by Lisa Olsen
Chapter Four
“Thanks for the ride, I wasn’t expecting door to door service,” Lexi smiled as Gabriel pulled up in front of the old Victorian home she shared with Maddie and Paul.
“It’s no trouble,” he shrugged away the thanks with an easy grin.
“So if this is the end of the investigation, I guess I might not see you again?”
“Yeah, I suppose that might be true,” he admitted with a slow nod, as if thinking about something else.
Now that they were at the end of the line, Lexi found herself not quite ready to say the final goodbye. “Do you want to come in for a cup of coffee or something?”
Ryan hesitated long enough that she thought he was going to say no but then he turned off the engine. “Never been one to say no to a cup of coffee from a pretty lady.”
A flush of pleasure went through her at the compliment. “Alright then, come on in, I’ll get the coffee brewing.” It was a safe bet Paul was at work and Maddie would be out shopping until the cows came home. That should give them enough time to see if they had anything in common besides a tenuous tie to the past and Neil’s disappearance.
“This place is… big,” Gabriel paused before climbing the short flight of stairs to the covered porch that wrapped around three sides of the house.
Lexi had a feeling the adjective was slapped on at the end when he couldn’t find anything complimentary to say about the house, which was an eyesore at best, and she laughed at his diplomatic tone. “It’s okay, you can say it… we know it’s kind of a pit right now, but it’s got potential. Officially it’s Paul’s house and he rents rooms out to us, but Maddie and I have put in so much work on the place, we feel like it’s ours in a way.”
“That’s Paul Spencer?”
Lexi’s brows rose in surprise. “Yeah, how did you know?”
“Cop,” a half shrug was given.
“You checked up on me?” Why had he bothered? Or did he really suspect she had something to do with Neil’s disappearance?
Ryan shrugged again, a slightly apologetic look on his face this time. “I’m a cop, it sort of goes with the territory that I check out everyone that catches my interest.”
“You’re interested in me?” the corner of her mouth tugged up into a half smile.
Gabriel’s answering smile was inscrutable. “Let’s just say you’re definitely not the usual type of girl I run into,” he said finally.
It occurred to her that he must be a great poker player, because she was having trouble getting a good read on him, but she thought he was being complimentary. “Is that good or bad?”
His hand waved back and forth in a so-so motion. “I’ll let you know once I taste the coffee,” he teased.
“Oh the coffee, right. Come into the kitchen with me and keep me company,” she caught hold of his arm, pulling him through the dilapidated front entry that was a cosmetic nightmare, towards the one room on the ground floor she could be proud of. While the majority of the house was still in need of some serious refurbishing, the kitchen had been the main focus of their restoration efforts so far. The old cabinets had been repainted a crisp white and hung with new doors and hardware, appliances replaced with modern stainless steel and the old pitted and scarred countertops with smooth granite. The original wood floor had been sanded down and re-stained the color of warm honey. The effect was a pleasing blend of old and new that somehow worked and it was Lexi’s favorite room in the house with the exception of her bedroom.
Making a beeline for the coffee pot, Lexi released her hold on the detective, letting him inspect the kitchen on his own, but she noted with a surge of pride that he looked considerably more impressed with this part of the house.
Gabriel’s hand skimmed over the sleek countertop. “This is nice. Did you do the work in here yourselves?”
“Yep.” Lexi traced a vein of gold in the swirl of earth tones found in the giant slab. “You’d think the counter would be the hardest to manage but the floor was actually the biggest pain in the ass. The next big project is the main bathroom. The plumbing in this place is older than dirt and we’re probably gonna have to replace all of the tile, but the giant clawfoot bathtub stays. Paul says he heard about a company that will re-enamel it or something, make it look as good as new,” she chatted lightly as she got the mugs and things down for the coffee.
“Oh yeah? I’ve done a fair amount of tiling in my day; it can be a bitch to get everything to line up just right.” His hands came up as though he was remembering a difficult project that resisted his efforts and Lexi thought he was probably the type who needed to have things line up perfectly straight or his sense of order would be thrown into a state of chaos.
“Well, now I know who to call if we get stuck or just need an extra pair of hands,” she smiled over her shoulder. “So what kind of detectiving do you do when you’re not taking missing persons reports?”
“Homicide mostly, a little bit of robbery when it’s a high value theft or if we suspect it’s part of a string of robberies or a known ring of thieves, but not your standard B&E’s or snatch and grabs.”
Lexi nodded, pretending she knew what the hell he was talking about. Those crime procedurals on TV never caught her interest, so she had no idea what a snatch and grab or a B&E was. The mugs she got down were a little dusty and without thinking much of it, she tugged off her soft cotton gloves and pulled out a pair of disposable latex ones so she could give them a proper wash. Reaching for a dishtowel, she was a little disconcerted to see him watching her intently. “What?”
“Okay seriously, this has been bugging me all day; do you always wear the gloves?”
“Uh yeah, pretty much, unless I’m in my room.”
“Are you a germophobe or…”
“No, not exactly. I told you, I wear them for protection.” Lexi turned away to pour out the coffee, using the simple act as a way to buy her some time. This was what she’d been hoping she could avoid at least a while longer until he had a chance to know her a little better. But then again, there was a good chance she wouldn’t see him again, wasn’t there?
“Protection from what?”
Setting the mugs down on the counter, she went back for the milk and sugar, avoiding his eyes for the moment. “I get… impressions from things I touch. The gloves keep me from constantly picking up distractions every time I touch something, so I can function,” she said simply.
“Impressions,” he repeated.
In for a penny, in for a pound. "I can see things when I touch them. Sometimes it’s brief images; sometimes quite a bit more depending on how much they've been handled and if there was a particular association with them. It's just something I've always been able to do and it's more of a nuisance than anything else, trust me there are things you don't want to know about how your food has been prepared," she went for a smile, "hence the gloves."
Gabriel stood there, the mug frozen halfway between the counter and his mouth. “You see things… like visions?”
She could tell from the way he looked at her that he was skeptical at best and seriously doubting her sanity at worst and Lexi struggled to explain it in a way that didn’t make her sound completely whacko. "It's like... I get images of things, places the object has been, who's been handling it, what they were thinking at the time. If it's something they've held for a long time I can sometimes even see the person and what they're doing now." Was she just digging herself a deeper hole? "There are layers to it; once you figure out how to peel them away, then you can look farther and farther back into its history. I’ll tell you what, give me something of yours and you’ll see if I can really do what I say I can or if I’m just a little balmy in the brainpan.” Sometimes that was on the only way, to give an actual demonstration. Even then, some people assumed it was a parlor trick.
“Okay,” he seemed willing to play along at least. Pulling out his wallet, he fished out a business card and handed it over.
Accepting it with her left hand, she pulled off the rig
ht glove with her teeth revealing her pale, smooth hand. Drawing in a long, calming breath before she touched it with bare skin, Lexi let the images wash over her for a good few minutes, taking it back as far as she could before her eyes popped open. “So when I touched it, I could see the last time you pulled out the card next to it to give to Monica.” Not that it would prove anything to him since she’d been standing right there when it happened. “Before that, I saw when you put it in your wallet to begin with and beyond that I could see where the card was shipped from, stuff like that. Nothing too interesting, but if you gave me something more personal I could probably pick up more."
Gabriel’s head canted to one side as he studied her, obviously trying to decide if he could take her at her word. “Where was I when I put it the card in my wallet in the first place?”
“In your bedroom, I think. There’s a blue comforter on the bed and a big brown chair in the corner of the room with a bunch of clothes hanging on the back of it. The blinds were open, but I couldn’t see much of what was out the window because you were looking at your wallet. Oh and the bedside table, it has…two drawers and it’s a dark brown, I think they call it espresso, with silver handles. ” Lexi struggled to recall every detail she could about the room.
His eyebrows climbed skyward and she could tell she’d been accurate in her description of the room. “So you get these visions from everything you touch? What would happen if you touched me?” Gabriel extended his hand, palm up towards her.
Lexi withdrew her hand instinctively, cradling it to her body and then away with a little gasp as she picked up something from her jeans without being prepared for it. “I don't...” she paused to take a calming breath, giving him an apologetic smile. “I'm sorry, I don't touch people,” she tried to explain, reaching for the coffee mug with her gloved hand before realizing that she hadn’t added milk or sugar yet. Instead she hurried to replace the cotton glove, instantly feeling more at ease once it was covered again.
“Ever?” he blinked.
“No, not for a long, long time,” she replied in a subdued voice.
“Why, what happens when you touch a person?” Gabriel frowned, dropping his own hand back to the counter again.
“The devil is in that girl… a sign of my sins… should never have taken up with her daddy… this is my punishment…” The words spilled into Lexi’s mind as she looked up at her mother, impossibly tall from the little girl’s vantage point.
“Don’t say that momma, I’m a good girl,” Lexi protested, tugging at the hand she was holding. Her mother recoiled from the confirmation of her thoughts, pulling her hand free, eyes filled with suspicion and not a little bit of fear.
Lexi swallowed back the wave of discomfort the memory produced; it hadn’t been an isolated incident from her childhood. “I’ll get a rush of what they’re thinking and it’s usually not pretty, believe me.” An awkward silence sprang up between them and she felt the need to fill it. “So anyway, that’s why I wanted to get into Neil’s office, so I could see if I could pick up anything that would tell me where he skipped off to.”
“And that’s how you knew about Monica?” he nodded slowly, obviously still processing.
“Yeah, but all I got from his office was that he was looking to beat traffic on the commute home, so nothing of use.”
Ryan nodded again, an unreadable expression on his face. After a moment, his posture shifted, and Lexi didn’t have to be a psychic to tell it definitely had that “I gotta get outta here” vibe to it. Sure enough, the next words out of his mouth were, “I should ah, probably get back to the office.”
“Right, of course you do,” Lexi nodded. It was, after all, the middle of the work day for most folks. Still, it stung a little at how quickly he wanted to get out of there.
“Thanks for the coffee,” he nodded back. She noted his full cup and he seemed to realize at the same instant that he hadn’t had any yet, and raised the mug to his lips, downing a big swallow of black coffee before he looked for the door.
“Yeah, don’t let me keep you from your detectiving,” she replied, following him to the front of the house.
A faint smile returned to his lips. “Actually, that would be either detecting or investigating.”
“I like detectiving better,” she shrugged, undeterred.
“Alright, detectiving then,” he replied equably. “I’ll let you know if we hear anything on Neil’s disappearance.”
“Thanks, I’ll tell Allison what a great help you were today.” Lexi meant it; she never would have gotten in to Neil’s office without his help.
He paused by the front door as though he felt the need to say something else. “I have to say my initial impression stands. You’re definitely not anything like the girls I usually run into.”
“Is that good or bad?” Lexi leaned against the doorframe.
The hesitation was longer this time and she got the impression that he honestly wasn’t sure, not just looking for a polite way to blow her off. “It was nice to see you again, Miss Morgan,” he replied finally.
Message received. “It was nice to see you too, Detective Ryan.”
A maroon Dodge Stratus pulled into the driveway just as Gabriel was walking back to his car and the men nodded to each other faintly in passing. “Who was that?” Paul asked as he came up the walk.
The detective was already pulling away at a fast clip, tires crunching on the uneven pavement that badly needed repair. “Oh, just a cop,” Lexi replied, trying to keep her voice even. It shouldn’t bother her that she’d been rejected by a man she hardly knew and likely wouldn’t ever see again, but it did.
“He was here about your brother in law’s case?” Lexi nodded in response, and Paul stopped on the porch beside her to watch the vehicle pull out of sight. “It seems like he was in a hurry, did he get a lead?”
“No, I just told him about these babies,” Lexi waggled her gloved fingers at him, offering a broken smile when she saw the look of recognition on his face.
“I’m sorry sweetie,” Paul wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “You want me to go find him and rough him up? Beat some sense into him?”
Lexi couldn’t help but laugh at the image of Paul trying to chase Gabriel down to teach him a lesson. Though Paul was taller than she was and well muscled for his frame, the detective still had a good couple of inches and at least ten pounds of muscle on him, besides some form of cop training that was bound to give him an edge in a fight. By contrast, Paul had never been in a fight in his life as far as she knew. Friends since college, he’d always been more of the cerebral type, given to writing in his journal and talking about philosophy. Lexi was pretty sure Gabriel would wipe the floor with him in a physical confrontation. “No, but thanks for the offer though. His loss, right?” she tried to shake off the conversation. “Did you come home for lunch?”
“Yeah, are you hungry? I thought I might whip us up a little pasta.”
Paul was a fantastic cook and could throw together a meal in the time it usually took her to make a simple sandwich but her appetite wasn’t up for anything just then. “No thanks, I’m not all that hungry, but you go ahead.”
“Lexi…” he gave her a pointed look.
“No I’m serious, I’m not hungry right now; I had a big breakfast with Maddie before our big attempt at corporate espionage,” Lexi grinned. “I’ll tell you all about it later though; right now I need to get back to work.”
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely, but I’ll have some leftovers later, I promise.”
“Alright,” Paul relented, loosening his tie as he stepped over the threshold, heading for the kitchen. “You know where to find me if you change your mind.”
“I do. And you know where to find me if you need me.” Her studio. Thanks to a small annuity she got from Gran’s estate and the low rent Paul charged to share the house, Lexi was able to focus primarily on her art and photography as a main source of income, supplem
enting from time to time with a part time job for extra cash. Though she hadn’t enjoyed a huge success, Lexi usually sold a few pieces a month which was enough to keep her above the poverty line. Maddie was even helping her put together a website to both display and sell her art.
The art studio was set up in the detached garage on the rear of the property that Paul was generous enough to allow her to use. He’d helped her build a workbench along one wall and a set of drying racks along another. Lately she dabbled a bit more with sculpture than her original love of painting, but as she stepped into the studio, none of her half finished projects called to her. Instead, she sat before the easel, a blank piece of paper staring back at her while she planned her next piece.
The image of the woman in Allison’s house returned to her; the owner of the earring. Her face loomed clear in Lexi’s memory, so full of sadness and longing but unquestionably a great beauty. The more she thought about it, the more she felt the pull to drop her other projects and paint the woman. Lexi’s paintings usually followed after a series of sketches to help her find the right positioning and perspective but she wasn’t thinking much about perspective as she started putting inspiration to paper. The pencil moved with quick, light strokes over the piece, slowly taking form until she stood back to stretch and the woman’s face stared back at her from the easel. “I wonder who you were…” Lexi murmured, adding a touch of shading and detail she didn’t normally add to the rough sketches.
Pulling out a fresh canvas, Lexi started to sketch out the basic layout she had in mind for the portrait, intending to place the woman at her dressing table, just as she’d seen her in the vision. Oblivious to the passage of time, she set to work until the sound of her name being called from the house caught her attention. “Out here!” she yelled back, not particularly caring if it reached the house or not.
Paul wasn’t content to just hear her voice though, knocking lightly at the door before entering. “I was worried I was going to have to send out a search party for you.”
