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“I was the doctor supervising your emergency intake,” he replied. “I’m not your primary care physician.”

Well, that was fair. I hadn’t even started to look for a regular doctor in Prescott, although I supposed I should probably do that sooner rather than later. It was still kind of crazy to think that I had real health insurance now, the same gold plan my parents had when they were alive. That was one of the only truly adult things I did after they’d passed, after I’d realized the cost wasn’t going to be an issue anymore, and I probably shouldn’t be playing fast and loose with something so important.

Otherwise, the bill from my little emergency room visit and overnight stay would have been something I really didn’t want to contemplate.

“Sure,” I said, then added hastily, “but I won’t have another night off until next Tuesday. Can we figure out the timing a little later?”

“Of course.” He got out a pen and wrote something on the prescription pad on his desk. When he tore it off and handed it to me, though, I realized he wasn’t writing me a prescription but was giving me his phone number. “Just give me a call when you’re ready. I know you’re probably still getting settled in.”

That was true. I was starting to get my rhythm, but with a ghostly great-aunt sharing the house with me and a dead federal agent hanging around my place of work, things still felt a little off-kilter.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll give you a call.”

“Looking forward to it.”

And went out to my car — well, Hazel’s big Cadillac convertible, which she’d given me permission to drive, just like she’d given me everything else in the house — and drove away, feeling slightly bemused.

Now it was Thursday night, and I was alone with Marco. Roz generally left around six; she had a husband waiting for her at home, and although both her kids were grown and out of the house, she still liked to be there for dinner. I didn’t mind, since she usually came in earlier than I did, arriving at the bar around nine most days so she could get the business stuff out of the way before any customers started to arrive.

Marco and I hit it off almost instantly. He’d gotten a degree in enology and viticulture at Yavapai College over the hill in Clarkdale, and now he was studying to take the Certified Sommelier exam, something that sounded pretty daunting.

But because he was such a fiend for wine in general and an absolute expert on Arizona viticulture, he taught me a lot about the wines we offered, how some of them were made with estate grapes — that is, grapes grown on a vineyard’s property — while others were made from fruit grown in the big farms down in Sonoita and Elgin and Willcox, where the climate and terroir were particularly conducive to producing high-quality grapes.

And we talked about the local beers we served, as well as the meads, which I found kind of fascinating because I’d expected them to be sweet, and a lot of them really weren’t. Before I started working at Copper State Cellars, I wouldn’t have said I was an expert on any of it…and I still wasn’t, but I was also learning.

We had our usual local crowd come and go that Thursday, and by eight-thirty, it was quiet, with only Marco and me — well, and Mack hanging around in the background, although I knew better than to strike up a conversation with him when it would look to Marco like I was talking to nothing.

On nights like this, I kind of wished we could just close things up and go home, but Hazel had been a stickler for keeping our regular hours no matter how busy or slow the bar might be, and I wasn’t about to go against her wishes on that point. Instead, I wiped down a table that had just been vacated and then headed over to the bar to give it another once-over.

The door opened, and a waft of cold air came in. I looked up to see Father Brennan enter the bar.

He was one of the regulars, usually stopping by a couple of nights a week. Marco had told me he was the pastor at Sacred Heart, which was a few blocks to the west and north of where Copper State Cellars was located. My interactions with him had been brief, but I knew that Hazel, a complete agnostic, was very fond of him, and he was very friendly with me during our first meeting, asking me how I was doing and whether I needed any support from the community to get settled in. I’d only said I was fine, and instead of pushing, he’d ordered a glass of red wine and sat with it at the bar, as if he didn’t want to take a table away from a couple or a larger group.

Tonight, he seemed almost preoccupied as he took his usual seat at the bar and ordered a glass of red, this time some Mangus from Arizona Stronghold.

I placed his drink in front of him. “Get you anything else?”

“No, this is fine.” He paused there, his fingers wrapped around the stemless glass. Then he smiled, but something in his usually warm brown eyes seemed tired. “I was hoping we might talk sometime. There’s something regarding Hazel that I wanted to speak to you about.”

He sounded casual enough, but I caught the way he glanced over at Marco, who was filling the partially empty bottles with argon so the wine inside wouldn’t oxidize overnight. That glance told me Father Frank wanted a chance to talk to me alone.

Did he somehow know that Hazel was still lingering on this plane and haunting the house she’d loved for so many years?

No, no one knew that except me. Well, and Mack, but since he was also a ghost and couldn’t talk to any mortal who wasn’t a Cosgrove with an awakened gift, I didn’t think he’d been spilling secrets in the confessional.

This had to be something else altogether.

“Of course,” I said. “Any time.”

Father Frank nodded, and a tired smile touched his mouth. “Then I’ll come back sometime in the next few days. Maybe next Monday?”

A day he must know was generally slow at Copper State Cellars.

“Sounds good,” I told him.

Since it seemed as if he wasn’t in the mood to chat, I left him alone after that and went down to talk to Marco, who was all too happy to explain how the argon worked, and how it meant we could leave a certain bottle half-drunk for a few days or even a week. I doubted even our least popular bottles would sit that long, but I had to admit it was a handy way to cut down on spoilage.

Sometime during Marco’s impromptu lecture, Father Frank finished his glass of Mangus and excused himself to go to the restroom. I offered him a nod and a small smile as he went, and then wondered whether I should remove the empty glass or wait until he came back. Normally, he only drank a single glass and then left, but it felt as if he was having kind of a rough day, and we’d be open for another fifteen minutes.