Moon In The Mirror: A Tess Noncoire Adventure

by P. R. Frost

  No wonder she hadn’t intervened in the argument between Darren and Donovan last night. An elephant gun exploding next to her ear wouldn’t rouse her from those drugs.

  “You’re all dressed up,” I said as I slid into a kitchen chair facing the bay windows and the cottage across the yard.

  “D and I have an appointment with Father Sheridan after Mass. To arrange the blessing of our marriage.” She actually preened as she set a plate before me filled with a succulent waffle. Melting butter flowed out from a fat pat in the center. Then she plunked a second plate on the table overflowing with sausages and fried tomato slices.

  I reached for the maple syrup—the pure stuff from Vermont.

  Gollum slid into the chair next to me and stole half the waffle.

  I considered slapping his hand, then thought better of it. We’d shared a lot last night. Personal stuff, wants and desires, politics to religion to fashion to education. I knew more about him as a person but still didn’t know much about his history and family. That would come. Some barriers had fallen between us.

  “Is Darren going to Mass with you?” I looked at the clock on the microwave. Nine-thirty-five. They didn’t have much time to get to church.

  “Of course,” Mom replied sharply. She stared out the window, worry creased her mouth and her eyes. “I’d better go hurry him along.” She marched out the door, leaving it open and letting in the cold but not frigid air.

  “Do you think Darren will actually set foot inside a church?” Gollum asked.

  “That is something I’d like to see. Will he disappear in a cloud of smoke? Will he meet a force field that throws him out?” Like had happened to Scrap once when he tried entering the newly blessed refectory back at the Citadel.

  That was something I’d have to ask him about. It reminded me of how he’d been blocked from entering a room with Donovan.

  But Donovan wasn’t blessed. If anything, he was as much a demon as Darren.

  What had he said last night?

  I was committed to the Great Enterprise before I fell.

  “What do you suppose Donovan fell from?” I asked.

  Gollum chewed in silence for a moment. Then he got up and poured more batter into the waffle maker. “From grace?” he replied.

  “But that would mean he’d been in a state of grace at one time. Like an angel. He’s no angel. That I’m sure of. Could a demon, even a half-blood, enter a state of grace?” The Church didn’t think so. That was one reason they littered their cathedral roofs with gargoyles.

  “Depends on the human half of his blood. If that ancestor had been up for sainthood, maybe the spiritual quality they imparted to their offspring . . .”

  An ear-splitting screech tore the air.

  “Mom!” I pelted toward the cottage.

  She screamed again and again. I felt the sky might tear open from her anguish.

  My heart beat overtime and climbed to my throat. I couldn’t cover the one hundred yards to the cottage fast enough. The distance seemed to grow longer, my goal farther away with every step.

  “Scrap? Where the hell are you? I need you now!”

  Right here, babe. He flitted ahead of me on wings that beat faster than my racing pulse. He flashed between curious yellow and happy lavender.

  No demons or evil lurked close by.

  What was going on?

  Finally, I reached the steps. Gollum overtook me and yanked open the storm door. The main door swung free.

  We came to a skidding halt. Mom stood in the middle of the room, hands covering her face, eyes wide in horror.

  Darren lay face up on the floor, dark blood pooled around him from a deep and long gash through his chest. Death had glazed his eyes and turned him blue with cold.

  The sweet smell of blood and death filled me with longing. I needed to stretch and sharpen, to taste this demon blood myself.

  But there were no live demons present. I took no part in this death.

  Never truly sated, I dropped down beside the corpse. My tongue lapped at the chill, stale blood. Instead of satisfying my thirst, it tasted sour. He’d been dead too long. I spat it out in disgust.

  My internal combustion engine remained well below the boiling point. Nothing changed in my normal cute self, gray green with six lovely warts.

  Curses. I can’t earn any more beauty marks from this death.

  Chapter 33

  GOLLUM MUST HAVE called 911. I sure didn’t. Allie and Mike roared up the drive in a four-by-four rig, followed closely by Joe Halohan, the chief constable, in his unmarked sedan, and by a third officer in a squad car. Followed by an ambulance. Followed by the tiny compact of James Frazier, reporter for the Cape Gazette.

  I had my hands full with Mom’s hysterics. She wouldn’t leave the cottage. She wouldn’t stop screaming. Finally I grabbed both her arms and frog-marched her outside.

  Once free of the sight of her dead husband, Mom’s screams reduced to sobs that shook her entire body. I feared she’d pass out from lack of breath. Or hyperventilate.

  Somehow, I got Mom into the house and plied her with a cup of tea.

  WindScribe ate the waffle Gollum had started a lifetime ago, hardly noticing the noise and fuss around her.

  “Take a plate to MoonFeather,” I finally snapped at her.

  “Oh.” She looked up with wide, innocent eyes as if I’d disturbed some deep and meaningful meditation. Her eyes were glassy. Had she found Mom’s migraine meds?

  For once, she obeyed without questions or whines.

  Allie and Chief Constable Halohan trudged across the melting snow—completely free of gnomes—each with one hand resting on their weapons and notebooks in the other. Mike trailed behind, head twisting right and left, looking at everything and . . . and . . . was he sniffing?

  First time I’d ever known a cop to use his nose with the same intensity as his eyes. I didn’t think smells were admissible evidence.

  He swung his arms freely, no trace of a wound from the Windago. He looked so very human I doubted demon blood in him. And Scrap didn’t react to him. Must be pretty diluted demon blood.

  I braced myself for the torrent of questions. Who was the victim? What was our relationship? Why was he in my cottage? How did we come to discover the body? I answered them all as simply and honestly as I could. I had nothing to hide.

  Right?

  “And where were you at three this morning?” Allie finally asked. Her eyes constantly shifted, searching for something or someone.

  Scrap flitted about making faces at her. He knew she couldn’t see him. Did she sense his passage through the air? Perhaps she was looking for one of my ghosts.

  Dill had remained absent since I threw his picture into the pond at midnight.

  “I was asleep at three,” I replied.

  “And you, Mrs. Noncoiré, I mean Estevez?” Allie turned her attention fully on Mom.

  “I . . . I was . . .” Mom choked and fell into another spate of sobs. “Will someone turn off the damned music. It’s giving me a migraine!”

  “We might as well give up on her for a while. She’s in shock. Won’t get anything out of her until tomorrow at best,” Halohan grumbled.

  I watched Mom visibly gather the ragged pieces of her psyche together. “I . . . I had a migraine last night. I took my pills. Darren was considerate enough to sleep in the spare room so he wouldn’t disturb me.” That could be the truth. When Mom had one of her “spells” and took her meds, nothing could wake her for close to twelve hours.

  No wonder the quiet music on the stereo grated on her fragile nerves. I always had music on the stereo. In the aftermath of the drugs was the only time she complained.

  “How did you get out of the cottage without stumbling over his dead body?” Mike asked. Anger tinged his voice. He stood with his feet braced, knees locked, and his body tilted forward in an aggressive stance.

  I’d seen Allie confront traffic violators and belligerent drunks before. But never with as much violence simmering benea
th the surface as Mike displayed.

  As if he were taking the murder personally. How close were his family ties to Darren Estevez?

  Both Chief Halohan and Allie looked askance at him.

  “I woke up about seven-thirty feeling quite well and refreshed,” Mom explained. “The cottage was still dark and quiet, so I crept out without turning on any lights. I wanted to surprise everyone with a big breakfast before we went to Mass. Oh, my gosh, it’s gotten so late. What will I tell Father Sheridan?” Mom threatened to fall back into her hysterics.

  I couldn’t tell if she lied or not. She’d dissembled for years, covering up for Dad’s sexual preferences. I’d learned to lie with a straight face from the mistress of untruth. She was so good I think she truly believed her altered view of reality.

  So many emotions crossed her face and filled her eyes with new tears I couldn’t delve beyond the surface to find the truth behind her words.

  “The body wasn’t in the direct path from the back of the house to the front door,” Halohan said, making notes.

  “Still . . .” Mike persisted.

  “Give it up, Mike. This thing isn’t going to be settled in an hour,” Allie warned.

  “Isn’t it?” Mike turned to me. “The victim was stabbed. Lots of blood. No weapon on the scene. We need to search both the cottage and the house.” He locked his gaze on me fiercely as he kept his knees from bending.

  “Mike,” Halohan protested. “We know these people. We should be looking elsewhere, into Mr. Estevez’s past.”

  “His foster son maybe?” I prompted. I’d watched Donovan leave in a huff near midnight. Who was to say he hadn’t come back? Gollum and I had been at the other end of the house, in the apartment. We probably wouldn’t have heard him.

  Should I volunteer that information?

  Never volunteer anything to the dirty rotten coppers, Scrap snarled in his best Chicago gangster voice.

  “Good idea. Any idea where Donovan Estevez is?” Halohan glommed onto that tidbit eagerly.

  “He said he was staying in a motel nearby,” I offered. “I don’t know which one.”

  Speaking of the devil . . . Scrap popped out as we heard the crunch of gravel under tires and a car door slam.

  “Chief Halohan, do we really know anyone here?” Mike asked. His voice remained cold and unfeeling. But I sensed heat behind it, waiting to explode like Mount St. Helens.

  “There have been a lot of strange reports and complaints by the neighbors the last year or so,” Allie said hesitantly.

  “And I find it too coincidental that both mother and daughter married someone they barely knew and then became widowed shortly thereafter. There’s money involved. ” Mike continued.

  That stopped me cold. How did he know that? Only Allie could have told him. Or Millie, chief gossip and police dispatch. But she’d only say something if Mike asked.

  That was something to think about.

  Rather than address that issue, I rounded on Allie.

  “Allie, how could you? You’re my best friend. You know me.”

  “Does she?” Mike snarled.

  Allie swiveled her head looking into the empty air, a silent signal that she searched for Scrap—a big secret I’d kept from her for three years.

  “Lots of nooks and crannies in these old houses,” Halohan mused, scratching his chin. “Wouldn’t hurt to look. The perp could have stashed the weapon close by to avoid getting caught with it.”

  “There is that room under the cellar stairs you keep locked,” Mom volunteered. She wouldn’t look directly at me. I had no idea if that statement came from her or from some lingering influence of Darren’s.

  My throat froze in horror. The armory. Stashed with more than a dozen very sharp and lethal weapons, new and antique.

  And the Celestial Blade.

  Scrap, wherever you are, get the blade out of there!

  “You don’t have to be so helpful,” I hissed at Mom.

  “I was only being honest. Which is more than I can say for you,” she replied in a huff.

  What had got into her?

  A demon still influences her, Scrap whispered from somewhere else. Look at her eyes. That’s not a drug haze. It’s demon glamour.

  “Let’s have a look,” Halohan said. He aimed for the kitchen access to the cellar. “You have a talk with the son, Allie.”

  “I have to get the key to the priest hole.” I stalled and remained sitting at the table. If I called it the armory, they might arrest me before they even looked.

  Halohan halted in his tracks. “Where?”

  “In here,” I sighed. Then I led him through the maze to the office and my purse inside the desk drawer. A quick search of the zipped pocket came up empty.

  The copy around my neck I wanted to keep secret.

  My heart raced in panic. I fumbled around inside the black hole of a purse and found only the fairy key chain with house and car keys—both my hybrid and Mom’s SUV. Then a slow and methodical grope into the corners at the bottom. Still nothing.

  Finally, I dumped the contents out on the desktop. As wallet, comb, sunglasses, PDA, and cell phone tumbled over the surface, I spotted the elusive key to the armory on its gargoyle chain with a mini flashlight attached. Someone had tucked them into a corner behind the computer.

  Not me. Even in a hurry I’d not be so careless. I said so to Halohan.

  He scrawled another note. “Who else has a key?” he asked, not looking up from his hen scratching.

  “I gave a copy to Gollum.”

  Halohan looked blank.

  “Guilford Van der Hoyden-Smythe. The gentleman who met you at the cottage.”

  “The nerd. Yeah. Why him?”

  “I trust him.”

  “And not your mother?”

  I just rolled my eyes. He knew Mom well. His wife belonged to the same garden club—the one that sold hideous garden gnomes to raise money.

  “Yeah, I guess not. If your mother had a key, the whole garden club would, too. In fact, since she knows about the room, they probably all do, too. Not hard to have a locksmith out and make a duplicate.” He took the key from me.

  I noted that he’d donned latex gloves.

  “Anyone else have access to this key?”

  “You saw where I keep my purse. I don’t lock it up in my own house. But I didn’t think anyone else knew to look inside a zipped pocket inside another zipped pocket.”

  Donovan had dug through the purse in search of a bandage for my cut forearm.

  “You’ve got a lot of people visiting. Lots of strangers wandering in and out.” He made another note.

  WindScribe poked her head out of MoonFeather’s room. I waved her back inside. No sense involving them until we had to. MoonFeather was innocent. I knew that. She could barely hobble about on her crutches let alone get across the yard quietly in the middle of the night, stab a full grown man/demon, and hobble back quietly.