Eat, Pray, Die Mystery Box Set

by Chelsea Field

  “Yes, Abe. Short for Abraham. Sheesh, you’re telling me you don’t even know his first name, and you’re prancing about on your high horse telling me to stay away from him?”

  “But—”

  “Besides”—she smirked—“how dangerous can he be if he’s scared of a little blood?”

  I hung my head. This conversation was not going how I’d planned. Actually, she was kind of arguing me around to her point of view, but I hadn’t forgotten my terror-stricken encounters with him. My dreams wouldn’t let me forget. I decided to play dirty. “Didn’t I hear him call you a sweet old lady tonight?”

  Etta struck me with a scowl that might’ve sent me running if I hadn’t been so exhausted. “That was low, Izzy, even for you.”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m worried about you.”

  “Piffle. I’ve survived close to three quarters of a century on this crazy Earth, and I’m not about to be afraid of some family-oriented bruiser who’s too nice to do his job properly! And for the record, it wasn’t the old part I objected to. Hell, I know I’m old, and I’m proud of it. It’s annoying at times, when my body isn’t as fit as it used to be, but it has its benefits too, like I can say whatever I want and no one will naysay me.” She shot me a meaningful look. “It was the word ‘sweet’ that got to me. Sweet is just so… insipid, so boring. I’m not boring.”

  “Boring is the last thing I’d describe you as,” I said truthfully. “But didn’t you describe Mr. Black as sweet earlier?” Calling him Abe felt wrong.

  She flicked her hand at me dismissively. “That was in a very different context.”

  I didn’t naysay her.

  After I’d left Etta and Dudley snuggling on the couch, all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and bring this never-ending crappy day to an end. But Etta had made me promise to get antibiotics for the cat scratches, and considering she was the type of person to think gator hunting was fun and giant bruisers were sweet, I figured I should take it seriously.

  I phoned my handler Jim and went through the usual identification rigmarole. “How do I go about seeing a doctor for… non-poison-related needs?”

  “You call me, and I organize it for you. Because I don’t have anything better to do with my Friday night.”

  “Uh. Okay. Can you do that then?”

  He grunted. “Anything for you.” Then he hung up.

  What a nice guy he was.

  The mystery novel I’d been reading felt too close to home, so I scrounged through Oliver’s books and found a comedy by David Sedaris. An hour later, I was learning about the recreational uses of catheters when I heard a knock on the front door. I dragged on my Ugg boots over my cupcake flannel pajamas and unlocked the deadbolt to find Dr. Levi Eduardo Reyes standing there. He was the doctor who’d tended to me on three separate occasions when I’d been poisoned or shot. His beauty threatened to upstage Connor’s. Toffee skin, molten chocolate eyes, and wicked dimples.

  Damn.

  Those eyes skimmed over me and my pajamas, and I caught a glimpse of the dimples before he bowed. “Madam, I’m here to rescue you.” His Hispanic accent was faint, just enough to add interest. He straightened up and gestured at the Chrismyass poster on the other side of the door. “Although I hope I don’t have to kiss Santa’s ass to do it. How can I help?”

  “Sorry, no kissing required, and I should’ve told J— my handler it wasn’t an emergency. I didn’t mean to drag you out so late.”

  “It’s fine. No problem at all, as long as you let me in anyway.” He rubbed his bare arms. “It’s cold out here.”

  I stepped aside. “Only someone who lives in California could make that claim in sixty degrees. Would you like a cup of tea to warm you up?”

  “I’d love one, thanks.” He watched me as I shuffled around the kitchen. “So, I know last time I saw you I said we had to stop meeting like this, but I have to admit, there’s a part of me that was disappointed you hadn’t been poisoned or shot lately.”

  Startled, I glanced his way and saw his eyes twinkling with mischief. I threw a cookie at him without thinking. A side effect of living with Oliver. “That’s the creepiest thing I’ve heard for a while.”

  He caught the cookie and bit into it. “It was supposed to be romantic. You know, heartwarming.”

  “You need to work on that.” I carried our two steaming mugs, milk, sugar, and a plate of cookies over to the dining table. “Why don’t we sit down?”

  “You must have been a waitress in a former life.”

  “Close enough, a barista.” More than a barista, actually. Coffee and food were two of my greatest passions, and I’d opened my own beautiful coffee shop right before the stock market, a bad loan, and my marriage all crashed and burned at once. The coffee shop had gone up in the merry, metaphorical flames. “What about you?”

  He sipped his tea, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes momentarily, his long eyelashes in full display against his cheeks. “That’s better, thanks.” He rested the cup on the table. “I served as an Army emergency physician.”

  I scanned his unkempt hair and ever-ready dimples. “Really? I can’t imagine you in the Army.”

  “Well, I got out as soon as I could. They didn’t appreciate my brilliant wit.”

  I smiled. “That I can imagine.”

  He drank some more and looked me over. “What can I do for you?”

  “Well…” I studied the contents of my mug.

  “You can tell me, you know. I’m a doctor.”

  I could hear the humor in his voice, but it didn’t help. It had seemed embarrassingly minor before I’d learned he used to treat war wounds. “It’s nothing much.” I looked up. “I probably don’t even need a doctor.”

  He sipped his tea again, but the mug couldn’t hide the laughter in the lines around his eyes. “You could try letting the doctor be the judge of that.”

  My innards squirmed in anticipated humiliation, but it was too late to back out now. I rolled up my pajama sleeves. “I got scratched by my housemate’s cat. My neighbor made me promise I’d get antibiotics for it.”

  “Does the cat need medical attention too?”

  “Nope, I was without a doubt the loser of the skirmish. She’s curled up on my pillow after a second helping of dinner.”

  He bit his lip. To keep from laughing presumably. “Don’t be embarrassed. I’d prefer to treat you for something superficial rather than life-threatening.”

  I held back a retort about how he’d been disappointed by my lack of gunshot wounds.

  “Besides, your neighbor is right. A few of those scratches look deep, which means they’re hard to clean properly, and cat claws aren’t the most hygienic weapons around. You don’t want to mess around with bacterial infection.”

  “Are you only saying that to make me feel better?”

  “Nope, I know a woman who was hospitalized after washing her daughter’s unappreciative cat. She had a couple of scratches and didn’t think anything of it and then woke up the next day with her arm so swollen she couldn’t bend it. By the time she made it to hospital, she was feverish and vomiting and had to be put on a penicillin drip.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “God’s honest truth.”

  I shook my head. “In that case, get me the antibiotics, stat.”

  His dimples appeared again. “Yes, doc, right away.” He got to his feet.

  “How many drugs do you carry in that van of yours anyway?” I asked.

  “Are you planning to break in and steal them to sell on the street?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thousands of dollars’ worth.”

  We smiled at each other, and he ducked outside, returning shortly with my antibiotics. I noticed he wasn’t winded from climbing up and down the stairs that fast, even with his limp.

  He handed me the sheet of pills, and I handed him his half-finished tea.

  “Take two of these twice a day for five days straight.”

  “Two, twice a day?”

/>   “People with your gene mutation need higher doses of drugs for them to have the same effect.” He was talking about the secret gene mutation PSH337PRS, which gave me increased resistance to poisons and was the reason the Taste Society recruited me as a Shade. “Haven’t you ever noticed that painkillers don’t seem to work for you? Or if they work, the relief doesn’t last as long as it’s supposed to?”

  I felt my cheeks warm. “Huh. I’d never thought about it.”

  “Don’t worry. We all assume we’re normal until we find out we’re not.”

  “You’re not normal?”

  “Is anyone working for the Taste Society?” he countered.

  “Good point.”

  He put his mug in the sink and headed toward the door but then stopped and turned. “One last thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “Would you like to go on a date with me?” He was fiddling with the hem of his T-shirt. If I didn’t know better, I could’ve sworn he was nervous.

  “What? Why?”

  His gorgeous brow furrowed. “Um.”

  “I mean, why me? Why now?”

  He chuckled. “I’ve wanted to date you from the first time you woke up and told me the counteracting drugs weren’t working. I gave you my card, remember?”

  “Well, yes, but…” After being drugged with a potent aphrodisiac, I’d woken up to find him standing over me, ridiculously good-looking. I’d told him so, certain the aphrodisiac must still be in my system, but as it turned out, he was just that ridiculously good-looking.

  When he’d given me his card, I thought it was his gentle way of easing my embarrassment.

  “I said I’d like to take you on a date when you came to the medical facility too,” Levi reminded me.

  When I’d been shot, he meant. Sure, he’d flirted with me, but he’d flirted with the ancient crone in the bed next to me as well.

  Except Levi hadn’t seemed nervous then. “But this is the first time I could ask you out seriously,” he said, his hand returning to the hem of his T-shirt. “Without worrying your judgment was clouded by drugs, that is. So I’m asking.”

  Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised, but I’d spent so much of the past two years berating myself for failing at life and trying to keep treading water that I hadn’t considered myself a viable dating prospect. It shocked me that someone else might. Actually, I was kind of shocked he even remembered me after a few brief encounters three months ago.

  As if reading my mind, he smiled at me. “You don’t know how beautiful you are. It’s part of your charm.”

  Charm? It wasn’t a term I associated with myself. “You don’t know me very well,” I told him.

  His dimples flashed. “I’d like to change that.”

  I thought about it. Two years was a long time, and my life and heart were in a whole lot less of a shambles than they had been. Plus my current client was beyond my protection and Connor had kicked me off the case, so I had the opportunity to go out. The fact that Levi was a drop-dead gorgeous doctor who seemed both fun and kind didn’t hurt either.

  But I couldn’t do it. “I’m sorry. I haven’t been on a date since my divorce, and my life and mental state are kind of complicated right now.”

  He smiled again, and I was relieved to see it still reached those molten-chocolate eyes.

  “That’s okay, I’ll ask you later then. Merry Christmas. And maybe stay away from that cat.”

  He let himself out, and I watched him go, wondering what was wrong with me.

  5

  I hadn’t bothered to set an alarm the night before, so I woke up late. It didn’t matter though. Earnest wasn’t waiting for me.

  The shock of that hit me afresh. A night’s sleep hadn’t dulled the pain, and it punched a hole through my gut. There were twenty-six alerts on my phone encouraging me to hurry up and rush to Earnest’s. The most recent said:

  You know that saying: “Better to be late than to arrive ugly?” It’s not true.

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. To switch the app off or leave it in honor of him. How could he be gone? Someone had to answer for it. But Connor wasn’t waiting for me either. The case was out of my hands. What was I going to do with myself today?

  I made a mental list: One, give my statement to Police Commander Hunt. Two, carry Dudley up and down the stairs. Three, help Mrs. Dunst plan Earnest’s funeral. I groaned and pulled my pillow over my head.

  The pillow failed to block out the sound of someone knocking on the front door. With another groan, I dragged on my Ugg boots, and wearing the same cupcake pajamas, topped off with my slept-in electrocuted zombie hair, trudged over to see who it was.

  My day’s plans went from bad to the stuff of nightmares.

  “Aunt Alice. Henrietta. What a—”

  “Surprise.” Aunt Alice looked over my rumpled appearance with a level of disdain she reserved for people who stole from the church collection plate, cannibalistic serial killers, and me. “I can tell.”

  Our eyes were the same shade of blue, but there the resemblance ended. Her chestnut-going-on-gray hair was flawless, pulled back in an elegant French twist, and her blouse and slacks as wrinkle-free as the most Botox-loving celebrity, despite the likelihood that she’d just hopped off an airplane. Her face had been allowed to age gracefully but was enhanced through the artful application of makeup, and her lips were drawn thin in the aforementioned disdain.

  Henrietta, Aunt Alice’s adult daughter and my least favorite cousin, didn’t have the half a century of experience to lend authority to it, but she did a pretty damn good job of imitating her mother’s expression.

  “I suppose this means you didn’t get my emails,” Aunt Alice said. “I sent the first over two weeks ago, and another last week, and another yesterday.”

  I hadn’t checked my emails in about a month. I always Skyped my family and best friend in Australia, so the only emails I received were reminders from the loan shark I owed money to, the occasional loose end to tie up from my ex-husband, and amazing deals on penis enlargement from Super Wow Special Store.

  The penis ones were my favorite since at least they contained good news. Needless to say, I didn’t check my email very often.

  “I guess they must have gotten lost,” I said lamely.

  Aunt Alice cast a pointed gaze over my disheveled state again. “Well, it doesn’t look like you have any plans this weekend anyway, so you’ll be free to show us the sights of LA.”

  I cursed every fate that had conspired against me to make that true. Then I decided to lie. “Well, actually—”

  “But let’s plan the itinerary over refreshments. Aren’t you going to invite us in?”

  I willed my teeth to stop grinding and stepped aside to let them enter.

  “And for goodness’ sake, Isobel, what is that monstrosity doing on your door? I was almost hoping I had the wrong address.”

  “I guess my housemate has an odd sense of humor,” I mumbled, retreating to the kitchen to make tea and dig up some cookies. I had no desire to witness their reaction to our humble apartment. As the kettle boiled, I thought about closing Oliver’s bedroom door to keep out the noise, but he was a heavy sleeper. Plus there was a sly, optimistic part of me that hoped he’d wake up and come to my rescue. Or at least that Meow might slink out for a visit.

  I tried for a pleasant expression as I sat down after serving them. “So I had no idea your around-the-world trip included a stopover in LA. How long are you here for?”

  Henrietta’s eyes kept flicking toward the Ninja Turtles stickers on the corner of the dining table, and my pleasant expression became more genuine.

  “Like I wrote in those emails,” Aunt Alice said, “we’re here for six days.”

  I choked on my tea. Trying to conceal it made it worse, and I found myself unable to breathe, eyes watering. Desperate for air, I instinctively inhaled despite the liquid in my throat and then spluttered tea all over the table. I wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or disappointed t
hat it missed Henrietta’s pastel pink knit top. “Sorry.”

  “Well really, Isobel,” Aunt Alice chided. “I would’ve thought after thirty years you’d have mastered the art of drinking.”

  “I’m still twenty-nine, so maybe there’s hope for me yet.” I smiled weakly. Neither of them smiled back. “Let me get a washcloth to clean that up.”

  “How’s your new job going?” Aunt Alice asked. “Your mother tells me it’s classified?” She sniffed in disapproval. “I can’t think what sort of respectable position would be so secretive.”

  “It’s going great,” I said. At least it had been until yesterday.

  She waved a hand at the apartment, with its musty green carpet, shabby furniture, and the garish feature wall of pineapple, flower, and banana wallpaper, which Oliver had decorated by drawing eyes on half the fruit. “This is temporary then, I take it?”

  “I’m saving my money.” Even she couldn’t argue with that. Never mind that instead of accumulating a nest egg, I was paying it all to the loan shark.

  “And do you have a man in your life?” she asked. “I ran into that ex-husband of yours, and he said he’s seeing someone.”

  Just the type of news I want from home. I was homesick sometimes, but never for my ex. Steve was a charming Italian who was fond of cooking his family’s secret pasta recipe in nothing but an apron. I used to watch, fantasizing about both the apron and the pasta. Nowadays I fantasized about what I’d do with the kitchen knives he’d taken in the settlement.

  I forced myself to answer her question. “No one at the moment. What about you?”

  Henrietta’s head shot up. Aunt Alice sniffed again, but before she could respond further, fate had a change of heart—or remembered I’d never stolen money from the collection plate—because Oliver stumbled out of the bedroom. He was still pulling his shirt on over his head and was followed closely by Meow.

  Aunt Alice saw his naked torso, with its tattoo of eleven tiny birds circling his left shoulder, and cast her eyes away in disapproval. But Henrietta’s eyes lingered a little too long. Or had I imagined it?

  Oliver blinked a few times as he adjusted to the light, wiped his hair out of his face, and looked over at our guests. “Good morning. Who do we have here?”