Seventh Grave and No Body

  Alas, Artemis didn’t care. She jumped on a stream of water as it splashed against the tub floor, her ears cocked and ready. She growled at it, focusing all her attention on stopping the rogue water stream when another popped up and demanded her immediate attention. The water surged right through her, of course, but she didn’t seem to notice as she pounced, growling to give it a stern warning. To give them all a stern warning. No splashing allowed! So it is written. So shall it be done.

  Just when the throbbing in my head had dulled to an excruciating but nonstabbing ache, a shrill voice sliced through the air straight to the center of each and every pain synapse Barbara had.

  “Someone stole my body!”

  Oh, my god. I slammed my lids shut and gritted my teeth in agony. She’d scared Artemis off, too. The big baby.

  The offending woman stuck her head through the shower curtain. “It’s gone! You have to find it!”

  I scrubbed my face and turned off the shower. Clearly the day was going to proceed as usual: hectic and slightly bizarre.

  “Do you remember where you last saw it?” I asked her, reaching for a towel.

  A young girl – perhaps sixteen, with shoulder-length hair dyed the dull color of charcoal – stood back and let me dry off before answering.

  However, the second I slid the curtain aside, she started in. “You have to find it. I think my ex-boyfriend stole it. He was cray-cray.” Her clothes were modern and a touch dark, so she couldn’t have been dead very long. And the slang would suggest a recent death as well.

  “Okay, but really, where was it when it was stolen?”

  She blinked at me. “In my grave at the cemetery. Where else would it be?”

  “Oh, so you’re not an unsolved homicide or anything?”

  She held out her wrists, her shoulders rounding as she tucked her chin. Several cuts marred her perfect skin. A few were deep enough to sever the arteries, and blood streaked down from them and over her palms.

  “I’m sorry I did it, if that helps. I had no idea what it would do to my family.”

  I wrapped the towel around me.

  “I’m going to hell, aren’t I?”

  “No, hon. If you were going to hell, you’d already be there. Don’t even get me started on that all-suicides-go-to-hell crap. There are always loopholes. Extenuating circumstances, so to speak.”

  “That makes sense. I was adopted. I don’t know anything about my birth parents, but I think they were crazy, too.”

  “You think you’re crazy?”

  “Yeah, but not like drama queen crazy. I mean like literally. I could never keep my head right, you know? I could never keep facts straight or remember things like others could. They put me in special education when I was a kid, and some girls called me stupid.”

  She was still a kid, though I kept that to myself.

  “Even my best friends growing up turned against me and laughed at me.”

  I knew the feeling.

  “I think maybe my mom was on drugs or something when she was pregnant with me, you know? Anyways, that’s why I did it, I think. My head just didn’t work right. But my mom —” She hid behind her hair and wiped the back of a palm across her eyes. “My adopted mom. I just didn’t know how much I meant to her.”

  “I’m so sorry, hon.”

  “I wish I could tell her I’m sorry.”

  Caving completely, I wrapped an arm around her. “We’ll figure out a way, okay? She’ll know how much you loved her. But for now, what’s this about your body?”

  “It’s gone!” she screeched again, and a searing knife pierced my delicate skull and plummeted into my head to scramble my already exploded brains. Poor Barbara. I didn’t know how much more she could take. She wasn’t the most reliable of brains to begin with.

  “Yes,” I said, holding my head to keep it from falling off, “I got that the first time.”

  I hurried and dressed so Reyes and I could make a quick pit stop at the bar before heading off to interview the suicide-note victims’ families and to check out Lacey Banks’s missing body. But stepping out of the apartment building, the one that had been blessed by a priest and thus offered some protection against the Twelve, proved more difficult than I had expected.

  “We can go back inside,” Reyes said, a sexy smile playing about his mouth as he stood behind me.

  “And do what, exactly?” I was getting frustrated. I had a job to do. I couldn’t be cowering around every corner, worried about one of the beasts of hell filleting the flesh from my bones.

  “You have to ask?” he said, teasing.

  “Please. I know exactly what you’d do.”

  “What?”

  I did the deadpan thing before explaining. “You would call Osh over to stand guard while you went in search of the Twelve. I know you would.”

  He looked across the parking lot, totally busted. “I would, but I can’t trust you. Or him.”

  “Then work, it is.”

  I forced my leg past the threshold of the building and waited a second for it to be ripped off. When nothing happened, I eased out into the open, praying we were right about the sunlight. After a few steps, I grew more confident. Reyes checked on things downstairs as I ran up to the office to check on Cook before we set out for the day. She’d seen a lot that morning. Not everyone could handle that kind of violence without some kind of side effect. Like horrendous nightmares or a twitchy eyelid. I hated when that happened.

  But she seemed fine. A little traumatized by the demon showdown that morning and the newswoman implying Reyes was going to sue her honey bunny. Other than that, she was ay-okay. We went over my schedule for the day before I set her on the task of finding a connection between the suicide-note victims. “And I want to know more about that newswoman. Do a background on her.”

  “Blackmail?” Cookie asked just as Reyes walked in.

  I smiled and laughed, dismissing her statement with a wave. “I’ve never blackmailed anyone in my life,” I explained to my affianced.

  “What about —?”

  “That wasn’t blackmail, Cook,” I said, shutting her up. “That was a mutually beneficial arrangement. And can you keep trying my dad? He’s not picking up.”

  “Maybe your stepmother’s psycho and he really is sailing the ocean blue,” she offered.

  “My stepmother is psycho. That’s never been in question. But not about this. Dad always makes sure we can get ahold of him. This just isn’t like him.”

  A woman’s voice drifted to us from inside my office. “They told me you were up here.”

  We turned as she walked through my office door. The one that led to the stairs that led to the bar that Reyes usually ran. She wore four-inch heels and sauntered up to us like she owned the place.

  “You,” she said, pointing toward Reyes, “are a difficult man to catch.” When Reyes didn’t answer her, she turned toward me. The woman whose back he’d been caressing. She held out her hand. “So nice to see you again.”

  “And in real clothes this time,” I said, still flinching over the fact that our first meeting involved pajamas and bed head.

  She hooked her fingers around mine as though she expected me to kiss her hand. “Aren’t you darling?” she asked.

  That wasn’t patronizing at all. “Well, thank you. My fiancé seems to think so.” I leaned back into his shoulder, at which point he placed an appreciative kiss on my head. Right on cue. It kind of hurt, since Barbara had exploded from lack of caffeine, but I sucked it up.

  While Cookie looked on longingly and a soft sigh escaped her, Sylvia Starr’s emotions were more along the lines of sociopathic. They leapt inside her, and a boiling hatred spilled out in hot, razor-sharp waves. Yet she managed to keep her cool. That superstar smile plastered on her face didn’t waver an inch. It was creepy.

  Feeling the same thing I did, Reyes wrapped his arm all the way around my waist and pulled me close. How did she even get in? It was eight o’clock in the morning and the restaurant wasn’t open yet. S
he was a sweet-talker. Neil had been right. She probably knew how to talk her way into any situation. Or out of one.

  “I’m Cookie,” my faithful assistant said, standing behind her desk and holding out her hand. “I see you on TV all the time.”

  “Well, thank you.”

  I wasn’t sure how that was a compliment, but okay.

  The sugary texture of her voice was making my teeth ache, but she turned back to Reyes and spoke again nonetheless. “I was wondering if now would be a good time for that interview.”

  Anger welled within him, so I intervened. “Actually, we have some people to interview ourselves. We’re on a case at the moment, but thanks.”

  “A case?” she asked. Not me. She had yet to speak directly to me. It was weird how everything she said, even to other people, was directed toward Reyes. As though he had to answer for us simple girl-folk.

  “A case,” I said, pointing to the front door, the one she didn’t come through, that had my name on it.

  “Oh, right. You must be the Davidson in Davidson Investigations.”

  Oh, my god. She didn’t even look at me when she said it. It was as though she would almost look at me, but her gaze would stay locked on Reyes.

  “If you’ll excuse us,” I said, gesturing toward the door. The front door.

  “Another time,” she said, turning and going back the way she’d come in.

  I stood stunned. Not for very long, but still. “She’s nuttier than a pecan tree.”

  Reyes didn’t say anything. He just glared.

  “Okay, well, that was fun,” I said to Cook.

  “I liked her, except her homicidal attachment to your affianced,” she said.

  “You noticed that, did you? I wasn’t sure you would with all the work you’re doing.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Cookie sat concentrating on her computer screen, really into that game of spider solitaire.

  I patted her cheek, and said, “Okay, then. I’m off to affect somebody’s life in an irreversible devastating way.”

  “Good luck,” she said without looking up.

  I think it was her lack of caffeine that morning that made her zone out. “And get some work done. I’m not paying you minimum wage to play solitaire.”

  “I’m on it, boss.”

  Gawd, she was good.

  “I was hoping to avoid that,” Reyes said as we made our way to Misery. Sometime during the evening, Uncle Bob had had Noni detail her innards, removing the blood I’d smeared across her seats and floorboard. I must’ve resembled Carrie when I left the asylum that first time yesterday. And the second time. And red was not my best color. Thank the gods Ubie’d had her detailed, because blood simmering under the New Mexico sun was never a good scent choice for cars. I preferred pine. Or plants of the tropics. But I was most fond of the one I had now, mocha cappuccino. Odd how that flavor came in a scent for one’s car. It turned the inside of Misery into a little coffeehouse on wheels. A decaf coffeehouse, sadly.

  Our first stop was the widow of yesterday’s suicide-note victim. Of course, she didn’t know she was a widow yet. I’d have to be very, very careful with my words.

  “Since you’re going to follow me around all day, I’ve decided to pretend you’re my bodyguard,” I said to Reyes as he followed me up the walk to the woman’s house. “And I am very, very wealthy. So wealthy, I need a bodyguard.”

  “I am your bodyguard,” he said, scanning the area for any sign of the Twelve. “And you are very, very wealthy.”

  “No, I’m not. You are. And you can’t be my bodyguard for reals. You’re my affianced.” I rang the doorbell. The Chandlers had a modest house in the Northeast Heights with a well-manicured lawn and lots of nonindigenous flowers. “Affianceds can’t be bodyguards to their better halves. Bodyguards have to keep their distance,” I explained as we waited. “They can’t get too attached to their subject matter.”

  “Their subject matter?”

  “The body they’re guarding. They have to keep a cool, level head and stay detached, lest they let their emotions overrule their better judgment. Thus, I am pretending – emphasis on the pre and the tend – that you are my bodyguard. I need a Chihuahua with a diamond collar.”

  I glanced at my button-down, soft leather vest hanging to my knees, and my boots. I had to wear the knee-highs so I could bring Zeus along. When I carried him out in the open, people hurt themselves trying to get away.

  “I so don’t look like a woman with a bodyguard. I look like a bohemian.”

  “I like bohemians.”

  I glanced up at him. “Are you sure you’re okay? You were almost ripped apart yesterday, and today you seem… off.”

  He glanced around again. “I just think we should be looking at the bigger picture.”

  “Which is?” I asked as the door opened.

  “Twelve angry hellhounds that want nothing more than to rip out your throat and sup on your blood.”

  Thankfully, there was a glass door between Mrs. Chandler and us, and Reyes had said those last words softly.

  I pasted on my best sympathetic smile as she opened the glass door. She was a pleasant-looking lady in her mid-fifties with short brown hair she probably had done every week at the beauty shop. After digging out my PI license, I explained who we were, introducing Reyes as my associate, Mr. Farrow, and why we were there. I doubt she heard a word we said.

  She let us in, her eagerness to find her husband making her desperate. I was surprised at the lack of uniforms. I’d expected a cop to be there or an FBI agent. She sniffed into a tissue as we sat in her pristine living room.

  “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Chandler,” I said, as she sniffed again. “Was that your husband’s handwriting on the suicide note?”

  “No,” she said, raising her chin. “Like I told the police, that’s his handwriting when he’s drunk.”

  “He’d been drinking?”

  She stood and rummaged through a drawer before coming back and showing us a coin. No, a chip. A sobriety chip from Alcoholics Anonymous.

  “This is his nine-year chip. He carries his ten-year chip with him everywhere. He hasn’t taken a sip of alcohol since…” She turned away from me to gather herself. When she turned back, her expression was filled with vehemence. Determination. “He hasn’t taken a single sip in all that time. Then suddenly he’s drinking and suicidal? Just out of the blue like that?”

  “Mrs. Chandler, do you know any of these people?” I asked, slipping three pictures out of the file I carried and showing them to her. They were the other three suicide-note victims. Perhaps if we could find a link, we could figure out who was doing this. And why.

  But my bigger motivation for being there was her husband. Every once in a great while, I would get lucky and the departed victim would still be hanging out at his old stomping grounds. I glanced around but saw no one. Though I did catch a glimpse of a stuffed shi-tzu on a bookshelf. Stuffed animals freaked me out.

  “I don’t recognize any of them, though this one looks faintly familiar,” she said, handing back the pictures and pointing to Anna Gallegos. “Are they involved in my husband’s disappearance?”

  “No, not exactly. Did the police tell you your husband’s suicide note wasn’t the first they’ve seen lately?”

  “Yes, they mentioned that. They said there was another man and a woman missing as well. Why aren’t they doing anything?” She was starting to panic. “Why aren’t they looking?”

  “Mrs. Chandler, they are. That’s why we’re here, too. We’re looking in on the case.”

  “A private investigator?” she asked, surprised.

  “I’m also a consultant for APD. Has your husband had any problems with anyone lately? Any fights with coworkers or —?”

  “He’s an accountant for a law firm. He has issues every once in a while with a lawyer or an investigator billing beyond what they actually worked, but nothing that would explain this.”

  I nodded, asked her a few more questions along the same lines, but I got th
e feeling Reyes was making her nervous. He stood and looked down the halls occasionally. Peeked into her kitchen. Moved aside a curtain to look through the window.

  “If you think of anything,” I said, handing her my card as she led us out, “please give me a call.”

  “I will. Please find him,” she said, breaking down again. A Buick pulled into the drive with Oregon license plates. Mrs. Chandler ran to the car and hugged the woman getting out of it. They looked like sisters, so I left them to it and walked Reyes to Misery.

  “This would work much better if you’d relax.”

  “This would work much better if there weren’t hellhounds after my fiancée.”

  He had a point.

  Next stop was an elementary school where the sister of the local female victim was working. The sister taught third grade. As much as I hated to interrupt her class, I needed to get on this. I made Reyes wait for me outside, because nothing about a man loitering outside an elementary school seemed creepy. But I couldn’t risk him making her nervous.

  After a thorough cavity check, a retinal scan, and the drawing of a sample of my DNA, I was allowed to walk two doors down the hall of the school to Marie Gallegos’s classroom.

  Ms. Gallegos was a petite Hispanic woman with a short bob and pretty face. And she was just as distraught as Mrs. Chandler. I asked her the same questions and showed her the same pictures as we stood at her desk, to no avail. The children were working quietly at their desks. The brave ones glanced up on occasion, curious as to what we were talking about. The really brave ones stared openly. But the longer we talked, the more restless they became. I was worried we’d have a mutiny on our hands if I stayed much longer. Either that or Reyes would be arrested for hanging out at a schoolyard.

  “If you think of anything,” I said as I let her get back to her third-grade math class before they drew blood, “please give me a call.”

  “Thank you, I will.”