by Rain Trueax
“You were supposed to be knocked flat,” Denali said, her voice showing no fear.
“It’s not the first time I have been tazed. I am a big man, takes a lot. You might remember that next time.”
“Will there be a next time?”
“I didn’t expect there to be a first time from you.” He gave her a look.
“And why are you here?”
“Most likely for the same reason you are. The guest list.”
She moved to the center of the room where the skylight let moonlight come through and light her beautiful face. She was striking in the day but by moonlight, she took his breath away—if he’d had any left after the Taser. “You were planning to take it?” she asked.
“Photograph it and check out the names.” He pulled his iPhone from his pocket.
“Do you have a flashlight?” He took it from a clip on his belt. “You are well-prepared. I was going to turn on a light.”
“This work for your family detective agency?” he asked without any doubt it was.
“Jane’s daughter hired us to find out what the police may not. She does not want this to end up in a cold file.”
“We have the same goal then. Let’s see if the list is in her office or if the police already got it.” He walked with unerring confidence even in the darkness. Denali had special skills, but seeing in the dark wasn’t among them.
“The other thing I hoped to find was her computer and daytimer. I suppose it’s hoping for too much that she wrote in a late night appointment.”
“If Myers and Whorley are worth their salt, they already have both.” Using his flashlight, he scanned through the desk drawers, then turned to the file cabinet. While Jane used a computer, she was old-fashioned enough to like it all in writing. There in a folder titled shows was a list of clients. The one for the Beringer open house was not there, but the list was likely to be similar if it was like other events. He pulled out his phone and photographed the pages.
“Surprisingly, they didn’t take her daytimer,” Denali said, who he noted had also pulled on gloves, “but no late night meeting on it for yesterday.”
“How about earlier?” He looked over her shoulder and photographed that day and the previous month. “Some of these are initials. Maybe from the invitations, we can figure them out.”
“You will be sharing your photographs, I assume,” she said.
He nodded. “I think we have all we can get from here.”
“How about photographing the sculpture for me.”
“That ugly thing?”
“It’s a beautiful woman.” He saw she was annoyed at his dislike of it and wondered why she was taking it personally.
“With antlers coming out of her head—is that your idea of beautiful?”
She gave a low growl, which he found surprisingly seductive. Imaging her purring had him unmanned. He walked into the atrium and studied the tall sculpture, as repulsed by it as he had been the first time he saw it. “What angle?”
“How about front, both sides and back?”
“I’m not keeping it on here.”
“Good. I will give you somewhere to move it, when we get back at my place.”
“We’re going back there?” he asked but started taking photos. She was definitely the strangest woman he’d ever met. The moonlight provided sufficient light to get decent shots.
Outside, he made sure the door was secured, so no one would know they’d entered. He knew how he’d gotten in, but how had she, as he hadn’t seen her. Had she used a back door he didn’t know about? He pulled off his gloves to look less like a burglar.
“Did you drive?” he asked.
“No. I don’t live far.”
He followed her, unsure exactly what he was getting into. “How long have you been a detective?”
“Most of my life.” She laughed. “Just kidding. After college, so that’d mean eight years.”
“You can’t be that old.”
“I can’t?” She laughed again.
“I’m forty or will be in December.”
“Besides the military, what else have you done?”
“Just it and painting. I had enough saved when I retired to fund the first of them and get a chance to find a gallery. From then on, it’s history.”
“And no lessons.”
“None.”
“I am jealous. How did you find such, almost poetic looseness?”
“Maybe no lessons.” She looked over and smiled in response to his. “Now you tell me why you like that sculpture.”
“I didn’t say I did, but I am curious how it came to be there, who did it, and why the murderer decided to put her body over it.”
“And it might lead you to the murderer?” He wasn’t wanting to think along that line, but she might be right. Psychopaths didn’t act with logic, and yet sometimes there was a reason.
“It might. It’s easy to kill someone as the killer did Jane Elm. Why not then simply leave?”
His mind was on something else. It’d been a long time since he’d made love to a woman. Mostly he didn’t meet the kind of women he wanted to be with. His work was solitary, and when at a show, he was there to promote the work. Married women came onto him most often. The few young women he’d met had seemed immature. He wasn’t a fan of bars—they usually got him in trouble. Now he was walking alongside a woman he passionately wanted to make love to-- lousy timing. If he could think about sex just walking beside her, he wasn’t sure how it’d be once he got into her home. Not a good idea.
“You think loud,” she said without looking over at him.
“I hope you don’t read minds.”
She gave a little laugh. “I wasn’t.”
“You don’t answer questions much, do you?”
“Not if I don’t have to.”
“You know quite a lot about me, and I know nothing about you. Will I be safe in your home?”
“Probably not.”
“Hope you have your laptop ready to receive incoming; so we don’t have to find out.”
“Oh come now, you don’t really have to be afraid of me.”
“You tazed me earlier tonight. What other weapons might you have in your home?”
“No guns.”
“Seriously? My home is loaded with them.”
“You were a SEAL that makes sense. I count on good locks.” He glanced over to see if she was serious, but her smile was impossible to read.
“I guess I am lucky. You might have shot me tonight, if I had frightened you enough.”
“I wouldn’t have done that, even if I’d had a gun—and I didn’t.”
“Tell me something about you, so I don’t have to think you just dropped out of the sky. I know you have a mother and you said three sisters.”
“Elke, Devi and Torre. We were all born in Tucson.”
“Father? Your mother and I talked very little the day I met her. Jane did the talking.” He laughed. “She had a tendency to do that.”
“My father was killed in 2000.”
“I’m sorry.”
“We say things like that. We are all sorry.”
“Is it painful to talk about?”
“Not anymore. He was on his motorcycle. He was good at handling it. Had ridden one for years, but he went off the road in one of the few places a person could run into something and be killed. At least he didn’t suffer. He died instantly they said. We found his loss hard to believe, but I guess death is that way.”
All the ones he had known had been, and he’d known way too many. He supposed Denali Hemstreet hadn’t. He said nothing and tried to think what he could ask that didn’t go in a direction he’d prefer it not. Every time he glanced over at her, he was struck by her beauty, like a goddess with blonde hair which didn’t look like it came out of a bottle. Her coloring was striking—nothing pale about her. He supposed there was something wrong with her looks, but, at the moment, he couldn’t find it.
“Any other questions?” she asked again wi
th an enigmatic smile. The moonlight accented her cheekbones, made her look like a creature out of a fairy tale. He needed more light to get away from the feeling she wasn’t real. Then he remembered how attracted he’d been at their lunch. Light wasn’t going to help.
“You have a boyfriend?” That slipped out before he could stop it.
“You have a girlfriend?” she retorted.
“I thought it was my turn.”
“All right… No boyfriend. I was married young and divorced as soon as I realized my mistake.”
“That you could do better?”
“That I didn’t like being beaten up.”
He had to work to keep his voice even. “Good reason for a divorce.”
“He took a while to convince. Finally he gave up and moved to Phoenix. I haven’t seen him in years. I hope I never do again.”
He didn’t know what to say. He’d seen a lot of violence in his life, some he’d doled out, but he never got used to men who abused children or women. The guy deserved to take a beating for hurting this beautiful lady.
“You press charges?” he asked trying to keep the anger out of his voice.
“No, I guess I should have.”
“So he got away with it.”
“Not quite. My mother showed him the error of his ways.”
“Your mother?” That was a surprise.
“Dad was already dead. She is a strong woman, if you didn’t know.” She stopped and pointed to a small bungalow. “We’re here.”
He would have expected her to have a bigger home, more luxurious looking considering she drove a Bimmer. “It looks nice,” he said to be polite. The porch light illuminated a small front porch, with a wilted plant in a clay pot.
“What it looks is practical,” she retorted as she took a key and opened the front door. “I travel a lot.”
Inside the home showed what she said—lack of concern for anything other than the basics. There were, however, colorful paintings on the walls in the living room. He didn’t look to see the artists as she flicked on a light. “I’ll get my laptop and be right back.”
When she returned, the dark shirt was gone, hopefully the Taser with it. She had a purple tank top and black jeans, which hugged her figure as any man would prefer.
She set the laptop on the coffee table and pulled it open. He handed her his phone, which he had recently cleared of all but a few desert shots. She attached it with a cord. When she had the new images in a folder she’d dated, she handed him back his phone. “Would you like some wine?”
He shook his head. He needed a clear head and being this close to her was already making that difficult.
“Tea? I wish I had something else to offer, but mother dear, the cupboard is bare.”
He smiled as he remembered his mother’s need to feed a guest something. “Tea would be good,” he said although it wasn’t his normal choice for a drink.
“While I get it, you can look at the lists and maybe come up with a plan for how we proceed.”
“Sounds good.” He scanned down the guest list first. He wasn’t much of a socializer but did recognize a few of the names. Out of five hundred, that wasn’t exactly helpful. “Do you have a printer?” he asked when she returned with cups and a teapot on a tray.
“I didn’t ask if you wanted sugar or milk. Not that I have any milk.”
“That bare cupboard,” he guessed as he took the cup. “I take it straight.” He smiled.
“I’d blame it on my being out of town until what is now yesterday morning. It’s hard to believe how much has happened in twenty-four hours.”
“You must be tired. If you could print off the lists for me, I will let you go to bed.”
“Okay, be right back.”
When she returned, she had the sheets of paper in a plain folder. “I left my copies in the room I use as a den. It’s not much of one either.”
“You’re not much for making a nest,” he said.
“It hasn’t been an interest of mine, I admit. I usually do have more food here though.” She laughed. “Well frozen dinners anyway. Did you know there is a good frozen lasagna?”
“You eat lasagna? Your body doesn’t show it.” As slim as she was, he couldn’t see her eating a lot of pasta—frozen or otherwise.”
“I run when I do.” She grinned. “Did you recognize any names?”
“Only three—they own my paintings. Chandler Smith, Tiffany Black, and Baron Sinclair.”
“Baron Sinclair is one of your collectors?”
“You know him? He owns one if I remember right. I wish we had the list for my show. It might be more helpful.”
“More, I know of him. He’s a rather eccentric sculptor.” She sipped her tea. “I wonder if he could have done the sculpture in the atrium, but if he did, why not a name somewhere. Artists rarely put out work without their names somewhere.”
“Maybe he was ashamed of it.” He was not surprised by now at the look of disdain she shot him. “You really like it, don’t you?” he asked.
“It has a certain appeal.”
“You into beautiful women?” Maybe she was not into men after what she had experienced with a brutal first husband.
“Not in that way. It’s rather mystical, don’t you think?”
“If you like New Age—mostly using religious junk to make money.”
She smiled at that. “People need to believe in something.”
“Not everybody.”
“Atheist?”
“More of a non-believer or disbeliever. I’ve seen enough to understand why people want to believe in a religion of some sort-- or a power.”
She stared into her tea. “There are things we can’t explain by biology.”
“But not many.” He laughed then as she wrinkled her nose.
“I will let that be. I am getting sleepy.”
He finished off his tea and rose, picking up the folder. Will we talk about this again?” He turned at the door to look back at her. She had come with him. As he had observed before, she came to his chin. He wouldn’t have to bend far to kiss her. It would be a mistake.
“Lunch Monday?” she suggested. “It’ll give us both time to think about it and look through the lists comparing them to Jane’s daytimer.”
“I eat at El Minuto which is near my home. Do you know it?”
“Not really.”
“Well, meet me in front of my house. We can go together.” He thought about inviting her to his home to eat, but they were unlikely to stay working on the murder. She could help him with maybe figuring out who at least had a motive to kill Jane Elm. Hopefully, before he got arrested for it himself. Anything more with her was a mistake.
“Noon,” she suggested.
“Good.” He walked into the darkness.
><><
Denali fell asleep almost instantly and almost as quickly, a feeling of someone there penetrated her dream. She shivered as she woke looking around. The room was empty only it wasn’t.
“Who are you?” she asked sitting up but not turning on a light.
There was a movement to her left and the hair on the back of her neck stood up. A spirit. Was it a ghost? “Tell me who you are,” she demanded, as the movement shifted to the window. “You came to tell me something. Are you new to being a ghost?”
A small vase fell and shattered. Luckily, it wasn’t one of her favorites. “You came for a reason. Make a sound, so I know you are trying to communicate.” She could banish it. She had deliberately not put a shield of white light around herself, nor salt at the window and door, with the hope she might receive a messenger. She wanted what it was trying to communicate.
“All right, let’s try this. A yes is two raps. A no is one. If you knocked off the vase as a message, you can do this. Give me two raps.”
They came.
“Good. Do I know you?”
Two raps.
“Are you recently gone over?”
Again two raps.
“You were Jane Jacobs
on.”
Two raps.
“Jane, you met a shocking end. I know that much. Do you want to tell me who killed you?”
Two raps.
“Was it someone you knew?”
There was a silence and then two raps.
“Can you tell me a name?”
One rap.
“All right, we have established connection. I will try to figure out a way for us to communicate better but for now, I am tired and you need to get comfortable with your new form.”
Again silence and then a laugh. She understood then. It hadn’t been Jane Elm. It was a spirit out to deceive. “Be gone,” she said. “I need my sleep, and you need to play elsewhere.” She gave the incantation and knew the being had left.
She lay there a moment wondering who it had been. She communicated now and then with the other side but wasn’t nearly as good at it as Elke. Spirits could see what had happened. There was a complication. Good spirits, guides, were reluctant to get involved in human matters. Demons, all of them, enjoyed deceiving and distracting. She had not been visited by a good spirit. She would talk to Elke when she could. For now, she needed her sleep and cast white light around her room.
><><
Sunday morning, Nick went out for the newspaper, not expecting to like what he’d be reading. Like it or not, he should know the latest theories on a prominent citizen’s violent death. Sitting in his courtyard sipping his first cup of coffee, he scanned down the story. The only mention of him was regarding the gallery’s open house. There were no suspects nor motives. The police were playing this close to the vest.
“Got some coffee?” John Cordova peeked in the door.
“You know where it is.”
He heard the old man rummaging through his kitchen and then return out to where Nick had thrown the paper down.
“You don’t look happy, son,” John said sipping the dark brew.
Nick pointed to the paper. “That lady owns the gallery where I had my open house Thursday.”
John glanced down the paper. “Someone dislike the show that much?” He chuckled at his dark joke.
“Looks like it.” When he’d gotten home after his midnight foray, Nick had looked through the lists of names and tried to connect them to initials in the daytimer. Nothing was working for him. He had even printed off the photos Denali had asked him to take. Since he disliked them intensely, he planned to burn those.
