The person on the other end explained they were asking for references about my client. Not hairybeast1855, thank goodness, just the usual kind of Joe Slacker I worked for.
The doorbell rang a second time, followed by a polite knock. The oven beeped at the same time. I hit mute on my phone long enough to shout, “Just a minute!”
I bustled to the oven, punched off the timer, pulled on a mitt, and removed the blueberry-crumble pie from the oven. I added it to the Cooling Counter (left of oven) next to three other pies, cranberry-apple, old-fashioned apple, and peach cobbler, already waiting in a neat line for their role in tonight’s Church Bake Sale. I had dough, berries, and glaze for one more, strawberry rhubarb, spread out on the Prep Counter (right of oven).
I’d been up since 5:30 this morning, suffering a hangover, to bake pies and to try to wriggle out of my job with hairybeast1855. No one should have to deal with arsonists and elderly church ladies on the same day, but the Bake Sale must go on.
Under my apron, I still wore the same red bikini top and cut-off jeans I’d worn yesterday. My strawberry blonde hair fought to escape a messy ponytail. People look at me and assume that I’m just a big-boobed bleach-blonde bimbo, which is completely unfair. I don’t bleach my hair. Also, I was smart enough that I was accepted to UCLA on a full ride. My sister Bryn said that didn’t prove much. (She attends USC.) But maybe she had a point. I flunked out after one year; she’s still in school.
I work from home, which Granny Rose interprets as the same as being a “homemaker.” She thinks nothing of ordering up pies from my kitchen as if I were her own private restaurant. This morning, my head felt like the Titanic when it met the iceberg, and I’d have rather tested shark-suits for nudists than spent the day baking, but I’d promised Granny Rose five pies, and I’d show up with five pies.
I slipped another pie into the oven and set the timer.
Our kitchen is the size and color of a human heart, red and divided, a diminutive space divvied into two ventricles by a scarlet curtain with silver spangles. Oven and counters are hidden behind the curtain and when someone is baking, the air liquefies to the temperature of blood. My sister and I live so close to Venice Beach that anything we cook always smells like salt and suntan lotion.
The front half of the divided kitchen is my “office”, with as many “scare quotes” around that term as possible. Two foldout chairs straddle a beaten wood table cloaked by another crimson, silver-spangled tablecloth. The fabric matches the saturated color of the walls and the front door, embossed with silver letters which still announce ornately: Madame Hood ∞ Psychopomp (Psychic Readings & Necromancy & Exorcisms)
…Even though Madame Hood no longer does business here. Neither my sister nor I had ever had the heart to remove the sign or repaint the walls.
How many kitchens have a beautiful mural painted on one wall? Right next to the table was a life-size painting of a closed door, so detailed some clients mistake it for a real door. Mom—when she was playing Madame Hood—used the Painted Door in her rituals. When I was a child, she told me that it could really open, and, in fact, with the right Key, it opened to Faerie. A Painted Door has a thousand keys, she’d said, with a mysterious smile. I totally believed her.
Yeah, that hasn’t worked out too well, has it, Mom? But at least you taught me how to spin a good fable to make a fast buck.
I have my own “business.” More scare quotes required. The tools of my trade are an account on a discreet website, two laptops, five phones and a bunch of phony accents, one of which I was using right now.
Unmuted, back on the phone, I hurried my spiel in my Australian accent, “…definitely a conscientious worker, a hard working, honest bloke. Yeah, that’s right, mate… he worked for us for…” I checked the notes scattered among unopened bills on the glamorous table, “eight years. I highly recommend him. Yes, yes, yes,” I gushed, “He’s such a marvelous human being, tremendous, punctual…fragrant…” Don’t overdo it, I warned myself, don’t wanna sound insincere… “We were sorry to see him go but he moved and so…”
I wrapped up the call and hung up. Now I could answer the door.
My second phone rang. Same company, calling about the same guy, but they thought they were calling a different office this time. He’d never had a job longer than a month in his life, but he didn’t want his latest employer to know that, did he? So he gave them my phony numbers and names as “references” and I helped a fellow out. For a fee.
I answered with a sugary drawl this time. I like to mix it up, keep it fresh. You know, take pride in my work.
“Aw, honeychile, I love that man,” I said. Okay, I was chewing the furniture; everyone in Los Angeles thinks they can act. “’Course I recommend him, I stand by that man like I stand by my mama’s fried chicken, and you know my mama’s fried chicken is good, da-aam!”
Two calls down. The third phone rang. Same company. Efficient bastards. I liked that, or would have, if the knocking on my door hadn’t been so unrelenting.
Probably it was someone here to see my mother, the supposed ghost whisperer, but the clients who wanted me to lie about hearing from their loved ones never paid as much as the clients who wanted me to lie about their bosses. The visitor would have to wait.
Indian accent. Laid on thick. “He is being a most excellent employee! I am liking his working extremely much!”
I know, I know. Lying is one thing, but must I also typecast worse than a bad sitcom? I usually try harder, but under pressure, I fall back on cliché. I admit it. I’m not proud of everything I do.
The doorbell rang a third time, followed by a grievously insistent knock.
I hit mute again, “Just a minute!”
I edged to the kitchen window and peeked out the curtain to the front porch. The man ringing my doorbell wore a band uniform complete with a rimmed cap. So either the Music Man had come to tell me there was Trouble in River City or… I glanced toward the street and saw the limo parked out front.
Or the guy was a limousine chauffeur. What the…?
I have a strange life. My sister and I are both adults but we still share a bunk bed, my mother’s in a coma in the back room, my father abandoned us six years ago rather than take care of my mother, I lie for a living, I lie to my sister about lying for a living and I lie to the guys I date because after my dad left, I swore off believing in love and all that other fairytale nonsense. I never have one-night-stands, except, you know, that one last night. My sister took an exam in the morning and worked a late shift in the evening, leaving me alone on a day I couldn’t take being alone. Not only was it my twenty-fifth birthday, the anniversary of my mother’s car crash, the anniversary of the day my dad walked out on us, it was also Monday. Thanks for nothing, stupid Monday. I found the hottest muscle on the Santa Monica Pier and spent the day doing every outrageous thing I could think of with him, in ascending order of crazy: roller blading, water skiing, paragliding, bar hopping and sheet diving.
After that, I don’t remember much until I woke up this morning in an empty motel room. Cue tragic soundtrack: alone again, naturally. Thanks for nothing, stupid Tuesday. I assumed he was a dog who snuck out on me, but maybe I misjudged. It’s just possible that I was drunk enough last night that I’d become engaged and ordered a wedding limo, in which case, I had to immediately lie my way out of both the limo bill and the upcoming nuptials, because (a) every cent I earn goes to pay my mom’s medical bills or my sister’s law school, and (b) I couldn’t remember my date’s last name from last night and it might sound stupid with my first name. “Roxy” doesn’t play well with too many last names.
Squawky noises from the phone reminded me I was still on the job, pretending to be an employer for the pothead who had hired me to be his “reference.”
Unmute. “By Jove, I highly recommend him, you couldn’t hire a better, more upstanding, responsible, honest, and sterling store manager,” I repeated, speaking even faster.
The person on the other end sounded startl
ed.
Oh, dog poop on a popsicle. I’d forgotten I was supposed to be using Indian English and had switched to my Sherlock Homes accent. I blustered through with a stiff upper lip. “Were there any other questions? I have a bloody call on the other line. Hello, there we go then, goodbye!”
I tapped off the phone and ran to the front door. I flung it open.
The man standing there now was definitely not a chauffeur.
Chapter 2. Warning: Contents May Be Sexy
My phone dropped from my hand but I was too stunned by the stranger standing on my front doorstep to notice. He locked his brilliant green eyes on mine and I couldn’t move, or even breathe.
If sexy caused earthquakes, he’d be a Magnitude Wow.
Maybe he was a movie star. That would explain the limo. Hollywood wasn’t far. All sorts of unlikely people showed up, even after six years, to consult my mother. Some of the more desperate ones settled for consulting me.
Please, please, consult me, begged the deepest, emptiest part of me.
His suit whispered money. Black suit, black shirt, black tie, black on black, black as a black hole wrapped around his body, stealing light and capturing it into permanent orbit. Underneath the CEO slick, though, he could have been a Navy Seal with that physique. He exuded so much Raw Male, he erased every man I’d ever met from my working memory; I couldn’t even picture last night’s one-hit-wonder any more. All I could see were those emerald eyes in that chiseled marble face. His skin was too pale—he sure didn’t work outside—during the day—but his tightly cropped bullion hair had a military flair. He smelled like all-night-sex on hot sand over a buried fire pit. Opaque heat radiated from him, as if he were a hidden sun in human form, scorching without illuminating, burning in the dark. I wrenched my eyes away from his intense gaze. I could feel my heart sprint like a deer fleeing an erupting volcano.
He didn’t look like the type who believed in ghosts.
Yet…there was an edge to his almost-smile that suggested he might be a man haunted by something.
“Roxy Hood.” He made my name sound dirty, in the most delicious way. He had an accent, antique and British, with something more dangerous and exotic folded inside the cultured cadence. “I believe you dropped this.”
He handed me back my phone.
“Th…thank you,” I stuttered. Real smooth, Roxy.
It didn’t matter. He was leagues out of my league.
“I need your favor, mademoiselle.” He smiled then, every so slightly, ever so understated. The way his hinted smile punched all sense right out of my head, I should have called the cops and had him arrested for assault and battery. If he ever full out grinned at me, it would kill me.
“Shortly after my maman’s death, there was an estate sale of some of her effects.” His smile vanished, replaced by somber intensity. “Including a garment which I desire to recover for…sentimental reasons. It has no real market value, but it was dear to her, and therefore means much to me. A lady’s garment. Unfortunately, I don’t remember exactly what it was.” His green-eyed gaze grew even more focused. “Except the color—crimson; and the fact that it was most likely a cape or coat of some kind—with a hood.”
He paused.
“Uh,” I said. Oh, Roxy, you scintillating conversationalist, you.
“I believe your mother may have purchased it,” he said. “And I would like to purchase it back.”
“Uh.”
“I realize it’s an inconvenience to ask you to search through your mother’s wardrobe for an inconsequential garment. I am prepared to make it worth your time.”
He handed me a check.
I forced myself to break from his green-eyed hypnosis and glance down at the check. The number leaped out at me.
$100,000.
Holy hamburger.
With that much money, I definitely wouldn’t need to take the job for hairybeast1855. The credit cards with the highest interest rates, I’d pay those off first, then we could afford a full time home nurse again for Mom, which meant I could quit the Lying For Douchbags “job” and find real work outside the house… maybe go back to school, Cal State LA, maybe, until I could re-apply to…. No, I should still wait until Bryn had her Law degree, stick to the plan, but it would be nice not to be paying thirty percent interest on Mom’s medical bills….
Something flickered in his eyes, a smugness that stung me. He hid it behind an implacable mask quickly enough, but too late. I’d seen it, and I stiffened. I don’t care if he was a movie star, he didn’t get to dangle money in front of me and sneer at how I salivated.
“I don’t think we have anything like that,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
I returned the check. He snapped it into his fist.
I started to shut the door; his palm against the cherry red wood stopped the motion like an anchor stopped a ship. His wrist now crossed my threshold, his hand invaded my house. I don’t know why that mattered, why that sent a shiver down my spine.
“Perhaps you could search, Mademoiselle Hood.”
There was a new note in his voice. Like the subtle shift of a song to a minor chord, it resonated with threat. I didn’t like it.
“I know every single item in this house,” I said coolly. “We don’t have it.”
I looked at his hand, then at him. His eyes smoldered at me, and I resisted the urge to flinch away as if from a flame. The gap between us sizzled and burnt like smoke.
Only the truth protected me. I knew we didn’t have any hooded scarlet cape. If I’d had it, I would have given it to him, even without the check.
I couldn’t move. If he stepped into the house, if he pushed past me to search himself, I couldn’t have stopped him. I would have let him take anything from there, even me. A little part of me feared the insanity of my weakness.
He stared at me for a long time, eyes locked on mine, and I felt measured, tested, tasted, and spit out like a sip of wine on trial at a Sonoma soiree. I have no idea if he enjoyed the bouquet.
With his other hand, he slipped a business card out of his suit jacket. He flourished it. Only after I accepted the card did he remove his palm from my door. I half expected to see scorch marks where he’d touched the wood.
The strange light flashed in his jeweled eyes again, the smugness replaced by something thicker and more complex. His voice was still rough, but edged, injured. Haunted.
“You may think me foolish, but it’s very important to me,” he said stiffly. “If you find it, or… if you ever need my favor, call my name.”
Just like that, the yearning in me deepened into a chasm. I want your favor. I felt need vibrate through my whole being, heat between my legs, and then I felt like an idiot because I didn’t trust my own longing.
I did not stop watching him until long after he had disappeared into the black limousine and the black limousine had disappeared up the street, toward the beach and the freeway that shadowed the land’s edge. The sun disappeared behind a cloudbank and the whole California morning dulled to gray, as if coated in ash.
I touched the door where he had palmed it. The wood was still warm.
Only after I closed the door did I look at the card. An ordinary business card, tasteful rather than exotic, matte black embossed with gold, a single name.
Domitian Drake.
Nothing else. No address, no email, no number. Just the name. Strange name, too. Domitian? What the hell kind of name was that? Like a medieval knight or a mad Roman emperor. Just call? Riiiiight. With no phone number.
“By Jove, Domitian,” I sing-songed in my fakest British accent. “I do believe you’re a bloody wanker!”
When I closed the door, I still felt dazed. In his presence my world had narrowed to him. Now, suddenly, I heard the clang and clamor of neglected household devices, scolding me. The oven bleeped, two phones jangled, the smoke alarm blared… I coughed.
The smoke alarm.
I dived through the red curtain that divided the room, as it wasn’t too hard to guess the sou
rce of the smell of burning pastry. The brume was worse on this side, definitely. I coughed, waved smoky air out of my face. A dark haze leaked from the seams of the oven, which I turned off. Inside, the pie was a blackened crisp, as if I’d left it in there for eight hours at 500 degrees instead of just put it in 15 minutes ago at a perfectly reasonable temperature for cobbler.
I haven’t burnt a pie since I was eight. And, to be fair, even if she refuses to admit it to this day, that was totally my sister’s fault. Admittedly, the crayons were a bad idea.
The burnt pie in the oven wasn’t the weird part, though.
I took the Pompeii Pie out of the oven and set it on the Cooling Counter and that’s when I finally noticed the Weird Part.
The Weird Part was that the other four pies had also burnt, even the three that had been golden crispy perfection half an hour ago… and even the pie that I hadn’t cooked yet.
All five pies were identical smoking, black disks of char.
Chapter 3: What Not To Bring On A Picnic
I stared at the burnt pies, fighting to grasp a niggling dread in the back of my throat. The ember of dread burst flaming panic suddenly, in a one word thought.
Mom!
I ran to the back of the house, to the big, heavy door we’d had installed when we brought her home permanently. I don’t know why panic hit me, what I thought might have happened to her. I had a terrible image of her body burnt to a crisp, like the pies on the counter.
My hand was already on the handle of the door, I was ready to spring into the room to check on her, to reassure myself, when I forced myself to pause. I breathed deeply. I didn’t cough.
My palm on the special, sealed door to her room encountered cold metal.
So a pie had burned. Big whoop. I’d had a hangover this morning at 5 am when I started baking. Everyone knows hangovers involve headaches, bleary thinking, and spontaneous combustion.
I didn’t burn those pies.
Whatever happened, it had started and ended in the kitchen. I was more likely to let smoke into Mom’s room than do any good by checking on her.
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