Ramon made a dismissive wave of his hand.
“De nada,” he said. “We get along fine, and I even like the little rat dog.”
“Hey, don’t call Kelsey a rat dog. He’s the love of my life.”
“Usually, girls have boys for that role,” Ramon reminded her.
“Don’t go there this morning. I’m too tired to hear your grandmotherly advice about relationships and marriage.”
“When was the last time you ate?”
Trakes slowly shook her head as she pondered the question. Then she sighed.
“I had a cup of chocolate early this morning.”
Ramon shook his head and said, “You need a mother.”
He turned and started toward the door.
“Walk Kelsey, and I’ll have breakfast for you by the time you bring him in,” he called over his shoulder.
She smiled as she realized how hungry she was. The second great thing about having Ramon as a neighbor was that he as a chef, he always had food. Rarely did she have to worry about shopping and never about cooking. Ramon always had leftovers from the restaurant where he worked. She sometimes wondered if he didn’t make extra with her in mind.
“You could be my mother,” she called after him, then she turned headed back down the steps with Kelsey bounding at the end of his leash.
Trakes took a bubble bath. She wanted to ease the tension of the murder scene from her mind. She wanted to feel like a girl. She knew the only caressing she would receive would come from the soap as it released the scented bubbles that teased her skin. She closed her eyes, and a crooked, closed-lip, but melancholy, smile grew. Her only kisses would come from Kelsey.
She was in her robe and sitting on her sofa when Ramon knocked on her door and entered without waiting for her to acknowledge him. He carried a covered dish in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. Before the door closed, the aroma of the food filled the space and she felt her stomach grumble.
“That smells heavenly,” she said. “Did you make that?”
He looked insulted. “Of course I made it, and I heated it up just now.”
He motioned for her to stay on the sofa and pushed a small end table in front of her with his foot. Kelsey ran in circles and alternated between jumping onto the sofa and jumping down.
Ramon sat the plate onto the table and from his back pocket, pulled silverware wrapped in a cloth napkin. He sat the bottle of wine next to the plate and looked sternly at her. He raised a finger and warned, “Do not touch this until I return.”
She smiled and nodded.
Ramon went into her kitchen and returned with two water glasses.
“Have you no stemware?” he asked.
“I have what you find,” she said, speaking around the piece of meat she was chewing.
Ramon noticed.
“Hey, I told you to wait. What if I took it back?”
“Need I remind you I carry a loaded firearm?” she smiled. “You’d not make it to the door.”
He shook his head and reached a finger to swipe a touch of sauce from the corner of her mouth.
“You like?” he asked.
“I love,” she hummed. “I’m thinking I should marry you for your cooking.”
Ramon removed the cork from the wine and poured each of them a small amount in the tumblers. He gave Trakes hers and toasted, “To you, little sister.”
“Don’t you think it strange that we are drinking wine at 11 o’clock in the morning?”
“Not when you work all night. It’s like...” he paused and calculated time, “3 o’clock in the morning for you. Drink up. It will help you sleep later, but first, you eat.”
With a touch of showmanship, Ramon removed the cover of the plate Trakes had replaced after her sneak. Steam still rose from the meal.
“Grilled chicken breast topped with a lemon garlic butter sauce. It is accompanied by pasta, which is also bathed in the sauce. Bon appétit.”
Trakes leaned forward and inhaled the aroma. She closed her eyes and hummed.
“You take such good care of me.”
“I have to. You are my little sister,” Ramon reminded her as he placed the napkin on her lap.
She took the closeness as an opportunity to kiss the top of his head. Ramon stood, excused himself, and left, taking his glass of wine with him. Trakes waved to him, but didn’t speak. Her mouth was full.
Twenty minutes later, Ramon slipped into the room to clear the dishes. He smiled. His friend, still in her robe, was asleep on the sofa. Kelsey looked at him from the table; the dog had been caught licking the plate.
Ramon emptied the remains of her glass into the sink as he muttered, “Waste of good wine.” He picked up the plate, the napkin and the silverware. He smiled down at his friend, on her side curled into a C shape, as she was too tall for the space where she slept. He set down the dishes, went to her bedroom and retrieved a quilt from Trakes’ bed. Gently, he covered her, then picking up the dishes again, he slipped out as quietly as he had entered.
“I heard about that young man that was murdered in Central Park. Are you going to be involved with that?”
“Yes, Ma, I am the lead agent, as far as that goes,” Andee answered.
“I don’t understand,” her mother replied. “What does that mean, as far as it goes?”
It was Friday evening, and Andee, as she did most Friday evenings, called her mother.
Adeline Trakes, Addie to friends and family, but “Ma” to her daughter, lived in Asheville, North Carolina. She had been raised there, the second daughter in a family of four girls. Her father had worked for the city in the road department, and her mother had been a school teacher. Addie was a freshman at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill when a young man with a military haircut held open a door for her at the library. It turned out they were in search of the same book. He offered her the only copy found in exchange for a date.
They had been married ten years when the building fell on him in Oklahoma City. He left her with an eight-year-old daughter whom everyone said was the spitting image of her father.
Stunned at the suddenness of it all, grieved to the point of disorientation, Addie returned to where she knew she would find support and people who loved her. She went home. She raised her daughter, returned to school, and became a teacher in her mother’s footsteps.
“So, explain it to me,” she asked Andee. “What does that mean?”
“It means that the investigation is being conducted by the NYPD homicide team. I get to tag along and run errands and make sure no diplomat is upset by anything we do.”
“But your name is on the report as being in charge?”
“Yeah, it is that.”
“Then you shouldn’t complain, especially after South Dakota.”
“What do you mean by that, Ma? Why should South Dakota have anything to do with New York?”
“Andee, sweetheart, you put that man in the hospital.”
“Of course I put him in the hospital. The son of a bitch tried to rape me.”
“Don’t use that kind of language around your mother. In fact, you shouldn’t use it at all. I know you’re a police person and you carry a badge, but you are still a lady. Ladies don’t lower themselves to that kind of language.”
Andee rubbed the area between her eyebrows. She loved her mother, idolized her in many ways. The woman had suffered one of the worst losses a woman could and not only survived, but flourished. But in many ways, her mother had social blind spots. Young ladies were not to put men in hospitals, even if those men attacked them. She could feel a headache announcing its arrival in about fifteen minutes.
“Ma, sometimes I think you would have been more comfortable in the Antebellum period. You know, when ladies were ladies and all men were Rhett Butler. I didn’t do anything wrong, except signing and agreeing to this cloak of secrecy. I wish I had never been talked into that.”
“But I thought that was what your supervisor suggested,” Addie said.
“He did. He was getting a ton of pressure from the Attorney General to keep it quiet. You know what they say, boys will be boys, and the administration has plans for the jerk. Didn’t want a little misunderstanding at a Christmas party to soil his reputation.”
“Well,” Addie said, “I guess you run the risk of being treated like that, when you choose to be in a field like you are.”
“Ma, female FBI agents are not the only women who get assaulted by men. I didn’t attack him… well, I did, but only after he put hands where they didn’t belong and laughed at me when I told him I wasn’t interested. The man was married, for crying out loud.”
“Andee, I’m not saying it was your fault, but if you are in the area when bad stuff happens and you put yourself there by choice, you must be willing to accept some of the responsibility.”
The daughter hesitated as she prepared her thoughts, and when she spoke, she used the softest tone she could muster.
“Ma, it wasn’t Dad’s fault he died that day. It wasn’t the FBI that got him killed. It was a group of fanatics that set off several tons of fertilizer that killed Dad. It’s their fault.”
Silence returned her comment. Then her mother deflected the topic.
“How come you aren’t out on a date tonight?”
Andee smiled. She loved her mother. She admired her courage.
“I should be out on a date? What about you? I’m told you are the hottest 55-year-old in Asheville.”
Andee smiled when her mother chuckled, “I’m comfortable at home with my cat, but I worry about you. I had a great love in my life. I want you to be as blessed.”
“Maybe, Ma, maybe someday. Right now, I’ve got Kelsey and a really nice next door neighbor. Between the two of them, they take pretty good care of me.”
“Ramon? Is there any…”
Andee laughed into the phone, “No, Ma, no chance. He is a really nice guy, but I’m not his type.”
“Well, I can pray for you.”
“I hope you will, in all aspects of my life Ma, not just finding a boyfriend.”
Chapter 4
“Special Agent Trakes,” she said into the phone. It was just before 10 a.m. on the Monday following the murder. Trakes was in her office.
“Hey, Agent Hottie, you want to get a cup of coffee?”
She smiled at the gruff and teasingly insulting voice.
“When I was a little girl, I had one of those stuffed teddy bears that were all the rage. You remember, there was Rainbow Bear, Thunder Bear, Sugar Bear?”
“What about it?”
“Well, Detective Meeker, I used to call you Homicide Bear.”
“Homicide Bear, I like it.”
“Like I said, I used to call you that. Now, what with your added, what shall I say, presence, I call you Lard Butt Bear.”
“Oh, that’s cold, Andee, and to think I wanted to share information with you this morning. I was going to offer to pay for the coffee. Why, I…”
“Stop right there, Meeker. You haven’t paid for a cup of coffee in this town since the turn of the century.”
“Well, that may be true, which is why this morning was going to be so special.”
The agent laughed and shook her head.
“Yes, I’d love to have coffee with you, as long as mine is made from the cocoa plant.”
“You got it. I’ll send a car for you.”
“Are you telling me you have results back? Do you have information about…?”
“Don’t get you panties tied in a knot, I said I’ll send a car. You’ll want to hear about this face-to-face, if you know what I mean.”
“I’ll be waiting at the portico.”
“Fifteen minutes.”
Meeker hung up, and Trakes leaned back in her chair. She raised her feet to her desk and wondered what he couldn’t say over the phone.
The patrol car deposited Trakes in front of a diner.
“He’s in there,” the uniformed officer laughed, “you’ll find him behind a small mountain of pancakes.”
And she did.
He sat at a table away from the entrance and facing the door. Most cops are more comfortable that way. Before him sat three plates: one of pancakes, one hash-browned potatoes and one a mixture of bacon and sausage. Meeker looked up at her and smiled. He lifted a mug of coffee, sipped and winked at her.
“How on earth can you eat that much?” Trakes asked. She shook her head and sat across from him. “I’m going to have to be careful where I put my hands in fear of losing a finger. You might think it’s link sausage.”
Meeker swallowed.
“Is that any way to talk to your uncle Jerry?”
“I suppose not,” she said, “I guess I’m jealous that you can eat like that and stay so, so svelte. I have to count every calorie and carb.”
“You’re just being mean.”
“Maybe,” she shrugged. “Why am I here?”
Meeker took in a mouthful of coffee and used the liquid as a mouthwash. He swallowed and raised a wave to a server, who promptly came to the table.
“I’ve got to go to work now. Would you be kind enough to clear the table and put my meal into a to-go box?”
The server, a young woman Trakes took to be a college student, smiled and nodded. She cleared the plates and even made a quick wiping motion with a cloth. Two quick trips, the second to refill Meeker’s coffee and bring Trakes her hot chocolate, and the pair was left alone.
Meeker looked at Trakes, cleared his throat and said, “I want to ask you a favor.”
Trakes frowned, “And that is?”
“I want you to leave this investigation alone. Turn it over to some schmuck who gets lost on his way to the men’s room.”
“Why would I do that? Being a part of an investigation like this could help get me out of this place.”
“This case needs to never be solved.”
“What?” Trakes scowled and without thinking, raised her voice. “Why shouldn’t this case be solved?”
Meeker motioned for her to lower her voice, and she did.
“Answer me, Jerry. What’s the deal?”
Meeker studied the young woman across from him. He hesitated, then reached into a briefcase that sat on the floor beside him. He withdrew his hand and held a small plastic bag, sealed and attached to a sheet of paper. The bag was roughly the size of a sandwich baggie and the paper standard letter-sized, making for an odd pair. Trakes recognized it as an evidence bag with attached documentation. With a loud sigh, Meeker tossed the bag onto the table between them.
With the tip of her finger, Trakes turned the bag around and examined the round ball of metal inside it. The ball was smaller than a boy’s marble, slightly egg shaped and brightly colored.
“This looks like a ball from a muzzleloader,” she observed.
Meeker was busy stirring creamer into his coffee, but he nodded, “Good guess. It is a ball from a muzzleloader.”
“There can’t be that many guns like that around. It should be relatively easy to track the rifling marks.”
“Go ahead, look closer,” Meeker pointed at the bag with his coffee spoon. “There are no rifling marks. The ball was fired from a smoothbore, a musket.”
Trakes picked up the bag and held it closer to her face. She reexamined the ball, and the detective was right. There were no rifling marks.
“Are you telling me,” she asked with a touch of sarcasm, “our shooter marched little Eddie Ferreira across the pasture of Central Park, forced him to his knees and shot him with a museum piece?”
Meeker shrugged, “Well, they do make reproductions of these weapons.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Trakes said. “Why would they use such a gun?”
Meeker shook his head, “Andee, you’re missing the point here.”
“And that is?”
“Look again at the ball. Most balls for muzzle-loading guns are made of lead. This one is not.”
Trakes pulled her mouth into a sneer, “And you’re goi
ng to tell me this one is made of silver, or maybe uranium.”
“Silver, actually.”
Trakes made a motion of wiping her brow, “Whew, I knew it was either a crazy terrorist or a vampire hunter. Guess we got lucky.”
“Werewolf,” Meeker said.
“What?”
“Werewolf,” he repeated, as if he was talking to a child. “Vampires require a stake through their hearts. Werewolves are killed by silver bullets through the brain or a silver dagger through the heart.”
Trakes studied the oversized detective with half-closed eyelids, “You’re not going to tell me you believe this shit?”
“Don’t talk like that,” he said. “You know your mother would disapprove. And it doesn’t matter if I believe it or not. Someone evidently does.”
Trakes picked up the bag and looked at the slightly distorted ball of silver.
“You know,” she said, “on Friday and over the weekend, I studied up on our friend Eduardo Ferreira, and he was a bad boy. If all the information and rumors are true, how he wound up is not surprise. But if he was a vampire, that puts him into a whole new league.”
“Not a vampire, a werewolf.”
“Oh, yeah, I forgot. It’s important I remember what kind of mythical animal this freak was.”
“Yes, Andee, it is.”
Trakes looked at Meeker, and the man wasn’t smiling. Her smile faded.
“Look,” he said, “when your father died, I stepped in and tried to have a hand in helping you grow up.”
“And I appre…”
“Shut up, I’m talking here.”
Trakes closed her mouth, but her glare made it clear she did not like being ordered about. Meeker ignored it.
“Your father was the best friend I ever had, and it made no difference that career choices put miles between us. I’m not saying I took his place, I certainly did not, but I tried to help out. That is what I’m doing now, trying to help out. You don’t want any part of this investigation Andee. It’s going to get ugly. When it’s over, any good work you do will be covered up by the sensationalism of the werewolf hunter. It’s a no-win deal.”
Shadow of the Moon: A Fantasy of Love, Murder and Werewolves Page 4
