For Whom the Smell Tolls: A Paranormal Women's Fiction Novel (A Nora Black Midlife Psychic Mystery Book 2)

by Renee George

  Bile burned the back of my throat, probably because of a combination of spicy Italian food and my encounter with Williams. “He asked to take me to dinner.”

  Ezra bristled. “Then what happened?”

  “He went into a back room with Burt Adler, the pharmacist, and I got the heck out of there. I’d only seen him that one time at the Rose Palace Resort, when he’d fired Gilly, and I guess he’d been so focused on her that he hadn’t noticed me.”

  “Well, he’s noticed you now. What else?” Ezra was using his cop voice. I recognized the tone from when he’d interviewed me after Lloyd Briscoll’s death. “Tell me everything.”

  “Also, Fiona had been with me right before he showed up. She seemed really happy about some news and was flashing around the missing ring I told you about. But she made a hasty retreat when Phil arrived. I could be projecting my own fear onto her, but she acted scared. Then yesterday when Reese came by, she asked me to look into Fiona’s death. And by look, I mean nose. She wants me to see if I can find a different reason for her cousin’s drowning. She thinks Fiona wanted her to ask me.”

  Ezra shook his head as he picked at the hairs on his arm. “And you told her yes.”

  I massaged my temple. “Yes.”

  “Okay.”

  “So, tonight, I went to Players, the restaurant Fiona used to work at. It turns out she quit a few days ago.” I frowned. “She’d had a thing with one of the cooks, a guy named Chad. I think she might have loved him. But, she was leaving town. I think she was getting money from someone and she planned to disappear.”

  “You saw this?”

  “Yes. It was actually a waitress’ memory. A woman named Clara. She saw a conversation out in the employee parking lot.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Chad is a recovering addict. He said that Fiona’s been clean for two months. That doesn’t jive with Fiona having oxy and fentanyl in her blood when she died—”

  “Did Reese tell you that?” he asked. “The autopsy report was completed this afternoon, but the chief made her take the weekend off. I wonder who told her about it.”

  “That part wasn’t Reese.” I took a deep breath and steeled my courage. I couldn’t handle the knowledge about Fiona’s past on my own. I needed to trust that Ezra wouldn’t overreact. My eye twitched as I reached up and gripped the steering wheel as if to steady myself as I got ready to tell him something that, as a civilian, I shouldn’t know about. “Fiona was arrested four months ago for drug possession with the intent to distribute.”

  Chapter 12

  Ezra did a double take. “I would have heard about it. Did you see this in one of your scent-memory visions?”

  I bit my lower lip. “That’s not how I know. Shawn told me.”

  “Shawn?” He pulled a face. “You mean Chief Rafferty?”

  “Yes,” I said. “You probably didn’t know about it because it happened in Rasfield, not here in Garden Cove.”

  He was leaning forward in his seat now, and I could see him trying to wrap his brain around what I’d told him.

  “Wait. I’m confused,” he said. “The chief called you to talk about Fiona McKay?”

  “No, not for Fiona.” I sighed. I wanted to tell Ezra it wasn’t as bad as it sounded, but I think it was that bad, if not worse. Shawn had no business confiding in a civilian. “I ran into Leila, his wife, at the pharmacy a couple days ago when I went in for allergy medicine.”

  Even with the pause, Ezra waited for me to finish. It was something I liked about him. He rarely talked over me or made big assumptions about what I was going to say next. He had so much patience. I guess having a kid at sixteen forced you to grow up quickly. Whatever made Ezra the man he was today, I was thankful.

  “Shawn called because he was worried about Leila. She told him we were having lunch on Tuesday, and I think he hoped I would have some insight into her behavior. He said she’s not been acting herself. Calling me about her was so stupid on his part. She’s struggling with her recovery. She’s in between chemo treatments, and she’s not doing so good since the last one, and the doctors won’t give her any more rounds until her immune system bounces back. She’s probably going to need a bone marrow transplant. They’re having a donor drive at the hospital for her. On top of all that, cancer freaking sucks.” I didn’t realize I was crying until Ezra thumbed a tear from my cheek.

  “She told you all that.”

  “No.” I sniffed. “Shawn did. Which is why the call was pointless in the first place. He knows what’s going on with Leila. So, he knows better than anyone why she’d be having mood swings or personality changes. My mom was a kind woman, generous to a fault, but during the rough times, she would sometimes lash out at me. I didn’t take it personally, because I knew it was more about her feelings of helplessness. The total lack of control that happens when cancer takes over your world. Hell, I lashed out at times at Gilly. Thank heavens she loved me enough to not take it to heart.” I patted my cheeks. They were hot with emotion. “And that’s the reason he called. I think he hoped I would reassure him. Give him a prediction or something. But I don’t see the future. You know that.”

  My eyes felt puffy and my nose had started to run again.

  “Do you want to come up to the house?” he asked.

  “No, thanks. My purse is in the floorboard over there. Can you hand me the travel pack of tissues in it?”

  “Are you sure you want me digging in your purse?”

  “You afraid of getting bitten by my pet baby crocodile?”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Nope.” He opened my bag and started searching around. “I am not seeing any tissue,” he said. He started pulling items out. “Nasal spray, Vicks VapoRub, eye glass cleaner, some unscented hand cream, glasses, a brush…”

  “I’m sorry.” I laughed. “That bag is a black hole. Just give it here.” I yanked on the purse a little too hard and the contents spilled between us. “Crap.”

  Ezra looked shocked as he helped me pick up the fallen items that had spilled to the floorboards. “You could win a scavenger hunt with what you have in there.”

  “Believe me, I need every single thing in there. Or at least I would the minute I didn’t have it,” I said as I retrieved my lip gloss from the seat crevice. “Better safe than sorry that you don’t have…” I picked up a foil candy wrapper that was wadded into a ball, examined it, then tossed it in a cup holder. “Well, I probably don’t need that.”

  “Aha!” Ezra held out the tissue pack and handed me one. “Here you go.”

  Something hard was under my thigh. I dug it out. It was small, rectangular, and was wrapped in masking tape. There was writing on the side, but I couldn’t read it without my glasses. It had come out of my purse, though, so I’d probably picked it up at some point. I tossed it back inside and took the tissue from Ezra.

  He gave me a sad smile. “So how did the topic come around to Fiona?”

  I blew my nose. Sooo sexy. “I asked. When we were married, Shawn used to tell me stuff about work all the time, but I wish he’d kept this little nugget to himself. I think he’s just…lost. You know?”

  Ezra nodded. “Did he say why there’s no record of it? It would have been big news to have Reagan McKay’s daughter on trial for selling drugs.”

  “He said that Detective Lopez arrested her, and that she traded information on her distributor, like a confidential informant, to have the charges dropped."

  He narrowed his gaze at me. “He told you all that?”

  I shrugged. “He asked me to keep the information to myself. He doesn’t want Reese or her family to find out.”

  “I’m sure he doesn’t. Fiona’s dad, Reagan McKay, paid a lot of money to get Aaron Trident re-elected mayor in the last election. Chief Rafferty’s job is appointed by the mayor.”

  I stared at him. “Do you really think Shawn would cover up something so awful just to keep his job?”

  “Do you? You know him better than I do,” Ezra pointed out.

&nbs
p; “Shawn always had a strict moral and ethical code, and while people do change, I can’t see him changing that much.”

  Ezra nodded. “Is that all?”

  “I wish,” I said. “When I was leaving Players tonight, I ran into Phil Williams again. Gilly was with me. He put two and two together, and now he knows my face and my name. I’m on his radar, and it’s freaking me out.”

  Ezra scrubbed his face. “Damn it.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been getting threats, warning me to drop the Williams case.”

  “You’ve been getting threats? Since when? Why am I just finding out now?” My mind leaped to the worst thing I could think of. “Please don’t tell me he’s leaving dead animals on your porch.”

  “No, nothing like that. Voicemails, printed notes, You’re Dead keyed into my truck door when I was at the store the other day. I didn’t tell you because, until the keying, I didn’t think the threats were serious. I still don’t. Not really. They’re warnings. No one warns you if they’re serious about killing you.”

  I nodded. “Maybe that’s true. But I still would have liked to have known. Can you trace any of that?”

  “The voicemails were left with burner phones purchased in another county. I’ve been in contact with the police there, but they came up with a dead end. The printed note was standard computer laser printer and paper. The forensics team says it’s impossible to determine where it was printed since almost everyone in the world has a printer now. And whoever keyed my truck wore gloves. There were no fingerprints. Whoever is doing this is smart.” He grimaced. “I’m not worried for me, but I have Mason with me now, and I don’t want my job putting him in danger.”

  “I’ll worry about you, then,” I said. I gave his waist a meaningful glance. “And you must be a little worried because you’re wearing a gun girdle.”

  Ezra smiled and shook his head. “I prefer the term carry-conceal corset.” He took my hand. “Do you think that Fiona McKay’s death was a homicide?”

  “According to the coroner’s report—”

  He squeezed my palm. “I’m asking what you think. What is your gut telling you?”

  “My gut thinks it’s something more than an accident. But I can’t decide whether I think someone drowned her or if she committed suicide.”

  “Huh. Suicide? What makes you think that?”

  “There’s something else I found out. Fiona was pregnant. Three months, according to her friend Chad. But Shawn didn’t mention the pregnancy when he ran down the ME report to me. So, maybe she lost the baby, or lied to Chad about being pregnant. I don’t know why—it wasn’t like he was the one she was trying to rope in with the news.”

  “Anything else?” Ezra asked.

  I nodded and continued. “Also, she has a scar on her left wrist. She wore a cuff bracelet, so I didn’t see it personally, but in my vision of her Narcotics Anonymous meeting, it was on display. Two inches long, and the thickness of the scar means it was probably pretty deep. No thin hesitation marks.” I touched my wrist. “If she had tried before, she might do it again if she was distraught enough. I don’t know. Fiona seemed like she could be pretty self-destructive. It’s not a stretch to think she pulled the plug on herself.”

  Ezra was assessing me quietly.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You would have made a great cop, Nora. You have good observation skills and keen instincts. I hate to say it, but I didn’t even notice the scar on her wrist. And the medical examiner didn’t mention it.”

  “Maybe you can talk to Reese. She might know when and why the cut happened. I could be wrong. Maybe she’d snagged her wrist on barbwire or something. I just…have a feeling.”

  “Is there anything else?”

  “No.” I sighed wearily. “That’s all I know. Do you want me to ask Reese about Fiona tomorrow? If she has any idea how the scars got on her cousin’s wrist?”

  “Reese came to you for help, so she would probably be less likely to throw up walls about it.”

  “Can you talk to the medical examiner?” I asked. “See if there’s anything that might have given him even the tiniest pause before calling it an accident? And ask him to give her a pregnancy test.”

  “Sure.” Ezra tapped his lower lip. “This is not an open investigation, so there shouldn’t be any conflicts as far as the police are concerned. But,” he said, “we should tread carefully. Fiona’s father, Reagan McKay, is a big deal in Garden Cove, and he was understandably upset when I talked to him. He won’t like it if we paint his daughter in a bad light.”

  “Are you saying you agree with Shawn? That keeping an ugly secret is a kindness for the family?”

  “Maybe. I’d want to know. I think.” He shook his head. “It’s a thorny trail.”

  “Then we’ll be careful.” I looked up the road at Ezra’s cabin, wanting nothing more than to go inside and have him hold me all night. “I should go home.”

  “Before you do, I wanted to ask… Do you want to see the fireworks tomorrow night with me? Mason’s grandparents are picking him up and taking him to Portman’s big extravaganza tomorrow night. He’s planning on staying the night. We could have some alone time with a picnic down on the dock, making love under the fireworks.”

  “While you give me fireworks,” I added.

  He kissed me. “Exactly.”

  “So where is this dock where you plan to get me naked?”

  “It’s small, but it’s down a trail out back of the cabin. Which you’d know about if you spent more time at my place,” he added. He traced the outside of my thighs. “So, fireworks?” he asked. “Alone. Just the two of us?”

  I rotated in the seat, carefully maneuvering over the middle console, and climbed onto Ezra’s lap. I kissed him.

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Oh yeah,” I said.

  He grasped my legs and tugged me into a tight straddle. Which would have been sexy as hell if I my back spasm hadn’t picked that exact moment to flare up. Only much, much worse than it had been before.

  “Oh, gawd,” I cried out in pain. A slight tickle in my nose had me turning my face to the window as an explosive sneeze took the pain to critical. I sounded like a dying cow as I let out an unintelligible noise.

  “Are you okay?” Ezra asked.

  Mortification threatened to choke me as I tried to hold myself ramrod stiff. “Back,” I said on a pant. “It’s my back.”

  Being fifty-one was awesome.

  Chapter 13

  “I don’t need to go to the emergency room,” I said, kneeling in the floorboard on the passenger side of my car. I gripped the seat, drawing in slow breaths. I’d discovered, when Ezra was crawling out from under me, that I couldn’t bend at the waist without experiencing blinding agony. As it was, my current position was barely tolerable. “I need to lie down. I’ll be okay if you take me home.” I groaned. “This is so embarrassing.”

  Ezra shook his head. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. I’ve had severe back spasms, Nora. You’ll feel a lot better once the docs give you pain meds and a muscle relaxer.”

  We hit a bump, and I whimpered. “Okay.”

  After Ezra had gotten free of me, he’d ran back to his cabin for his wallet, and to let his son know why he was suddenly taking off in the middle of the night. I wondered how that conversation went. Hoo boy. “What did you tell Mason?”

  “The truth.”

  I blinked at him. “The whole truth?” I’m not sure the sixteen-year-old wanted to hear about his dad’s make-out session.

  The corner of his mouth quirked up in a smile. “Maybe not the whole truth. I told him you injured your back and that I was taking you to the hospital.”

  “This is humiliating.”

  He reached for the radio. “Maybe some music will calm your nerves.” He pushed the on button. John Cougar’s “Jack and Diane” started playing mid-song. “Cool. I love the classics,” Ezra said.

  I stared at him as he pounded out the drumbeats
on my steering wheel.

  He glanced at me. “What?”

  This was the music I’d grown up with. This was Cougar before he was Cougar Mellencamp, and Ezra calling it classic made me feel ancient. “Really? You know this song came out when I was a freshman in high school, right?”

  He snickered, and I could see he was holding back a full-on laugh. After he took a few seconds to regain control, he said, “I told you, sweetheart. I love the classics.”

  My pulse quickened. Did he just profess his love and call me old all in the same breath? Was I happy or horrified? Most certainly both. I softened my expression then then reached back to turn the dial up as Cougar hit the chorus.

  Two more “classic” songs later, and Ezra was pulling into the emergency room roundabout. He stopped in front of the doors, put the car in park, got out, and ran inside. A few minutes later, he returned with a wheelchair and a large middle-aged man with shaggy salt-and-pepper hair and a burly beard.

  “Nora, this is Bear,” Ezra said. “He’s going to help get you inside.”

  I nodded. “Thanks, Bear.”

  “Nora, can you lift yourself up and swing your legs out of the car?” Bear asked.

  I tried, but I’d spent nearly half an hour in this position, and everything below my knees had fallen asleep. “I’m afraid not. I can’t move my legs.”

  “From your back injury?” Bear’s voice sounded worried.

  “Poor circulation,” I said. Now, my mortification was complete. “It happens.”

  “That happens to me if I sit on the toilet too long,” Bear offered in solidarity.

  “Good to know,” I said as I glanced at Ezra. He was fighting a smile again. “I think you guys are going to have to lift me out.” I turned slightly to give them my arms and cried out as my back seized up. “Flippity flippin’ flipping shit!”

  “You okay?” Ezra asked.

  “Do I sound okay?” I choked out. “Sorry, sorry.” It wasn’t his fault I was in this predicament. Not completely. Still, I glared at him. Another twinge caught me off guard. I grimaced. “Yeah. It’s fine. I’m peachy.” I looked at the wheelchair. “Even if you get me out of this car, there’s no way I can sit in that,” I said. “Sitting on anything isn’t an option.”