I grabbed an amber silk-blend cami, black pants and a blazer that wouldn’t last through the client interview—not in the L.A. heat. Then I pulled on my black low-heeled boots from yesterday and was off before I could change my mind. Leaving Apollo felt like leaving behind a part of myself.
I squashed the feeling mercilessly. I couldn’t think about any of that now. I had a client, one I hoped came with a big, juicy case rife with distraction. No cheating spouse or missing money, but something I could sink my teeth into. Like a chocolate croissant.
Speaking of which…my favorite coffee shop was on the way, and after my earlier aerobics with Apollo, some sustenance was definitely in order. I’d probably earned myself a cheesy omelet, an entire side of bacon and whatever else I could carry back from an all-you-can-eat buffet, but I didn’t have time. Carbohydrates and caffeine would have to do the trick.
I was already late. It wouldn’t do to arrive faint with hunger as well. Better to take the five-minute detour and show up with pastry-shaped peace offerings.
I pushed through the door of the coffee-shop/art house I frequented to find, mercifully, only one man ahead of me, already paying for his cuppa.
Barry-the-barista greeted me by name and asked, “The usual?”
“Yeah, but make it three. Wait, four. Make one soy just in case and hold the sugar on two. Three chocolate croissants and three regular.”
“Oh, so it’s a party,” he said, drinks already in progress.
I smiled. “Don’t know what everyone else is going to eat.”
“Isn’t that why you ordered the plain?”
“You know me so well.”
And all I knew was his name. Well, and the fact that he’d proposed to his girlfriend last month and been accepted. And that the wedding was next spring. And…okay, so I knew quite a bit. Probably, I’d even financed a good part of the big day.
While I waited, I looked up at the ever-present TV screen tucked away in a corner of the cafe, practically a necessity out here between weird weather, riots, and all-important air quality updates. The sound was down or off, but the subtitles scrolled across the bottom of the screen—all about a murder in the upscale Hollywood Hills. As I watched the external footage of a body being loaded into the back of an ambulance, I caught the flash of a familiar figure—Detective Nick Armani. My ex. He looked…well, as amazing as always, all dark hair and midnight blue eyes. I knew those eyes in all of their moods; right then they were troubled, his usual poker face nowhere in evidence.
A zing went through me and I froze. It could not be about Nick’s eyes. It couldn’t, but… It happened again and I laser-focused on the foot disappearing into the ambulance, the door slamming on it with the finality of death. Something was not right at the scene, even beyond the taking of a life. Something…
Barry called my name. For the second time, I thought, and I shook myself out of my fugue to grab the coffee carrier and pastry bag he offered me. Only to set them back down on the counter so that I could root around in my pocket for payment. I left the change in his tip jar. Maybe I could help toward a down payment on the hall. It was my feeble attempt to counteract the bad in the world with just a little bit of good.
The office was only another minute away, located in old Hollywood, home of iconic theaters like the Orpheum and Rialto, sadly long since past their prime, most no longer operating as theatres. My office was in an old art deco building with a lift so ancient there was always a chance the doors wouldn’t open again once they closed. But there were rules against messing with historic buildings by doing things like updating unsafe equipment. I decided to live dangerously and take the elevator anyway. I lived to tell the tale.
The door to the office opened while I was still trying to juggle coffee, pastries and keys. A haughty Jesus (pronounced Hey-Zeus) stood in its place, glaring his disapproval.
“You’re late,” he said.
“No kidding,” I answered.
“The client is waiting.”
“She wouldn’t be waiting anymore if you’d let me in.”
He relieved me of the coffees and graciously allowed me pass.
“Would you carry those in for me?” I asked.
“It depends. Is one of them mine?”
“Yes.”
“Well then, chica, by all means.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. Chica meant all was forgiven. Boss lady would have meant I was still in the doghouse, which could mean anything with Jesus from him changing the password on our computer network to selling my story to the tabloids…not that he knew the half of it. One did not thwart Jesus’s iron will.
I expected to see the client almost immediately, sitting in the small waiting area in front of Jesus’s desk. Instead, he led the way to my office, and as we approached the door, I understood why he’d tucked this one away, despite my prohibition on seating anyone in my office when I wasn’t there to watch over them. The sound of her sobbing carried all the way through the door. Big, sloppy tears from the sound of them. Jesus abhorred a scene…unless he was creating it. And messes were right out. He’d probably handed her the tissue box, toed my garbage can closer to her and run for the hills.
“Good luck,” he stage-whispered as I reached past him to open my door. As soon as I had that hand free again, he passed the coffee tray into it, ushered me forward with a hand to my back and closed my office door firmly behind me.
The girl, because really she wasn’t much more than that—nineteen, twenty maybe—looked up from the tissue she held over her nose. Her eyes were watery and red where they weren’t cornflower blue.
“I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting,” I said. “Can I offer you something. Coffee? A pastry?”
She stared blankly at first, as though the words were in some foreign language she had to translate for herself.
“I’m lactose intolerant,” she said finally.
“One of these is soy.”
The girl gave a wobbly smile. “Thanks then, I could use it.”
I wondered if my foreseeing had played any part in the order, but if it had, I wouldn’t have paid for the fourth cup… I set the coffee carrier down on my desk and handed her the one marked soy. Then I set the sugars—I’d gotten a fistful of each—out where she could reach them and in lieu of a plate, tore the paper pastry bag down the center to reveal the yummy goodness inside.
She went for sugar in the raw and eyed the croissants as if she hadn’t eaten in an age.
I grabbed a chocolate croissant to show her the way and bit into it immediately. The taste—butter and chocolate and flaky sweet goodness burst onto my tongue. I did not moan, but it was a close thing.
She sniffled, used the edge of the tissue in her hand to swipe at the moisture on her face and to give a good hard blow of her nose, then dropped it into the wastebasket and reached for one of the plain pastries. It was a good thing, I thought, that I wasn’t the germaphobe Jesus was. I could just picture his reaction.
But once grabbed, all she did was hold the croissant in her hand. I half feared she’d forget it wasn’t the tissue and we’d have a big ole mess on our hands.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” I asked.
The girl’s eyes filled with tears again.
“Why don’t we start with your name?”
“Jessica,” she said. “Jessica Roland.”
That zing from back at the coffee shop struck again and I knew instantly where I’d heard the name Roland before…the teletype about the Hollywood Hill murders.
“And you’re here today because…” I prompted.
“Because of my parents,” she said, finishing my sentence on a sob. As I’d feared, she started to raise the croissant to her face. I quickly dropped my own like a hot potato in order to head her off with the offer of another tissue.
The Hollywood Hill murders… Allowing Jessica a moment
to compose herself gave me all the time I needed to imagine just how overjoyed Nick would be about my interfering with his new case. He’d be positively giddy.
But Jessica had made her appointment yesterday. Before the killings. Or at least before the bodies had been found. Maybe this was about something else? Inheritance or…
“What about them?” I asked gently.
“They’re dead. Murdered,” she said, holding my gaze, the tissue unused in her hand. “And…and the worst is…I think my brothers did it.”
And I thought I had problems.
“Explain?”
She took a huge sip of her soy latte first for sustenance. “I mean, not them exactly,” she said, looking away, “but… Let me start at the beginning.”
“That’s usually best,” I said. I could imagine Jesus rolling his eyes at me for that, but I wasn’t trying to be a smart aleck…not this time anyway.
Jessica stood with her coffee and paced as she talked. “I called yesterday because… Look, this is going to sound crazy, but someone told me you sometimes handle things…a little outside the box.”
I nodded to encourage her to continue. There was no point in denying what was, especially when it was so severely understated. Gods, plague demons, dragons, apocalypsi…or whatever the plural might be of apocalypse… Yes, we certainly handled things outside the box…Pandora’s Box, specifically.
She took a deep breath. “Here’s the thing. Ian and Richie got back just this past weekend from the graduation trip my parents sent them on to Egypt. My brothers had always been fascinated with it. Ian was even planning on going to college for archaeology, Richie probably for the drinking. Anyway, the thing is, they came back…different. I don’t know how to describe it. They’ve always been trouble. Not bad, just…they don’t really have any impulse control. If something occurs to them, it has to be done…right that instant. Especially if it’s new or exciting or dangerous. Mom and Dad have always had the influence or the money to get them out of any trouble they’ve gotten into. Still, they’ve always been fun-loving and have always looked out for me as their little sister. Well, not little, but younger.”
“But now?”
“When they came back, they were…scary. Different. Ian said… I don’t even want to tell you what he said to me. I’m his sister. He’s never been like that. He would have punched out any of his friends who talked to me that way, and… I was freaked. I mean, seriously. For the first time ever, I locked my door against them, and the night before last, I was sure I heard the door knob rattle, like someone was trying to get in.”
“You mentioned Ian. What about Richie?”
“Richie’s been…quiet since he got back. Not pensive-quiet, but more like a predator of some kind, waiting and watching, looking at me like prey. And the way he looked at Mom and Dad… Yesterday my parents got into a knock-down, drag out fight with the boys. There’d been a call from the tour company about them. Mom and Dad were trying to protect me, I think. They wouldn’t tell me what was going on, but sent me away to a friend’s house. That was when I called you and now…”
Her hand was shaking so hard I could hear the remains of her coffee sloshing about in her cup. I rose to guide her back to her seat so she could sit down before she fell down. She followed my guidance, and when she was back in her chair, she looked up, tears glittering in her eyes as she speared my gaze. “Do you believe in possession or… I don’t know, is there some kind of drug or disease that can totally change someone’s personality? I mean, there’s no doubt these are my brothers. The way they walk and talk, their mannerisms, but…but at the same time, they’re not. I’ve heard about the curse of the pharaohs. Do you think that somehow they disturbed an ancient tomb or…I don’t know. Can you even investigate something like that? Especially if it happened an entire continent away? Please tell me you can help. I don’t know where else to go.”
I’d get to “the curse of the pharaohs” in a second.
“Have you talked to the police yet?”
She looked away now, and I knew she hadn’t. “N-no,” she admitted. “I mean, they’re my brothers. They’re not themselves, but the police aren’t going to believe that. They’re only going to look at the boys’ records, assuming my parents left any behind, and the evidence, and… I don’t know what to do.”
“Jessica,” I said gently. “You have to talk to the police. I know the detective in charge. He’ll listen. He has to pursue the investigation, of course, and go where the evidence takes him, but… Well, he’ll listen. That much I can promise you.”
She lunged forward and grabbed my hand across my desk. “You can help me then? You’ll take the case?”
I couldn’t do anything else. If she was right about her brothers, I might be the only P.I. who could help her.
“I will. First, you need to tell me everything you can about your brothers. Their friends, their resources, places they frequent, what they drive, anything you can think of. Most especially, I need to know what tour they were on. I’m going to need to contact the tour company. I presume the police didn’t find them at the house? They haven’t yet been arrested?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Then step one, I call my friend the detective. Step two, we find your brothers. If they’re dangerous, we need to get them safely under wraps while we figure out what’s going on.”
Her hand still clutched mine, and now she squeezed. “Thank you,” she said in a voice gone hoarse with emotion. “Thank you.”
I squeezed back and smiled reassuringly as I took my hand back so that I could call Jesus on the intercom. “Jesus, will you bring in a standard contract for Ms. Roland?”
He agreed, and I turned back to Jessica. “Now, about this curse of the pharaohs…”
It was superstition nonsense, of course… A few early archaeologists had met with misfortune, but no more than normal, and Howard Carter, the infamous discoverer of Tut’s tomb, had lived to the ripe old age of sixty-four. Science didn’t allow for “curses”. It did allow for deadly mold or bacteria which could have accumulated in the tombs or burial boxes over the years and made people sick when the spores were unleashed, but none of those, that I knew of, made people into crazed killers.
Not that I thought science held all the answers. I knew better than most that Shakespeare had been right—there were far more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in my philosophy.
“What about mad cow disease?” she asked when I finished. “Or, like, syphilis? Not that I’m saying they have syphillis. I know that can take years to make a brain into Swiss cheese, but…something like that. It can happen, right? Maybe if I can convince them to get tested…”
“No!” I said, a little too quickly. “I mean yes, it’s possible, but I don’t want you alone with them. I don’t want you to confront them. If it’s true that they’re responsible for what happened to your parents, it’s too dangerous for you. You need to let me handle things.”
Jesus knocked on the door and didn’t wait for me to give him the all-clear before coming in with the contract in duplicate.
Jessica didn’t delay signing. “Do you take credit cards?” she asked.
First world problems. Nobody carried cash or checks anymore.
“Sure,” I said, letting Jesus know with a look that this time we’d make an exception. Generally, cash and checks were a lot harder to dispute if you didn’t like the way an investigation turned out.
As soon as the paperwork was done, I had her list out all the things I’d asked her—people, places, hangouts for her brothers, cell phone numbers. Everything she could think of. While she was writing, I made the call.
As predicted, Detective Nick Armani was beside himself to hear from me. No, really.
Chapter Two
I followed Jessica to the police precinct. She had her own car, but I wasn’t entirely sure she was fit to drive, and any
way, I wanted to talk to Nick myself. I needed to prime him on what she was going to say and pick his brain about the case.
He hadn’t loved my “interference” in his cases before we’d dated. Now that we had history I suspected he’d love it even less. Especially now that I kept company with his former rival. “Kept company with” sounded so much more and less than “dating”, which was far too normal for whatever was between Apollo and me. Now that we were trapped in each others’ orbit? Now that inescapable forces pulled us together…
Gah, this thing with Apollo was dangerous. Certainly for my concentration. He wasn’t even here and he was messing with me.
So, Nick. Detective Armani. Whatever we were calling each other these days. Neither one of us was going to be leaving L.A. We’d have to find a way to work together sooner or later.
It was a good thing I’d taken that fourth coffee with me when I left the office. I finally understood what I’d bought it for in the first place. It wasn’t for me, though I’d toyed with the idea, even knowing that me on caffeine overload was something like a Chihuahua on speed. It was for Nick. A peace-offering of sorts. It would be cold, but still better than the swill they served at the precinct.
I met Jessica at her car in the parking lot and we walked in together.
The desk officer who ruled all traffic in and out of the precinct with an iron fist raised a brow at the sight of me. I wondered if he’d seen the stories about the wings or whether he knew about me and Nick and the breakup. I hadn’t seen him since I’d returned from my trip back to Greece to meet with the Gray Sisters. I didn’t know what tales Nick might have told about us or the miraculous healing from his third-degree burns. Very possibly we should have gotten our stories straight on the phone, but I’d had an audience and, really, it hadn’t even occurred to me.
“We’re here to see Detective Armani,” I said quickly, before the sergeant could ask anything unprofessional in front of my client. “Tori Karacis, P.I., and my client Jessica Roland. He’s expecting us.”
Blood Hunt Page 2
