Fifth Grave Past the Light

  She blinked, surprised to be there. “Hi,” she said back. “Can you see me?”

  “Sure can.” I stepped around her and headed that way. That way being the bathroom. “Are you here to cross?”

  “Cross?” she asked, trying to gain her bearings. “I don’t think so.”

  “Okay, well, there’s coffee in the pot.” When she frowned in confusion, I said, “Sorry, bad joke. How can I help you?” She followed me into the bathroom. I hated to turn on the shower with one of the departed women in there, but it had to be done.

  “No one can find my body.”

  “Do you know where it is?”

  “Yes, yes!” She grabbed my arm. “I do. It’s under that old bridge on 57, like the ones they make for trains. Metal and rusting.”

  I patted her hand. “Okay, an old bridge on Highway 57. Got it. Can you give me more?”

  “My family can’t find it. They have been searching and searching, and they can’t find my body. My sister is – She’s so upset.”

  “I’m sorry, hon. What’s your na —?”

  Before I could ask for her name, she disappeared. Darn it. All I got off her ID was Nic. Perhaps she was a Nicole or a Nicky. If she’d have crossed through me, I would have gleaned more info about her, but apparently this was going to be a game of cat and mouse. I could only pray I’d be the cat this time. I hated being the mouse.

  After dressing in a cream-colored sweater, jeans, and my favorite boots, I started for my handy dandy office, which sat about fifty feet from my handy dandy apartment. I took another look at Reyes’s door and felt an odd urge to use my key again. God, that man was talented. Still, honing my skills in self-control was good practice for later in life when dementia set in and I would try to take everyone’s meds off the cart at the home.

  I called Uncle Bob and got only a garbled hello for my efforts.

  “Hey, mister. I need you to check something for me.”

  He cleared his throat and said, “It’s Saturday.”

  “And?”

  “I’m off.”

  He did sound a bit groggy. “Did I wake you?”

  If I didn’t know better, I’d have said he growled at me.

  “So, has there been a rash of murders lately? Perhaps something in a blonde? Petite? Strangled?”

  “What? Did you get something?”

  Uncle Bob, always asking if I got something, like I got messages from the great beyond. “No, but I do have an apartment full of women who were strangled to death.”

  I heard a rustling sound as though he were fighting sheets to get out of bed. I understood. Sheets were tricky. Losing the fight, he cursed. And dropped his phone. Twice. Ubie had never been a morning person. “Okay,” he said at last, “give me the details.”

  I broke it down as I had for Cookie. “Okay, I have no less than nine women in my apartment ranging in age anywhere from seven to thirty-five, all blond but not all natural blondes. Caucasian, Hispanic, African American, and at least one Asian. Ring any bells?”

  “Not offhand.”

  “I don’t think these women died recently. And I think their deaths were spread out over an extended period of time, possibly with long gaps in between.”

  “Could be the killer did a stint in jail. Any names?”

  “No, but they’re scared, Uncle Bob. Terrified. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “I’ll check around. How are you?”

  “Okay, I just have no idea why they would show up now. Something had to trigger their appearance.”

  “I don’t know either, pumpkin. But how are you?”

  Uncle Bob. Always worried about me. Or, well, his ticket to solving case after case, thus his immaculate rep.

  “I’m okay. A little weirded out, actually, and the departed never do that to me. They are just so terrified, Uncle Bob. It’s like they’re reliving their deaths. I need to solve this fast.”

  “We will, hon. I’ll get on it today. Let me know if any new missing women show up or if you get any more information from them. Maybe another death is what triggered their appearance.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Oh, and I wanted you to know that our arsonist struck again.”

  I stopped halfway up the stairs to my office. “What? When?”

  “Last night around midnight.”

  My free hand flew to my mouth. It wasn’t him. It wasn’t Reyes. He was with me at midnight. Unless… “Was it on a timer like the others?”

  “Yes, but we have a witness.”

  Suddenly strangled with worry again, I asked, “Can the witness identify the arsonist?”

  “No, but we did get a pretty good description. An odd one, actually. If I didn’t know better, I’d say… Never mind. I’ll tell you when I see you.”

  “No, what?” If he didn’t know better, he’d say it was Reyes Farrow? Was that what he was going to say?

  “Well, it’s kind of crazy, but if I didn’t know better, I’d say the arsonist was a woman.”

  I paused a moment, then asked, “A woman? That’s kind of rare, right?”

  “It happens, but yes, it’s extremely rare.”

  Slowly, and with infinite precision, awareness crept over me. It couldn’t be. “Can you describe her?” I asked, almost not wanting to hear.

  “Tall, willowy, painfully thin. The witness said he, or she, was shaking, like she was scared.”

  I closed my eyes in regret. If anything would come between Reyes and me, it’s the fact that I was about to put his only relative, his nonbiological sister, Kim Millar, in jail. Earl Walker had obtained Reyes through nefarious means. I didn’t know the details, but I did know that Reyes had been kidnapped as a baby and later traded to Earl. Kim had been dropped on Earl’s doorstep. Her mother, a habitual drug user and prostitute, was dying, so she left Kim with her biological father. The fact that her father was Earl Walker was a cruel twist of fate for Kim and a way to control Reyes for Earl.

  I sat on a step and fought back the wave of sorrow I felt. Who else could it be? She’d grown up in the same houses as Reyes. She’d been subjected to the same horrors. Her abuse was different from Reyes’s. Earl never touched her the way he did her brother, but he did other things. For one, he starved her to get what he wanted out of Reyes. Earl used them against each other their entire lives. What would that do to siblings? Reyes had stayed away from her when he was accused of killing Earl and made her promise not to go see him. He didn’t want her hurt any more because of him and she didn’t want anyone using her as a means to get what they wanted out of Reyes ever again, so they hadn’t seen each other in years. Yet they had a fierce love for each other and would do just about anything to protect that love. Did that include arson?

  “You there, pumpkin?”

  I tried to snap out of the sadness that had overtaken me. “I’m here.”

  He must have sensed it anyway. “Who is it, hon?”

  “What makes you think I know?”

  “Have you ever heard the caveat about trying to con a con man? You know exactly who it is. You’ve suspected for a while, ever since that fire the other night.”

  He was talking about the night the condemned apartment building burned. “I might know,” I admitted, my heart sinking. “I might not. I need to be certain, to check on a few things.”

  “Then tell me who you suspect.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I thought we had an open line of communication.”

  “Come on, Uncle Bob. Don’t pull the relative card on me. I’ll do the right thing. You know I will.”

  “I know, hon, but —”

  “Please give me some time.”

  After a long pause, he caved. “You have twenty-four hours. After that, I drag your ass in for aiding and abetting.”

  “Uncle Bob!” I yelped, completely appalled. “After everything we’ve been through?”

  “Lives are at stake here, Charley. The next fire could kill someone. Could kill lots of someones, and I know how big that
heart of yours is.”

  He was wrong. My heart wasn’t big. It was just taken. “I’ll do the right thing. I promise.”

  I hung up before he could make me feel worse. Damn it. Now what? Turn in Reyes’s sister? He would never forgive me. And Uncle Bob would never forgive me if another building burned and I knew who the arsonist was. What if someone did get hurt next time? That would be on my shoulders as surely as my head was.

  There had to be options. I knew people who knew people. I had connections. I nibbled on a hangnail as a fail-proof plan formed. Surely my plan would work. True, my plans tended to head south from the get-go, but sometimes they made a left turn just in the nick of time and veered onto an alternate course until they almost, if one squinted hard enough, ended up in the right place. Maybe a few feet off-kilter, but close enough to call them a win in my book. No matter that my book was titled How to Call Even Your Most Dismal Failures a Win and Not Feel Guilty About It.

  No. I had to think positive. This could work. This could work. I chanted that mantra over and over while unlocking the customer entrance to Davidson Investigations. Not that I wanted a customer to enter, but business was business, no matter what day it arrived. I walked through Cookie’s reception area, into my office, and straight toward the Bunn. Coffee would take the edge off. Or put in on. Either way.

  After starting a pot to get me through the morning, I powered up my computer and prepared to print out the pictures I’d taken of Tidwell fondling Cookie’s right hand. They didn’t really prove anything other than the fact that Tidwell had a fondling issue and a horrendous temper, but he was definitely there for nefarious reasons. Hopefully my shots would prove that at least, and hopefully Mrs. Tidwell would not be one of those women who made excuses for her husband. Of course, she’d hired a PI for a reason. People don’t hire a PI to find out if their spouse is cheating. They hire a PI to prove it. They already know the truth, deep down inside.

  I plugged in the USB cable to my phone and pulled up the shots. They weren’t pretty. They could have been, however, had I used a wide lens with a softer focus and some strategically placed lighting. Sadly, as the evening progressed, they got a little worse until all I had was a shot of Cookie’s eye and right nostril. In the upper left corner, one of Tidwell’s fists was coming at me. He tried to hit me. How did I miss that?

  My phone pinged. It was a text from Cookie.

  I’m not that good at cocking guns.

  Really? Did she not know me at all?

  I texted her back.

  You can do this. Learn the cock, Cookie.

  Know the cock.

  Be the cock.

  6

  I’m not 100 percent certain, but I think my cup of coffee just said, “You’re my bitch.”

  —STATUS UPDATE

  I walked Cookie through a quick lesson on how to cock a gun – or, since she was using a semiautomatic, how to chamber a round – without pinching the ever-loving crap out of herself. I’d been there. I knew the price. That steel sliding against steel was unforgiving, even on the smallest versions. She seemed to do okay once I gave her a few pointers, so I decided to do a quick search to see if I could get a hit on my new roommates. Surely there would be something about them in the news. But site after site yielded exactly squat. Nothing. Not a word about a group of murdered blond women.

  “You need to go.”

  I jumped and turned to the departed thirteen-year-old gangbanger standing behind me. He looked at the door, his eyes wide with barely contained panic, then back at me.

  “Really, you need to go. Somewhere else. Leave.” He put his arms under mine and yanked, trying to lift me out of my chair, his hands alarmingly close to the girls, Danger and Will Robinson. My breasts were all I had. I had to maintain their integrity. Allowing a thirteen-year-old to grope them would be wrong on so many levels.

  “But it’s my office,” I said, slapping at him. “You go.” I kicked against my desk until he dropped me back into my ninety-nine-dollar office chair.

  He knelt beside me. “Please, Charley, just go.”

  I grew wary. People had a tendency to try to kill me at the most inopportune times. But his pleading was much less “life-threatening situation” and much more “I screwed up.”

  “Angel Garza, did you steal all the toilet paper from the women’s restroom again? We’ve talked about this.”

  “No, I promise. You just need to leave.” The front door opened, and he dropped his head into his hands. Apparently, it was too late for me to escape. I was caught like a fly in a spider’s web. I could only pray for survival.

  I took a sip of coffee instead as a Hispanic woman walked into Cookie’s office, a curious determination to her gait. I didn’t recognize her, but I felt like I knew the face. She was in her late fifties with long black hair that hung in pretty waves over her shoulders. And she was dressed to kill. Hopefully not me, though. She wore skintight jeans, knee-high black leather boots, a soft gray sweater, and a D&G bag that hung from her shoulder like an Uzi. I liked her.

  She spotted me and made a beeline to my desk.

  “You can’t tell her, Charley,” Angel said, panic rounding his eyes again. And I suddenly knew who she was.

  I looked up at her and tried to hide my utter shock as she came to a stop in front of my desk. “Are you Charley Davidson?” she asked, her Mexican accent soft, the sharpness in her tone anything but.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I panicked right alongside Angel. It was the only thing I could think to say. “I don’t know. What?”

  She blinked at me, then realized I was panicking. Honestly, it was like admitting to murder before being interrogated.

  “Ms. Davidson,” she began, but I decided to trip her up, to throw her off the trail of blood I’d left like an injured animal.

  “I don’t speak English.”

  “I’ve asked around about you,” she continued undeterred. “I know who you are. What you do. But what I can’t figure out for the life of me is why you would be depositing money in my bank account every month. How do you know my account number? And why would anyone do such a thing?”

  “What? Me?” I looked around, hoping she was talking to someone else.

  “You can’t tell her, Charley.”

  “I won’t,” I whispered through my teeth. Then again, his mother looked a tad hell-bent. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do.” She crossed her arms and tapped her toes on my carpeted floor.

  “Can you just excuse me for one moment?”

  “Look, I’m not accusing you of anything, but you’ve been putting money in my bank account. Five hundred dollars every month for almost three years now.”

  “Five hundred dollars a month?” Angel asked, appalled. “Is that all I’m worth to you?”

  I grabbed his arm and held up an index finger to put his mother in pause mode as I herded him out the side door, the one that led to the interior stairs of Dad’s bar. “Excuse me just one sec.”

  “Five hundred dollars a month? I could haunt a rich guy’s ex for five hundred dollars a month.”

  When Mrs. Garza eyed me, her expression part leery and part suspicion, I smiled and closed the door between us. “Look —”

  “Migrant workers make more than I do.”

  “Angel, you are part-time. Part-time. And that was all I could afford when I first opened up.”

  “Yeah, well screw you. I quit.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, eyeing him. “You know exactly how much you make. You’ve known the whole time. I told you.”

  “I know.” He shrugged. “I was just hoping for a raise. My mother needs a new car.”

  “And I have to supply it?” I asked, taking my turn at being appalled.

  “If you want to keep your best investigator, you do.”

  I poked his chest with an index finger. “This is extortion, buddy.”

  “It’s business, pendeja. Pay up or shut up.”

  ?
??And just who says you are my best investigator? You’re my only investigator.”

  “Either way.”

  “This is wonderful. What am I supposed to tell her?”

  “You’re the one with all the answers. And you’re a PI. Tell her an uncle died and left you in charge of doling out the money or something. Isn’t that what rich people do?”

  “That’s a job for lawyers.”

  “Then I don’t know. I can’t think of everything.”

  “Angel,” I said, placing a hand on his shoulder. His eyes were such a deep, rich brown and his face was so young, his chin sprinkled with the soft beginnings of facial hair. He died too young. Way too young. I often wondered what he would have done with his life if he’d had a chance. He was such a good kid. “Maybe we should tell her.”

  “Fuck that.” His stormy eyes suddenly turned angry. “No.”

  “If I were your mother, I would want to know you were okay.”

  “If you were my mother, I’d need therapy. I’ve had thoughts, you know.” He gestured to Danger and Will with a nod, but I didn’t let his confession – though it wasn’t exactly news – deter me.

  “I would want to know what an awesome kid you are.”

  One corner of his full mouth rose in a playful gesture. “You think I’m awesome?”

  Uh-oh.

  “Am I awesome enough to see you naked?”

  Why did I bother? “Or I could just tell her what a perv you’ve become.”

  “Okay, never mind. But you didn’t see her. She cried all the time, for months after I died. I can’t do that to her.”

  Like I said, awesome. “Okay, sweetheart. I won’t tell her. But your mother is sharp and stronger than you give her credit for.”

  “She’s as tough as they come.” Pride swelled across his chest. She was probably in her early thirties when he died. It had been at least twenty years.

  I stepped back into my office. Mrs. Garza, who had also lost her husband after Angel died, was examining a painting on my wall. She turned to me, her expression still set on hell-bent.