4 The Infernal Detective

by Kirsten Weiss

  “That’s just sad. We’re small potatoes.”

  “Donovan’s got a name. You’re a character. And there are enough A-listers here to make the wedding newsworthy. But that’s why you invited us, wasn’t it?” He smiled to soften it, but his bitterness was palpable.

  “I believe Donovan invited you because you’re friends,” she said mildly. “And I believe we’ve all put up with the photo shoot because we’d like to see him get out from under last month’s bad press, press he didn’t deserve.”

  “I was just along for the ride. Madison was his friend. And look where it got her.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “No. I guess not.” He leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs out, lowered his chin. “Donovan couldn’t have known what Mitchell would do.”

  “Tell me about the photographer. I read that you and Cam got in a fist fight. Was it because of Madison?”

  He raised his head. A smirk played at the corners of his full lips. “Yeah. Partly. He was just always there, stalking us. Finally, I couldn’t take it any longer.”

  Riga rubbed her finger along the rim of her glass. That didn’t jibe with what Dora had told her. “Briian, before Cam handed the glass to Madison, who was around you?”

  He looked toward the beamed ceiling. “Jordan McCall was around. I remember that big hat of his. And I guess Annabelle was, too. Those two are always together. And a bunch of people I didn’t know. There was a crowd around us. But Madison always attracted attention.”

  Riga glanced at the autograph hound, two tables over. The woman giggled, showing off her sleeve to the waiter. “You don’t do so badly.”

  “Eh.” He shrugged. “I’m still just a B actor. If it weren’t for Madison…”

  “Don’t sell yourself short.”

  “Riga?” A woman asked from behind her.

  Riga turned.

  Terry. Dark circles shadowed the writer’s eyes, and her hair fell lank about her shoulders. She unzipped her blue parka, rubbed her palms on her jeans. “I thought it was you,” she said. “Hello, Briian.”

  “Hi, Terry,” he said. “How are you holding up?”

  “Better, thanks to Riga and Donovan. Riga, I just wanted to thank you for everything last night – coming to the station with me, getting Cam a lawyer—”

  Briian’s hand jerked, and his mug flipped on the table. A brown stain spread across the white cloth. “You got Cam a lawyer? He’s a killer!”

  “I don’t think so, Briian,” Riga said. “Someone put that vial into his pocket after they poisoned his drink. The poison was meant for him. Madison was an unintended victim. And we need to find her killer.” But that didn’t make sense if Madison had been poisoned earlier, if, as Donovan’s father had suggested, it took longer for nicotine to kill.

  “Then what…?” He stood, nostrils flaring. “All those questions you asked me – you’re using them to try to get him off? That’s bullshit!” He grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair and stormed away. Heads turned to follow his progress. A flash went off, and his shoulders hunched.

  Terry’s mouth made an o. “I guess I put my foot in it. Sorry.”

  Thoughtfully, Riga watched him disappear through a swinging door. “Everyone’s under a lot of stress. How are you doing?”

  “Okay.” She placed her hand on her stomach. “I didn’t sleep well last night. Do you mean it – that you think someone was trying to kill Cam? That he’s been framed?”

  “Yeah. Who wants Cam dead?”

  Terry pulled out Briian’s chair, sat. “I don’t know. Cam could be very secretive about his life. He traveled a lot, had friends I never met.” Her forehead wrinkled.

  “But?”

  “But… I saw him arguing with Jordan. I don’t know what it was about. And you’ve probably heard about the fight he got into with Briian. Briian came out the worse for it, looked like a fool, rolling on the ground with his bloody nose. And of course, there was another photographer there to catch the whole thing. The beat down didn’t do much for Briian’s action hero image. And in Hollywood, image is everything. Cam could have pressed charges – Briian started it. But Cam dropped it. I don’t think Briian ever forgot it.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “That newspaper editor, Dora. Cam wasn’t really comfortable with her here, thought she might be holding a grudge.”

  “Over what?”

  Her lip curled. “She came on to him at a newspaper they both worked at. Lewd jokes, innuendos, that sort of thing. He sued, and won. He’s a handsome man. It happens.”

  Riga sighed. She hadn’t learned anything new. “How’s your work on the Barbara Yaganovich story going?”

  Terry brightened. “I met her, the Angel of Death.”

  “The what?”

  “That’s what they call her, because her life’s been surrounded by tragedy. Two of the rock stars she dated died of overdoses. Another died in a murder-suicide. People started talking, saying she was involved in the deaths. She wasn’t, of course. But the name stuck and she disappeared. Then she became a damn good landscape designer, won awards, became a name again.”

  “What happened?”

  “More bad luck. She was living in a client’s guest house in Switzerland. A cult broke in, killed the owners while she slept. She found their bodies the next morning. And then she disappeared again, became a hermit. But I found her.” Terry’s eyes glowed.

  “What’s she like?”

  “Bat-shit crazy.” She grinned. “But a great story. Maybe someday I’ll finish writing it. If I get through…” She bowed her head and took Briian’s discarded napkin from the table, blotted her eyes.

  “You’ll get through it.”

  She looked up. “The wedding… Are you still going forward with it?”

  “We may delay it, but we haven’t made any decisions yet.”

  Terry stood. “Well. I’m off to the police station. The lawyer said I can see him.” Her lips trembled. “I can’t wait.”

  Riga’s smile splintered.

  Chapter 22

  Riga stood on a forest path, and checked Mr. Gupta’s directions, cold seeping through the soles of her boots. She was well away from the highway, and the pine forest was silent, still, listening. The trees cast long shadows, blue-gray bars across the snow. Her own footprints were the only sign of human life, and for an instant she regretted not asking Ash to come with her. But he was watching Pen, and if Barbara Yaganovich was really a hermit, more would not be merrier.

  A branch cracked and she froze, senses straining. Something rustled in the Manzanita along the narrow trail. Then a Stellar Jay flew out of the snow-laden brush, squawking, and she relaxed, shoved the paper into her satchel.

  Riga set off down the path, her boots crunching in the snow. Mr. Gupta had promised Barbara’s cabin wasn’t far in, but the snow was deep enough to make the trek a long one, each step a chore. She should have brought cross-country skis, or even snow shoes. Twenty-twenty hindsight. She was the master of wishful thinking.

  And then the forest opened up, revealing a wide bowl-shaped clearing, with a cottage on the opposite side, its back to the far slope. The ramshackle cabin wore its gabled roof like a cockeyed elf’s cap, and rose above the snow on stilts sprawling outward like chicken legs.

  At the edge of the clearing, the pressure in the air changed and she wavered, skin tingling.

  Magic. A ward.

  She’d found Barbara.

  Tentatively, Riga stepped forward. Reality stretched, resisted, and then she was plunging down the hill. In the silent forest, her quick breaths and her boots mashing, slipping, stumbling in the snow crashed and echoed.

  Riga stopped at the bottom of the hill, and looked around. Silence folded in on her.

  She shrugged and continued on to the cabin, clunked up the floating steps to the front door, knocked.

  No answer.

  She waited a minute, knocked again.

  Barbara had no phone. Riga had known the woman
might not be at home. But Barbara was a recluse, and Riga figured she wouldn’t stray far. Riga buttoned the top of her pea coat, pulling her blue knit cap lower over her ears. Their tips burned from the cold. Her nose had that hot-cold feeling, too. Well, she’d survive. She’d wait.

  She turned.

  Long white hair, tangled, escaping the confines of a battered felt hat. A lumpy sweater, oversized, hanging down to the old woman’s knees. Eyes nearly black, a firm chin, straight nose. She crowded Riga, too close, her breath smelling of eucalyptus and something unpleasant.

  “What do you want?” The woman shifted a burlap sack that hung from her shoulder, down her back. Her accent was vaguely British, melodic.

  “My name is Riga Hayworth.”

  The woman stared, said nothing.

  “Vasily Gregorovich thinks I’m his destiny, the high priestess. He said you told him so.”

  “Not the high priestess. His high priestess. And I know what he thinks.” The woman pushed past, through the unlocked door. She shut it in Riga’s face.

  “Okaaaay.” Riga knocked on the door, tried the latch. It opened and she stuck her head in. “May I come in?”

  The woman swung the sack onto a long wooden table. Above it hung dried herbs and strings of garlic. “Oh, you’re asking my permission,” she said, sarcastic.

  Riga stepped inside, and closed the door behind her. The cabin was one large room. Kitchen to one side. A cot on the other – bedroom? Table in the middle. She wondered where the bathroom was. An outhouse out back? That would be hard on an old woman, and uncomfortable in the cold.

  “What can you tell me about Vasily?” Riga asked.

  The woman, Barbara, drew a butcher knife from a chopping block. “Why should I tell you anything?”

  “Why shouldn’t you?”

  She paused, knife upraised. Barked with laughter. “Are you going to kill him?”

  “Do you want me to?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t answer my question with a question!”

  Riga walked to the table and pulled out a high wooden stool, sat. “For a known recluse, you’re taking my unexpected arrival pretty well.”

  “Knew you were coming.” She drew roots out of the bag. They were covered in ice and dirt.

  “How? Did Vasily tell you?”

  She whacked off the end of a root. “Him! He doesn’t tell me. I tell him!”

  “How did you know then?”

  “Don’t play games. I see. You see.” Barbara pointed the knife at her. “That’s why you’re here. We’re alike, you and I.”

  “Alike?”

  “You’re playing games again.” She returned to the roots, examining one carefully, discarding it.

  “Sorry.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “I think you met a friend of mine,” Riga said conversationally. “Terry Reynolds-Mitchell.”

  “The writer. She wants a piece of me. She’s not going to get it.” Barbara sniffed. “And you’re lying again. You’re not her friend.”

  “What did you two talk about?”

  “Killing aphids.” She put the root and knife down, held out her hands across the table to Riga. Her palms and fingernails were crusted with dirt. “Give me your hands.”

  Riga wavered.

  “Your hands!”

  Reluctant, Riga reached across the table. The woman grabbed her hands, her thumb probing, prodding, and Riga flinched, feeling a shock of recognition. Barbara pulled them closer to her face, squinting.

  “Well?” Riga asked.

  Barbara released her, turned her back, and got a curved knife from a drawer in the kitchen.

  Surreptitiously, Riga wiped her hands on her khakis. “Tell me about Vasily.”

  “Vasily… We near the winter solstice, when the veil is thin, and the Oak King is at his weakest.”

  “Is Vasily the Oak King?”

  “No. Your man is oak. Vasily is the Holly King.”

  “Is that what you told him?”

  “No. It’s what I’m telling you, because we’re sisters, you and I. I met Her, too.”

  “Her?”

  “Goddess of the crossroads, magic, death.”

  Hecate then. Great. “Why do you say we’re sisters?”

  Her black eyes glittered. “We were touched by Her. We walk the same path, the path of death. I’ve been alone on it a long time.”

  “This isn’t such a bad place to be alone. It feels nice. Peaceful.”

  Barbara clipped off a piece of root with the curved knife. “It’s protected.”

  “Against what?”

  “Against people! They’re all the same. Always consuming. Always killing. Always dying. They’re locusts. A plague.” She spat.

  “Killing? Like Vasily?”

  “He’s the worst.” Barbara whacked off the tip of another root. “You are his destiny, you know. Will you kill him?”

  “Unlikely,” Riga said.

  “But not impossible, I think. I tried, once.” Her eyes grew misty with remembrance. “Why don’t you want to kill him?”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t want to kill him. Of course I want to kill him. But I’m not going to.”

  “Why deny your instincts? I think you should kill him.”

  Riga rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’m going to kill him,” she lied. “Are you going to give me some useful information or not?”

  The old woman smiled. “That’s better. There are three things you need to know.” She went to the sink and returned with a mortar and pestle.

  “Sounds like a Monty Python sketch,” Riga muttered.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” Riga said. “Go on.”

  She pointed at Riga with the pestle. “First, death shadows you. To master it, you must reach inside and find the goddess of the crossroads, the in-between, magic.”

  “I meant information about Vasily.”

  “Second, you must find faith.”

  “I meant specific information. I’ve gotten better insights from fortune cookies.” Christ. Vasily actually paid for this vague dreck?

  Barbara glared at her. “Third. Vasily’s important papers are kept in a safe at his lawyer’s office. I suggest you look into them.”

  Riga’s eyebrows lifted. “That’s helpful. Thanks.” She slid from her seat, went to the door.

  “You can’t go through with it, you know.”

  “With what?” Riga looked over her shoulder.

  She put the pestle down. “The wedding. I saw that, too. People like us. We’re supposed to be alone.”

  The breath left Riga as if she’d been punched. She straightened. “Speak for yourself.”

  Riga hurried from the cottage. Barbara was nuts. And she’d be crazy to listen to anything Barbara said. She might as well take Vasily’s advice to the lovelorn. Riga shook her head. Nuts. She gripped her leather satchel more tightly, and trudged up the hill. Step. Sink. Lift foot.

  Halfway to the top, something tugged at the hem of her pea coat, pulled her back toward the cottage. Snarling, she turned.

  Nothing. The cottage lights had gone on, dim and wavering, but welcoming against the looming pines. The sun was low on the horizon, the shadows longer, the temperature colder. Riga shivered.

  Compressing her lips, Riga continued forward. She was getting carried away by her imagination.

  Near the top, she had that strange sensation of something stretching, resisting, and then she crested the hill, was through the ward. A bird chirped and shot into the sky, and a trickle of snow fell from the branch it had abandoned, plopping to the ground.

  Did Vasily pass through that ward? Or did Barbara go to him?

  Step. Sink. Lift.

  Riga puzzled over the problem, giving her brain some exercise. Barbara had no phone. How did she know when Vasily wanted to see her? Did he send his men for her? She couldn’t imagine the mobster making the forest trek himself.

  Step. Sink. Lift.

  Shadows and darkness merged in a gray twili
ght, and Riga felt a prickle of disquiet. A breeze tossed the tree branches, soughing. She froze, watchful. Something was there, just at the edge of her senses. Uneasy, she rummaged in her bag for her tactical flashlight, the weight comforting in her gloved hand.

  She bent her head, listening, and the forest bent toward her in response. She felt the rocks, sinking into the damp earth, crumbling. A squirrel, months dead, pancaked beneath the packed snow. A broken tree limb, its needles dry while its wood rotted. Death, dissolution, decay. It was all around her. And something else, something wrong, circling.

  Whispers carried to her. Riga cast about, trying to locate their source. They surrounded her, everywhere and nowhere.

  A door slid open, and reality changed, flattened. What color was left in the fading light vanished, and she felt a sense of dislocation. Was she seeing things differently? Had the world changed for her? Or had she stepped through a door?

  Through the soles of her boots, through her thick coat, her gloves, cold seeped into her bones. Her teeth chattered.

  Think. She was still well away from the road, her car, safety. Closing her eyes, Riga extended her senses, and touched malice. Her eyes flew open.

  She ran.

  Step, sink, lift, double-time, not fast enough. The snow dragged at her feet.

  Movement to the left. She clicked on her flashlight, shot it into the trees. A screech that scored her eardrums. A shadow veered off, evaporated beneath the pines. Not human then. Her heart pounded.

  They closed on her, dark blurs between the trees. Cold slowed her movements, froze her veins. She was in a nightmare, running and making no progress. The running should have warmed her, but she was cold, cold, cold, and a spell from Pen’s gaming book popped into her mind – deathly cold. She was deathly cold, like a victim of a spell from that book.

  Idiot. Forget Pen’s damn book.

  She’d made a mistake – should have doubled back to Barbara’s, and the safety of the clearing behind that magical barrier. But now Riga would have to make a stand. Soon. Her breath burst in and out, her lungs burning. She reached into her bag, bouncing at her hip, and fumbled for the packet of salts and angelica.

  Cold seeped into her lungs. Sweat beaded above her lip. How could she be so icy and sweating at once? Focus! Above and below, she concentrated on the energies. They were there, latent, waiting. Pulled them inside, felt them build. Her fingers touched the plastic bag of salts and she pulled it out, wrenched off the tie, her fingers stiff, jerky.