Seventh Grave and No Body

  “Sounds legit. You went on an interview?”

  She flashed me a nuclear smile. “I knew you were busy almost getting killed by the crime boss and playing paternity lawyer, so I thought, ‘Hey.’”

  “You think that a lot. But look at you. Miss Private Investigator. Now that you have a concealed carry permit, we might have to get you a fedora and a trench coat. The whole nine yards.”

  She shrugged sheepishly. “It was nothing. Like literally. The woman knew nothing. She and her niece were fairly close, but she said they hadn’t talked much since Phoebe’s move to Californ-eye-ay. That’s actually how she said it. And what the hell are you watching?”

  But I’d returned to the woman on the screen and didn’t dare take my eyes off it. “She’s pregnant,” I said.

  “You think? These things are going to give you nightmares and —” She stopped and leaned closer. “What is she in?”

  “Shhh.” I waved absently. “It’s almost here.”

  “Is that a wading pool? In her living room?”

  “Cookie, wait. She’s having a baby. Look.”

  “What is that man doing down there?”

  Shaking my head, I said, “That woman does not seem to be enjoying the moment.”

  “There’s no reason for his hand to be doing that.”

  “I think he’s massaging her.”

  “Her what? Her vagina?”

  “Oh, wait!” I said, squirming in my chair. “It’s coming.”

  We tilted our heads in unison, trying to see the baby emerge. Then, again in unison, we both cried out in horror.

  I covered my mouth and spoke from behind my hand. “Is that supposed to happen?”

  “Okay, seriously,” Cookie said, recovering quicker than I, “who’s the new guy? And why does he have a spatula?”

  “What are you two watching?” Uncle Bob asked from behind us, but our gazes were superglued to the screen.

  “Is that even legal?” Cookie asked. “It just seems wrong.”

  “I think this was shot in Mexico.”

  “Okay. But still, is it moral?”

  “What the hell is that guy doing?” Uncle Bob asked, leaning over my other shoulder, tilting his head until it matched ours. “Are you watching South American porn again?”

  “Oh, crap,” Cookie said, straightening. “You’re here.”

  “I am,” Ubie announced proudly.

  “We have to get ready for dinner. I’ll call and have Italian delivered.”

  “Works for me,” he said, heading to my kitchen for a cup of devil’s blood.

  I twirled in my chair and stood. “What is this dinner everyone keeps talking about?”

  “The dinner. You know.”

  “That is not helpful, Cookie.”

  She pursed her lips. “It was in last week’s memo.”

  Ah, the Concorde. It met a fiery end on Central. My window had been open.

  “Dr. von Holstein?” she continued.

  “The cow doctor? He’s coming here for dinner?”

  “He’s coming here to talk to you. Garrett was supposed to pick him up at the airport. We’re supposed to have dinner. Please tell me Garrett didn’t forget.”

  “He’s a little busy with his ex.”

  “No, he’s not,” Garrett said, walking right in. Nobody knocked anymore. It was weird.

  Cookie cast him a worried frown. “He isn’t coming?”

  Garrett hung up his phone. “He died of a heart attack two days ago. I just got off the phone with his secretary.”

  “Oh, no,” I said, sitting back down. “I’m sorry, Garrett.”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry, too. That explains why I didn’t hear from him.” He glanced around self-consciously. “I thought maybe you could, you know.” He wiggled his fingers.

  “I can wiggle my fingers, thanks for asking, but what does that have to do with the cow doctor?”

  My phone dinged with a text. I grabbed it off my desk and checked it.

  “You know what I mean,” Garrett said.

  “How’d it go with the ex?”

  “She’s not really my ex. I mean, we never really had a thing.”

  “Sure you did.” It was Osh asking if he could come in.

  I typed back,

  Of course.

  “You had a kid. That’s a tad more important than a thing.”

  “I guess.”

  Cookie went up and hugged him. He hugged back as though she were a prickly pear cactus, clearly uncomfortable with the subject of fatherhood. “I don’t care how it happened, it’s still wonderful. Congratulations.”

  He wiped his mouth when she stepped back. “Thanks.”

  “He’s adorable, Cook. His name is Zaire and you nailed it with the voodoo stuff.”

  Garrett’s gaze snapped back to hers. “How did you know?”

  She chuckled and walked back into the kitchen. “Marika has a blog. I’m a little surprised you didn’t find it.”

  “Wow. I never dug in that direction, I guess.”

  Uncle Bob shook his hand. “Congratulations. I’d offer you advice, but I’ve never been married.”

  “Neither has Garrett,” I said, stating the truth. “He’s a slut.”

  Cookie giggled. “I love it when you call men sluts.”

  “Right?” I said, giggling back. “It’s much funnier than the alternative.” It was odd how I despised that word when talking about women, but when talking about men, all bets were off. Maybe because of the centuries-old double standard where a woman who enjoyed sex was a slut, whereas a man who enjoyed sex was a stud. That one never sat well with me.

  I slowly got the feeling something was out of place. I glanced around, then bent down to Belvedere’s fishbowl. Only it wasn’t Belvedere. He’d been kidnapped!

  “Cookie,” I said, straightening and turning to look at her. “This is not my goldfish.”

  “What?” she asked, guilt radiating out of her.

  “Cookie!” I said, astonished. “Why would you abduct my goldfish?”

  She let out a hapless sigh. “How on earth did you figure that out? It’s a goldfish. They all look alike.”

  “Belvedere had a white patch on his side. This… this impostor, does not.”

  “Hey,” Cook said, walking over to cover the bowl as though covering a child’s ears. “She is very sensitive. Belvedere didn’t make it, hon. This is Mrs. Thibodeaux.”

  “What? I barely had him a day.”

  “I know.” She stepped forward and patted my shoulder. “It was his time.”

  I sank into a chair at the kitchen table. “I killed him. I knew it. I’m going to be a horrible mother. How can I keep a kid alive if I can’t even keep a goldfish alive?”

  “Charley, this has nothing to do with your parenting skills. Any number of things could have happened.”

  I sniffed and glanced over at Mrs. Thibodeaux. “Did he go peacefully?”

  “Yes.” She patted again. “I found him floating upside down with a smile on his little face.”

  “Mrs. Thibodeaux is very pretty.”

  “Yes, she is.”

  “So, can you try?” Garrett asked, going back to the wiggling-fingers thing as someone finally knocked on my door.

  With a sad sigh, I stood and opened the door to a very embarrassed and uncomfortable kid named Osh. When he didn’t come inside immediately, I rose onto my toes and hugged his neck.

  “You are welcome here anytime, Osh. I know you didn’t summon them. Reyes knows it, too.”

  Osh let me hug him but didn’t hug back unless I counted the slight patting of my rib cage. When I finished, he said, “Rey’aziel has a point. There are only a handful of entities on this plane who could have summoned the Twelve.”

  “Come in.”

  He stepped inside at last and I went to pour myself a cup of his captor’s blood. “Coffee?” I asked.

  He shook his head, then offered a tense nod of acknowledgment toward Cook and Garrett. They had both been there
that morning during World War III.

  Cookie rushed up and hugged him, too, her arms barely reaching around his shoulders. He bent to let her. It was sweet.

  “Are you okay, sweetheart?”

  His gorgeous mouth slid into a smile. “I’m fine. And I’m a centuries-old demon. I’ve lived through a lot worse.”

  She stepped back. “You’re a sweet boy nonetheless. Anyone who risks his life for our Charley is family in my book.”

  He was taken aback by her assessment of him. I got the feeling he didn’t get many compliments like that. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “Okay, who’s up for Italian?” When everyone nodded in agreement, she went to her apartment to call in an order and check on the offspring who had to do her homework before she could join us.

  Uncle Bob turned on the television and Osh walked up to me as I sat back at my computer. “You knocked my ass out this morning,” he said, clearly impressed.

  “Yeah, sorry about that. You sure came up swinging.”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry about that, too.”

  “Not at all. That was on Reyes, love. Who will be here in a few minutes.”

  “What is that woman doing?”

  I’d paused the video. “Oh, you won’t believe this crap.”

  I replayed it, to his utter mortification. “I’ve been alive for centuries, and I’ve never seen anything like that.”

  “Thank God that’s unusual. I was worried.”

  Reyes showed up and – instead of apologizing to our guest, the one he’d tried to beat senseless that morning – went straight to his apartment for a shower. Osh was cool with that. He sat and watched a game with Ubie and Swopes as Cookie cleared a space in my kitchen for the food when it arrived. Gawd, she was handy. I needed like three of her.

  Remembering she needed actual utensils, she ran back to her place to grab some. No idea why plastic forks wouldn’t do. Much less work involved later.

  “I have a joke for you,” Amber said as she sashayed into the room, her long dark hair hanging in tangles down her back.

  “Okay,” I said, giving her my full attention.

  She stood beside me, drinking soda from a can. “You know how you have a bun in the oven?”

  I stifled a laugh. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  “Okay, and you know how Reyes calls you Dutch?”

  “Yes,” I said, wondering where she was going with this.

  “Well, you’re like a Dutch oven. Get it?” She giggled.

  “I get it,” I said, giggling, too.

  “You’re still coming to the carnival, right?”

  “Abso-freaking-lutely.”

  She deflated. “You don’t know anything about it, do you?”

  “Sure I do.” I seemed to recall something about a carnival. Cookie may have mentioned it. Or it may have been in that 747 I’d crashed into the toilet. Memo or no memo, I was not fishing that out. “I just forgot when it is, exactly.”

  “Awesome. It’s tomorrow night.”

  “Oh, that’s right.”

  She giggled again. “You’re such a bad liar.”

  Oh, my god. Clearly, I needed lessons.

  “Let’s go into my room,” I said. “I need to change.”

  She shrugged and grinned as her phone dinged with a text.

  “Quentin?” I asked, leading her that way.

  After a quick glance at Osh, who nodded a very cool acknowledgment, she said, “Yeah. He got in trouble today in shop.”

  “Uh-oh. What’d he do?”

  “He made a wooden heart for me, but his teacher said it didn’t look like a heart. I have no idea what else it would look like, but he got detention for the rest of the week.”

  “Hmmm, I’ll have to call Santa Fe in the morning, see what’s going on.”

  “Okay.”

  “But things are good with him?” I asked. She seemed quite taken with Osh. Then again, so was I. What teenaged girl wouldn’t be?

  She sat on my bed, her expression morphing into dreamy. “Things are wonderful.”

  “I’m glad.” I chose a white sweater, then put it back. White and Italian didn’t always mix. Going for a soft black sweater, I took off the vest I was wearing and tossed it on a chair in the corner, then unbuttoned my blouse. “Don’t look. You’ll be scarred for life.”

  “Okay,” she said with a giggle. “I have a question for you, though.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Did you ever, you know, experiment with a girl?”

  “I did once in high school. She was my lab partner, and we had to dissect a frog.”

  “No, not that kind of experiment. The other kind.”

  I was worried she meant the other kind. “Oh, okay. I did experiment once in college. It was kind of the thing to do.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “I certainly didn’t hate it, but I did find out I’m not gay. Still, twenty bucks is twenty bucks.”

  “Yeah. Misty Rowley says if I want to give it a try, she’s game. But I just think I like guys, you know?”

  “She’s not pressuring you, is she?” I asked in alarm.

  “Oh, no. She just said if I wanted to try, it was okay with her.”

  “I’d go with my gut on this one, kiddo.”

  “Yeah. Her family is kind of weird anyway. She said her mother has a strap-on named Event Horizon.”

  I hid a burst of laughter behind a cough, then asked, “Do you know what a strap-on is?”

  She gave me a look of incredulity. “Of course. I know what a bra is. You strap it on.”

  “Right.” I patted her shoulder. “Well, some people name their bras. Personally, I find the practice bizarre.”

  She giggled. “You name everything.”

  “Not my bras. Who does that?” I asked, refraining both from explaining the error of her definition of a strap-on and the fact that I was currently wearing a bra named Penelope.

  After lifting a delicate shoulder, she said, “I have another question for you. But this one is kind of hard.”

  “Anything. Unless it involves math. Four out of three people are bad at math.”

  She fidgeted for a moment before continuing. “No math. I was just wondering, is Reyes’s… you know, package, is that an accurate representation of what a guy has?”

  I stilled and slammed my lids shut in mortification. I’d almost forgotten Reyes had torn into my apartment with nary a stitch on the other day. She came in right after and got the full monty.

  I couldn’t help it. I referred back to one of my favorite movies: The Jerk. “Um, do you mean his special purpose?”

  “No, I mean his cock.”

  I dived forward and slammed my hand over her mouth. “You’re twelve! How do you even know that word? I didn’t even know that word when I was twelve. Well, no – actually, I’ve known that word since the day I was born, but I didn’t use it when I was twelve.”

  Amber pursed her mouth and said from behind my hand, “I’m thirteen. I’ve been thirteen for a week.”

  “Right, okay.” I let her go. “Well, from here on out, it’s called a special purpose, okay?”

  “I’ve seen the movie. So is it?”

  “Wow, um, I’d have to say not really. Reyes is a tad… well, larger than the average male.”

  “Oh.” She deflated.

  “But the anatomy is the same. I mean, they all have pretty much the same equipment.”

  “Oh.” That seemed to make her happy.

  I finally found my sweater and pulled it before sitting beside her. “Why, hon? What’s up?”

  She shifted her mouth to one side of her gorgeous face. “It’s just I thought he was really nice. You know, to look at.”

  Stifling a grin, I said, “I agree completely.”

  Cookie walked in then, her brows raised in question. “What are you two talking about?”

  “We’re talking about special purposes,” Amber said. “We’re talking about how Reyes has a spectacular special purpose.”

  I c
losed my lids as Cookie walked up and put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Honey,” she said, “we all have a special purpose. Some are just bigger than others. You’ll have your own special purpose someday.”

  It took every ounce of control Amber had not to burst out laughing. Her face reddened with the effort as she stood, not sure how long she could hold it. “Thanks, Mom. I look forward to my own special purpose someday.”

  I dropped my face into my hands as she walked out.

  Cookie let out a long, exaggerated sigh. “The Jerk?”

  “The Jerk.”

  “Why do I fall for these things?”

  “Because you’re you,” I said, giving her a sympathetic hug.

  14

  If I’m upset, hold me and tell me how beautiful I am.

  If I growl, retreat to a safe distance and throw chocolate.

  — BEST. ADVICE. EVER.

  We enjoyed – enjoyed being relative – a quiet evening as Garrett told us stories about some of the conversations he’s had with Dr. von Holstein. Those were great. Clearly the man wasn’t nearly as stodgy as I’d imagined. The tension came from the two otherworldly beings in the room – minus Mr. Wong, since he didn’t seem to care about much of anything. Osh was very determined to stay put, to make sure I stayed safe despite the glares Reyes kept giving him. It didn’t help that Osh grinned every time Reyes glared. I was growing quite annoyed with the lot of them, if two could be considered a lot. It was kind of iffy, kind of like how two crows was only an attempted murder.

  But we made it through dinner with nary a punch thrown or an eye blackened. It was another good evening. In other words, it made me nervous.

  I walked into the bedroom after making Osh a bed on Sophie. Reyes was none too happy about our slumber party, but Osh was worried. He wanted to be here. To help in any way he could. And I had no problem letting him. Reyes would just have to deal.

  When I stepped past the threshold of our room – our beds still butted up against each other, since he’d taken the wall separating our rooms out a couple of weeks ago – I was struck by the picture that met me. Reyes lay across both beds, propped up on several pillows, shirtless with only his dark lounge pants, his legs stretched out in front of him, his feet bare, a drink in one hand, and a book in the other. It was like one of those “at home” photos with models that looked like movie stars.