Heaven Painted as a Christmas Gift Read online

  Copyright Information

  Heaven Painted as a Christmas Gift

  Copyright © 2014 Dean Wesley Smith

  First Published in a different form in Smith’s Monthly #13, October, 2014

  Published by WMG Publishing

  Cover and Layout copyright © 2014 by WMG Publishing

  Cover design by Allyson Longueira/WMG Publishing

  Cover art copyright © Andreykuzmin/Dreamstime

  Smashwords Edition

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

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  Other Titles from Dean Wesley Smith

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  For Kris

  Even more popcorn for the brain.

  Section One

  TRAINING NEW TEAM MEMBERS

  ONE

  NO ONE EXPECTS to die. Belle Watson sure didn’t. Not on a beautiful November day in downtown Boise, Idaho.

  Of course dying wouldn’t have been any better on a crappy, rainy day, but this Wednesday afternoon was far, far from crappy. Clear blue fall sky, the leaves on the trees lining the sidewalks bright orange and red, and the afternoon temperature a perfect sixty-five, with no wind. Boise in early November, with the threat of winter right around the corner, didn’t get much better, and that made dying just flat seem impossible, especially at the young and healthy age of twenty-eight.

  No one dies while taking a day off work to just spend time with her best friend and do some clothes shopping. Not a high-risk kind of activity.

  Belle felt and looked good, better than she had felt and looked in years. She had dropped the thirty pounds she had gained from the eight-year horrid marriage to Brad Duncan, the high school quarterback who became the fat, sloppy, mean, self-proclaimed king of drunks.

  He had seemed proud that he didn’t work much and spent all his time in the Varsity Bar down off old Highway 99. He would see how proud he got when he didn’t have her money so he could buy a drink.

  She had only been in that bar once and had left in two minutes. It was dirty, smelled of piss and stale beer, and every surface she touched felt slimy. Yet her ex-husband had loved the place.

  That alone showed how different they were.

  The divorce had now been final for six months and Belle hadn’t spoken with the slob in exactly six months.

  And with luck, she never would again. To her friends and people at work she wouldn’t even give him the title of her “ex-husband.” To her he was just “the slug.”

  Now she had a brand new apartment in the beautiful, tree-lined streets of North End of town, with new furniture and a new red Mercedes convertible. She had also splurged on a brand new wardrobe that fit her thin, five-five frame perfectly and looked and was expensive. She didn’t need to worry about money since she didn’t need to support the slug anymore and had saved her mother’s inheritance.

  Besides, her job paid real nice as well. She had managed to finish college and get a masters degree in forensic accounting, marrying the slug as she finished the last of her thesis. Wow, what a mistake that had been. He couldn’t even manage finishing two years of college. That should have been her first clue, but in those early years, he still looked like the football jock he had been in high school and could sweet-talk her out of her panties without a problem.

  That part of their relationship had ended not long after they got married and she hadn’t missed it in the slightest.

  Now, on this beautiful afternoon, Belle hoped to improve the already expensive wardrobe some by adding in some fashionable winter clothes.

  Belle had her long blonde hair pulled back and felt great walking the wide sidewalk down two blocks from the capital building, her low heals clicking on the pavement. She had been born and raised in Boise and had grown to love the downtown area with all its small shops, older buildings, and tree-lined sidewalks.

  Strolling beside Belle was her long-time friend from high school, Nancy Bend. Nancy was also freshly out of a divorce from a worthless idiot who she had supported for years by working at a high-level development job at a start-up computer firm.

  Belle and Nancy had gone to college and done their master’s work at the same time. Nancy had her degrees in computer technology and could make any computer just get up off the desk and dance. What Nancy did for a job looked like magic to Belle. Nancy said what Belle understood about corporation financing and network systems was flat out magic period.

  Nancy had caught the bastard she had been married to sleeping with a waitress from Denny’s where he spent most of his days drinking coffee and pretending to look for work.

  Nancy hadn’t talked to him either in five months, since the moment their divorce had been final. And Nancy had told Belle that sex with her husband had turned sour almost from the start and she didn’t miss it either.

  Belle and Nancy, after their divorces, had decided they needed to celebrate at least once a month, even though they spent a lot of time with each other normally, by taking a day off in the middle of the week, shopping, having a great dinner, going drinking, and otherwise just letting their hair down, so to speak.

  Belle couldn’t imagine the world without Nancy beside her. They spent most nights together having dinner and watching movies at one or the other’s apartment.

  Nancy was three inches taller than Belle, but just as thin. And Nancy also had money from the stock in the start-up firm she had been working at. Nancy had long brown hair that she usually kept up against the back of her head and large, green eyes that Belle loved.

  And they made each other laugh. They had needed that laughter a lot over the last few years climbing out of those marriages. Luckily, for both of them, there were no kids involved. For Belle, the idea of having a kid with that slug of a human she had married made her just shudder.

  Besides, she and the slug hadn’t had sex in years and that had been just fine with her.

  Belle and Nancy had been friends for so long, they basically did everything together. They had spent many a night drinking in the old Idanha Hotel luxury bar, laughing and holding each other while they cried and schemed during those years of first separation and then divorces.

  And together, they had sworn off all men, which suited Belle just fine.

  The November sky was clear, the weather warm, and they were shopping and laughing and enjoying life. Finally, for both of them, life was good again.

  Dying was not in either of their plans for the day.

  TWO

  DR. JEWEL KELLY sat across from her best friend, lover, and fellow Ghost of a Chance Agent, Tommy Ralston, eating breakfast in the cozy Golden Nugget Casino and Hotel buffet in downtown Las Vegas.

  She had gone with scrambled eggs, a muffin, and some fruit, plus an orange juice. Tommy had skipped the fruit and gone for bacon.

  As always, the food tasted wonderful, one of the real benefits of this new life Jewel found herself living. All food tasted better than she could have ever imagined food tasting.

  She and Tommy were both dressed in their running clothes. They had just finished a two-mile run from their apartment in the University District to the Golden Nugget. Jewel would have never normally liked going out in public in her running t-shirt, sweat pants, and with her hair pulled back, but since not a person in the room could see them, she was getting used to being comfortable instead of fashionable.

  She had been a ge
neral practice doctor in Buffalo Jump, Montana, working to pay off student loans when she met Deputy Tommy Ralston. They had been attracted to each other instantly, but on the way to a medical emergency just a short time after they met, they had crashed in his patrol car and both been killed instantly.

  At that point, they had been recruited for an organization called “Ghost of a Chance.” They basically worked as ghosts in the real world to help keep the future peaceful.

  So they were both ghosts and now very much in love. And she had to admit, she was enjoying life a lot more now that she was dead than she had when alive. Sex was better, food tasted wonderful, and nothing except missions seemed that important.

  While alive, she had been one of those people who didn’t laugh much and thought everything critically important. She figured that medical school had made that worse. Tommy thought it had just been part of her normal personality.

  It certainly wasn’t now.

  As Jewel was about to finish her eggs, K.J. Moore (their “handler” as he liked to call himself) appeared and pulled up a chair. Jewel was surprised, since they hadn’t seen him in two weeks since they had solved a small crime with a casino employee taking a guest’s money from the guest’s room.

  She and Tommy didn’t ask why they were sent on some missions or why the missions were important. It seemed their main boss, whom they had yet to meet, knew which event would have lasting impact and which event to stop.

  So now with K.J. here again, Jewel figured they had another mission.

  K.J. was a short man with brown eyes who loved to dress in the wildest, but almost fashionable clothes. He at least thought them fashionable. But this morning he had on a fairly casual gray silk business suit, a bright pink tie, and pink loafers. Except for the first time they had met, that was as tame as K.J. got with his clothes.

  “This looks serious,” Tommy said, indicating K.J.’s outfit.

  “Two new recruits coming on board,” K.J. said. “And since I did such a good job with you two, my boss wants me to bring the new recruits to Las Vegas as well for a coming mission.”

  Both Jewel and Tommy laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” K.J. asked, pouting and looking hurt.

  “You met us hours after we died, told us nothing,” Jewel said, shaking her head, “and then told us to learn as we went and get to Las Vegas on our own.”

  “Worked, didn’t it?” K.J. said, again pretending to look hurt and fluttering his big eyelashes at her.

  She just laughed. Damn she loved the little guy even though at times he could be downright frustrating.

  “So you want us to go with you and help with the two new people?” Tommy asked, picking up a piece of bacon and biting on it as he stared at K.J.

  “Oh, would you?” K.J. asked. “That would be so helpful. It would mean a lot to me.”

  Jewel again just laughed. She and Tommy had only been dead since August, but clearly they knew now almost as much as K.J., who had been an agent for over a hundred years. And Jewel and Tommy were learning more about how to be a ghost every day. Surprisingly, there were lots and lots of tricks to it.

  Tommy looked over at her and she shrugged. Then she said, “Better than letting these two new people try to learn this on their own.”

  “So we’re in,” Tommy said to K.J., nodding. “When are they dying and where?”

  “About now,” K.J. said, looking at his pink-banded watch under his gray silk suit sleeve. “In Boise, Idaho.”

  “It’s going to take us half a day to get there,” Tommy said. “Unless you want to teach us how to teleport.”

  “I’ll jump all of us,” K.J. said.

  “Can we at least go home and change clothes?” Jewel asked.

  K.J. looked at both of them, then waved his hand. “You two look fine. Typical American heterosexual couple.”

  The next moment the three of them were standing on a sidewalk in downtown Boise, Idaho.

  The air was filled with sirens and ambulances were pulling up from all directions.

  And the scene in front of them was far, far from pretty.

  Jewel turned to K.J., feeling about as angry as she had in years. “If we knew this was going to happen, why didn’t we stop it?”

  K.J. just shook his head. “When a person is scheduled to depart the planet, we can’t interfere with that unless The Brigade is interfering and we are trying to set things straight. You know that. But we can offer the newly dead a job if they want to stay and help out.”

  Jewel started to snap at K.J., but Tommy put a hand on her arm to calm her. As a medical doctor, her training had been to save lives, not let people just die.

  So instead she turned back to the horrific crash site and the two well-dressed and very attractive women sitting on the sidewalk, shaking.

  THREE

  BELLE WATSON HEARD the sirens coming from all the way up Capital Boulevard. It sounded like something awful was going on.

  She and Nancy had just left a small boutique store tucked off to one side of Main Street and Capital, so they both stopped to look in the direction of the sirens.

  To their left a few blocks was the big Idaho Capitol Building, built as an identical miniature of the big Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.

  In the other direction to their right, three miles away over the Boise River and beyond the Boise State University campus, the old Union Pacific Depot with its tall spire dominated the hill. The sirens were coming from the direction of the depot and the noise was echoing between the big stone buildings.

  “That doesn’t sound good,” Nancy said.

  Belle had to agree. There must be at least six sirens going at once. It was all echoing and getting louder between the large downtown buildings.

  “Maybe they are chasing one of our do-nothing husbands,” Belle said.

  “Oh, wouldn’t that be funny?” Nancy said, laughing. “But not likely since neither of them could get their asses out of a chair to even give a chase to police.”

  “Real good point,” Belle said, giving her friend a one-armed hug.

  They moved back over against the stone wall of the old boutique building to watch the coming excitement as the sirens got louder and louder.

  Belle found this sort of thing exciting. She had always found police and police work interesting, just never been around it much. And she always loved a good spy movie.

  Suddenly, on their left, two other police cars screamed into the middle of Capital Boulevard and blocked it.

  “Look!” Nancy said, pointing.

  Belle saw what she was pointing at. Up the street toward where the sirens were coming from, another policeman ran out into the road and dropped a strip that looked to be full of spikes. Then he sprinted back for the sidewalk.

  “They really want to stop whoever they are chasing,” Belle shouted over the sirens to Nancy as two more police cars blocked the intersections of both sides of Main Street where it crossed Capital Boulevard. The police had effectively formed a box canyon for the fleeing vehicle and got all traffic off the road.

  Nancy reached over and took Belle’s hand, squeezing it, clearly as excited as Belle. It wasn’t often you got to see the end of a police chase up close and personal like this.

  And from the way the police were acting, there was no doubt in Belle’s mind that it was going to end right here in front of them.

  Suddenly, a large black pick-up truck shot into view with a couple lines of police cars in hot pursuit.

  Belle was stunned at how fast it was going.

  A man was leaning out the passenger window firing at the police chasing them with what looked like a shotgun.

  Nancy squeezed Belle’s hand, holding it tighter.

  This looked just like something you would see in a movie. Belle couldn’t believe it was actually happening in Boise and they were getting to watch it all.

  The black truck hit the spike strip going at least a hundred by Belle’s best guess. The driver instantly lost control of the truck and s
werved hard left.

  The man in the passenger window with the gun was tossed out, smashing head-first into a parked car beside the road.

  Belle wanted to turn away, but couldn’t as the man bounced off the parked car and then smashed like a rag doll into the side of a red brick building. No chance he was going to survive that.

  The driver of the truck managed to get it back under control slightly, but then lost it again because of his speed and flat tires.

  Almost instantly Belle realized she and Nancy were in trouble.

  The truck swerved left, then right, then came straight for them, faster than Belle thought possible.

  She tried to push Nancy to one side, out of the way, but it did no good. The last thing she saw was the wide eyes of a guy in an orange prison jumpsuit.

  Then the truck smashed her and Nancy against the stone wall.

  FOUR

  AS THE TRUCK cartwheeled down the wall and finally flipped over, Belle found herself sitting against the stone building on the sidewalk.

  She was breathing hard and barely able to stop her body from shaking. Wow, that had been close.

  Nancy was sitting beside her, eyes squeezed shut, her hands over her mouth.

  “We made it,” Belle said. “I don’t know how, but we did. Are you all right?”

  Nancy slowly opened her eyes and then looked at Belle with her large green eyes. She then took a deep shuddering breath and nodded. “I think so.”

  “Not sure how that truck missed us,” Belle said, also forcing herself to take deep breaths. That had been far, far too close.

  “It didn’t miss those poor souls,” Nancy said, indicating two mangled bodies on the sidewalk down from the truck.

  Belle looked at them but couldn’t focus her eyes on the ugliness, so she turned away and looked at Nancy.

  “Are you sure you are all right?” Belle asked her best friend as two ambulance drivers ran past them headed for the bodies down the street.