Crystal Vision

by Patricia Rice

  Keegan had held her last night as if she were actually important to him. He seemed to have forgiven her for being a walking time bomb, possibly because he was the same. Except he had no compunction about dropping his knowledge upon an unsuspecting world—and she had learned differently.

  “I wish I’d known Daisy better,” Teddy said. “Do we have more milk? You make this stuff strong enough to walk.”

  “Amateur.” Mariah took the mug and returned to the kitchen. She heard the shop door open while she was adding milk and lingered in the kitchen rather than face reporters or interfere with Teddy’s customers.

  “Do you have any tourmaline crystals?” a male voice asked.

  Mariah stiffened, trying to recall all Teddy and Keegan had told her about the red rocks. Tourmaline was the rare one, she thought, the one that got mixed with the industrial grade garnets and maybe used in the commune’s evil-eyed oils. She couldn’t remember the uses Teddy had given for it. She simply associated it with evil.

  “No, sorry,” Teddy said cheerfully. “Tourmaline is too expensive for my inventory. I could order what you need if you’d like to leave a deposit.”

  Yay, Teddy! Mariah was fairly certain Teddy had some of those rocks in her lockbox. Not mentioning them must mean she was suspicious of this customer.

  Mariah eased to an angle where she could see the shop doorway.

  She caught a glimpse of one of the flowery tourist shirts checking out the merchandise. He wasn’t the one talking.

  “I heard you just received a whole shipment,” the customer argued. “I’ll buy all you have.”

  Teddy had just received the package from the sheriff—the red stones they’d found covering a skeleton. Someone had inside information from the sheriff’s office. Mariah didn’t like the sound of that. She eyed the paints Teddy’s creative sister had left on the kitchen counter. War paint sounded even better than it had earlier. Asking forgiveness from her peaceful Ohlone ancestors, she hastily began braiding her hair.

  “How could you hear about my shipments?” Teddy asked, probably in genuine puzzlement. Or maybe fear, since her sister’s stalker had been a policeman.

  “Word gets around,” the customer said, not sounding insouciant so much as threatening.

  “Well word is wrong. I recently received a package of crude quality almandine. Perhaps your mysterious informant doesn’t know one crystal from another,” Teddy said curtly. “I will be happy to sell you the almandine, but I don’t keep it here. The shop is too small to carry inventory that isn’t ready for sale.”

  Maybe Teddy didn’t need her help. Maybe she could keep hiding here. . . or follow these two clods when they left. Mariah grabbed the paint and used her reflection in the kitchen window as a mirror.

  “I’ll take the almandine,” the customer said, in an even more irritated tone than Teddy’s. “Here’s my number at the lodge. Give me a call when you have it. How long will it take?”

  “I can’t leave my shop right now. It may be after lunchtime before I can have someone sit in for me.”

  Teddy sounded cheerful again, but Mariah figured she was seething. Streaking paint across her face, she wished she had Daisy’s cloak. And now she really was descending into Daisy-world.

  Mariah slipped out the back door and around the alley to the boardwalk. She almost fell over watching the two flowered-shirt thugs climbing into Carmel Kennedy’s chauffeured Escalade.

  She waited until the Escalade departed, then slipped into the front of Teddy’s shop.

  Teddy was just emerging from the kitchen and almost dropped her coffee mug. “Oh my grasshoppers, where’s the buckskin, Pocahontas?”

  “Grasshoppers? I can’t wait until Syd takes her kids home so you can talk normal again. Your customers just drove off in Carmel’s Escalade. You want to call your boyfriend and ask him who he told about the tourmaline? How dangerous is that stuff?”

  “Kurt wouldn’t tell anyone, but I’ll call and ask about Carmel’s friends. Although if that’s the company she keeps, Kurt might have other problems.” Teddy wrinkled her nose. “You’d have to ask Keegan about dangerous properties. He’s the one who said there was something wrong with the crystals. These guys asked specifically for tourmaline, but that bag was mostly almandine, a far less precious stone. So we’re getting mixed messages.”

  “What is tourmaline supposed to do?” Mariah asked in frustration.

  “As far as I’m aware, red tourmaline, or rubellite, is mostly for emotional healing, although there’s a lot of blather about heart chakra because of the red tones. Almandine garnets are red, too, and are said to remove unwanted inhibitions. They’re fun, but I’m not touching any of the crystals that were on the skeleton, so they’re welcome to them.” She eyed Mariah’s war paint critically. “Do you mean to go around like that all day?”

  “I need feathers and buckskin and maybe a bow and some arrows,” Mariah said, mostly in jest but thinking a disguise might be a good idea. “Can’t we have cartoon characters walking around town?”

  “We could, actually.” Teddy looked serious. “Re-enactors tend to do better historical research, but for an impromptu costume party—Hillvale has a history of Native Americans, cowboys, spiritualists, miners. . . We could pull off phony stereotypes pretty easily. Amber already has the Gypsy bit almost in hand.”

  “Go for it.” Mariah waved at the landline. “I’ll have to make do with leather, but I have the feathers. It will allow me to do something besides lurk in backrooms all day. I want to find out what those bullies were up to.”

  “Bring bows and we’ll have an archery contest,” Teddy called after her.

  That wasn’t a half bad idea, if she wanted to get someone killed.

  July 14: later Saturday morning

  “Keegan, you might want to mosey down to town and rein in your girlfriend.” Kurt entered the conference room and assessed the damage left by half a ton of equipment and sample boxes stacked along the walls.

  Keegan looked up from his microscope. His girlfriend? The casual comment smacked him sideways. Bri had been his girlfriend, until he’d seen her true character. Mariah/Zoe. . . was an untamed force of nature. One did not call a hurricane a girlfriend. He smiled inwardly, remembering her reference to herself as the wind called Mariah. “What has she done now?”

  “She’s apparently gone off the deep end. She’s parading around town wearing war paint. She has Harvey dressed up as a Spanish grandee. And she has Teddy demanding to know who I told about her box of rocks. Am I going to regret working with Lucys?” Kurt paced the room, studying the geological maps Keegan had hastily produced and taped to the walls.

  “War paint.” Keegan stood and stretched his back. “Sounds more interesting than what I’m doing. Do I need to wear a kilt for this party? And what box of rocks?”

  “The ones the sheriff’s office was holding until recently. I have them in my safe. Apparently someone knows Teddy got them back and wants to buy them. Selling evil sounds evil. I don’t know if it’s safe to sort through them.” Kurt rubbed his temple as if he had a headache. “But she’s right about my mother consorting with some odd fellows. I have Walker looking into them.”

  Keegan had all but forgotten the red stones. Maybe he ought to smash a few of those and. . .

  That’s why Brianna had called him a cowardly boffin—because he buried himself in work instead of paying attention to people. Until now, he hadn’t cared enough to listen. For better or worse, he cared now.

  “All right, if you can check on your mother, I guess I can check on Mariah. Maybe I should start studying women the way I do rocks.” Keegan was serious, although he said it lightly. If he meant to have any kind of relationship at all, he should at least attempt to understand Mariah before she turned on him as Bri had.

  “If they start talking ghostly possession as the reason for the costumes, I’m outta here.” Kurt trudged out.

  Why would anyone want those particular rocks? And why now? Keegan stopped to check his notes
on the red tourmaline sample he’d transformed from the canyon’s common quartz. The only use he knew for it was to attract particles of dust. Heating or rubbing the stones generated both positive and negative charges, creating an effect similar to—electronic equipment.

  Damn! They really were working on computer crystals. Why? The secrecy was worrisome. His mind clicked through possibilities as he climbed on the ATV and roared down to Hillvale’s parking lot.

  Two cowboys, complete with western boots and Stetsons, talked outside the grocery. Cowboy hats and boots weren’t unusual, except he’d never noticed them in Hillvale. Amber strolled down the boardwalk, chatting with Samantha. The tarot reader was wearing her usual flouncy skirt with a billowy, off-the-shoulder top and arms full of jangly bracelets. But today, she’d covered her red hair in a turban.

  Everything was normal, just a little more off kilter than usual. He checked his watch and saw it was nearly the lunch hour, so the café would be packed. He decided to stop in the meeting hall instead, see how the preparations were going. Mariah had explained Walker’s plan last night. He wasn’t certain what it would accomplish, but he supposed drawing in as many suspects as possible was better than doing nothing.

  The hall was filled with normal, jeans-clad men and women, taking photographs and tapping into electronic devices as they perused the displays Lance was still working on. Teddy’s strawberry-blond sister Syd was helping him. Keegan assumed the note-takers were reporters or perhaps art critics, and not tourists.

  He found Mariah working with an audio-visual technician and his computerized equipment. Without wi-fi, she should be safe enough, but what the hell had she done to herself?

  She always wore her hair in a single braid, so the two down her front looked odd. The headband around her forehead with feathers stuck behind her ears was more hippy costume than anything else. No beads or crystals though. He’d assumed war paint had meant cosmetics, but apparently not. Mariah would never stoop to anything so common as lipstick and mascara. She had actual streaks of white and black paint accenting her high cheekbones and hollow cheeks. Damn, if she didn’t look hot that way. But she looked like no Native American ever, except for the color of her skin. This was Hillvale artistic irony at work. She could add a rose tattoo and resemble some of the hippies in the paintings.

  Her tight suede brown jeans on the other hand. . . needed leather biking boots. She always wore vests, so the denim one wasn’t really out of place, although he wasn’t entirely certain she was wearing anything under it. It left her muscled brown arms revealed in all their glory.

  She looked up as he crossed the room. “I don’t suppose you packed a kilt, did you?” she asked, mischief in her eyes.

  He liked the mischief even better than the war paint. “No, I did not, although I’m sure Tullah will magically conjure one should I ask. Do I get a clue or is it a surprise?”

  She covered her lush lips with a finger and jerked her head in the direction of the reporters watching them. “Hiding in plain sight,” she whispered.

  He actually understood. Rolling his eyes, he checked out Lance and Syd. Lance was wearing a painter’s smock and beret. Syd wore an ankle-length ruffled skirt, a tight-fitting button-up shirt, and her hair stacked high in a vaguely Victorian style—maybe to resemble one of the original spiritualists? “And so you talked everyone else into doing the same?”

  “It’s fun. It’s a party. The tourists are loving it, and I get to be useful.” She flicked a button on the AV equipment, bringing up a screen full of writing that drew the attention of several people standing at the reception desk.

  It took Keegan a moment to realize the reporters were queuing up behind the desk to use an old-fashioned landline. “In keeping with the Victorian atmosphere?” he asked dryly, nodding at the phone. “The reporters have to call in their stories?”

  “Most of them are getting a kick out of it. We have a few grumps, but the smart ones understand we’re feeding them new clues every minute.” She flicked another switch and a wall-size image of Daisy in her red cloak appeared. Daisy was looking windblown and working on one of her stone statues, her unlined, timeless face a study in concentration. “Val gave us this shot. We’ve been scanning a lot of good stuff in here.” She flipped the switch and an image appeared of Daisy as a plump, much younger woman.

  “She wasn’t pretty, but she looks very alive,” Keegan said, studying the figure dancing through a meadow.

  “That’s a Dolores Menendez photo of Daisy from Val’s album. I think it needs to be framed and hung in City Hall. It makes me happy just looking at it.”

  A reporter standing nearby, unabashedly listening, took note. “Is that the woman who was murdered? She was one of the original commune members?”

  “Yes, you’ll see her image on the mural in the café,” Mariah said in the tone of a museum docent. “Some of her stone sculptures are still available at Teddy’s Treasure Trove. They use crystals found on the grounds of the commune.”

  “That last part is a stretch,” Keegan whispered as the reporter jotted notes. “I’ve not even found potter’s clay there.”

  She shrugged. “They’re not the ones who’ll be looking.” She nodded at a man in the back corner, studying the illuminated oil painting of the Ingersson kitchen and its odd collection of guests. “The ones who look like that are the ones we’re watching.”

  Still listening, the reporter glanced in that direction and shrugged. “Don’t recognize him, but he’s probably a goon. You must be expecting some high-level visitors. Want to give me a hint?”

  “A goon?” Keegan studied the stranger—clean-cut, wearing a colorful shirt he wouldn’t be caught in, and pressed khaki trousers. “Looks like any American tourist to me.”

  Mariah snorted and let the reporter answer for her.

  “He’s carrying concealed,” the reporter explained. “Don’t let the Hawaiian surfer dude shirt fool you. He has an earbud, although I don’t know what good it’s doing him. It’s total air silence out here. Maybe they’ve hacked your City Hall’s wi-fi. Any word on what the prize is for identifying the mural portraits?”

  Mariah condescended to answer this question. “Hillvale isn’t rich. We’re hoping to give you the scoop of the year, since it appears all of you worked together, and there is no one real winner.”

  Mariah was talking to a reporter, and the reporter didn’t recognize her! Keegan blinked in surprise. He’d recognize her from a dot in the distance and wearing a bear suit—she was that distinctive. How could people be so blind?

  “Any hint on the scoop?” the reporter asked. “If it involves art, I need to bring the entertainment editor up here. I’m more interested in the recent murders.”

  “Crime scene news, at the very least,” Mariah promised. “If not, then maybe we need to give out artwork as booby prizes.”

  The reporter snorted and went off to look at what the goon was looking at.

  Keegan took Mariah’s elbow and dragged her toward the entrance. “What crime besides murder?” he demanded.

  “You’re the one who mentioned Wainwright and time-space crystals and computers,” she said pertly, hurrying toward the door now that he’d steered her in that direction.

  “There is no crime in developing new science.”

  She shot him a dangerous look he never wanted to see on her face again.

  “Crystal computers requiring no energy, right?” she asked. And before he could answer, she added, “Have you ever heard of the dark web and cryptocurrency?”

  Thirty

  July 14: Saturday lunch

  With anyone else, Mariah would be antsy by now. But Keegan with his laptop at her kitchen table actually made her feel—homey. That was probably dangerous for her unstable emotional state, and she focused on their task.

  She had no internet, so it didn’t hurt if she occasionally punched his keyboard to direct his search for cryptocurrency in her downloads. As she prepared lunch, he was muttering unintelligibly and lining up pebb
les from his backpack across the old oak top. She tried not to interrupt, but she needed to return to the gallery soon and keep an eye on the goons.

  Gun-toting bodyguards probably had little to do with secretly moving cash over the dark web, but they could be protecting someone who did. She just hadn’t seen any of their suspects wandering around town yet.

  She looked up in surprise as her front door swung open without warning. Cass and Amber stood on her doorstep. Without waiting for an invitation, Cass strode in. Amber trailed worriedly after her.

  “Theodosia and Samantha cannot attend your reception this evening,” Cass announced.

  Keegan politely rose from his work, looking puzzled. Mariah patted his arm to let him know this wasn’t a military invasion.

  “I think Sam and Teddy probably have an opinion on that,” Mariah said. She owed a great deal to Cass and knew it paid to heed her warnings.

  “You have offered an open invitation to evil,” Cass said. “Amber confirms my findings. We cannot risk all of us in the battle you have invited. Find some way to persuade your friends to stay with me tonight.”

  Mariah shivered, processing that prediction.

  “Why don’t you persuade them?” Keegan asked, coming to her defense.

  She adored her warrior for his protective instincts, but this wasn’t his battle. “Because Sam and Teddy would react negatively to Cass’s commands. They’re too new to understand, just as you are. Hillvale survives because there has always been a Lucy to guard it. Try to imagine what we would be if anything happened to Sam and Teddy.”

  Walker would probably lose it without Sam to bring him back from the abyss. Kurt would release years of stress and tension and explode the entire town, bulldoze it into the ground or worse. Mariah didn’t know if Keegan could understand that, but she did. She also knew that this meant the Lucys wouldn’t be there to guard her back tonight.

  “I don’t wish to harm Hillvale,” she told Cass. “I’m willing to risk myself but not Sam and Teddy. What about the others? Harvey and Aaron and Tullah and the rest?”