Cold As Death (The Mira Morales Series Book 5)

by T. J. MacGregor

  “I don’t drink soda.”

  Right. How careless of me. “And you don’t eat meat or chicken. Occasionally, you eat fish, eggs, cheese. Your preferences are salads and fruits.”

  His eyes widened. Finch could see that Adam was starting to get it, to realize how much planning had gone into this.

  “What… what else do you know about me?”

  “Everything I need to know. You’ve got an I.Q. of one-forty-eight. You’ve been in gifted programs all your life. You’re a very bright kid, so I expect you to follow my few basic rules.”

  “I have a medical condition, I bet you don’t know that.”

  “Bullshit.” But hey, good try. “I bet you saw that in Trapped. The kid had asthma.”

  “Actually, it was in one of my mom’s movies.”

  “Yeah? What movie was that?” Finch had seen all of Suki Nichols’s films.

  “Romancing the Raven. It was the first thing she ever did, a twenty-minute video when she was in college.”

  Clever little shit. He’d caught Finch on that one. “I haven’t followed her career that far back.” But the hidden camera in the room was catching all of this and once Finch ran it through his computer, editing out anything that would compromise him, it would make a compelling piece of documentary.

  “Do I get to shower and use the bathroom?”

  “That’s why the bathroom’s here.”

  “It’s so dark. Can you take the hurricane shutters off?”

  Hurricane shutters: That would have to be edited out of his little documentary, he thought. “No. But you’ll have plenty of lights.” He slipped the clicker from his back pocket, pressed a button, and every light that wasn’t already on blazed brightly. The press of another button turned on the television and Mac and released the remote control on both. “Is there anything else you’d like?”

  “My mom.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t bring her.”

  “You killed Gladys.”

  He spoke in a hushed voice, but without tremors. That was good. Rage was understandable, but a crybaby, especially in a teenage boy, would piss him off. “She got in the way.”

  “You want something, but Friend says it isn’t money.”

  “What friend?”

  “Friend. That’s her name.”

  “You’re a little old for an imaginary playmate.” It seemed that a sly smile tugged at the corners of Adam’s mouth, a reminder that Finch didn’t know everything about him.

  “So what do you want?” Adam persisted. “Sex? Are you a pervert? Are you looking for publicity, because of who my mom is? Is that it?”

  “You watch too many Lifetime movies, Adam.”

  “Lifetime is for women and teenage girls. I don’t watch Lifetime.”

  Hey, I stand corrected. “I don’t want money or publicity and I’m not a pervert. As we get down the road a bit, we’ll talk about what I want. But for right now, now about something to eat?”

  “Okay. Do I have any clean clothes?”

  Finch gestured at the bureau. “In there. Clothes from your closet. In the bathroom, you’ll find everything you need—towels, soap, shampoo. How about scrambled eggs and toast?”

  “Are the eggs vegetarian?”

  “Yes. And the bread is whole wheat, with organic butter and some organic strawberries on the side.”

  “No meat byproducts?”

  “None. I’ll be back in a while.”

  Adam nodded and remained on the bed, watching Finch, his vivid blue eyes filling with contempt. As soon as Finch shut the door, Adam screamed, “You perverted fucker!” He started kicking the door, banging his fists against it.

  This would be simple to remedy. Finch aimed the clicker at the door and pressed the button that turned off all the lights.

  The temper tantrum abruptly ended.

  “See what happens when you don’t cooperate, Adam?” No answer, just soft, choked sobs.

  “Now you’ll have to sit in the dark for a while.”

  And suddenly the room goes dark and the bogeyman moves around under his bed, a soft rustling like leaves. Then he hears that small, evil cackle and knows that the bogeyman, emboldened by the darkness, is coming for him. He screams and screams and the door to the room flies open. The man marches in, slapping a leather strap against his open palm.

  “You pipe down in here, boy, or I’ll really give you something to scream about.”

  “It’s under my bed, get it out, help me, help me……

  Finch staggered against the weight of the memory or whatever the hell it was, and fell against the wall, breath exploding from his mouth, heart slamming against his ribs. These images, their presence, were nearly too much to bear. Gasping for breath, Finch slid down the length of the wall. Shudders whipped through him. I’m dying.

  After several moments, his heartbeat stabilized, he sucked air in through his teeth. His perfect teeth. Upper teeth met lower and started to grind. No, don’t do that. Don’t grind them.

  Relax the jaw. There. Good, very good.

  Who was that kid cowering on the bed and screaming about the bogeyman? It felt like a memory, but he didn’t think the memory belonged to him. The boy was young, maybe five. Was it him?

  Couldn’t be.

  His first clear memory was of speeding across a desert with his old man, the hot sun beating down against the windshield and burning his legs. While it was true his old man was a mean bastard when he was drinking, mean enough to punch Finch around, he never had locked him in a dark room, never had hit him with a leather strap.

  Guilt swept through him, and he struggled to his feet and pressed the button on the remote control that turned on the lights in the kid’s room. No torture chamber. Christ, what the hell was wrong with him?

  That wasn’t in his game plan.

  It wouldn’t be in the video.

  As he snagged the alien mask over the hook next to the door, a snowstorm of light exploded in his peripheral vision. Panic tore upward from the pit of his stomach. He knew he had about a minute to reach his meds before the light became a full-blown migraine.

  He stumbled into the kitchen and poured what was left of the morning’s coffee into a mug and gulped it down cold. Cuban coffee, thick, heavy, loaded with caffeine. He followed this with two homeopathic remedies for migraines that Eden had given him. She was a former nurse who had studied alternative therapies. She knew about these things.

  He barely made it to the table and collapsed in a chair directly under the AC vent. Cold air poured over him. He went utterly and completely still, eyes shut, the cold air blowing down over his head, face, his aching temples.

  He didn’t know how long he sat there, his mind blank. But when he opened his eyes again, his vision was normal. No aura, no blurring, no brightness.

  He pressed his forehead against the surface of the cool table, absurdly grateful that he had averted a migraine that might have lasted two days. I got lucky.

  This time.

  Chapter 3

  Body Heat

  The cop stood near the screen door that led from the porch and swimming pool to the back of the property. Just to his left, Mira saw that panels of screen were missing and that the inner struts that held up the structure of the porch looked new. Destruction and repair, that was the rule of life on Tango now.

  Now and then, the cop glanced Mira’s way, as if he expected her to bolt any second. No one had said the cop was keeping an eye on her. No one had to. She didn’t have to be psychic to know that she was the primary suspect in a homicide and in the disappearance of a teenage boy.

  For years, Nadine had drummed into her that when she psychically read anything or anyone, she was opening a door to herself and that object or person. At no time in her forty-one years had this adage been driven home so completely. It occurred to her that she maybe she should call an attorney, but she didn’t know any criminal attorneys. She had read for physicians and politicians, for scientists and teachers, for celebrities and con men, for judges
and killers and rapists, for artists of every type, for directors and CEOs, FBI and CIA agents. But she never had read for a single criminal attorney, except Wayne Sheppard, who had practiced law between his stints in the FBI. But he didn’t count because she hadn’t read for him when he had practiced law.

  She knew plenty of people who knew criminal attorneys, so she could make some calls and get a name. The question was whether she wanted to open that door and what would happen if she needed to open that door—and didn’t.

  Mira eyed the apple on the table in front of her, probably left by someone who had sat here earlier. Fresh food and vegetables generally didn’t convey anything she could read psychically. Give her metal, wood, ceramic, fabric, glass, plastic. Sometimes even fabric and paper retained emotions and psychic residue that she could read. The best conduit was the human body.

  Okay, so the apple was safe and the plastic bottle of water beside it, set here moments ago by Sheppard’s partner, probably wasn’t. She picked up the apple, bit into it, put it down and tucked her hand inside the bottom part of her shirt, and grasped the bottle of water. Nothing. The fabric between her hand and the bottle blocked any impression. Goddamn. She was on a definite roll here. She twisted off the top, drank.

  Behind her, the sliding glass door opened, shut. John Gutierrez stepped out. “You need anything, Mira?”

  “Yeah, Goot. An honest answer.”

  He pulled out the chair across from her and sat down, an earnest man who was not only Sheppard’s partner, but his closest friend. Cuban-American, the grandson of a renowned Cuban santera, he understood her abilities nearly as well as Sheppard did. His wide, dark eyes regarded her with an openness that belied his body language—fidgety, uncomfortable, tense.

  “Shoot,” he said.

  “Hey, relax. My question isn’t about Shep. Do I need a lawyer?”

  Goot rubbed his hand over his unshaven jaw and glanced toward the local cop at the screen door. Mira followed his gaze. Beyond the cop, a line of police officers with dogs fanned out across the fields, looking for the missing boy.

  “I’m supposed to say it would be premature.” His voice softened. “But yeah, it’d probably be a good idea, Mira.”

  “You think I killed that woman? That I kidnapped some kid? Jesus, Goot.”

  He looked as if she’d punched him and leaned forward. “Do I think that? C’mon, Mira. We know each other better than that. But it doesn’t matter what I think. The boy is missing, the housekeeper is dead, and the guy who owns the house found you next to the body.”

  “And this man is who exactly?”

  “No one told you?”

  “He sure didn’t pause long enough in his rantings to introduce himself.”

  “Paul Nichols, movie director and now a visiting professor in that film program at the University of Miami. Married to Suki Nichols, the actress who…”

  Uh-oh. “I know who she is.” What were the odds? “I’ve read for her.”

  “You did? When?”

  When the universe brought her my way. Maybe, she thought, the portal had been opened then, during that first reading. “Before Danielle hit. It must’ve been in late May.”

  “Did you pick up anything about her son? About the housekeeper?”

  Had she? Late May seemed like lifetimes ago. She squeezed the bridge of her nose, struggling to conjure up the day that Suki Nichols came up to one of the registers at her bookstore with a stack of books. She had a psychedelic print bag slung over her shoulder with a yoga mat rolled up inside it, wore workout shorts, a T-shirt with TANGO FRITTER written across the front of it, and sandals. Mira hadn’t recognized her at first. Her sunglasses, the short, curly style of her blond hair, her clothes: she could have been anyone. Then she spoke.

  Mira would recognize the voice anywhere, soft but firm, throaty but whimsical, a voice that made spoken language sound like music.

  Who do see to schedule a reading?

  Me, Mira replied, and rang up her sale.

  Suki Nichols. Four years ago, she’d won an Oscar for her role in Acid Trip, in which she’d played a Sixties hippie looking for meaning in a world gone mad. Since then, her film presence had soared and moved her into the same stellar circle as Jolie, Kidman, Johansson. And yet, she had done only two films since her Oscar win and one of them wasn’t slated to come out until next year. Mira didn’t know what, if anything, that meant.

  With more than twenty films to her credit, Suki’s roles were as diverse and unpredictable as the character in Acid Trip. Angel and prostitute, vampire and soccer mom, gay woman, senator, dork, psychic, computer nerd: There was no neat and tidy category into which she fit.

  They had gone outside to the garden and settled at the metal table in the shade of a banyan tree the hurricane had toppled several weeks later. Even before she began the reading, Mira had sensed Suki’s churning anxiety. But she couldn’t tell if it was due to some underlying problem in her life or to her nervousness about getting a reading.

  Do you use cards? Do my chart? Read my palm? What? Mira considered using cards just to focus, but in the end, asked to hold her wedding ring. Big mistake.

  “What I remember from the reading is that her husband was having an affair and she was considering divorce,” Mira said finally. “Look, get her out here. She’ll remember me, Goot.”

  “She’s in New York on business and is supposedly on her way back.”

  “And where the hell was the father last night?”

  “He claims he was returning from his class at the University of Miami, but got out of there so late that he knew he wasn’t going to make curfew here. He didn’t think he’d be able to make the last ferry out of Key West.”

  Mira rolled her eyes. “The last ferry leaves at eleven. That’s plenty of time to get home before the midnight curfew. C’mon, it sounds fishy to me.”

  “I’m just telling you what he said. He checked into a motel on Big Pine. Has the receipt to prove it. He says he called the housekeeper and told her he wouldn’t be back until this morning. We’ve got proof of that too.”

  Meaning what? Just what was Goot really saying? Before she could ask, the sliding glass door opened again and Charlie Cordoba, the new chief of police, stepped out. A young man, this Cordoba, with thick hair the same shade as his chestnut-colored eyes, a quick, easy smile, plenty of charm. He was a runner, lean and compact, had two young kids and an American wife who practiced law in Key West. Solid Cordoba.

  So solid, in fact, that two or three years ago when he was just a beat cop in Key West and his wife was having problems in her pregnancy, he had stopped by Mira’s house and asked her to read for him. He had come in the dead of night, parked his car three blocks away, and asked that she never tell anyone that she had read for him.

  “Hi, Mira,” he said pleasantly. “How’s it going?”

  “How’s what going, Charlie?”

  The smile faded and he pulled out the other chair and sat down. “Do you have an attorney?”

  “No. Do I need one?”

  “For starters, Mr. Nichols is pressing charges for trespassing.”

  “I thought someone in the house was in trouble, that’s why I came in. And the door was open. And trespassing is a misdemeanor. I don’t need an attorney for that.”

  He rubbed his chin, folded his hands on the table, and leaned forward. “Let me put it this way. You were found next to the housekeeper’s body, you were the only person in the house, the front door was wide open when Mr. Nichols got here, his son is missing, and the housekeeper is dead. We’ve got thirty men out there now looking for the son. Another twenty are on the way. Right now, you’re the primary suspect, Mira.”

  “For murder and possible kidnapping,” she said, and forced herself to laugh. “And what’s my motive supposed to be?”

  “You tell me.”

  He really thinks I may have done this.

  “Knock off the bullshit, Charlie,” Goot snapped.

  “You don’t have to answer that question
, Mira.” Sheppard ducked as he came through the door. At six feet four inches tall, he had to duck through most doors. “You’re outta line, Charlie.”

  Cordoba rolled his eyes and sat back. “Lancelot to the rescue. Gimme a break.”

  Sheppard picked up a stool from the poolside bar, brought it over to the table, and set it down between Mira and Cordoba, as if to use his body as a shield. Gallant, Mira thought, but considering that she hadn’t seen him for weeks, it seemed beside the point.

  She thought his face looked thinner, that his beard was grayer. But maybe that was what she wanted to see, an aging, haggard Sheppard, evidence that he suffered in his new life without her. He wore cotton chinos the same beach-sand color as his hair and a print shirt she’d never seen before. The shirt was like a punch in the stomach. It meant his life had gone on without her—he shopped, went to restaurants, had Cuban coffee, read the morning paper, went jogging, probably had found a new honey. He was carving out a new life for himself—without her.

  Never mind that she knew that was what “split up” meant and that her life had gone on as well. But her life hadn’t moved on in the same ways. She mourned for the demise of the relationship, mourned every time she passed a landmark they had shared, found a book they had discussed, or came across a new mix of delectable coffee that she knew he would enjoy.

  She didn’t want to sit here any longer. Didn’t want to be near him. But she had a feeling she wouldn’t be allowed to leave just yet.

  “Okay, next question,” Cordoba said. “What prompted you to come into the house?”

  “You can answer that.” Sheppard glanced at her.

  “Oh, you’re her lawyer now?” Cordoba asked.

  “If necessary.”

  Right. Sheppard hadn’t practiced criminal law in years, but now he was her attorney. Was this a macho thing or what?