Heaven Painted as a Free Meal Read online

  And after he woke up from this crazy dream, he and Deanna were going to have to come out here for dinner. He had no idea the food here was so good.

  SIX

  JEWEL WATCHED ELLIOT eat the juicy sirloin steak and the baked potato. She was convinced that Elliot still thought he was in some strange dream.

  She liked the guy. Her first impression of him was good and he had a confidence you didn’t often see in a person. But she had no idea what was going to happen when he finally realized he really was dead.

  So while Elliot was eating, she turned the conversation to K.J. in an attempt to give Elliot more information.

  “So why did the powers-that-be want to add Elliot to our team?” Jewel asked. “I’m a former doctor, Tommy was a cop, Belle is a corporation wizard, Nancy is amazing with math and money.”

  “The risk-taking part,” K.J. said, “would be my guess. Either of you ever think of jumping out of a plane?”

  Jewel shook her head, as did Tommy.

  “They didn’t even have planes when I died,” K.J. said.

  Elliot looked at him with a funny look, then went back to eating.

  “My boss told me that Elliot will bring to the team that ‘take chances’ attitude,” K.J. said. “And his legal thinking will help a lot as well. I have no idea what kind of special missions they have planned for us, but seems that Elliot’s duel skills are needed.”

  “So you killed me to join your team?” Elliot asked, stopping with a piece of steak halfway to his mouth.

  K.J. laughed, as did Tommy.

  Jewel took the question seriously, because she and Tommy had thought the same thing at first.

  “No, you were going to die today in that accident no matter what,” Jewel said.

  “When a person’s time is up, their time is up,” K.J. said, finishing the last of his pudding dessert and pushing the tin cup away. “No one, no god, no superhero can stop that or change that in any fashion. Kind of a real downer, but it’s true.”

  “So how did you die?” Elliot asked K.J.

  K.J. shrugged. “Beat to death because a group of men didn’t like my sexual orientation.”

  “Oh,” Elliot said, then went back to eating. He had almost finished the large sirloin.

  Jewel glanced at K.J. “You want to go get Belle and Nancy so they can meet our new team member?”

  “Be glad to do thy bidding, my lady,” K.J. said, standing, bowing, and vanishing.

  Elliot stared at where K.J. had been for a moment. “Am I going to be able to do that?”

  “You are,” Tommy said. “With a little time and practice.”

  “And this,” Jewel said, floating up out of her chair until she was near the ceiling, then coming back down.

  “Now I know this dream is crazy,” Elliot said. “I wonder what I ate to cause this.”

  “It’s not a dream,” Jewel said.

  “Whatever you say.” Elliot pushed his empty plate away. “Can I have seconds and will they taste as good?”

  “You can,” Tommy said. “And it will.”

  “Great,” Elliot said, standing and heading back for the door from the kitchen near the salad bar.

  Jewel watched him go, weaving through the tables as if he was still alive.

  “We might have a problem,” Tommy said.

  Jewel nodded. Elliot was completely convinced he was in a dream. That might turn into a very big problem. And Jewel had no idea at all how to stop it.

  SEVEN

  ELLIOT DECIDED THAT like a good ski run, he was just going to enjoy this dream and not fight it. And when he woke up, if he could remember it, he and Deanna would have a good laugh.

  He was really going to try to remember this. Just too weird.

  He went over toward the door to the kitchen to wait for someone to bring out another steak dinner. The food had tasted so wonderful and he was far from full yet. So while he was dreaming, he might as well enjoy himself. Can’t gain weight eating in a dream.

  A woman with a large tray of meals came out of the kitchen. She started for him and he stepped back to give her room and bumped right into a woman about his age.

  Only he didn’t bump into her.

  He went completely inside of her. Like she had been a vacuum and he was a dust mote.

  No suck, plop, or whish sound. Just one minute he was outside of her and another minute he was inside her.

  Trapped.

  He could feel everything she was feeling and hear everything she was thinking and see everything she was seeing.

  He felt a short moment of panic, then realized this was all a dream and laughed to himself. Then he let the woman’s information flow over him.

  Her name was Cathy, divorced, one kid, worked for a computer firm.

  Oh, god, he suddenly realized he was inside the Cathy from his math class in high school, the same Cathy who had been a cheerleader and had married the head of the cross-country team.

  He remembered everything she remembered from high school, the time she knew deep down had been her best time in life.

  Wow, how sad was that? He had hated high school and just wanted to get out and really start living. He figured he had a full life of living ahead of him, if he ever woke up from this stupid dream.

  Or got out of being trapped inside this woman.

  Cathy was headed for the bathroom. She felt kind of ill and was hoping her period wasn’t going to start tonight. She had no intention of sleeping with the older guy she was on a date with, but she just didn’t want the hassle of her period.

  Elliot could see Cathy’s entire life, the affair she had on her husband that caused their breakup and his eventual suicide. Elliot could tell she wasn’t a bad person, just a very, very dumb person.

  And she carried the guilt about what had happened to her husband like a tight black knot in the back of her mind. Her sex drive had killed him just as if she had taken a gun to his head.

  She knew that. She still loved him, for all the good that was going to do. She was trying to forget and move on.

  Elliot had no doubt that she needed professional help to get past that tragedy, but Cathy didn’t feel she had the money to get it.

  He had always thought she was hot in high school, but since he was a skier, not some sports jock with a letterman’s award, she never gave him the time of day.

  He hadn’t given her one thought in over a decade. Why was he now, in this dream, inside her, listening to her thoughts on the way to a bathroom?

  And from what he could see about what she liked about sex, thank god he hadn’t asked her out. She had a hidden closet in her bedroom full of all sorts of whips and chains and things he now could see her using, but didn’t want to know about.

  As far as he was concerned, everyone had a right to his or her own sexual interests. He just didn’t want to know about the interests if he could help it.

  And right now, riding inside of Cathy, he couldn’t help but know about it all.

  Every last detail.

  And how much she loved it.

  No wonder her husband had left her when he discovered her naked with another man tied up and getting whipped.

  Now Cathy was walking at a fast clip toward the woman’s restroom. That was not a place Elliot wanted to be, even in a dream that was quickly becoming a nightmare.

  How the hell did he get this dream back on track and out of this woman’s brain?

  Was this what Jewel had done when she disappeared into Deanna? If so, there had to be a way out.

  He tried to imagine himself just standing outside the bathroom or back in the main part of the restaurant, but no luck.

  He was inside Cathy, stuck.

  Cathy opened the door, her thoughts on hurrying up and getting done and getting back to her date with a guy she called Bennie. Bennie was ten years older than Cathy and they had met on an online dating sight. His last wife had died, and he had money, something Cathy was very interested in.

  As Cathy went into the stall, Elliot imag
ined himself like a little ball inside her head, his hands over his eyes and ears, cut off completely from anything going on around him.

  It seemed to work and give her the privacy he wanted her to have.

  And that kept him from seeing things he flat didn’t have an interest in seeing up close and really personal.

  He let himself come out of his ball as she combed her hair in front of the mirror, relieved her period hadn’t started.

  Cathy had clearly put on a few pounds since high school, and it wasn’t muscle. And her hair color and style hadn’t changed at all. She still wore the same style of mini-skirt, now too short for her thicker legs, and a blouse with a frilly bra that allowed her date to get a glimpse, but not the entire picture.

  “Wow, really stuck in high school,” Elliot said to himself.

  Cathy glanced around, thinking that maybe she had heard someone, then shrugged, put her comb back in her purse and headed back out of the restroom.

  Could he actually talk to the person he was inside. Wait until he woke up and told Deanna that.

  As Cathy approached the table, Elliot had a bad feeling as he recognized her date.

  Bennie was actually Barry Johns. Barry had been accused of killing his first wife, but no one could ever prove it, so no arrest. Elliot and the others in his firm had talked about the chance of taking Barry’s case if he was arrested and all of them had wanted no part of it.

  Barry, or Bennie as Cathy called him, stood and offered his hand as she returned, playing the part of a real gentleman.

  Cathy actually liked that and took his hand and settled into her chair.

  But as she touched Barry, Elliot could see inside his mind as well.

  And the son-of-a-bitch had killed his first wife.

  And another woman back in college.

  Now what was Elliot going to do?

  What could he do? This was a dream.

  And in the dream, he was stuck in an old cheerleader’s body and she was dating a man who had killed his wife.

  Suddenly this was becoming something more than a dream.

  This was a full-on nightmare.

  EIGHT

  JEWEL GLANCED UP as the other two members of their team appeared with K.J.

  Belle and Nancy both were wearing jeans and light sweatshirts, their kick-around-the-house outfits, as they liked to call them. Both women were about Jewel’s age and stunningly beautiful. Belle had long blonde hair that she had pulled back and tied while Nancy had short brown hair, styled wonderfully to look like a modern cut.

  When these two dressed up in modern fashions, as they loved to do at times, no model could hold a candle to either one of them.

  They were a couple and Jewel had never seen two people so much in love before. They just radiated joy and friendship and Jewel really enjoyed time around them, even when working on stopping some horrid thing from happening.

  “The old get-used-to-being-dead restaurant,” Belle said, laughing as she looked around. “Don’t you just love the wood beams and columns in here?”

  Jewel and Tommy and K.J. had brought them here just after they died, just as they had brought Elliot this time.

  “I still like this place,” Nancy said. “And I think I could use some more to eat.”

  “Actually,” Belle said, “with that wonderful steak smell, it’s going to be damn hard to resist.”

  “So where is the new recruit to the team?” Belle asked.

  Jewel pointed toward the salad bar and kitchen door area. “He’s the six-foot tall guy in the gray jumpsuit.”

  Then she turned and didn’t see him.

  “Oh, shit,” Tommy said, vanishing and appearing outside in the parking lot and doing a quick scan around.

  “K.J.,” Jewel said, “check the men’s bathroom.”

  K.J. vanished.

  “Wow,” Belle said, laughing. “A lost dead guy. Who knew that could happen.”

  “He still completely believes he’s dreaming,” Jewel said.

  “Oh,” Belle said, as the three of them spread out.

  But after a moment they all ended up back at the table, and K.J. and Tommy both shook their heads.

  “How could a tall, really, really handsome guy in a parachuting jumpsuit just vanish in a restaurant?” K.J. asked.

  “He’s a looker, huh?” Nancy asked, smiling at K.J.

  “Dreamy,” K.J. said, pretending to fan himself.

  Tommy glanced at Jewel and just shook his head.

  “Did you teach him how to go into someone and get out?” Belle asked.

  Jewel instantly knew that was the problem.

  “He bumped into someone and he thinks he’s stuck,” Tommy said, nodding.

  “Spread out,” Jewel said. “Let’s see if we can find him.”

  The five of them spread through the restaurant, running their hands through people. Jewel knew if she found the right person Elliot had stumbled into, her hand would run into resistance, just as if she was touching a regular person when she had been alive. Ghosts feel regular to other ghosts.

  Twenty people later, and more information about people’s lives than she wanted to know, she was back near their big table in the back section.

  “He’s not in the restaurant,” Tommy said.

  “Again,” K.J. asked, “how can you lose a hunk of a man in a gray jumpsuit in a restaurant.”

  “You don’t think he left, do you?” Nancy asked.

  Jewel shook her head. “If he did,” she said, “he’s going to quickly discover just how dead he really is.”

  At that moment, a woman wearing a mini-skirt and a blouse that didn’t fit her came out of the woman’s restroom and went to a table.

  Jewel pointed at the woman.

  Tommy nodded and shook his head. “I’ll get him.”

  “Oh, no,” Belle said, laughing. “His first time in another person and he’s trapped with a woman in a restroom.”

  “He’s going to need professional help to get over that,” Nancy said.

  “As if being dead wasn’t bad enough,” K.J. said, laughing as well. “I’d have to pay my shrink double if that happened to me.”

  “You have a shrink?” Belle asked.

  K.J. waved his hand in dismissal. “Of course. Doesn’t everyone?”

  Jewel just smiled. If anything could convince Elliot he was dead, trapped inside a woman in a restroom just might do it.

  Or convince him he had died and gone to hell.

  NINE

  ELLIOT WAS JUST barely holding down the panic. He was trapped in a woman’s body who was dating a killer and he had no idea what to do.

  Or how to get out.

  Or why this horrid dream wasn’t ending.

  Suddenly, he could feel a strong hand grab his arm and jumpsuit and yank him sideways.

  He was back in the restaurant and instead of experiencing the steak smell through Cathy, he could smell it himself.

  Oh, thank heavens!

  Rescued.

  Tommy was standing beside him smiling and shaking his head.

  “Thanks,” Elliot said.

  “Part of the training,” Tommy said and turned Elliot toward the table in the back. Jewel and K.J. and two other stunning women were there.

  Both women wore sweatshirts and jeans. One was a blonde with long hair and the other had short brown hair.

  And all of them were clearly trying to keep from laughing.

  “Elliot,” Jewel said, as they got close, “this is Belle and Nancy, our other two team members.”

  “Welcome aboard,” Belle, the blonde said, giving him a smile that really was welcoming along with a firm handshake.

  “Sorry that your first time inside another person had to be in a woman’s restroom,” Nancy said, smiling at him. “Not a fun place.”

  “I imagined myself down into a small ball,” Elliot said, “with no eyes and ears and managed to not see anything I shouldn’t have seen.”

  “Wow, smart thinking,” Jewel said as they all sat do
wn around the big table again.

  “For future reference,” Tommy said, “think of being inside another person like being inside a car. You just step out. It’s easy once you get the hang of it.”

  “If they are walking,” Nancy said, “I just think of myself stopping and the person walks on and leaves me.”

  “So I was really inside Cathy over there?” Elliot said. “She was a cheerleader in my high school.”

  “That’s Cathy?” Belle asked, shaking her head and staring across the restaurant where Cathy sat with that killer. “Besides the weight, she hasn’t changed at all. I just didn’t recognize her.”

  “Wow, me either,” Nancy said, staring at Cathy.

  Elliot was surprised. “You knew her?”

  Both of us went to school at Borah,” Belle said, “same year as Cathy and you went to Capital.”

  Elliot suddenly could feel some panic start to creep into his mind around the edges. He hated panic of any kind, but at the moment it was winning because he now remembered the two sitting across from him.

  “You both were killed last fall in that horrid mess downtown,” Elliot said, managing, he hoped, to keep the panic out of his voice.

  They both smiled as if they were happy to be recognized. “That was us,” Belle said.

  “We didn’t stick around for the aftermath,” Nancy said. “We had a world to save. Was it fun?”

  “Not sure about fun,” Elliot said, “but it was headlines. So that must mean I am really dead?”

  All five of them nodded.

  “But just remember the food’s good,” K.J. said.

  “And we get to save the world at times,” Nancy said, “and a lot of people as well along the way.”

  “This isn’t a dream?” Elliot asked.

  He was trying to let his logical brain figure out a way that he couldn’t be dead, but the logic kept telling him he was dead.

  Very dead.

  He really had streamed into the ground earlier and he really was dead.