(Don’t argue with me on whether it’s Vulcan or Klingon—at that moment, only a Klingon could have wrestled it from me)
I paused. Come to think of it, I don’t believe there is a Vulcan Death Grip is there?
“Are you okay now?” He finally sat back down on his stool. He had a half-full beer in front of him.
I nodded. “Fine.” I paused. “I’m not sure that whiskey’s going to stay down—so if I disappear again—it’s because I need to hurl. I was thinking about what you’d said yesterday—about Reverend Rollins.”
“Oh?” He sat forward. I really liked his sideburns. “Well, I’d like to see what you discovered, but it’s probably the same stuff I uncovered.” He frowned. “How exactly did you do your investigation?”
Okay Zoë—how do you break the news that you too were now sort of investigating Tanaka’s death, only you weren’t a cop or even a private investigator, or even using legal or believable methods of search?
Breathe.
“Yes?”
I smiled. Big, guilty smile. “Lieutenant Frasier—”
“Daniel.”
“Daniel. I have a friend who can find things, and I was curious—do you know what it was that Visitar bought of the Reverend’s?”
“Intellectual properties.” Daniel leaned back in the chair. The stool gave a horrendously loud squeak in the bar. You know, that fingernails-on-chalkboard kinda screech. “Or that’s still all I’ve been able to uncover. I’m not exactly welcome on the case, seeing as how no one believes there’s a connection between Tanaka and Rollins.”
“Yeah…” I felt this was the perfect opening to investigate Detective Hottie myself. “Are you not welcome because you think there is a connection?”
He lowered his shoulders and rested his elbows on the bar. “I told you about losing my partner, right?”
I nodded. Uh-oh. “In that convenience store.”
“Yeah. He died…” Daniel paused. “He died because of me. Because I didn’t follow procedure. I was there with him. I was foolish. Reckless. And I made a wrong decision. And he was shot. We both were, only his was fatal.” He rubbed at his face. “I’m lucky they didn’t take my badge from me permanently.”
“Is that why you haven’t found a partner yet?”
“Sort of. No one really wants to work with me. And I’m still technically on probation.”
Probation? Was this why my client wanted this particular detective spied on? Wait—I got it. “You weren’t supposed to go interview Hirokumi yesterday, were you?”
He shook his head, stopped, then turned very wide blue eyes at me. “How did you know I interviewed Koba Hirokumi?”
Oops. Shit. Big. Mouth.
Think. Think. Did he tell that bartender guy? “I overheard you talking to the bartender—the one with the ponytail—before I came over.”
I didn’t breathe as he thought about this. Luckily, either I was right or his memory was a bit off, but he relaxed and nodded.
Big. Freak’n. Mouth. It was going to get me in sooo much trouble one day.
“Well, no. I mean yes. See, he agreed to see me when I called. And then he got all mysterious and started talking about protection and told me to leave.” He shook his head and picked up his beer. “Then I went back and found him poking it to his secretary. Dick.”
Well, I knew the truth, but I didn’t think Daniel here was ready to hear it. I also thought again about Rhonda finding that dragon artifact and wondered what she’d done with it.
I looked down at the folder in my hands. “Well, like I said, I have a friend who finds things. She’s good at it too. And she found these this morning. I’m not sure if it’s what Visitar bought, but I think if it was, it might give your killer motive.”
He looked dubious (and it looked good on him) as he took the folder. I waited patiently as he set it on the bar in front of him and opened it.
I expected his reaction to be as mine and Rhonda’s had been. Shock and some sort of humor.
Daniel Frasier only nodded as he thumbed through the printouts of the jpegs. He closed the folder and handed it back to me. “I’ve seen these.”
At that moment I wanted to strangle him. How dare he not be impressed with what we found. “You have?”
“Yeah…” he nodded. “And I thought the same thing as you. Only the actual tapes don’t seem to exist. Someone proved a year ago those covers were faked, made up by some religion-hating college art kid. Rollins even gave a statement on them.”
I looked at the pictures again. These were faked? Well, they were good fakes. “Wow…I mean, I’ve seen porno covers before, and if an art student did these, then either they were really bad, or they nailed the authenticity.”
Daniel laughed. Nice sound. Okay. I won’t strangle him. Just kick him.
“Zoë—can I call you Zoë?”
I nodded. You can call me anything you want.
“I think the kid was prosecuted, then Rollins did some saving thing, and now the artist works for him.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope.” He rubbed at his chin. “Look, I’m sorry you came all this way down here for me to tell you it won’t help. I do appreciate your trying.”
“Oh, no problem.” Oh, none at all. I really wanted to be humiliated in front of a sexy cop. Go me. I stood.
He did too and offered his hand. Real touching this time—not the fake astral physical touch. I felt the vibration of his skin on mine rock my world. I wondered if it did his too. “Zoë, we can still have dinner?”
I paused. I was embarrassed, and my stomach felt reeeeeally upset. I needed to throw up.
“Zoë, I also hope you know that all men aren’t like that. That there are some men that find that kind of behavior more than disgusting.”
“You mean like cops?” I gave him a coy smile. Or at least I hoped it was coy and not leering.
He blushed. Oh he was so cute! “Yeah. Let’s just say that because of that, what you went through, I’m doubly appreciative that you tried to help me.”
“Too bad it wasn’t helpful.” I opened the folder again and looked at the images. “They are very well done, though. And I did get a chuckle at the Reverend being a gay porn actor.” I smiled at him. I needed to back out of this one. Not because I didn’t want to have dinner with Daniel, but because I was really starting to feel awful from the whiskey.
Time to retreat nicely and find that pint of Rocky Road in my freezer. “I’d like to have dinner with you, Detective Frasier—but after you understand that I’m not abused. Not now. And”—I gave him a crooked smile—“after I don’t stomp in here and order a shot.” I shook his hand. “Thanks, Frasier. Hope to see you again.”
But after a few steps away, he called my name. I turned and he was beside me, his eyes wide.
“You said, gay porn star?”
I nodded.
He took the folder again and moved back to the bar. This time he turned the printed page toward the light and narrowed his eyes. After examining the pictures, he held up his hand, and said, “Wait right here.”
I did, though I did watch him move his little cute self out the door. He was back by the time I returned to my stool. My coffee was there, and I sipped it, still not sure I was combining the right stuff for my quivering stomach. Bailey’s and Dewars? Oook.
Daniel had a folder in his hands, twice as thick as my own. I’d assumed he’d stepped outside to his car to get it. He removed printouts of the covers and put them side by side. He looked from one to the other.
He turned, abruptly grabbed my shoulders, and kissed me.
Yow! Red alert! All hands on deck, and on the cop! Crank up the juices and let the manhandling begin! “Zoë, this might be it! I’ve gone over this case again and again, and I’m sure the pictures on the Web are the ones the artist allegedly fixed. But these…” He pointed to mine. “These are different. I’ve never seen these before.”
I blinked.
And I blinked again. My knees were still
shaking. “Uh…what’s the catch? You’re seeing something I’m not.”
Mental note: kiss from cute cop fries the hard drive.
“Actually, you saw it, and I didn’t.” He pointed to the nearest one. “You nailed it. The ones on the left are faked. The ones on the right might just be real.” He fixed me with those incredibly blue eyes. Were his knees shaking too? “I’d always wondered why the Reverend’s legal team would prosecute that artist so heatedly if they were simple fakes. You know—just debunk the guy. I always suspected there was more to it, and the whole time there was never any mention of the tapes being listed as gay porn. The difference is the gay part, Zoë. I think the ones you found are legitimate.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Big freak’n deal.
Could you kiss me again?
13
OUR excitement at the find on the Rollins covers was short-lived. Very short-lived.
Having this new bit of information, Daniel wanted to get back to work on the case. No dinner. Which was fine, as my stomach was in foul shape. He did promise me a rain check, exclaiming he’d never met anyone quite like me.
Well, that much was true. How many girlfriend candidates did anyone have who could move out of body and see dead kids in doctors’ offices?
I left and headed over to Mom’s shop for a cup of tea and a remedy for whiskey-burdened stupidity.
Clouds continued to breeze in from Alabama and covered the city in a canopy of dirty cotton balls. The temperature had dropped again, and I dug out my mom’s hand-knitted, six-foot burgundy-and-gold scarf from the back of my car.
My cell rang—chirped, made some strange noise—and I checked the number as I got out of the car after parking in the lot behind Mom’s shop. Didn’t recognize it. The gloom that had settled with the clouds hung in the wind and lowered its already-biting cold. Chunks of hair escaped my braid and whipped about my face. I caught sight of the white hairs—they seemed to glow in the dark. I patted at them irritably, knowing that the whole thing would become a tangled mess as I said “Hello?”
“They shut me down.”
Uhm. Nice. And you would be?
Click.
Oh! Daniel.
I didn’t miss a beat. “What do you mean? They didn’t believe your theory after seeing those photos?”
“I think the captain does believe me, but there’s nothing they can do. The photos, whether real or not really, don’t have anything to do with the murder. There’s no evidence they’re the property that Visitar bought, and buying intellectual property isn’t illegal. And there’s absolutely no evidence of Rollins at the crime scene. Nothing physical. And as for forensics—” He made a snuff noise. I think he snorted. “Well, we all know how long they take.”
Uhm. “Thirty seconds in a sixty-minute television show?”
I took it from the thick frustration in his voice that it was a lot longer than that.
“Anyway, I’ve been ordered to drop it. Tanaka’s murder is pretty much now in the hands of other detectives.” He sighed. “I wanted to call you and thank you again for your interest. And I—”
I stood in the cold, beside my excellent car, my hair tangling in the ever-increasing wind velocity, and waited for him to finish the statement. It was a pure movie moment. I even believed the sun broke through the clouds and shone on me alone.
Of course in a matter of seconds I’d already imagined what he would say:
And I—I’d like to see you again.
And I—I’d like to take you out, Zoë.
And I—I’d like to make sweet, hot, passionate love to you in front of a roaring fire while we do things declared illegal in forty states—
“—I was wondering if you could give me the name of your source—the one that found those pictures.”
Uh. Oh. Fantasy gone. Crash.
Crap. I was sure Rhonda’s friend Bruno wouldn’t appreciate me giving over his name to an Atlanta detective. I had a suspicion the boy’s means of info gathering were as “unique” as my own. Though I doubted Bruno left his body to do it—except with recreational pharmaceuticals. “I’m not sure. I’ll have to ask. Client privilege and all that.”
“Client privilege? Are you a shrink or something? Is that what you do for a living? You know you didn’t tell me.”
Big mouth, big mouth, big freak’n mouth.
“I didn’t? Oh, I’m sorry. Look, I’m in the middle of something. I’ll get back to you, okay?” I disconnected and shoved the phone into my bag before running up the steps and into the shop.
Roses warred with gardenias in my nose as I paused inside. Two customers were near the far wall, examining the seven-day candles for love, war, and restarting a period.
Rhonda stood behind the counter, the book from yesterday closed and propping up a sample tray of brownies. I shivered, brushing off the cold, and moved forward over the creaking floor.
“Hey, Zoë,” Rhonda frowned at me. She wore a black turtleneck, black jeans, and black driving gloves. She looked like a paintbrush dipped in black paint. “Whoa—your hair’s sticking out everywhere. What happened?” She narrowed her eyes. “Okay—I’m reading both good and bad here. He kiss you?”
I nodded quickly as I went behind the counter and stuffed my purse into one of the cabinets. “Yeah, it was a quick one, but it still messed with all the right parts.”
“And—you’re here and he’s not because those parts didn’t like to be messed with?”
“No, I—” I could go into our conversation at Fado’s, and I could go into what Daniel just told me in the parking lot, and I could go into how he wanted Bruno’s number. But right now, I was hungry and thirsty. “Never mind. I’ll tell you later.” I snatched up a brownie. “Where’s Mom?”
“Out with that Shultz woman.”
I caught the slight acid in Rhonda’s tone. Jemmy Shultz was the owner of one of the smaller junk shops along Euclid in Little Five Points. A stout woman of African-American and Hispanic descent, she was the scariest broad I knew. Next to Mom.
Jemmy kept her salt-and-pepper hair braided and wound around her head beneath a wide-brimmed floppy hat that she wore night and day, winter and summer. She and Mom had formed a fast friendship, Jemmy being the only other person I knew who could see Tim or Steve.
Jemmy offered tea-leaf reading, tarot card reading, and astrological chart printouts. When the two women got together, something weird always happened. I was a little worried about them being together now.
Rhonda thought the woman was a fraud and a bamboozler. And, of course, Rhonda was the only person I knew who could use that word with a straight face. So what if she could see ghosts? I didn’t know if Mom had ever told her about my unique ability. Didn’t really care. Nona knew her assistant disliked Jemmy, and I sometimes thought the old bat (Mom, not Jemmy) kept her friendship with the boozier just to grate Rhonda’s nerves.
I popped the brownie in my mouth. It immediately turned to cardboard.
Rhonda gave me a lopsided grin and pointed to the trash. “Now you know why the tray’s still full.”
With a loud p’tooey, I spit the nasty slice of corrugated board and chocolate into the small lined basket behind the counter. “Oh. Foul. Foul. Mom trying to poison her customers?”
“A new recipe from Jemmy your mom tried. I’ve been warning customers not to eat it.”
“You didn’t warn me.” I spit into the trash can again.
“Since when do you listen?”
I arched my eyebrows and noticed Rhonda’s gaze lingering on my hair. What? I patted it down with my hands. “I’m wondering if I should call Daniel back, you know? Maybe set up a real date?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “You asking me for advice? Not unless you do something about that gray—though my first inclination is to say no. Something weird’s happening to you, and I don’t think you should put yourself at risk for exposure. What if you go OOB and then become all Wraithy?”
“There’s a difference?”
“Maybe.
I found two very interesting things while you were flirting with the detective.”
One of the customers neared the counter and once again I was nearly knocked over by the smell of roses and gardenias. I realized then it wasn’t from some incense in the shop, but from her.
I sneezed from the overpowering scents in my nose. Man, forget sulfur. I think exorcisms should be carried out using cheap perfume.
Stinky Lady bought two bars of soap (egh—go wash off that perfume) and a Love Charm candle. Rhonda rang her up and smiled. “Please come back.”
After the door closed she pulled the Book of Everything toward her over the counter and opened it to a dog-eared page. I pointed to the bent page. “Does Mom know you’re doing that to her book pages?”
“Here it is.”
“Here is what?” I moved closer and leaned down to see whatever it was she’d jabbed her finger at.
The pages were yellowed, though I’m not sure it was from actual age or from the printer. I’d not checked to see what the publishing date was on the book. The type was easy to read, though the context made little sense.
Her finger pointed to what looked like an old wood engraving of a woman on the ground as a brighter image of the woman sprang forth out of her chest. Several men in armor stood to the side, all of them cowering and pointing. One of them had a cross around his neck, and he seemed to be the focus of the brighter image’s attention. “I think I’m not getting what you’re pointing at.”
“Read the fine print—under the picture.” Steve appeared behind Rhonda. He looked serious—but again—Steve always looked serious.
“Aren’t you supposed to NOT be in here during business hours?”
“It’s after six. That was the last customer. Zoë, read it.”
I sighed and looked down and read the single line of type. “A sixteenth-century woodcut of a Wraith being cast out of a…” I blinked, then looked harder at the woodcut.
A Wraith.
I looked at Rhonda, who arched a dark eyebrow at me. “Found the reference in one of those books I bought today. I was looking at a Wraith in the usual definition of the word, as a harbinger, or disembodied spirit. Never occurred to me to look at one in the demonic realm.”
Wraith Page 13
