Marie shot Riga an apologetic look. Riga suspected apologies were Marie’s specialty.
“I’m sorry,” Marie squeaked. She pulled a pill of wool from her lumpy gray sweater. “What do you want to know?”
“Hold it.” Marilyn arched forward. “Why should we tell her anything? We don’t even know what happened to Helen.”
“Helen’s dead,” Riga said. “I don’t know how it happened either, but the circumstances are suspicious.”
Marilyn snorted. “Thank you, psychic hotline. Why don’t you tell me something I don’t know?”
Riga imagined telling her that Santa was real. She’d never believe it. “What can you tell me about Helen’s husband, Herman?” she said instead.
Marta shot Marilyn a look that dared interruption. “He was alright.” She tapped her paper cup on the table. “I didn’t know him well. He showed up a couple times with Helen for drinks. They seemed to get along, if that’s what you mean.”
“Helen told me she’d met someone new,” Riga said.
The three women glanced at each other, looking surprised.
Marta shrugged. “She didn’t say anything to us.” Tap, tap, tap.
“Seems a little soon if you ask me,” Marilyn said. “Herman’s been gone less than a year.”
“Almost exactly a year,” Marta corrected. “It would be wonderful if it’s true. Herman’s death hit her hard. She deserved a little happiness, I think. I wonder why she wouldn’t have said anything to us, though?”
Riga didn’t wonder about that at all.
“She was dressing more nicely,” Marie said. The others looked at her and she shrank in her chair, as if she’d surprised herself by speaking. Her nose twitched. “And she’d lost weight. Do you remember how awful she looked in the months after Herman died?”
Marilyn admired her scarlet claws. “Just because she was coming out of mourning, doesn’t mean she had a new love in her life.”
“It would have been nice if she had.” Marta smiled wistfully. “Kind of gives a girl hope, you know?” She held her cup by the rim and rolled it in circles around her quarter of the table.
Riga nodded. She did know. It was a sort of proof of life. “Did anything unusual happen that last night at the Cliff House?”
Marilyn’s eyes narrowed to catlike slits. “How did you know we were at the Cliff House?”
“Helen told me she was meeting friends from work there. I assumed you were the friends,” Riga said. It wasn’t a very good lie. Even if Helen had mentioned such a thing, she wasn’t likely to give Riga their phone numbers.
Marta shook her head. “It was a normal night out. If anything, Helen seemed more relaxed than usual – I think your meeting made her feel better. She was taking action, doing something. We talked about you, and Herman. Of course, none of us really believed he’d returned from the grave to hurt her. I’m not sure Helen believed it either, but she wasn’t sure, you know? I think this was a way for her to start putting the past behind her.”
The past was always behind you, Riga thought. That was the problem. It never went away.
Marilyn tore an empty sugar packet into halves, quarters, eighths. “It was just survivor’s guilt.”
“What do you mean?” Riga asked. “Was Helen in the car with Herman when he crashed?”
“No, but she’s alive and he’s not,” Marilyn explained. “Maybe she felt if she’d been there she could have done something. Maybe he would have been driving more slowly. So she felt guilty and every little accident she had she magnified into something more. It’s a better explanation than the ghost of Herman come back to get her!”
Riga nodded. It was a better explanation. But, they weren’t little accidents. The last one had killed her, if it was an accident at all.
Chapter 10: An Unwelcome Guest
The bookstore receipt in Helen’s purse had come from a shop not far from the café, so Riga headed over, photo in hand. No one there remembered Helen but Riga’s expectations had been low on that score. She bought a new mystery novel for Brigitte – a hardback. They were easier for Brigitte to manage than paperbacks. And forget about eBooks. Riga shuddered, thinking of Brigitte with a touch screen.
She returned to her office. The Apollo Group was looking for good press, so Riga didn’t have any trouble setting a Monday appointment with its director, Aaron Cunningham.
“I’ve got all the time in the world for the Fourth Estate!” he told her, full of bonhomie. He suggested lunch at a private golf club on the Peninsula.
Aaron was looking to impress, Riga thought, leaning back in her chair and crossing her feet upon the desk.
She went back to her research, scribbling questions for him on the legal pad Pen had left behind, and then turning back to Helen and Herman. She found a wedding announcement for the two in the online archives of a local paper. It didn’t tell her anything useful.
Restless, Riga pulled a Tarot card from the deck atop her desk. It was the Page of Cups: a romantic opportunity, message of love, or a message from the subconscious. Unhelpful.
Riga shuffled papers across her desk, scanned through a couple books on the occult, then realized the room had darkened. The day was, to all intents and purposes, over.
She walked home slowly, enjoying the sting of cool air on her face. The madman on the corner slept hard against a trash bin, cradling a bottle of liquor. It seemed as good a way as any to greet the apocalypse, she thought.
The doorman’s dog escorted her in the elevator again; it had become a ritual. They rode up, she scratched behind its floppy ears, then punched the button so it could return to its master.
A package wrapped in thick plastic leaned against her door and Riga felt her stomach lurch at the sight. She approached cautiously, then relaxed, feeling foolish. It was just a phone book. Quaint, in the age of the Internet.
She let herself in to her condo, book tucked beneath her arm, and stopped dead inside the doorway, felt the blood drain from her face. There was a red Valentine on the kitchen counter.
Her brain kicked into gear and she realized Donovan must have picked it up from the doormat outside and left it there. A message he’d left beside the Valentine confirmed it:
A secret admirer?
D
She walked through the condo, making sure Donovan had gone. Her home was empty but Donovan had left his energy behind him – restless and masculine. The bed was, naturally, unmade. Riga straightened the cotton sheets and coverlet, thinking how useless the action was since she’d be taking it all apart in a few hours anyway.
Dropping onto the bed, she pulled her boots and socks off, wriggling her toes with pleasure. And then she felt it. Magic. It tingled at the edges of her aura. She buried her face in the pillow Donovan’s head had rested upon. It was stronger here. He had either used magic on her, or he was a magical being of some sort. But why hadn’t she sensed it before? It was like Helen all over again.
Panic rose in her throat. Were her powers slipping? She rolled off the bed and summoned a whisper of energy. It leapt reassuringly into her as it always had, flowing upward through her feet and down through the top of her head – as above, so below, with Riga as the nexus. She stretched out her arm and with a word, a book effortlessly flew across the room and into her outstretched hand.
So, her powers were intact. Were Donovan and Helen of the same kind, she wondered, or doomed by the same enchantment? Riga was inclined to believe the former. They would have to be unusually powerful or inhuman if they were using cloaking spells to hide their magic from her. And if they were victims of a spell, it was clumsy – why create a spell which killed in the future and required cloaking from magical practitioners? Much easier to kill now, or to use mundane means like poison.
She went to the kitchen and stared into the refrigerator, looking for inspiration. Finally, she removed a wedge of parmesan and sliced off a thick chunk.
The back of her neck prickled.
She wasn’t alone.
Riga turne
d, scanning the room with all her senses. A dark-haired figure sat in her leather armchair, facing the fire.
“Donovan!” she yelped. “How did you get in?”
His head turned slowly towards her. The knife Riga held slipped from her fingers, clattering upon the tile floor.
It wasn’t Donovan. It wasn’t even a “he.” Whatever it was, its features were frozen in a rictus grin, flesh rotting, dead eyes yellowed.
Riga screamed.
The sound seemed to shatter something. Riga felt a physical snap, which sent her reeling backwards. She slipped on the knife handle and went down, falling hard against the refrigerator. A hail of plastic bottles –vitamins and aspirin – rained down upon her.
“Shit!” She scrambled to her feet, snatching the knife from the floor and holding it before her.
Herman was gone. Even dead and rotting she knew him.
Riga reached out with her senses, checking her magical wards. They were intact. What. The. Hell. She searched her home, trading the knife for a heavy flashlight. She looked in every closet, in the shower, and under the bed. She checked the balcony doors – they were locked. Finally she stood in the center of her living room. Riga was alone.
No neighbors had come running at her scream. On the other hand, she only had one neighbor.
Chapter 11: Banished and Bewildered
Riga centered herself and conducted a ritual banishing. It was a simple, kindergarten level spell – but it always worked for her. The ritual focused her, and when she sent her energy rippling through the spell, she knew her home was clean. What she didn’t know was how a ghost had gotten past her wards. There was nothing wrong with her wards – they were solid, she could feel it. A ghost shouldn’t have been able to make it past them.
She went to her balcony and called for Brigitte. But the gargoyle didn’t come; it was easiest for her to move at night when she would not be seen, and not unusual for Brigitte to escape the building for parts unknown. Riga never asked where she went, figuring even gargoyles deserved a private life.
Still rattled, she slipped a Montgomery Gentry CD into the player but it didn’t have its usual calming effect. Riga was used to weird, but a manifestation had never followed her home before. She looked in the refrigerator, closed it, opened it again, hopeful she’d missed something interesting, closed it. Wine… no wine tonight.
Bored, she went across the hall and knocked on Liz’s door. After a long wait, Liz opened it. Her eyes were bloodshot, her face gaunt to the point of skeletal. Liz’s blonde hair hung lank about her shoulders.
“You look like hell,” Riga said. “What’s going on?”
“I’ve been painting.” Liz turned and walked back to her easel. It stood beside a table laden with paints.
It had not been an enthusiastic invitation, but Riga followed. Her eyes watered, the place stank of oils. “Good God, how can you breathe in this?” She slid open a glass balcony door and gulped fresh air.
“Thanks,” Liz mumbled, picking up a brush and sitting down on a tall, three-legged stool stained with green paint.
Riga looked around. A TV was on in the corner, the local weatherman sweeping his arm across a map of the Bay Area dotted with bright yellow suns. New paintings of vines and Greek temples lined the walls. “You weren’t kidding about the grapevines.”
“Huh?” Liz looked up, abstracted. “Yeah, I’m on a creative roll. Can’t stop.”
“When’s the last time you’ve eaten?”
“I don’t remember,” Liz said, intent again on her painting.
Riga pulled her cell phone from the pocket of her safari jacket, and ordered Chinese. Liz kept painting, ignoring her, so she went to the balcony and watched the lights wink at her from across the bay. Twenty silent minutes later, the food arrived. Riga paid, then rummaged in Liz’s kitchen for plates and utensils. She pushed some paints aside on the work table, and set out the food.
“Eat,” Riga said.
Liz switched the brush to her left hand and picked up the fork with her right, blindly stabbing at a piece of sweet and sour chicken. The fork hovered above the plate, making no move towards her mouth as she scrutinized her work in progress.
Riga leaned across the table. “Liz!”
Liz wrenched her gaze from the canvas and looked at Riga, blinking as if she’d just awakened.
“Liz. You need to eat something.”
“Oh.” She looked down at the food, surprised. “This looks good. Thanks.”
Riga relaxed as Liz dug in. Then she realized she was hungry, and joined her. She had ordered too much and spring rolls, rice, and vegetables in orange-colored goo littered the plates after they had finished. Riga leaned back in her chair, satiated, but she cracked open a fortune cookie anyway. Fortune cookies never failed her. This one read: “Arrival of a tall, handsome stranger. Trust him.”
Well. They couldn’t always be right.
“What does yours say?” she asked Liz.
“You are in the middle of something big,” Liz said, returning to her painting. She still held the fortune in one hand.
The movement on the television caught Riga’s eye. A sink hole had opened up on a familiar-looking street. Riga moved in for a closer look, pulling her jacket more tightly around her as a chill wind gusted through the window. A blue strip flashed at the bottom of the screen with the street name in bold white letters and Riga’s shoulders tensed. Her sister, Rebecca, lived there. She squinted at the screen. No homes appeared damaged, but Riga wanted to call her sister, make sure everything was okay.
She made her excuses and left, closing the window first. If Liz wasn’t in a state to eat when she was hungry, Riga didn’t trust her to close the window when she got cold.
Once inside her own place, she called Rebecca. Her sister sounded harried when she answered the phone, but she always did. Rebecca had two loves – her family and sports – and Riga’s calls always seemed to interrupt one of them. Tonight, however, she was glad to talk to Riga. Her outrage at the state of the city’s streets had her in full flow.
“A sinkhole! Can you believe it? Pen could have been killed! And God only knows what it will do to property values. There’ll probably be an extra tax to pay for the repairs.”
“Back up,” Riga said. “Was Pen nearby when it happened?”
“She’d just driven down the street! The sinkhole opened up right behind her.”
“Shit,” Riga said, thinking hard. It could have been a coincidence. Sinkholes did happen. But she didn’t like it.
“Damn right,” Rebecca said. “Pen’s thrilled though. She was first to post the footage on YouTube and that Tweeter thing.”
“Twitter,” Riga corrected absently. She heard frantic barking in the background.
“Ranger! Down! Down, Ranger! Oh for heaven’s sake, you’d think he wanted to talk to you. I’ve got to go – this stupid dog…”
Her sister rung off and Riga carefully replaced the handset. She turned on the TV, waiting for the local news station to start its ten o’clock show. A sci-fi series was playing and she left it on as background noise, catching the occasional phrase: A body only turns to soap under certain conditions.
She filled the sink and began washing the dishes, glancing at the television sporadically to see if the news had begun.
A mad scientist raved: The universes are colliding! The laws of physics no longer apply!
The wine glass she was washing slipped from her grasp. She cursed as it juggled between her two hands, but caught the glass before it hit the tile floor. Dramatic music swelled on the TV and there was a quick cut to a car insurance commercial.
Universes colliding. Well, that could be a problem. There were a lot of theories about the unseen world – alternate dimensions, spirit worlds, worlds of thought forms, daemonic reality, Plato’s realm of the ideal... Riga thought any and all could all be possible, but there were always certain rules. The worlds might occasionally brush up against each other, but these encounters had to be brief.
The news station held the story until the very end and when it finally came on, her glass was empty. The piece was dissatisfying, with no explanation of the cause, and an overhead view of the collapsed road. Riga thought she saw her sister’s house in the far edge of the shot. Rebecca would not be happy.
Chapter 12: Pumpkins on the Shore
The next day, Riga kept her mind fixed on prosaic rituals: washing windows, scattering dust bunnies from beneath the couch, mopping the kitchen floor. She gave Brigitte the mystery novel. The gargoyle exclaimed delightedly and soared to the rooftop to read. At least Riga had made someone happy today.
By afternoon, however, she was restless enough to eat her way through the refrigerator. Recognizing that impulse for what it was (bad) she drove down the coast to Half Moon Bay, its farm fields dotted with orange pumpkins. She stopped at a beach, pulling into its small gravel parking lot. As she stepped from her car, a wind kicked up, lashing the waves into a dark frenzy. Riga crunched down the shore, feeling her tennis shoes fill with sand. She found a rock and sat against it in the sun, a woolen shawl pulled taut around her shoulders. Drawing an Agatha Christie from her bag, she began to read, her gaze drifting from the Pacific to the page, with little attention paid to either. Like the pull of the tide, sleep tugged at her. Her eyelids drifted downward and in that liminal place she fancied there was another beach, just on the edge of her perception, someplace warm and perfect.
A cry rang out from behind her. She stumbled to her feet, turning toward the source of the sound – a young couple, arms wrapped around each other. The woman pointed towards the ocean, her mouth open in astonishment. Riga followed the direction of her arm. A waterspout danced far off shore. She stared, disbelieving. Then she gathered up the book which had fallen open upon the sand and left hurriedly.
The Metaphysical Detective (A Riga Hayworth Paranormal Mystery) Page 5
