’ve got back to headquarters,” Roland explained in professional tones, “and see if we can find out what’s causing it. Once we’ve figured out a way to stop this, we’ll give you a call to tell you we’re coming over.”

Carl was waiting for them outside. Kylie saw him, told herself to stay cool and approached him. He lowered his eyelids to look at her and demanded coldly, “Well?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“Can you get this thing sorted out in two days?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“Don’t play games with me,” Carl shot back angrily. “I want to know as soon as you get results.”

Kylie merely shrugged. Five minutes inside that dreadful place had left her drained. Thinking about it, she was surprised that fourteen years in there had not affected Sandy Drake more than it had. She never wanted to go back there. Maybe she would boycott the case. She and Eduardo could spend time with their children instead. Perhaps she could take an extra shift at the nail salon while the others were trying to exorcise Drake’s cell.

“Well?” snapped Carl.

“Let’s just wait and see, huh?”

“I want this guy dead by Monday afternoon, Kylie.”

“Well Carl, that’s not really up to me,” Kylie returned quietly. “See ya,” and she turned to rejoin her companions.

* * *

Eduardo had gone straight to the Firehouse and wasted no time in telling Egon that he was not prepared to work on such a controversial case. Egon had said that he understood, though his scientific mind hadn’t even considered the ethics of the thing, which he assumed was Eduardo’s reason for his abstinence.

To pass the time Eduardo attempted the crossword puzzle in the nearest paper to hand; he found it suitably distracting to try and interpret clues through green areas that indicated Slimer had already attempted the puzzle himself. However it was too difficult for him to complete alone, so Eduardo enlisted the help of Janine, and between them they managed to solve every clue except for seventeen-down.

After this little adventure, however, Eduardo’s thoughts inevitably turned back to Sandy Drake. Kylie would be with him quite possibly at that very moment. He didn’t much like the idea of those two together: his father’s killer and the woman he loved. He wondered what Kylie had thought when she first set eyes on Drake; how she had felt, and whether she had wanted to say anything to him. He was also curious about the man himself. Doubtless Kylie would tell him everything she could about Sandy Drake if he asked her, but could he bring himself to ask her?

His spirits were lifted when the main door to the Firehouse clicked open on the floor below and a dog started to bark incessantly. Eduardo went straight down to the foyer in no doubt as to who the visitors were. He had come to know Lucy well enough to recognise her deep, throaty shouts of excitement anywhere.

Lucy, still hyper from the long walk with her favourite playmate, was the first to greet her host. She strained the leash as far as it would go and jumped up onto her hind legs, pressing two filthy paws against Eduardo’s chest.

“Down Lucy,” Kelly commanded sternly, though she was not surprised when the dog ignored her. She was still holding onto Rose’s pram with one hand; Kevin was lovingly holding the other.

“I don’t mind,” Eduardo said, allowing the dog to lick both of his hands.

Tugging hard on the lead to encourage the dog back towards her Kelly replied, “I know you don’t mind, but a lot of people do, and I ought to make some kind of attempt to stop her from doing it.”

“Lucy never listens to anything you say,” Conchita pointed out.

The small girl’s bronzed hands and arms were streaked with mud and earth; her knees and shins were coloured green from the grass; her lovingly prepared ponytail had sidled close to her left ear and now consisted largely of twigs and blades of grass as well as her own hair. Beneath her pert little mud-streaked nose a dazzling smile formed dimples in her smooth brown cheeks and her green eyes shone with amusement. Every father believes that he has the most beautiful daughter in the world; Eduardo was no exception.

“Looks like you’ve had fun,” the doting father observed, lifting his little girl clear of the ground. She wrapped her chubby arms around his neck in a crushing embrace and said with a giggle, “Kelly got yelled at by one of the park people.”

“Yeah, that was funny, wasn’t it?” Kelly returned with dry humour, giving Conchita the wide-eyed crooked-mouthed look that always made her laugh.

“Oh yes?” Eduardo’s glance sidled down to Lucy, who was now standing still but looked ready to go berserk at a moment’s notice. “What did she do?”

“Nothing much,” Kelly defended her beloved pet. “She just peed on somebody’s kid, that’s all, but if his mother will dress him up as dull as a lamppost she has to expect dogs to think he is one.”

Conchita started giggling again, and Eduardo felt compelled to join in. His older daughter thought a lot of things funny and her laughter was infectious. Soon Kevin and Kelly were shaking with laughter as well, and Lucy’s insane barking had started up again.

“God, listen to us,” Kelly said, once she had recovered. “It’s like the end of ‘Scooby-Doo’ or something.”

“Is Mommy here?” Conchita asked, once her giggling fit had tailed off.

“No,” Eduardo replied, “she’s out on a call.”

Conchita pulled a face and demanded, “Why are you here then?”

“Because, mi amada, I decided to sit this one out. Is that all right with you?”

Conchita shrugged, and then wriggled to indicate that she would like to be released. Eduardo obliged and set his daughter down on the floor. For the sake of appearances she dusted herself off, flashed her father a facetious grin and then started pulling on one of Lucy’s ears.

“Doesn’t she mind that?” Eduardo asked Kelly as he turned his attentions to his younger daughter, who stared bemusedly up at him from inside her pram.

“Who, Lucy? No, she loves it,” Kelly assured him. “She lets Conchita do whatever the hell she wants.”

“A bit like you really, Eduardo,” Kevin remarked dryly, watching with faint amusement as Eduardo lifted Rose from the pram and she immediately took a strong grip on his goatee.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Eduardo asked with a frown, his speech slightly impaired by the limited control he had over his lower jaw.

“Well look at the state of her,” Kevin replied, invoking another torrent of giggles from his young cousin. “You don’t even mind. I’d never have been allowed to get away with that.”

“Me neither,” Eduardo said solemnly. That was the main reason Conchita was allowed to get as dirty as she liked.

“Anyway, I’d better get this one home,” put in Kelly, giving a slight tug on Lucy’s lead. “You’ve excited her too much, Chita, and I think it’ll take at least a dozen dog biscuits to calm her down.”

“The park guy excited her,” Conchita defended herself, letting go of Lucy’s right ear with some regret. This was certainly true: Lucy had indeed been most intrigued by the park official’s wagging finger. As Conchita had so cruelly pointed out at the time, it did resemble a bratwurst (or rather “one of those fat sausages”), but fortunately Kevin had been quick enough to stop the dog from testing its flavour.

“By the way,” Kelly addressed Eduardo, as she and Kevin began to make their departure. “Next time you take her out look out for a kid called Billy. I think he kinda likes you, Chita,” she added with a mischievous wink.

“He does not!” Conchita objected with a pout. “He said I had a stupid name.”

“Really?” Eduardo asked rhetorically. “I hope you told him where to get off.”

“Well,” Conchita said thoughtfully, “I did stick my tongue out at him, but then Kelly put it back in again.”

Eduardo couldn’t help but wonder, as he took his two children inside the main building, whether Conchita genuinely believed she had as little control over her own tongue as she imagined. Using her nose and earlobes as buttons and levers, it was possible to make the little pink muscle do more or less anything one wanted. It seemed a harmless enough game, but Eduardo supposed it was just possible that enough pulling and tugging on the child’s ears and nose might have a similar effect on her tongue to that of the bell on Pavlov’s dogs.

It was Saturday; so Eden and John had spent most of the day in the Firehouse, save for the food-shopping trip Egon had taken them on earlier. It was a beautiful day, cool for the time of year, and Eduardo thought about offering to take them to Central Park – but where would that leave Conchita? She had just spent nearly three hours in the park and would not want to go back; and leaving her alone with Egon, Janine and Slimer would just be cruel.

Still it seemed a shame to waste the fine weather, so Eduardo took the four kids up to the roof with a bumper sized bag of Doritos and Eden’s copy of “Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland”. They were about halfway through the book; the twins were enjoying it immensely, and so was Conchita – despite he very tender years. Kylie and Eduardo both took this as a sign of genius in their daughter. Most children her age that they knew seemed to prefer books sporting colourful pictures of Barney the Dinosaur and other such dubious characters.

* * *

It was almost exactly the same instance in which Kylie and Eduardo both remembered that Kylie was working a shift at the salon that afternoon. Sadly there was no way that either of them would come to know this astonishing coincidence, as they had been almost exactly three miles apart at the time.

Roland dropped Kylie off at the salon on the way back to the Firehouse, and Kylie bitterly regretted that she would hardly have seen anything of her children that day. Her lie-in that morning had given them about twenty minutes together before the kids were taken out by their very kind cousin, and this shift at the salon would allow her to get home just in time to put Conchita to bed, and to see Eduardo leave to earn his second income. Whether Rose would be asleep when she got back was purely down to chance.

* * *

Roland drove Garrett, Garrett’s wheelchair, Eduardo, Conchita, Rose and Rose’s pram to their respective homes at five thirty that evening. The wheelchair and the pram between them left very little space for people, but they managed somehow.

Eduardo had been looking forward to a pleasant evening with his children and cat until he had to leave for work shortly before eight o’clock. However there was no such luck. Dragging the folded pram up the stairs with Rose on one arm, he was faintly put out (though not particularly surprised) to find his mother waiting for him outside the front door of his apartment.

“Hey Mama,” Eduardo smiled weakly, setting the pram down on the ground and fumbling in his pocket for a key. He addressed his mother in English for Conchita’s sake. The energetic child had been running up and down the stairs to the fifth floor all the time Eduardo had been struggling up them with the pram, and now stood impatiently by the door. Of course she understood that using the elevator was quite out of the question, as her sister seemed to have some kind of early onset claustrophobia, and burst into tears whenever she was taken into a lift. Still Conchita felt there was no reason for her father to be quite so slow.

“I will take her,” Carlota offered, holding out her hands for Rose. Eduardo passed the baby to her with gratitude and unlocked the door.

“How long have you been waiting?” he asked.

“Not long, not long,” Carlota replied airily. “I have been talking to your Mr. Stillingfleet.”

A fresh torrent of giggles escaped from Conchita’s mouth. She liked the kind elderly man who lived across the hall well enough, but privately she preferred to call him “Mr. Stinking Feet.”

“Where is Kylie?” Carlota demanded.

“Working.”

“Ah yes, her fingernail job,” Carlota nodded in understanding. “I suppose it puts the food on the table.”

“About a third of it anyway,” Eduardo muttered.

The small living room was filled up with clutter, some of which Eduardo half-heartedly gathered into his arms on the way to the kitchen. Carlota was bound to want coffee; she always did. Pagan was dozing on the sofa and snoring slightly. Since reaching middle age he had become something of a docile creature, and was not pleased when Carlota disturbed the sofa cushions taking a seat next to him. He opened one eye, yawned and then pointedly turned his back to her.

“Conchita, you are a mess,” observed Carlota, eyeing her older granddaughter with deep disapproval. Rose was seated on her lap, hardly the picture of cleanliness herself, but at four months of age she could not very well be blamed.

“Kevin and Kelly took me to the park,” Conchita said by way of explanation. Then she added, “And Lucy.”

Carlota turned up her nose, recognising the name only too well. She had met Lucy once and ended up facedown in a children’s sandpit. It was not an experience she particularly wanted to repeat.

“Kettle’s on,” Eduardo said brightly, re-emerging from the kitchen. He took the seat on the other side of Pagan and smiled as Conchita climbed into his lap.

“Why do you let her get in such a state?” Carlota asked.

“She’s just a kid, Mama,” Eduardo defended his daughter, idly picking blades of grass and clumps of earth from Conchita’s tousled ponytail. “I’ll um… put her in a bath later.”

Conchita wrinkled her nose. As far as she was concerned, bathing was a reasonably enjoyable way to pass the time, but she could never go more than one day at a time without being made to do it. This, frankly, was too often for her liking.

When Kylie arrived home at quarter-to-eight Eduardo was giving Conchita the promised bath. Carlota was in the sitting room, holding Rose’s legs in the air by the ankles with one hand and applying a sprinkling of baby powder with the other.

“Um… hi,” said Kylie, favouring Carlota with an even weaker smile than the one the old lady had received from her son.

“Hello,” Carlota returned, pleasantly enough. “How are you?”

“Oh…” The smile was fixed. Try as she might, Kylie could not shift it. “Can’t complain.”

There was nothing fundamentally wrong with Carlota Rivera. She was a good woman who loved her sons and her grandchildren, and she mourned the loss of her husband every day. However she maintained old-fashioned values that clashed with Kylie’s own ultra-modern ideas, which was why it was not always easy for the two women to talk to each other.

Fortunately they did not have to continue their conversation for long. Within moments Eduardo emerged from the bathroom, his jeans and t-shirt sporting several damp patches. He carried Conchita in his arms; she was wrapped in a towel, her hair clung damply to her face and, as usual, she was giggling incurably.

“Hey.” Eduardo’s smile broadened when he saw Kylie; he crossed the room and kissed her on the cheek. “How was work?”

“Not too bad.”

“Good. Lucky you came back now,” Eduardo chatted on, handing Conchita over to her mother. “I have to go to work.”

“Then I’d better go too,” Carlota tactfully decided. “Kylie, would it be all right if I came by tomorrow?”

“Sure,” smiled Kylie, noticing Carlota’s courtesy and appreciating it. “Come at lunchtime and we’ll bunk off work.”

She felt Conchita slipping from her grasp, so she hoisted the child up and repositioned her arms under the towel. Eduardo kissed them both and said to Conchita, “Goodnight sweetheart.”

“ ’Night Daddy,” Conchita smiled sweetly. Then she turned her head towards her grandmother and said, in the same amiable tones, “G’night Yaya.”

“Goodnight baratija,” Carlota returned fondly, dropping a kiss on Conchita’s forehead before she was shown out by her son.

Carlota had already tucked Rose up in her cot under several blankets, and to Kylie’s surprise the baby’s eyelids looked heavy. She removed one of the blankets with a reproachful click of the tongue, as it was a hot night, and then carried Conchita through to her own bedroom. Here she made a game of roughly towelling her daughter dry before pulling a nightshirt over her head and tucking her into bed.

Worn out by her exertions in the park earlier in the day, Conchita’s eyelids suddenly became heavy and her energy spurt was over. She was already falling asleep, and would not need a bedtime story, so her mother merely kissed her and said, “Sweet dreams, honey.”

Vaguely Kylie wondered what “baratija” meant. Her household had no use for a Spanish dictionary for obvious reasons, but her translator was no longer there, and she would never remember to ask him about it when she saw him. His shift at the bar finished at midnight, and with any luck she would be asleep when he got home.

Kylie checked on Rose once more and was glad when she saw the baby sleeping soundly. Then she looked at the clock on the mantel. It was eight fifteen. She had only been awake for ten hours, but still she felt she could do with an early night, so she headed for the bathroom. After all, her meeting with Sandy Drake had been mentally exhausting; and now that her children were safely asleep she could try and get over the strain of living with such a complicated man as she did. As she started running water into the bath, Kylie wondered how much Eduardo would want to know about her meeting with Drake. The man had one whole day left to live; he also had one more night and one more morning.

Unless of course his apparent guardian angel got its way.

* * *

Kevin and Kelly generally stuck to their system of spending Friday nights together and Saturday nights with any other friends that were handy. However their last date had been somewhat tainted by the presence of Kelly’s chaperone… and Eduardo, of course, though he would never have dreamt have muscling in on a real date. So that night the two love-struck teenagers took a taxi to a coffee bar and gazed into each other’s eyes across a pristine tablecloth. One of Def Leppard’s softer songs was playing in the background, and it suddenly reminded Kelly of a thought she had been meaning to voice to Kevin.

“Do your parents complain about groups like Def Leppard and Gorillaz spelling their names wrong?” she asked.

“Um…” Kevin was taken by surprise. He had been happy staring into Kelly’s soft blue eyes and thinking how beautiful she was. However he jolted himself back to reality, thought for moment and then said, “Not that I’ve noticed.”

“Mine do,” Kelly went on energetically, “but the other day I thought: well, what about the Monkees?”

“And the Beatles,” added Kevin.

“Ye-es, but that’s different,” Kelly said slowly. “That’s play-on words.”

They continued to chatter inanely for an hour and then decided to take a walk in the park. It was Kelly who initiated the traditional kiss by the tree with their initials carved into it (“KR + KW 2gether 4ever”), but within minutes she stopped abruptly and started cursing and swearing as she realised that she had missed her curfew.

“What was it?” Kevin asked as they began hurrying in the direction of Kelly’s house.

“One o’clock.”

“Wow.” Kevin illuminated the numbers on his digital watch. It was three-twenty. “Your dad’s gonna kill me.”

“Your grandmother won’t like it much either,” Kelly pointed out.

“Oh yeah.” Kevin wrinkled his nose. “I’d forgotten about her.”

“Hey.” Kelly stopped in her tracks and slipped her hand into Kevin’s, and then she said in conspiratorial tones, “Let’s just forget about my stupid curfew. Hell, we’ve already missed it by more than two hours. Why not put off facing the music for a bit longer?”

This was daring for Kelly. Her father was strict, her mother agreed with everything her husband said and their daughter was usually careful not to upset them. However in this instance she had already upset them by breaking curfew and she saw little or no difference between being two-and-a-half hours late and being four hours late.

Kevin wrapped his arms around Kelly’s waist and kissed her on the lips. “Good idea,” he approved, stroking her straight blond hair with the backs of his fingers. “Where do you wanna go?”

Kelly considered before finally suggesting that they go to the nearest cemetery.

“The graveyard?” Kevin looked doubtful in the glow of the streetlights. “Is that a good idea?”

“I don’t know,” Kelly shrugged. “It’s something I want to do before I die though.”

“What, go to a graveyard in the middle of the night?”

Kelly nodded.

“My grandfather’s buried there.”

“Mine too.”

“So… what?” asked Kevin. “You wanna vandalise the graves or just dig people up?”

“Neither. I just want to look around. Come on,” and she took Kevin’s hand and started leading him down the street.

“I just don’t see the point,” Kevin muttered as he was practically dragged into the cemetery. He wondered if Kelly had been harbouring some kind of weird graveyard fantasy. After all, he reflected, she seemed to enjoy scaring herself silly watching horror movies. Maybe she got some kind of kick out of creeping around graveyards in the middle of the night.

“This is like one of those Wes Craven things,” Kevin remarked. “Two teenagers going to a graveyard in the middle of the night to make out… It’s so clichéd.”

“We’re not going to make out,” Kelly’s voice wafted from the darkness. There was nothing here to light their way, the air was chilly for that time of year and Kevin felt more than a little uneasy.

“Really?” He feigned disappointment. “Oh.”

They ventured through the darkness, and Kevin clasped Kelly’s hand tighter each time he saw the edge of a headstone illuminated by the moonlight. He looked up and wished he could see the stars to admire them with her. He did see the moon and noticed that it would be a good night for werewolves.

“Beautiful moon,” he murmured close to Kelly’s ear.

“I already told you we didn’t come here to make out,” Kelly returned, ignoring the pleasurable sensation of his warm breath on her ear.

“So why did we come here?”

“Well…” Kelly took a moment to ponder this question. “I’d like to see what my grandparents’ graves look like in the dark.”

Her maternal grandfather had died early the year before, and her grandmother three years before that. They were buried side-by-side with matching headstones; you could tell at a distance of about thirty feet that they were married. Amanda and her mother tended both graves on a regular basis, but it had been a while since Kelly had seen them even by daylight. Still, she had never seen them in the dark, so this was a new experience altogether.

“I can’t remember what’s written on them,” she muttered, venturing to the stone on the left and reaching out a hand to touch it. Kevin could not see but he guessed that she was attempting to read the words like brail, running her fingers over the raised letters on the stone. This, he thought dryly, has got to be the first time I was envious of a headstone.

“Julia… Mary… Sutcliffe,” Kelly said aloud. “Died… oh shoot. It ought to say two-thousand.”

“Exactly,” returned Kevin, “you know what it ought to say. Come on, let’s find you something a little more difficult.”

Minutes later Kelly found herself fumbling her way around the lettering on a gravestone that she was not familiar with. After some thought and a lot of movement with her fingers she ventured, “This bit’s Rivera.”

“Good,” Kevin approved. “What about the bit before that?”

“Um…” Kelly concentrated hard, running a forefinger slowly and carefully over the inch-tall letters. “Al… Al-bert… o?” she hazarded. Though she thought hard, she couldn’t remember Kevin ever referring to his paternal grandfather by name.

“Go on,” urged Kevin, thinking what a great disrespect he was showing his late grandfather.

“J,” Kelly was muttering. “J, U… It’s Juan, isn’t it?”

“Yep.”

“Ok. Alberto Juan Rivera… Oh Christ, Kevin, there’s heaps here. I give up.”

“Oh come on, you’ve only got his name so far.”

“Well… where are the dates?”

“Second line down.”

Kelly felt around for a minute or two longer, realised that her knees ached terribly and finally got to her feet.

“He died in nineteen-ninety,” she had managed to deduce. “He was born in nineteen-thirty-something.”

“Right,” nodded Kevin. “What it actually says is: ‘Alberto Juan Rivera; March nineteen-thirty-eight to July nineteen-ninety; Devoted husband and father; Died serving his country’.”

“Wow.” Kelly was impressed. “Do you visit him often?”

“Not usually more than once a year,” Kevin replied, “on the Day of the Dead. It’s a - ”

“Mexican festival, I know,” Kelly interrupted. “It’s all to do with honouring the dead and celebrating life and all that kind of stuff… or something.” She did a quick sum in her head to work out how old Kevin had been in July nineteen-ninety. Then she asked, “Do you remember him?”

“Very vaguely.”

“What happened to him?”

“Did I never tell you?”

“You told me he was killed on the job,” answered Kelly. “You never told me how it happened.”

“It was nothing special really. He got called out to a bank robbery, one of them shot him in the gut and he bled to death.”

“That’s really tragic.”

“I know. It scares the hell out of me sometimes, Dad doing the same job.”

In the darkness, Kevin felt Kelly’s fingers close around his hand. He went on: “He expects me to be a cop too, you know. I don’t know how I’m gonna tell him otherwise.”

“What happened to the guy that shot your grandfather?” asked Kelly. “Um… or woman?”

“No, he was a guy.” Kevin furrowed his brow in thought. Had he ever been told what had become of the man? “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’d like too though. I’ll try to find out.”

“Kev?”

“Yeah?”

“One more question?”

“Shoot.”

“What’s with that epitaph? I thought he was from Mexico,” said Kelly. “No, correction, I knew he was from Mexico.”

“Well,” Kevin began, “the way I understand it he encountered a lot of racism on the force. After a while he just couldn’t handle it. He made out like he was ashamed of being Mexican and he really tried to integrate his family into American culture. In fact I think he applied for citizenship.”

“Is that why your dad’s so American?”

“I guess so. Eduardo hated it, even at the age of eleven. He and my grandfather… um… didn’t part well.”

Kelly’s arms fastened around Kevin’s waist and her head came to rest against his chest. She was evidently feeling emotional, perhaps even sorry for him, or for the Rivera family in general. He put his left arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer to him, dropping a kiss on the top of her head. He knew this would be the perfect time to say those three little words that could make or break their relationship. He had loved her for some months now, but he was scared to death of telling her. However this was most definitely his chance – despite their slightly unorthodox surroundings.

“Kel,” he began hesitantly. “I… I…”

He could feel her face contorting into a smile against his torso. “You you what?” she asked good-naturedly.

Kevin had been about to utter the fateful words when he suddenly heard an unnerving sound that was almost like moaning. He listened for a moment, baffling Kelly by his silence until the sound began to increase in volume and she too heard a ghostly wail. In the hope of hearing better she pulled her head away from Kevin so that her right ear was no longer pressed against his chest.

“Shit,” she breathed, her eyes moving around in the hope of seeing something in the darkness. “What the hell is that?”

Suddenly the gravestone before them began to glow an eerie white and the letters of the deceased’s name stood out huge and black against the unnatural blinding light:

ALBERTO JUAN RIVERA

“What the…?”

Kevin’s unpleasant turn of phrase was drowned out by a rush of powerful wind that knocked both him and Kelly backwards onto the ground. They had lost physical contact, but Kevin quickly manoeuvred himself onto his hands and knees and called over the deafening sound: “Kelly?”

He heard a vague shout and made for its general direction. The darkness had increased and now nothing at all, not even the slightest shape or movement was visible. However Kevin pushed against the force of the wind, reached out and secured a hold on Kelly’s ice-cold fingers… At least he hoped they were Kelly’s.

“Is that you?” he asked uncertainly, still having to shout.

“Yes!” Kelly yelled urgently. “Now can we please get the hell out of here?”

The teenagers scrambled to their feet and ran, hand-in-hand, in whichever direction they happened to be facing. They left the ghostly wind behind them, and did not turn round to check on the eerie glow.

They seemed to have been running for hours (though in reality it was little more than half a minute) before they were outside the cemetery and standing in the relative safety of a lamp-lit street. Kelly held firmly onto Kevin, partly from fear and partly from a desire to protect him. Each of them could feel the other’s heart hammering madly, they held each other so close.

Finally, after what seemed like an age, Kelly pulled slowly away from Kevin and exhaled loudly. “Wow,” she said at last. “I guess that’s what graves look like in the dark.”

“What… what the…?” Kevin stammered nonsensically.

“Um… guess your granddad’s grave’s haunted,” his companion returned with a slight shrug. Kelly had gathered up a mass of blond hair in one hand and clutched it to the top of her head, looking vaguely around her as though seeking some explanation as to what had just happened. Seconds ticked by before she said, “I think I’m ready to go home now, Kev.”

“Right,” nodded Kevin. “Good idea.”

Instinctively he kept an arm around her shoulders as he walked her home. Eduardo, he decided, would definitely have to hear about this. Not only had it scared both him and Kelly witless; it had ruined his big moment as well. Never again, he thought bitterly, would be able to find the courage to confess his love.

TO BE CONTINUED...