Dirty Sexy Murder

by Cathleen Ross

  Lizzie didn’t answer him. With a sigh, he closed the door and looked at Marina.

  She put her hand on his arm. “You’re a good brother to Lizzie. It’s horrible being an only child. I wish I had a brother who cared like you do.”

  James shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. “Lizzie’s too old for me to be looking after her, but I don’t like this guy. I’ve only met him once and he’s never come to the apartment since.”

  A small smile formed across Marina’s lips. “Do you think that had something to do with you telling Fabio that you’re violently opposed to the steroids body builders use, and that they can shrink a guy’s testicles down to the size of a walnut?”

  “Did Lizzie tell you I said that?”

  “Who else?”

  James twitched. “I might have said something like that. Do you think I’m too protective of her?”

  Marina brushed an auburn curl behind her ear and shrugged. “Just an iota, but that’s what I like about you. You care. That’s nice. You’re prepared to go that extra mile to look after Lizzie. I really respect that. I don’t think she has the best taste in men, not that I can talk.”

  He held her gaze and for a moment, Marina thought he was about to lean forward and kiss her. The space between them seemed to change, to become more intimate. But James was her landlord. She’d just been telling him what a great brother he was to Lizzie. He couldn’t be thinking about kissing her, could he?

  “Let’s go eat these pizzas before they get cold,” he said, picking up the pizza boxes. He turned abruptly and walked into the living room.

  “Sure.” Marina followed him.

  He lay on his stomach. “Picnic on the floor okay with you?”

  “Sounds good.” She sat opposite him helping him open the boxes. The spicy aroma of Matriciana pizza wafted toward her.

  With a small shake of his head he opened his plain pizza and stared down. “Why did I order something so boring?” He glanced over at Marina’s pizza and breathed in deeply.

  “You can share mine. We’ve got three here now Lizzie’s gone. I don’t mind ham and pineapple.”

  “How did you know I wanted some?” he asked. “Are you turning into a mind reader?”

  Marina laughed. “You’re transparent. Everything you think is on your face.”

  “Gosh, I hope not,” he said, shifting uncomfortably before reaching for a slice of her pizza.

  Marina took a delicate bite of her pizza. She chewed thoughtfully. “I guess it would be pretty embarrassing if we could all read each other’s minds.”

  James stopped mid-bite. “Can you really tell what I’m thinking? Am I that transparent?”

  “You have an honest face.” She paused, frowning slightly. “Can I talk to you about something that’s bothering me?”

  “Sure.”

  “I have to warn you, it sounds strange, but I need to talk to someone I trust, someone grounded, like you. I usually tell Lizzie everything, but I don’t want to talk to her about this. She’d think it was terrific and get all excited, but it isn’t. It’s horrible.”

  “So tell me,” he encouraged. “I like the way you ask my advice.”

  She stared into his eyes. There was warmth there and she wished she could snuggle up close to him just to feel his protective arms around her. “I’m beginning to think I’m psychic or something.”

  She watched his lips twitching into a smile. Marina pointed at him warningly. “Don’t laugh at me.”

  “I’m not. I just don’t believe in that stuff. Trust me, you don’t want to know what men think about most of the time.”

  Marina laughed. “I could guess.” She had an over-powering compulsion to reach out and take his hand in hers. There was something about him. She wanted his big, hard body around hers. Being with him made her feel safe.

  “So?”

  She mentally told herself to snap out of it. “I’ve started getting migraines. I got the first one just before my wedding and at the time, I thought it was a fluke. I put it down to things not going right with my relationship.”

  “Sounds pretty normal to me.”

  She shook her head emphatically so that her curls bounced. “No. I haven’t explained this properly. Before the wedding, along with the migraine I had a vision of my fiancé, Tony, dressed in women’s clothing. Remember I told you that.” Agitated, she tangled her fingers in her curls, then wrenched her hand free. “This is hard for me to talk about, so hear me out.”

  He gave her a reassuring nod. “Maybe it was a daydream.”

  She shook her head. “No. This was a vision. I didn’t understand what was happening at the time, so I dismissed it. Since then, strange stuff has been happening and it’s getting worse. You remember the night Adele was murdered?”

  “Yes.”

  “I had a vision...a premonition that she was going to be murdered. It came with the migraine too. Remember I told you that. She was murdered, James.” She threw her hands in the air. “And now I just seem to know things and it’s getting weird.”

  “You did tell me. I don’t believe in that stuff but I have to admit, you did say it before it happened.” He frowned and Marina could see him trying to logically trying to work out how it had happened.

  “It’s like I can feel people’s thoughts, their emotions, especially when I touch them. It scares me.” She tilted her head to the side.

  “It has to be a coincidence. You’re probably intuitive. Women sense stuff more than men. You’re probably just picking up body language.” James reached for another piece of pizza and munched on it.

  She paused and nibbled her pizza thoughtfully. “I hope you don’t mind me telling you this stuff. Back home, I used to talk to my dad a lot until he passed away. It was good to get a male perspective on things. Apart from Lizzie, I don’t really have anyone else I can confide in here. I guess this all sounds kinda dumb, doesn’t it?

  James shrugged. “It’s different.” He half-smiled. “I come from a science discipline.”

  “Computer engineers don’t believe in psychic phenomena?” she asked.

  “We’re trained in probability. If we can’t see it, measure it, it isn’t probable.”

  “There are plenty of things we can’t see that we know are real. Take gravity.”

  “We can measure that,” James said.

  “True.” She put her index finger to the tip of her nose and rubbed it. “I’d like to try something out in a safe environment. Can I try something on you?

  “Such as?” James asked, his expression wary.

  “I’d like to touch you. See if I can sense anything. An emotion. Thoughts or feelings. I don’t know if this will work.” She stared at him. “I can trust you to tell me the truth.”

  He shrugged. “Go ahead. Lucky I don’t believe in what you’re going to do. A beautiful girl touching me in my apartment. Let me see, what could I be thinking?” He gave her a playful smile.

  “Don’t play where you lay,” Marina said.

  “You got it.”

  “I don’t want to experiment on Lizzie because I know her too well and I already know she’d be thinking of Fabio and her sex life.”

  “Must be bred in the bone,” he joked.

  Marina bit her bottom lip and shook her head. “Lizzie’s a believer and the trouble is—I don’t want to be. Yet this awful stuff is happening to me and, as much as I want to deny it, it won’t go away.”

  “So you want to test it out on me because you know I don’t believe either.”

  She nodded. “And I know you’ll take this seriously. You hold my hand and I’ll try and sense what you’re thinking. I’m worried. Either this stuff is real or I’m going crazy. I’m worried I’m going crazy. I have to test this out in some logical way.”

  He reached out and gave her a comforting squeeze on the shoulder. “Sure.” He rolled on his back and closed his eyes. He shifted uncomfortably and glanced over at her. “I’ll make it easy for you,” he offered. “I’ll think of a make of a
car. You have to guess which one I’m thinking of.” He closed his eyes again.

  Marina slid her hand into his. His hand was firm and big. An image of them on her breasts shot into her mind. She gasped.

  “What?” James’s eyes snapped open.

  “Nothing. Shut your eyes,” she ordered, aware that her cheeks must be flame-coloured.

  “Okay, this is a hot car,” he said. “I’m focusing on it. Driving it.”

  Marina shut her eyes and concentrated. She could see herself naked with her cherry-coloured nipples erect. James was licking them, slowly, thoughtfully as if he had all the time in the world.

  “You’re not thinking about a car at all,” she said indignantly, pulling her hand away.

  His eyes snapped open. “What?”

  “You were thinking of sex.”

  “No, I wasn’t.” He pushed himself to a sitting position. The skin colour around his throat and face had deepened.

  “Yes, you were,” she insisted, furious. “You were thinking about licking my nipples.”

  “How did you know that?” he said, clearly too stunned to deny it.

  Disgusted, Marina rose to her feet and marched toward her bedroom.

  James raced after her. “Marina. I didn’t mean to upset you. I couldn’t help how I feel. You’re gorgeous. But you’ve had a hard time. There’s no way I’m coming on to you.”

  He was about to say more but she stopped him with a glare.

  “I was trying to talk to you about something important. Do you know what it’s like to live with this? To see frightening images, to hear voices?” She hugged herself. “I’m scared and I don’t know what to do. I think I’m going mad. I’m too frightened to go to the doctor in case I get committed.”

  “Listen, Marina. You’re not mad and I was paying attention. I didn’t want to think about your nipples. They kept popping up. I couldn’t make the thought go away.”

  “Go to hell.” She slammed her bedroom door in his face and leaned against it to catch her breath. What was wrong with men? On the face of it, James seemed sweet and understanding, yet underneath he had his own secret sex agenda, just like her fiancé, Tony. She didn’t understand men.

  James knocked on the door. “Marina?”

  “Get lost.” She was so angry she could barely be civil. “Just leave me alone.” Her head throbbed at the temple as her anger gave way to a headache.

  James knocked insistently on her door.

  Every nerve ending in her body jumped at the sound. She looked around uneasily. She could feel fear, a marauding, dark feeling, but couldn’t sense the cause. Sure, she was angry with James, but she wasn’t scared of him, yet the edgy, uneasy feeling persisted. Something was wrong.

  “Marina, can I come in and talk?”

  “No!” She massaged her temple, wishing she weren’t so prone to headaches. They seemed to have become worse since she’d moved to the city. It was like her overloaded senses couldn’t cope in Sydney.

  “Please, Marina?” James was standing close to the door so that only a couple of inches separated them. “I want to tell you how I feel about you. I have to get it out in the open.”

  “Just go away.” She didn’t want to discuss emotions, not when she was like this. Her hands formed fists as the tension grew. The creeping blackness surrounded her. What the hell was the matter with her? Blindly, she searched her mind for the reasons for her fear. She knew this feeling. Had it before. Something was wrong.

  The light in her bedroom seemed to change and the purple-coloured walls of her bedroom deepened. Oh no. Not this. Please not again. Not a migraine. Her jaw clenched in fear and her breathing quickened. But it wasn’t the debilitating migraine she feared—it was the accompanying vision that rode on its back like a specter.

  She sensed evil.

  She could hear James knocking insistently on her bedroom door but he seemed far away. Her anger for him forgotten, she wished she could let him in. Like a fly injected by spider’s poison, she found moving difficult. Quickly, she shut her eyes, the only part of her body that still seemed to obey her commands, hoping to block the vision that she knew would come. It was useless. The white-coloured aura of the migraine grew inside her head, flickering at the edges like a strobe. There was no escaping it. She opened her eyes slowly as if drugged and stared into space.

  Her throat constricted as a shape formed in the aura. She could see a woman, fighting, trying to find breath as a cord tightened around her neck. Suddenly, she was there in the body of the woman as if her soul had descended into the scene and entered the body of the woman.

  “You filthy bitch, advertising yourself.” The male voice of the murderer was low like a growl.

  Marina’s breath seized with the surprise of the attack and the pain of the cord tightening around her throat. Air. She needed air. She clawed at her throat trying to release the cord, but her fingers came up empty. Her legs buckled under her as blackness surrounded her vision. She couldn’t breathe. Terror, and the bleak knowledge that death awaited, consumed her. She felt the woman’s horror and her own dark terror as her strength went and her life force drained out of her.

  Marina groaned, helpless to stop the vision. Her heart thumped in panic and she was certain that this time, she would die with the victim, but then something strange happened. The light changed in her room as the door opened behind her, but she was powerless to move out of the way.

  “Marina?” James squeezed himself through the gap and bent. “What’s the matter? I heard you groaning. Did you faint?” He was on his knees beside her, his warm hands on her shoulders and she had never been so happy to see him.

  He lifted her and placed her gently on her bed, keeping his arms around her. “What happened?” he asked urgently. “Gosh, you’re icy.”

  She couldn’t talk as she sucked in air, concentrated on breathing, snatching her soul back from whatever hell it had entered. With enormous effort she reached up and pulled him to her. “So cold. Hold me, James. Hold me tight.” Her voice came out in a whisper as if she hadn’t recovered her power of speech.

  James did as he was told; his reassuring warmth surrounding her body. He drew her close as he lay beside her, wrapping his big arm around her, pulling her in close. “I think you must have fainted.” His voice was full of concern. “I’m sorry I upset you.”

  “No,” she groaned, weakly moving her head from side to side, her numb fingers massaging her throat.

  “Another woman has been murdered.”

  Chapter 9

  Marina could hear Lizzie hammering on her cubicle door at work.

  “Come in,” she called.

  Lizzie burst in, her face turning from side to side checking for clients.

  “What is it?” Although she asked the question, in her heart, Marina already knew what Lizzie was about to tell her.

  “There’s been another murder. They’ve found a woman floating in the Harbour.”

  “Please don’t tell me it’s one of my clients again.” Marina wrapped her arms around herself as the chill seeped through her. She searched her memory for the event that had happened the night before. The woman had had her back to the killer when she’d been strangled so Marina hadn’t seen her face, but she couldn’t rid herself of the déjà vu feeling that she knew this person.

  “I don’t know,” Lizzie said simply.

  Marina let out a long sigh. She’d stopped breathing with Lizzie’s news and hadn’t been aware of it. “Was it on the radio?” she asked, knowing Lizzie, who rarely looked at a newspaper or watched the news, sometimes listened to music on the radio. Her interest in current affairs outside her own life was zero.

  “Fabio sent me a text message this morning.”

  “So call him back. Find out something,” Marina said. Momentarily, she closed her eyes and prayed that she didn't know the victim. The murder of one of her clients was a coincidence—the thought of two made her shudder.

  Lizzie looked at her watch. “Fabio’s doing weight training.
He doesn’t like interruptions when he’s pumping iron.”

  Marina cast Lizzie an impatient glance and started pacing her small cubicle.

  “Fabio only texted me she was found in the Harbour strangled. Horrible, isn’t it?” Lizzie’s blue eyes widened and she wrinkled her nose as she put her hands to her throat, stuck out her tongue and made a choking sound.

  “Lizzie!” Marina’s stomach turned. She usually laughed at Lizzie’s childish behaviour but this wasn’t funny. She was just about to tell her so when a flashback of the terrible event she’d experienced the night before hit her. Again, she felt the woman’s panic and her desperate struggle. Marina staggered at the intensity of it. Sharp, unbridled fear struck her. She couldn’t breath as the cord tightened around her neck.

  “Marina. What’s the matter?” Lizzie took her by the shoulders and shook her.

  Marina doubled over gasping for breath as the vision faded with Lizzie’s interruption. She felt Lizzie’s thin arms go around her as she struggled to stand upright.

  “Are you all right? You’re very cold. I’ll get you your sweater.”

  Marina reached out and grabbed Lizzie’s wrist. Her fingers pressed tightly into her skin. “Don’t joke about the murders. They’re not funny. Don’t you realize there is a psychopath out there?” Her voice had an urgent edge to it. She couldn’t tell Lizzie what she had just experienced, because the next minute Lizzie would be reading her magazines and telling Marina how to develop her psychic powers. Marina didn’t want that. Instead, she wanted to be free of this curse that made her see and feel things she didn’t want to experience.

  “I’m sorry,” Lizzie said. Her lower lip trembled. Marina freed her wrist realizing that she’d gripped Lizzie so hard, she’d have a bruise.

  It grated on her that Lizzie had no emotional connection to Adele’s murder. It wasn’t that Lizzie was an unkind person, she just concentrated on her own world, her friends and didn’t seem to worry what went on outside of it. Right now, despite her irritation, Marina wished she could be like Lizzie, get on with her day and forget about the murders, but she couldn’t. Instead, she had a recurrent feeling she was a swimmer about to be tangled up in a large net just waiting under the surface to drag her down.