Crystal Vision

by Patricia Rice

  Mariah tried not to raise her eyebrows in surprise. She hadn’t realized that. She’d been so busy trying not to get involved that she’d missed a few key points here. Daisy might have been killed for a book?

  “I see. And this concerns me how?”

  Mariah heard the hard edge in Cass’s voice. She could step in now, explain about Daisy, but Cass knew all that. So she let Keegan blunder his way into maybe surprising her.

  “We thought Daisy may have brought the volume to you for protection,” he said, without apology. “Books that old do not survive long in the conditions in which she lived.”

  Oh, very good, Mr. Ives, Mariah murmured mentally, enjoying her tea. The handsome oaf could be a diplomat when he tried.

  “And if she did, I would protect it accordingly,” Cass said, giving away nothing and everything at once. Cass was a master of illusion.

  “Daisy may have been murdered for that book,” Keegan reminded her, keeping his voice soft. “It would be safer under lock and key in my castle.”

  “Not if it was stolen, along with other volumes,” Cass pointed out, equally polite. “Do you still have a Malcolm librarian? Or has that ability passed on, possibly to American descendants?”

  “Chinese, actually,” he said, starting to look uncomfortable. He stretched out his long legs and studied his polished shoes. “That’s my branch of the family. Several traveled as missionaries to China, produced families who have extended around the globe. There’s a branch of the family here in San Francisco. One of them learned about my library and took her studies in Edinburgh. She’s been updating the catalog ever since, which is how we became aware of the third missing crystal journal.”

  Mariah knew Cass would not give up a book if she’d decided it was needed in Hillvale. So, she took a different direction. “What sent us up here was Lucinda’s triptych. We know that Lucinda generally painted scenes that were important to a member of her family. As far as we’re aware, you’re her only relation in Hillvale. So how was that day important to you?”

  “And this has what to do with the missing journal?” Cass poured a second cup of tea and watched them through eyes that sparkled like sapphires—like Sam’s.

  “Since that was the day the woman last known to have the journal died, we thought acquiring the journal might have been important to you,” Keegan said.

  Mariah wished they’d brought Teddy with them to determine Cass’s reaction. But Teddy said the spirits filling Cass’s house made her afraid to open her extra sense. This conversation gave Mariah some inkling of why Cass might like to keep her ghosts around.

  “I can’t remember that day,” Cass said remotely. “I’ve only briefly seen the painting. It didn’t appear remarkable in any way, other than knowing when it was painted. I was probably headed for the new grocery store. One must eat.”

  There was little point in calling Cass a liar. She never went to the grocery. She had friends all over the mountain who saw that she ate and had supplies. Mariah wouldn’t call them servants, exactly, but close enough. Money might not be exchanged, but favors almost certainly were.

  “Cass, we need to find who killed Daisy before they kill again.” Mariah stepped in, understanding how Cass’s mind worked. Poor Keegan thought honesty and directness should do it. “If there’s any chance there’s a clue in those books, we need to know.”

  “I’ve read the odd diaries Thalia left on the backs of her paintings,” Cass said stiffly. “Besides mentioning she stole Lucinda’s compendium, she had nothing of any value to say. She complained that her husband was a fraud, a bad potter who disparaged her artwork—rightfully so, if I’m any judge—and she was afraid of his temper. The single mention of Lucinda’s journal labels Thalia as thief in her own words. If she possessed the journal, she didn’t mention its use except that once, with Susannah’s help, on the café mural. It’s quite possible that she passed it on to someone else.”

  “Like to Susannah,” Mariah concluded, as Cass had wanted her to. “Sam says her mother writes children’s books. She has no use for crystals.”

  “Susannah—Mrs. Menendez, the lady who brought her father’s paintings with her and is now cleaning the mural in the café? The one who thought Thalia still has the volume?” Keegan’s gaze burned with interest.

  Mariah wanted to bathe in his masculine attention—or slap him away. “Sam’s mother, yes. She lives on some Indonesian island now, completely off the grid, and wants nothing to do with Hillvale’s paranormal inhabitants. I see no reason she would have lied about not having it. No, I’m pretty sure Daisy is our key.” Mariah shot their hostess a glare. “And Cass.”

  Cass merely sipped her tea and met her gaze without flinching. “Do come again to tell me what you’ve found out.”

  “She knows,” Mariah hissed as they let themselves out a few minutes later. “If she doesn’t have the book herself, she knows where it is.”

  “How likely is it that our killer will figure that out?” Keegan asked worriedly, offering his hand to help her into the cart.

  “If we’re assuming the killer took out Daisy to access the bunker in search of it, it will take a while—if we keep the bunker secured. Kurt has his security out there, but they’re human, not dragons.” She turned the ignition but didn’t know where she was taking him.

  In pursuit of the truth, she’d forgotten that she was supposed to stay clear of Keegan. It seemed natural to work together—and maybe necessary. If she couldn’t use computers to trace a thief and a killer, she needed to learn better methods of obtaining justice.

  Had she learned better methods sooner, she might not be moldering in Hillvale, waiting for the distant day it might be safe to leave.

  “We should talk to Mrs. Menendez,” he said. “We could at least confirm that she saw my book and not some other.”

  “She was pretty immersed in cleaning the mural when I left.” Mariah steered the cart down the lane, past Sam’s flourishing garden house and her own tiny cottage. Traffic on the main highway had declined since the fire that had stripped the mountain, but she still preferred this backroad. The cart wasn’t much safer than her bicycle—which led to another thought.

  “Where is Val? She was Daisy’s closest friend. She might have some knowledge of the book. This is her cart I’m driving around. I’d assumed she was with Cass, but I didn’t see any sign of her.”

  “The wailing banshee?” he asked with interest. “Does she actually speak?”

  “She can, when she wants. But I’ve not seen her speaking to her sister since Susannah arrived. This damned town has more secrets than I do.” Mariah pulled the cart up behind the café without thinking. It wasn’t time for the lunch rush, but she wasn’t up to her usual rounds of checking her ghostcatchers.

  Keegan assisted her from the cart. Out of habit, she opened the kitchen door.

  The operatic argument hit them before they could enter.

  “The land is evil,” the banshee screeched. “We cannot sell it!”

  “Uh oh, trouble in paradise,” Mariah whispered.

  A plate crashed and a woman screamed.

  Ten

  July 9: Monday, mid-morning

  Keegan lifted Mariah and hauled her into the kitchen in his rush to reach the front of the diner. Her generous curves fit perfectly against him, even if she was trying to rip off his arm. He didn’t think she wore perfume, but she had a natural scent of sage that reminded him of the heather at home.

  Looking frightened, Dinah hovered by the server’s window. She didn’t look any happier when Keegan dropped Mariah at her side. “Keep her here,” he ordered.

  Mariah got in a good smack before he could escape to the front. It was little more than a bee sting to relieve her frustration, he understood. He just wasn’t having any more women murdered in his vicinity.

  Samantha, the tall slender blonde he knew as the police chief’s girlfriend, stood between her mother on a ladder at the mural and the shrieking banshee on the other side of the counter. Sam y
anked a second plate out of the banshee’s hand and glanced up to Keegan with hope. He wasn’t certain what he was supposed to do now that it was apparent it was a cat fight and not a murder, but he obligingly stepped in front of the plate thrower.

  “Valerie, act your age,” the woman perched on the stepladder scolded. “This isn’t the opera, and you’re too old to be a diva. It’s just us now, and Sam. You don’t have to perform.” She eyed him skeptically. “Well, and now it’s the Scot, but I doubt that’s a problem.”

  Keegan held out both arms to prevent the tall, dark-haired woman from reaching around him for another plate. Her long black veil concealed her features, as it had every time he’d seen her. Keening over a murder demanded costume, perhaps, but a family fight, not so much.

  “I will not sell that land,” the veiled Valkyrie wailed—operatically. Keegan understood the diva reference better, along with the dramatic Valdis instead of sensible Valerie as a name.

  “I just said you could afford to return to the city if you sold that albatross hanging around your neck.” Carrying her tray of paint, Susannah climbed down the stepladder now that attack didn’t appear imminent. “I’ve never wanted the money, but I thought perhaps you and Sam might.”

  “It’s not that easy,” Samantha said with quiet authority. “Aunt Val, if you’d sit down, I could bring you one of Dinah’s possets. You said they make the migraines go away.”

  Mariah was already limping out of the kitchen, carrying two large mugs. “Is the mural okay?”

  “The mural is so plastered in varnish, it could withstand an earthquake,” Susannah Menendez said dryly. “Mr. Ives, you may sit down. Sam has removed the rest of the ammunition. Thank you for stepping in.”

  The café was unusually empty, Keegan noted. He took the mugs from Mariah, set them on the booth table, and assisted her to a stool. She looked as if she wanted to shake him off, but curiosity burned in her eyes.

  “The cowards all fled,” she whispered. “They saw Val coming and didn’t hang around.”

  “Cowards, indeed, if they feared a couple of fifty-year-old women. Did they expect bolts of lightning?” He sat down on the stool beside her while Samantha settled her family in the booth.

  “Don’t scoff. With Val, anything is possible. She walks on the other side of the veil, and I’m not talking about that rag she wears to conceal her scar. And no one really knows what Susannah is capable of. The family is multi-talented.”

  When Samantha signaled she was okay, Mariah spun the stool around and whacked Keegan’s biceps—hard. “Quit hauling me around. I’m not a helpless child.”

  He wouldn’t ask questions about a woman who walked on the other side of the veil. There were women in his own family who said worse. He focused on the here and now. “You are currently lame, and I wished to move swiftly. I assume the coffee machine works normally? Shall I bring you a cup?” He nodded at the silver urn that had been moved while the mural was undergoing renovations.

  She looked surprised at his offer and nodded with a hint of suspicion. “It may be empty at this hour.”

  “Give me instructions in filling it, if so.” He got up and tested the spigot, filling two cups and setting one down in front of Mariah, while unabashedly listening to the family argument.

  “This land they argue over, that’s where the bunker is, correct?” Adrenaline still pumping, Keegan leaned against the counter to drink his coffee.

  “The Ingersson farm, yes. It’s been an ongoing thorn in the town’s side for a thousand different reasons for decades, maybe longer. Sam thinks her mother sent her away to keep it from ever being sold, but it looks like that theory is wrong. It’s in a trust, and Sam and Val are the executors.”

  “Not Mrs. Menendez? So she cannot actually sell it?” He listened to the murmurs in the booth, but Sam was mostly soothing her aunt and mother and urging them to drink their possets. Keegan wondered if they contained rum and if he could have some too.

  “Not that I’m aware of. Sam and Walker have been looking into it. The land belonged to Sam’s grandparents, Val and Susannah’s parents. Foreclosures and lawsuits were still ongoing when the Ingerssons died. The court arranged for the land to go into a trust when the suit was settled. Sam was an infant at the time. Susannah sent her off for adoption, bolted, and Val couldn’t sell until Sam came of age—and then no one knew where she was, until Sam found us. The Kennedys want it to expand their resort operations.”

  “Then there is little reason in killing Daisy to remove obstacles to selling,” Keegan mused aloud.

  “A developer murdered Walker’s father and attempted to kill Daisy, Val, and Sam for that land,” Mariah reminded him. “This is California. Land is as precious as gold.”

  “This town is evil,” Susannah shouted from the booth, as if emphasizing Mariah’s point. “It’s destroyed all of us. I never wanted Sam to come back here. I wanted her to have a normal life! This is all Cass’s fault.”

  “Here’s where I make an idiot of myself,” Mariah whispered, standing. “You have permission to haul Val off me.”

  Keegan didn’t know how seriously to take her, but he came out from behind the counter to be better prepared for action.

  Tall and commanding, even in blue jeans, buckskin vest, and a braid laced with feathers and beads, Mariah stopped in front of the booth. “Hillvale is not evil,” she said without raising her voice, but with sufficient conviction to halt argument. “This is where people like us gather because like understands like. All we want is to be left in peace so we can employ our gifts for good, in whatever small way possible. And if we work together, we might accomplish a greater good.”

  “Yeah, we’ve heard all that before,” Susannah replied in cynicism. “Listen to the voice of experience and get out before you’re as corrupted as they are.” She gestured at the mural.

  “They didn’t do this to me,” Val howled, flinging back her veil.

  A livid red and purple weal ran from her ear, down the strong line of her jaw to her mouth. Unimpressed, Keegan noted the death goddess had the same Nordic bone structure as Samantha. Susannah’s face and figure were less sculpted and more rounded, pleasant while her sister must once have been striking. Samantha fell in between, not classically beautiful but easy to look at.

  “Evil isn’t a place,” Mariah agreed. “Evil is in people, a much broader spectrum that can be found anywhere. Evil is selfishness, greed, and ambition without respect for others. It’s possible the crystals your parents played with possessed qualities that enhanced evil, but we need to find them to understand. Selling the land would be criminal, if only because we don’t know what’s hidden up there.”

  Her dramatic gesture over, Val covered her face again. Keegan would have liked to know her story, but this was Mariah’s moment, not his. He was impressed by her ardent plea. It seemed underneath her thick skin of cynicism boiled a vat of passion.

  “Once the land is turned into another tourist hole, no one will care. Daisy was killed for what some greedy moron thinks is there,” Mrs. Menendez protested. “Let them find out it’s just dirt.”

  “Who put the land into trust for me and Aunt Val?” Sam demanded, unexpectedly.

  “The lawyers Cass hired,” her mother retorted. “Val was starting her career and was touring. I was newly widowed and not even twenty-one. Our parents had just died, leaving us confused and bereft. Cass had always handled your father’s business, so I let her handle yours.”

  Val spoke normally, if rashly. “You knew what Cass’s lawyers would do. Don’t blame her! That land belongs to all the people who lost theirs because of the greed of the Kennedys and our father’s obsessions.”

  Susannah rubbed her temple. “Our parents died because of that land. Sam’s father died from the drugs they brought up here. I wanted nothing to do with it. Cass knew that, so the lawyers left me out and substituted Samantha instead, against my wishes. I was too stupid with grief at the time to care. I’d already decided I was leaving. If I thought anythin
g at all, it was that the land could sit there and rot, but now I see it’s still hurting people. Poor Daisy didn’t deserve to die like that!”

  “You denied Samantha her heritage!” Val roared. “She could have made a difference if she’d known her roots. You never cared about anyone but yourself.”

  Keegan bit his tongue, confident Mariah would take charge. Once the argument broke down to the personal, they’d learn nothing but old grievances.

  “We all must take care of ourselves in the best way we know how,” Mariah said, startling the older women into remembering her presence. “But once we’re in a position to do so, we must look out for those who are still struggling. This town is full of people who are struggling. We have a chance to fix it, if we work together.”

  Keegan gained an inkling of understanding of why Mariah might be hiding in Hillvale. Those who fought for others often ended up in a world of trouble if they took on the wrong foes. Mariah was strong enough to conquer some opponents, but reckless enough to bite off more than she could chew. Now he was really worrying about her.

  “Is Daisy in the mural?” Samantha unexpectedly asked, diverting hostilities. “If we could label the mural, we might know who else knew about the crystals.”

  Now they were getting somewhere. Keegan watched in satisfaction as the women emerged from the booth to direct their attention on the painting running the length of the café’s counter. He eased to one side so as not to block their view.

  “This was painted before we were born,” Susannah reminded them. “I doubt most of these people, except our parents, hung around long enough to see us into adolescence. They’d be what, in their seventies by now? Or older.”