by Lucy Score
“Hello again,” he said.
“And this is Nick,” Riley said before her sister could line up husband number three.
With great effort, Wander dragged her doe eyes away from Gabe. “Hello,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind tofu and children.”
“Two of my favorite things,” Nick lied, all panty-melting charm.
“Welcome to family dinner, boys. We’ll get it started just as soon as I manage to get these gosh darn boxes down,” Blossom said from her perch.
“Allow me, Mrs. Thorn,” Gabe insisted.
“I can do it,” Nick offered. “His muscle mass could shatter that ladder.”
“Relax.” Riley patted him on the arm. “You’re the couch guy.”
“Huh?”
She angled her head toward the sliders that overlooked the back deck. “Come meet the nieces.”
She opened the door, and Burt bounded outside.
“When did you get a dog?” Wander asked, her eyes glued to Gabe’s toned butt as he ascended the ladder vacated by Blossom.
“Wednesday,” Riley said, stepping outside to supervise.
“Look! A lion!” six-year-old Rain crowed from her upside-down position on the monkey bars. Burt loped over.
She wrapped her arms around his neck in an inverted hug.
“Hello, giant doggy,” Janet said, skipping over. “You have big feet!”
Burt’s entire body trembled with glee.
“Girls, come in and wash up so you can help with supper,” Wander called, regaining some of her ethereal, earth-motherly vibe.
Whines changed to excitement when the girls spotted Riley on the deck. Excitement changed to coy interest when they noticed Nick behind her.
“Aunt Riley, is this your dog?” Janet asked, jogging alongside Burt.
“He is. And this is Nick,” she said.
Janet shyly buried her face in Burt’s fur.
“Hi, Nick,” Rain piped up. “You’re cute. Hi, Aunt Riley.”
After hugs, they all trooped inside, and the girls shuffled off to wash their hands.
“So this is Burty Boy. Hello, you handsome, handsome boy,” Blossom crooned, kneeling down to lavish the dog with love.
Both Nick and Gabe—who was clutching a box of Fourth of July-themed crap—looked as if they wished the compliment was directed at them.
The front door banged open and shut, and Roger appeared, trailed by eight-year-old River.
“You didn’t kill that terrible woman, did you?” Blossom asked.
“Nah. I just had River turn the hose on her and made it look like an accident. Now, who wants to help me move a couch?”
After a flurry of chopping, steaming, seasoning, and couch-moving, they sat down to a meal of what amounted to a mound of steamed vegetables.
“This is why chicken,” Riley whispered to Nick as he grudgingly spooned leeks onto his plate.
“You’re so wise,” he said.
Burt wasn’t even trying to beg for scraps. He’d taken one look at the table and wandered into the TV room to curl up on the couch.
“So, Nick,” Blossom began.
“Oh, boy. Here we go,” Riley muttered.
“Tell me all about yourself,” Riley’s mom said. “What sign are you? Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Do you take any supplements?”
“Mom, we’re not actually dating, remember?” Riley said.
“I can be interested in my dinner guests without them dating my daughters,” Blossom said with feigned innocence.
Sure. She could be. But that was not what was happening here.
“I feel like your intentions—”
“Are you reading my energy right now?” Blossom perked up. “Oh, this is so exciting! I’ve been waiting years for this.”
“Mom, you’re dimming Riley’s aura,” Wander warned.
“That’s just a reflex,” Blossom said confidently. “She’s nervous about finally opening herself up to her gifts. How do you feel about psychic gifts, Nick?”
He choked on a balsamic glazed carrot. His gaze slid to Riley and then back. “I feel… great?”
“So it doesn’t bother you that Riley could be reading your energy or receiving messages from a deceased loved one right now?”
“I find it most impressive,” Gabe cut in.
Wander looked like she was going to melt out of her chair and into a puddle on the floor.
“You know, not only does Wander see auras, she’s clairscent, and she’s very flexible,” Riley said to Gabe.
“I think it’s amazing and fascinating,” Nick cut in. “The psychic thing, I mean.”
Riley looked down at the lump of sautéed kale on her plate and felt a lovely little glow in her chest.
“Hey, who won the 1989 Super Bowl?” Roger asked from the head of the table.
River screwed up her face. “Um, the 49ers?”
“That’s my girl,” Roger said. “Just for that, I’m gonna teach you how to run the power washer tomorrow.”
“Yes!” River pumped her arm in victory.
The doorbell gonged, rousing Burt from the couch.
“Come in,” everyone shouted.
There were noises of dog and human greetings, and then Wander’s biological dad, a broad-shouldered black man with a graying frohawk, ducked his head into the kitchen. “Hi, guys,” he said.
“Hi, Winston,” they chorused back.
The girls pushed away from the table to give more hugs. “Pappy W!” Janet said, making grabby hands at the man.
“Company tonight?” Winston asked.
“Riley brought her men,” Blossom said proudly. “Nick, Gabe, meet my ex-lover and Wander’s father, Winston.”
Wander blew Winston a kiss.
“Uhh,” Nick said. “Hi.”
“Hello. It is a delight to meet you,” Gabe said.
“Doing okay?” Riley asked, patting Nick’s knee.
“I have a lot of questions,” he confessed with a grin.
“Don’t you dare ask them because you’ll get answers none of us are prepared for,” she warned.
“Me and Winston gotta go,” Roger announced, pushing away from his barely-touched vegetables.
“Trivia Night waits for no man,” Winston said, rubbing his palms together.
“Have fun, you two,” Blossom called, getting up from her chair to kiss Roger.
Wander caught Riley’s eye and tilted her head questioningly in Nick’s direction. Riley nodded toward Gabe and wiggled her eyebrows. Her sister tugged her braids over her shoulder and hid behind them coyly. It wasn’t psychic communication. It was a sister language.
Once the rest of them had spent enough time pushing vegetables around on their plates, Blossom called dinner over. Since Roger had left and taken his cholesterol problems with him, she doled out juicy helpings of homemade strawberry shortcake that made up for the soggy kale.
Nick impressed Blossom with his request for seconds. Gabe volunteered to do the dishes. The kids trooped off to the living room to watch their allotted hour of TV with Burt on their heels.
“Nick,” Blossom said as Wander took her plate to the sink. “Have you ever had a tarot reading?”
“Oh, no,” Riley groaned.
“I haven’t. You’d be my first,” he said, dimples on full display.
Reluctantly, Riley followed Nick and Blossom into the sunroom with a full glass of wine. She didn’t feel good about leaving him alone to be spiritually analyzed. The room had once been a stately study, but her mother had put her stamp on it, adding dozens of plants and crystals and colorful rugs and tapestries. The shelves were now stocked with alternative spiritual tomes and gardening books as well as an extensive collection of gory murder mysteries.
Against the row of windows was a small table covered with a midnight blue, patterned cloth.
It was there that Blossom directed Nick to sit.
Riley slouched on the red suede loveseat that matched nothing else in the room and picked up a volume on he
rbs from the bench that served as a coffee table.
Blossom lit fat, white candles that lined the windowsill, then produced a deck of cards from a worn vegan leather pouch.
“Since you’re a virgin,” she said cheerfully. “We’re going to do a simple past, present, future reading.”
Riley did her best to tune them out, instead focusing on strategies to growing lavender indoors. But her attention continually returned to the low voices at the table.
“This card in your past represents a turning point stemming from a loss. A tragedy occurred. And a decision was made,” Blossom instructed, her tarot voice quiet and soothing. “Does that make sense?”
Nick cleared his throat. “Uh. Yeah.”
Curiosity piqued, Riley couldn’t help but listen. Once again, the picture of Nick and the girl with long, dark hair popped into her head. Just as quickly as she’d appeared, the girl disappeared.
“The cards say this decision took you on a new path to your present,” Blossom continued.
While her mother worked her way through his present and his paths and decisions, Riley again wondered about the mysterious Beth. Who had she been to Nick and Detective Weber? Why was she such a touchy subject for both men?
“That doesn’t look good,” Nick said good-naturedly as Blossom began to flip over the last row of cards. His future.
Blossom laughed. “The Death card very rarely means actual physical death. As long as you don’t flip over a Ten of Swords. That’s when we’d start to wor—”
“Huh,” he said.
“Well, shit,” Blossom said.
The sudden wave of “uh-oh” coming from the table caught Riley’s attention. She abandoned the herb book and sidled up behind Nick.
She wasn’t into divination, but growing up with Blossom Basil-Thorn meant she’d absorbed enough. The Death card sat in the middle of the last row of three cards. To its right, the end of Nick’s future, was a card depicting a man lying face down with ten swords stuck in his back.
“Well, we’ve all gotta go sometime,” he joked.
“Mom!” Riley hissed.
But Blossom’s brow was furrowed as she studied the last row of cards. She muttered to herself for a good two minutes before shaking her head. “I’m sorry, dear, but this looks like death to me. And sooner rather than later. Do you have a will? A power of attorney?”
“Aunt Riley?” River appeared in the doorway. Her eyes were glazed, tone flat. “You need to see the TV.” Riley recognized the look immediately. River had been showing signs of her female clairvoyant heritage since she was five.
“Go,” Blossom ordered, meeting Riley’s eyes.
“We’ll talk about this later,” Riley promised Nick. To his credit, he didn’t look concerned that his fake fiancée’s mother had just predicted his untimely demise or that her niece could have been an extra in The Shining.
Riley followed her niece into the living room where River pointed at the TV. The evening news was on. “State Legislator Rob Bowers was killed in a one-car accident late last night on the Market Street Bridge.”
Video footage of the aftermath showed a mangled gray Mercedes with its passenger door ripped open. There was a tarp covering the interior. The white of the bridge was bathed red and blue by emergency vehicle lights.
A distinguished headshot of the victim appeared in the upper left of the screen. “Representative Bowers served the residents of Dauphin County for three years.”
“Nick,” Riley yelled.
He stepped into the room and put his hands on her shoulders. She pointed at the screen. “That’s him. That’s the guy who broke into Dickie’s apartment.”
41
9:11 p.m., Friday, July 3
Riley appeared in the sunroom’s darkened doorway when he disconnected the call. “My sister volunteered to drop Gabe and Burt home. I’m coming with you,” she announced.
Nick crossed to her and took the keys out of her hand. “Ever been to a junkyard before?”
“You sure know how to show a girl a good time,” she joked. But he could feel her nerves.
There was another body now, and every instinct was screaming that the deaths were connected.
After a lightning round of goodbyes, they headed out. It was dark now, and a rainstorm had moved in, saturating the ground and making the road gleam under the streetlights.
“Maybe it’s a coincidence,” she suggested when he turned off her parents’ street and headed toward Route 15.
He shot her a look. “Does it feel like a coincidence?” he asked.
“Not even a little bit.”
He navigated around the town of Mechanicsburg on the highway, his mind turning the pieces of information over. It helped to have something else to think about besides the whole “he was going to die soon” thing.
“About that tarot reading,” she began. “Those things are really subjective.”
He grunted. “Has your mom ever predicted anyone else’s death before?” he asked, expecting a negative.
“Well…”
Ah, shit.
“Just a few times,” she hedged.
“And? Did they die?”
“Everybody dies eventually, Nick,” she said cautiously.
This discussion wasn’t helping keep his mind off of his impending demise.
He got off the highway and took a meandering road a half mile before the headlights slashed across the sign. Earl’s Salvage.
He pulled up close to the chain link fence, rolled down his window, and stabbed the intercom button.
“Nicky Santiago, how the hell are ya?” crackled a voice through the speaker.
“Not bad, Beefcake. You staying clean?”
Beefcake cackled. “Ish,” he said. “Come on in. You got gear, or do you need to borrow?”
“Borrow if you’ve got it,” Nick said. He shot a glance at Riley. “Enough for two.”
The gate in front of them whirred and clanked open, and he pulled through. It was a typical junkyard. Refuse was stacked high behind chain link fences and lit by the occasional stingy pole light. Heavy equipment was parked under the cover of a pair of open-walled car ports.
He followed the dirt path away from the weigh station to a trailer that sat a good eight inches lower on its foundation on the right than it did on the left.
“Come on in,” he invited Riley, shutting off the engine.
Together they made the soggy dash for the trailer’s cinder block steps. He gave a cursory knock and yanked open the door, shoving her inside.
Earl “Beefcake” Nickelbee was a skinny rooster of a guy who’d had a few brushes with the law in his younger, dumber days. The only thing that seemed to have changed about the man was that he now sported a skinny mustache and a wedding band.
“Nicky,” he said, greeting him with an enthusiastic hug.
“Good to see you, Beefcake. Thanks for opening up for us. This is Riley. Riley, this is my buddy Beefcake.”
“Hi,” she said.
“You got yourself a looker. New partner? You back on the force?” Beefcake asked.
Nick slid a look at her. “Nah, man. I’m still a PI. Riley’s my fiancée.”
“No fucking shit? For reals?” Beefcake grinned. “Never thought I’d see the day. No offense, ma’am.”
“None taken,” Riley said. “I was pretty surprised myself.”
“When you know, you know,” Beefcake said, holding up his left hand to show off his gold band. “I met the missus two years ago at all-you-can-eat crab legs, and it hit me like a claw cracker to the heart.”
“Good for you,” Nick said.
“Anyway, help yourselves to some gear.” Beefcake waved at the boxes of latex gloves and zippered freezer bags, a stack of cheap plastic-wrapped ponchos, and a collection of banged-up flashlights on the desk.
“How long have you two known each other?” Riley asked when Nick plucked a couple pairs of gloves from the box.
“Feels like centuries sometimes,” Beefcake said. �
�We first met… When was that, Nicky?”
“It was 2005. I busted you for possession and shoplifting from the adult store.”
Beefcake snapped his fingers. “That’s right. I was mixing it up with the time you got me for writing bad checks. Them were the days. Nicky here was okay for a cop. He wasn’t an ass about arresting guys like me. Just doin’ his job.”
Nick handed Riley a pair of gloves, a poncho, and a headlamp. “Let’s get a beer and catch up soon, Beefy.”
“I’ll bring the missus. We can make it a double,” Beefcake said, winking at Riley.
“Sounds great,” she said with a smile.
They shrugged into the plastic ponchos, strapped on their headlamps, and headed back out into the rain. Following Beefcake’s directions, Nick led the way up the slow rise to the east of the trailer. Wrecks were stacked on top of each other like Tupperware.
“That’s a lot of rust,” Riley observed as her light cut a swath through the wet night, playing over the sea of cars that began at the crest of the hill and stretched on into the dark.
“Lucky for us, they haven’t stashed the Mercedes yet,” he said. He pointed to the wreck in front of them.
The hood was crunched back to the dashboard, windshield folded into jagged shards. The driver’s side was gouged down the entire length of the car. The passenger door was lashed to the roof, offering a view of that tattered blue tarp that meant death.
She winced. “Looks even worse than it did on the news.”
He pulled out his phone and cued up the camera.
“I’m gonna take some pictures of the exterior. If you’re comfortable, you can put on the gloves and see if you can find anything interesting in the glove compartment.”
“Interesting like what?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Anything that says ‘murder’?”
She trudged determinedly to the passenger compartment. He went around to the front of the car, crouching down to look at the damage up close. Then did the same to the driver’s side.
He took pictures of every inch of what had been the hood and engine compartment. Now, it was nothing more than a messy tangle of metal. He played it through in his head. Rewinding and starting over.
It had been a while since he’d last landed a crash investigation, but there were a few things that stuck with him.
