by Linda Welch
I must have made a noise. He looked at me over his shoulder. “I just ruined the moment, didn’t I.”
“We weren’t having a moment.”
“We were talking. I wondered if we would do so again, or communicate with sign language.”
I didn’t respond to his feeble attempt at mirth. He got on with the business of breakfast.
“Why should I give Gia Sabato a break?”
He scooped up chopped green onions and sprinkled them on the omelet already firming up in the skillet. “Rio’s probably dead, and she knows it.”
How would I feel if someone I cared for disappeared and I had to conclude they were dead? Okay, I’d cut Gia some slack. Maybe.
“Tell me about the homicides.”
He swung around and put his hip to the counter. He made little circles in the air with his spoon as he spoke, an inward look in his eyes. “At first the victims were Gelpha. Two years ago, we thought it was over and breathed a cautious sigh of relief. Until we heard from Gia and Daven. Their killings started about the time ours stopped.”
“Hm. Odd. As if the killer switched from one breed to another.” Oops. Open mouth, insert foot.
Royal frowned at me. “Breed? We’re a breed?” He pushed his hair off his forehead with the back of one hand. “I suppose it is an improvement on demon.”
“Well it’s awkward saying Daven’s people or Gia’s people all the time. If you won’t tell me what they are. . . .”
He rubbed at his eyes. “Please understand, between your world and mine, some subjects are taboo.”
I twiddled my fingers on the table top. The statement emphasized our differences and reminded me, yet again, he wasn’t human.
When I first met Royal, he told me I had to trust him, and I’d worked hard on trust ever since, even when he excluded me from some parts of his life. Trust doesn’t come easy to me. I’ve had issues with trust since I was a kid. In my experience, when you trusted someone, they stabbed you in the back. But one day in Gorge’s shop, when I led Royal to Lawrence, I decided I’d trust him and no going back. It was a big step forward for me, and I’m sure my therapist would be proud of me, if I had one.
I couldn’t blame anyone but myself. I let my guard down. I put too much faith in someone, and see what happened?
“Tiff,” he said in a gentle tone, “I’m not unaware that when our conversation unintentionally drifts to your life before we met, you steer it in another direction. I hope, one of these days, you will feel you can share more with me, but until then I will respect your reluctance.”
I wanted to look away from his eyes, from his sincerity. I held his gaze with effort.
“If I can do so, can you not do likewise? You do not want to talk about some aspects of your life, and I am forbidden to share some of mine.”
It sounded so darned reasonable, except I am not a reasonable person. I don’t talk about my childhood and teen years because it’s nobody’s damned business and . . . okay, so something unpleasant happened but it’s not big news, I bet the same still goes on in foster homes throughout the nation. It’s just that when I think of it, a massive obstruction fills my throat.
But Royal’s reality and its secrets could impact my world.
However, I could bite my tongue, for a time. I would make it my business to learn everything there was to know about Bel-Athaer and one of these days, I would know.
“Okay,” I conceded. “Gelpha and Dark Cousins. That sounds stupid too, like something Lawrence made up.”
“We do call them Dark Cousins, because we would rather not speak their real name aloud.”
Oookay. Scary stuff.
“I can tell you this much: the title is a courtesy, they are not related to Gelpha, they are not demons.”
Darn. And I thought I had them pegged. “But if - ”
“Tiff,” he warned, his brows almost meeting between his nose.
“Okay!” I rolled my eyes up. “The murderer went from killing Gelpha to killing Dark Cousins. Why?”
Royal turned back to the skillet and went about the delicate process of omelet-folding. “Perhaps he didn’t know he switched. As Daven said, we are very alike.”
“That presumes the killer is someone who can recognize you guys. So, yeah, the Charbroiler could be Gelpha or Dark Cousin.”
“Or he is human, and Maud worked for him.”
“The killer turned his sights on Dark Cousins, but then he went after Maud, a Gelpha. Maud said, ‘forgive me, I betrayed them.’ Maybe she had an attack of conscience and decided to betray him, and he found out.”
“What happened to Maud. . . .”
I growled something he wasn’t supposed to hear, but being a demon, he heard anyway. “I know it was cruel, but if she had been in a human hospital they would have helped her on her way. She was too far gone for anything else.”
“They wouldn’t have helped her on her way unless there was absolutely no alternative, and if they did, they’d use morphine, not a fucking great sword. You kept that woman there, in agony until I arrived and then you - ”
“Tiff - ”
My entire body felt tense, so much it ached. I drew in a long, deep breath. “We will not discuss it further, not now, maybe not ever,” I said fiercely.
“Dammit, Tiff!” Royal threw the wooden spoon across the room. It hit the wall and broke in two pieces which shot in opposite directions, along with little chips of brick. He spun to face me. “What was I supposed to do? Fight every Gelpha in the room? Drag Maud’s abused body out of there?”
I surged upright. “You knew what would happen and you still took me there. Worse, Royal, you kept quiet while you did it. You gave me no information and no choice.”
He had his arms in the air but let them drop, looking beaten. “I had no choice. I told them we’d find another way. I was overruled.”
“If you’d just told me. . . .”
“I thought we’d established the fact I couldn’t tell you!”
“Yeah! Because I wouldn’t have gone!” I slapped my palms on the table top. “You were an officer of the law, Royal! What happened to you? When did you decide to ignore your oath?”
His hand clenched on air. “I’m a Gelpha enforcer. I - ”
I didn’t let him finish. “And when did you start thinking it’s okay to use me.”
He stared at me and I couldn’t read his eyes. “Do I spend the rest of my life apologizing to you?”
As if it would help. I couldn’t find the words. I closed my eyes, shook my head. I opened them to see him turning back to the skillet, shoulders set like concrete.
I dropped back in the chair. We settled into an uneasy silence. Royal grabbed a spatula, slid the omelet on a plate, cut it in half and transfer that half to another plate.
The case, concentrate on the case. What was I missing here? Think, Tiff, think. Why did the Dark Cousin murders start when the Gelpha finished? There had to be a reason.
“These murders - how long has it been going on?”
“Ten years, we think. Germany, Poland, Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic.”
Jesus! “Why haven’t I heard of it before now?”
“Because we managed to get to the bodies and dispose of them before they were found. They are listed as missing persons.”
I watched him sprinkle diced tomatoes and chopped cilantro atop the omelets and garnish each with a big dollop of sour cream. “The Dark Cousin murders started two years ago - where, here in the States?”
“Not at first. The killer seems to have moved his operation here a year ago.”
I chewed that over for a moment.
“And this switch from Gelpha to Dark Cousins . . . it was abrupt, one moment the Gelpha, next the Dark Cousins?”
Royal walked over with the two plates, paused, thinking. He nodded. “It was abrupt. As you say, one moment the Gelpha, the next, Dark Cousins.”
“And no Gelpha murders since then.”
“Apart from Maud. . . .” He joined me
at the table with plates in hand, pushed one of the plates to me. I gazed at his sleek, bowed head as he cut his omelet into neat little pieces.
What was I missing? Pieces of the puzzle. Gelpha, then Dark Cousins.
I sat up straighter. Hell’s Bells. Another Dark Cousin had died and I’d presumed Maud fingered the victim before her conscience got the better of her, before the killer tried to get rid of her. But a horrible notion battered my brain. No, not a notion, a certainty.
It wasn’t over.
“Two of them,” I blurted out.
He looked up, eyes narrowed. “Go on.”
“Maud identified Gelpha, until the killer found someone who can identify Dark Cousins. Maybe they were his target all along. Maybe Maud knew, but for some reason set him on her people, because he couldn’t tell the difference. He had only her word to go by. She identified Gelpha and someone else is identifying Dark Cousins. Two of them.”
Royal speared a wad of omelet and chewed thoughtfully for a few seconds. “It does make a macabre kind of sense. Maud’s father and his cabal planned and attempted the assassination of the High Lady. He was banished and took Maud with him. She was a child at the time, but she could have returned to Bel-Athaer when she reached her majority. She refused.”
“All those years, her daddy poisoning her mind - I bet she hated your people.”
“So she betrayed them to the Charbroiler.”
“Until he found someone else. Maybe he realized Maud fingered the wrong people. Maybe he didn’t trust her to keep her mouth shut. Either way, she was a liability, so he tried to kill her.”
Royal lifted another morsel to his mouth, but paused, then dropped the fork on his plate. He bowed his head, closed his eyes, joined his hands behind his neck beneath his long hair. “If you are right, there will be more Dark Cousin deaths.” He rolled his eyes to look up at me. “I thought it was over and now we have to start again.”
“Not true. We have the guy with the Mercedes, the hit on Daven. We took a step back, nothing more.” I moved the omelet about on my plate. “And we have Elizabeth’s journal. I don’t see how it can be a clue, but it has to be. Why else would Maud speak of it with her last breath?”
There, I said it. I’d been waiting for the right time to ease the journal into our discussion.
“Elizabeth’s journal?”
I met his eyes across the table. “Oh, didn’t mention that, did I.”
Royal’s cell phone chose that moment to ring and he answered it with his eyes glued to mine. He listened for a minute.
“We’ll be here.”
He closed the phone and put it on the table. “Daven. Something came up. They want to meet tomorrow morning.”
Oh dear, what a shame. “Oh darn,” I said, my voice monotone.
“What’s this about a journal?”
I became interested in my omelet. “It came in the mail for Banks and Mortensen, to my address. It’s real old, written in 1887 by Elizabeth Hulme, a fifteen-year-old British girl. Her father was an archeologist and she went with him to some old city or something in Burma.”
Silence. I cut off a morsel of omelet with my fork and got it in my mouth.
“If it came to Banks and Mortensen, why didn’t you tell me?”
I made a face, and not only because the omelet had gone cold. “With all the excitement, I didn’t get around to it.”
More silence.
“Could this have anything to do with your trip to Las Vegas?”
“I wanted to talk to Elizabeth’s last surviving relative. Paid her a visit.”
“I see. With all the excitement, you still found time to track down the last surviving relative of a girl who’s been dead for over a hundred years?”
I was not going to apologize. I dropped my fork on the plate and shoved the plate away. “Don’t come over all sarcastic with me, Royal. And don’t talk to me like I owe you an apology. I didn’t see a connection to the Borrego case, I still don’t. In fact, I don’t see it has anything to do with the Charbroiler murders, now I know about them.”
I pushed up from my chair. “I’ll bring the damned journal over tomorrow morning. You can have it. See what you make of it.”
If I’d had the journal in my hand, I’d have thrown it at him.
Chapter Nineteen
I stomped down Royal’s stairs and started for home.
The drive didn’t seem to take any time at all. Have you ever brought your car to a stop and wondered how you got there? You know you took your usual route, followed the rules and drove responsibly, didn’t run a red light, or hit another car. But you can’t picture the drive in your mind’s eye. I couldn’t recall the streets going by.
I parked in the street, walked to my front door and stared at it awhile before going inside, then headed right upstairs with MacKlutzy following me. I tried to make my voice bright and cheerful as I called out, “Hi, guys! I’ll be down in a minute!” because I didn’t want Mel and Jack following me up there.
I picked up Mac and collapsed on the bed. He struggled free soon as we hit the mattress, and maybe I imagined the question in his bright brown eyes. He wasn’t usually allowed on the bed.
When Mac was a puppy he became a menace in the car. He was all over the place: on my knees, across my shoulders, up above the dashboard pressed to the windscreen, down at my feet as I worked the brake and accelerator. Then one day, I didn’t have the passenger window rolled up far enough and out he went, and there was a ditch at the side of the road. He fell a long way for a tiny puppy. He broke his wishbone, and since then not only does he stay put on the seat of the car, he knows what he can safely negotiate. He knows if something’s too high to jump up on, he’d best not jump off it. He settled down near my feet with a doggy sigh.
Colin’s smiling face appeared inside my head. So, someone at Clarion PD talked to Col about my so-called psychic ability. I bet the entire division had a fine old time dissing Tiff Banks.
Clarion PD threw me out the first time I went to them. I kind of expected their reaction, but I didn’t like telling the victim I couldn’t help him. I went back six months later with information on another case. They didn’t want to listen to me then either, but the murderer was already a suspect and I told them things about the case not made available to the press or public. I told them where to find evidence. I saw the conflict rage across Mike Warren’s face. He almost believed me, he wanted to believe me, but arresting an innocent man on the word of a crazy woman could cost him his job. Mike brought the guy in for questioning and he cracked under pressure. And I had me a career as Clarion Police Department’s resident psychic.
I’ve worked for other PDs too. I’ve been all over the nation, kind of on loan from Clarion. Then I quit my part-time consulting job and opened the agency with Royal. I should have kept my job with the police. Working for the cops, I felt useful.
And look at me now, witness to a murder staged for my benefit. Who was I helping now? Not Rio Borrego. God only knew what happened to him.
I had to go downstairs eventually. To keep my roommates out my hair, I got busy sorting through the pantry. It’s surprising what you find shoved in the back when you haven’t had a thorough look in years. What I tossed filled four paper sacks. Mac “dogged my footsteps” the entire time, hoping I’d drop something tasty.
“Think again, MacKlutzy. Nothing tasty in this pantry,” I told him.
“And what’s this in aid of?” Jack asked.
He should have left me alone. “Why does it have to be in aid of anything?” I snapped.
“It’s been in there for years, so why disturb it now?” Mel said.
“That’s the point, it’s way past edible.”
Jack decided to be snide. “Oh, so your sudden, completely atypical behavior is not in aid of anything, but it does have a point.”
“That can of beans looks fine to me,” from Mel.
They were so close behind me, if I stepped back I’d go through them. Tempting. Instead, I picked up t
he can of beans and showed them the expiry date. “See . . . 2001.”
I weighed the can in my hand. Oh, but it did feel fine there, and heavy, and most certainly would make a dent in the wall if I hurled it.
The can went back in a sack.
“You could tell us what’s wrong,” Mel said in a gentler tone.
“Nothing wrong with me, sister.”
“You know about tells?” Jack said, emphasizing the word.
I stuck my hand back in the pantry. “You mean those little giveaways, from people playing poker? Yeah, so what?”
“Well no, not just card games. We do it all the time in everyday life.”
“I repeat, so what?” I needed the step stool to reach the top shelf. I pulled it out from between the fridge and the kitchen drawers.
Mel moved to stand by the fridge. “You have enormous tells. Like baking cookies, or cleaning out the kitchen. Those are not things you do as a habit, now are they. And although I’m sure a collector of antiquities would be interested in what you have in the pantry, I don’t think that’s why you’re clearing it out.”
I turned and gave them the stern eye. Seemed to me a good time to straighten them out on a few things. “One, I don’t have to explain myself to you. Two, this is my house and what I do in it is my business. Three, I don’t need psychoanalysis from a couple of spooks.”
Jack came in, nose to spectral nose with me. “One, I’m tired of you talking to me like I’m your kid brother. Two - you think because we’re dead, you can treat us like children? Why should we put up with your tantrums anytime you feel like it? We live here too, you know.”
I bit my tongue. I seethed with the impulse to say they didn’t have to live in my house. But this was my bad mood trying to control me. I was out of line and knew it.
I dropped my head, rubbed my fingers over my brow. “I’m sorry, guys. That was uncalled for. I apologize.”
“Damn right too,” Jack muttered in a low voice.
“We’ll forgive you, if you tell us what’s bothering you,” from Mel.
I took the two steps to the kitchen table, sat, and told them.
