Second Grave on the Left

by Darynda Jones

  Ubie reached over and took Garrett’s hand in a firm shake. “Good work,” he said before taking Cookie’s. “Nice work. Sorry about your car. We won’t keep it long.”

  She gazed at him, still in stunned-speechless mode.

  Then he turned to me. “Are we friends again?”

  “Not even if you were the last hero cop on Earth struggling with hemorrhoids.”

  He chuckled. “I don’t have hemorrhoids.” Then the butthead leaned down and kissed my cheek nonetheless. “This guy meant a lot to me, hon,” he said, whispering into my ear. “Thank you.”

  As Uncle Bob hoofed it to his SUV, Cookie stood with mouth agape. “Did that just happen? ’Cause that was really unexpected. I mean, I thought kindergarten teachers were nice.”

  “If we stay in this business long enough, Cook, I think we’ll find every profession has its bad apples.” I grinned and elbowed her. “Get it? Teachers? Apples?”

  She patted my shoulder without so much as a glance my way then walked to Misery.

  “I totally owe you one,” I called after her. I turned to Dead Trunk Guy, or, well, Officer Brandt. “So, you’re not nuts?”

  A grin as wicked as sin on Sunday slid across his face, and he was suddenly handsome. I mean, he still had matted hair and crap, but dang those eyes.

  “And the showers?” I asked, almost in fear.

  His grin widened, and I was torn between lividity and admiration. I’d never been duped like that by a dead guy.

  “You can cross through me,” I said, still playing nice.

  “I can?” He was being sarcastic. He already knew. He stepped toward me. “Can I kiss you first?”

  “No.”

  With a soft laugh, he reached around my waist, pulled me to him, and bent his head. I breathed in softly as his lips touched mine; then he was gone.

  When people crossed through me, I could feel their warmth, sense their fondest memories, and smell their auras. After he disappeared, I lifted the collar of my sweater to smell him again. His scent was a mixture of cotton candy and sandalwood. I breathed deep, hoping never to forget him. When he was twelve, he risked his life to save a neighborhood boy from a dog attack, resulting in twenty-seven stitches for himself. The fact that neither he nor the boy died was slightly miraculous. But that’s all he’d ever wanted to do. To help people. To save the world. Then along came a drunk kindergarten teacher named Carrie Liedell to rob us of one of the good guys.

  And he had been lost. For three years, he’d lost who he was, what he’d grown up to be. Until Cookie opened that trunk and my light found him, he lay in confusion and darkness. Somehow, according to his memories, my light had brought him back. Maybe there was more to being a grim reaper than myth would have me believe. I totally owed Cookie a margarita.

  “Do you kiss dead people all the time?” Garrett asked.

  I’d forgotten he was there. “I didn’t kiss him,” I said defensively. “He crossed through me.”

  “Yeah, right.” He shouldered me as he walked past. “Remind me to cross through you when I die.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  SOME GIRLS WEAR PRADA.

  SOME GIRLS WEAR GLOCK 17 SHORT RECOIL SPRING-LOADED SEMIAUTOMATIC

  PISTOLS WITH A LOADED CHAMBER INDICATOR AND A NONSLIP GRIP.

  —T-SHIRT

  For a short, blissful moment, I’d almost forgotten that Reyes could be dead, that I might never see him again. The moment I climbed back into Misery and started home, the weight of sorrow resettled around me. I focused on breathing and passing every car possible just because I could. It was after six when we got back to the office. I didn’t bother going to see my dad. The hospital released him and he was home, which would mean a tedious drive to the Heights, and the four hours of restless sleep I’d managed the night before had worn off around noon. I figured I’d go see him on the morrow. After a long night’s sleep.

  Cookie was going to do a little more work and was checking messages as I headed out. Ubie had left one, explaining where Cookie’s car was and still wanting his statement. Didn’t I give him a statement? It was never enough with that man.

  “Will you make it home?” Cookie asked me, frowning in doubt.

  “Don’t I look like I’ll make it home?”

  “The truth?”

  “I’ll make it home,” I promised with a grin.

  “’Kay. How about that Mistress Marigold?”

  “No kidding.” I shook my head in astonishment. “How on Earth did she pull the son of Satan out of her bag?”

  “I wish I knew. I just signed you up for a fake e-mail address and e-mailed her. You need to check it from time to time.” She handed me a scrap paper with the username and password on it. Her face softened then. “He’s okay, Charley. I’m sure of it.”

  The mere thought of Reyes siphoned the breath from my lungs. I decided to change the subject before I turned blue from lack of oxygen. Blue was not my best color. “Mistress Marigold’s a nut. And I think Mimi’s in hiding.”

  She acquiesced with a smile. “I think so, too. On both accounts. I think Mimi knew what was happening and went underground on purpose.”

  “We’ll find her.” After a promising nod, I went home to a bowl of cold cereal and a shower. A hot one, now that Dead Trunk Guy had crossed. The rascal.

  I barely remembered landing on my bed when I was awakened by a familiar texture sliding over my skin. A warmth. An electricity. My lashes fluttered open, and I looked over at one Mr. Reyes Alexander Farrow sitting on the floor underneath my window. Watching.

  He was incorporeal, so despite the darkness that drenched the other objects in the room, every fluid line of his being was visible, each one tempting, luring my eyes, like the hypnotic waves of the ocean. I followed them, drifted over the plains and plummeted into the valleys below.

  I turned over to face him, burrowing farther into the folds of my comforter. “Are you dead?” I asked, my voice a groggy echo of its real self.

  “Does it matter?” he volleyed, evading the question.

  He was sitting as he’d been sitting in the black-and-white photograph stalker chick Elaine Oake had—one leg bent, an arm thrown over it, his head back against the wall. The intensity of his gaze held me captive. It was hard to breathe under the weight of it. I wanted nothing more than to go to him, to explore every solid inch of his hard body. But I didn’t dare.

  As if aware of the exact moment I decided not to go to him, he smiled, tilted his head. “Little girl grim,” he said, his voice like butterscotch, smooth and sweet and so tempting, my mouth literally watered. “I used to watch you for hours on end.”

  I battled down the elation that thought evoked. The thought of him watching me. Staring. Studying. I’m sure he felt it anyway. He had to know how easy I was when it came to him.

  “I used to watch the way you ran through the park to get to the swings, the way your glistening hair spilled over your shoulders and fell in tangles down your back. The way your lips turned red when you ate Popsicles. And your smile.” A heavy sigh slid through his mouth. “My God, it was blinding.”

  Since he was only about three years older than I, that statement wasn’t nearly so perverted as it might’ve sounded. I could feel the summoning in the deep timbre of his voice, the coaxing energy, luring me to him, seducing me like an incubus, and every part of me shivered in response, quaked with a need so visceral, so consuming, it stole my breath.

  “And when you were in high school,” he continued, as though he were reliving a dream, “the way you carried your books. The arch of your back. The flawlessness of your skin. I craved you like an animal craves blood.”

  I grew weaker with each word, with each heartbeat that reverberated toward me. I knew I would give in if I let him continue. I didn’t have the superhuman strength it would take to resist him for long. There simply wasn’t much super in me, human or otherwise.

  “So, what exactly is brimstone?” I asked, hoping to douse the flames. And I wanted to remind him whe
re he came from, to cut him just a little, because he was cutting me. By not trusting me, by tossing my wishes and concerns to the wind, he was cutting. Just like every other man in my life of late.

  A slow, calculating smile spread across his face. “If you ever bother my sister again, I’ll slice you in two.”

  I guess it worked. I cut him. He cut me. I could live with that. “If you’re not going to tell me where you are, if you’re not going to trust me to help you, then why are you here? Why bother?”

  After the room reverberated with a soft growl, I felt him leave. I felt his essence drain from the room, the cold stillness that lingered in his wake. A split second before he vanished completely, he brushed past me, whispered in my ear. “Because you’re the reason I breathe.”

  With a sigh, I burrowed into my blankets even farther and lay there a long while, contemplating … everything. His words. His voice. His stunning beauty. I was the reason he breathed? He was the very reason my heart beat.

  With a gasp, I bolted upright. His heartbeats. I could feel his heartbeats. Rumbling toward me as he spoke, strong and even. He was alive!

  I jumped out of bed, stumbled a bit when a sheet plagued with separation anxiety attacked my foot, then hopped to the bathroom to sit on my porcelain throne and tinkle. I had one more shot to find out where he was. I hoped Reyes’s best friend, Amador Sanchez, didn’t mind crazy female private investigators visiting him in the middle of the night. I might should take my gun, just in case.

  After throwing on some clothes, pulling my hair back, and accessorizing with a Glock, I ran to the office and got everything Cookie had on Reyes’s BFF from both high school and prison. Mr. Amador Sanchez. It was touching that they’d stayed close and could spend so much time together over the years. Snort.

  I cut through light traffic—it being three in the A.M.—and landed in the Heights a little over fifteen minutes later, a tad surprised I was going to the Heights in the first place.

  Amador Sanchez had been a fair-to-poor student in high school, had been arrested a couple of times for petty crimes, then was arrested and received four years for assault with a deadly weapon resulting in great bodily harm. It didn’t help that he’d also hit a police officer. Never a good decision. And yet he lived in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city. I needed to remember to ask him who his broker was. Mr. Wong and I could do with some nice digs ourselves.

  The house I pulled up to wasn’t exactly what I’d been expecting, despite the address. I’d conjured something from the South Valley, low-income housing, or even a halfway house. A stunning trilevel Spanish-tiled adobe with a stained glass entryway hardly fit my image of an ex-convict who’d done time for assault.

  Feeling almost bad, I hurried through the frigid air and rang the doorbell. Maybe this wasn’t Amador’s house? Maybe he lived in a caretaker’s house or something out back. But according to Cook’s notes, he lived here with his wife and two kids. I couldn’t help but hope this was the right place. An ex-convict who’d made it past all the stereotypes to forge a successful—and hopefully legitimate—career would make my day.

  I pulled my jacket tighter around me and rang again, letting the occupants know I was not going away. A porch light blazed on, and a blurry figure gazed out the stained glass window at me. I finally heard the turning of a lock, and the door opened warily.

  “Yes?” A Latino in his early thirties stood rubbing one eye and studying me with the other.

  I held up my license and set my jaw. “Reyes Farrow. Where is he?”

  He dropped his hand and stared at me like I was part lunatic and part escaped mental patient. “I don’t know any Reyes Farrow.”

  I crossed my arms. “Really? That’s how you want to do this? Did I mention that my uncle is an APD detective and I can have him over here in about twenty minutes?”

  He got defensive at once. “You can call your aunt while you’re at it, too. I haven’t done a fucking thing.” He was so testy.

  “Amador.” A woman walked up behind him, a scolding edge to her voice. “Stop being so rude.”

  He shrugged sheepishly and stepped aside as she took hold of the door.

  “What can we help you with?”

  I flashed my license again. “I’m so sorry for the hour.”

  “She didn’t apologize to me for the hour,” he told his wife.

  I glowered at him. Tattletale. “I’m here about Reyes Farrow, and I’m hoping your husband knows his current whereabouts.”

  “Reyes?” She closed the collar of her robe, worry lining her pretty face. “They haven’t found him?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Please, come in. It’s freezing.”

  “You’re just going to invite her in?” Amador asked. “What if she’s a serial killer? Or a stalker? I have lots of stalkers, you know.”

  The woman smiled at me apologetically. “He doesn’t have any stalkers. He just says that to make me jealous.”

  I couldn’t help but grin as she led me to a gorgeous living room sprinkled with toys of every color.

  “Please excuse the mess,” she said as she began picking up. “We weren’t expecting anyone.”

  “Oh, please don’t.” I felt bad enough.

  “Of course we weren’t expecting anyone,” Amador said. “It’s three thirty in the freaking morning. Cut that out.”

  With a sigh, she sat down beside her husband, and I had to admit, they were as stunning as their house. An absolutely beautiful couple.

  “You probably know who Amador is,” she said, “and I’m Bianca.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” It would have been nice of me to introduce myself. “My name is Charlotte Davidson. I need to find Reyes Farrow immediately. I—I…” I stuttered to a stop when I realized they were staring at me with mouths agape.

  Bianca recovered first. “I’m sorry, you were saying?” She elbowed her husband.

  Okay. “Um, it’s just that…”

  Amador was still staring. Bianca reached over and closed his mouth. “We really were raised better,” she said with a nervous giggle.

  “Oh, no, that’s okay. Is it my hair?” I smoothed my hair self-consciously.

  “No, it’s just that, we’re a little surprised to see you.”

  “Right. So, have we met?”

  “No,” Amador said. They looked at each other and shook their heads before turning back to me and continuing to shake their heads.

  Okeydokey. “Well, I’ll just get down to business, then.” I stabbed Amador with another glare. “Where is Reyes Farrow?” I was serious, damn it. But when the only emotion that came over him was pleasure, I had to admit I was stumped.

  “I don’t know where he is. I swear.”

  They were both back to shaking their heads in unison. This was getting ridiculous.

  “That’s it,” I said, showing my palms, “what is going on?”

  Even Bianca was almost giggling now, so much so that I jammed my fists onto my hips. “Did I miss something? I mean, you guys seem really … I don’t know, happy. May I remind you that the hour is much too ungodly to be happy?”

  “Oh, we’re not happy,” Bianca said happily.

  Then it hit me. Well, punched me in the gut. They knew who I was. “Holy cow, did Reyes tell you about me?”

  Their heads almost vibrated, they shook them so fast. And they were lying.

  Unable to believe he would do such a thing, I stood and paced their living room, tripping twice on a Transformer. I was a slow learner. “I can’t believe it,” I said through gritted teeth. I turned on them. “Did he tell you what he is? Huh? Huh? Of course he didn’t.” He wouldn’t tell his best friend that he was the stinking, low-life son of Satan. Oh, hell no.

  After a moment, I realized they were laughing. I stopped and stared a moment before folding back into the seat. “Okay, no offense—but, like, what?”

  The smile that overtook Amador’s face was charming. “It’s just that, we never—” He looked back at his wife. “—
we didn’t know if you were real.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re Dutch,” Bianca said.

  My heart leapt at the sound of my nickname. Reyes was the only one who’d ever called me that.

  “You’re the girl from his dreams.”

  “The one made of light,” Amador said.

  The girl from his dreams? Did they not know I was the grim reaper? Probably not. I doubted they would be so happy to see me if they’d gotten a hold of that golden nugget.

  “Wait,” I said, inching closer, “what dreams? He dreams about me?” This was getting good.

  Bianca covered her mouth and laughed as Amador spoke. “You’re all he’s ever talked about. Even in high school, when every girl there wanted him more than air, you were all he talked about.”

  “But he said he’d never seen you, not in real life, so we just didn’t know if you really existed or not.”

  “I mean, c’mon,” Amador said, “a beautiful girl made of light? Which, by the way, I’m not really getting that part. I mean, you’re white and all.”

  Bianca hit him on the shoulder, then turned back to me. “The more Amador and I found out about him, the more we realized you probably did exist.”

  “So, he called me beautiful?” I asked, zeroing in on that one word.

  Bianca grinned. “All the time.”

  Wow. That was about the coolest thing I’d heard all day. Of course, it was still early, but I was there for a reason. After a heavy sigh, I blinked back and said, “I really and truly need to know where he is. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but if I don’t find him soon, he’ll die.”

  That brought the festivities to a screeching halt. “What do you mean?” Amador asked.

  “Okay, look, exactly how much do you know about him?” I needed a gauge of how much I could and could not tell them.