Aaron looked a bit shell-shocked as the Lucys surged from the booth and commanded their men. Hannah knew her eyes were dancing as his possessive side fought with his loner tendencies. It was a good thing that she didn’t have any preconceived notions about relationships, or she’d be destroyed by his reluctance.
He fell in step beside her as the crowd spilled from the café. “Kurt says now that his mother is no longer on the board, the Kennedy corporation is willing to sell its properties. I can buy the shop if I want.”
“And pay to replace your own window,” she said with amusement. “What do you think you’ll do?”
“Own it,” he said decisively.
Hannah tried not to ponder the implications of his decision to permanently attach himself to Hillvale. He belonged in larger circles, but Hillvale was good for him. Which meant that if she wanted a relationship, she needed to be a schoolteacher and stay.
“Kurt’s insurance will cover the window,” Aaron continued. “Mine will cover the inventory damage and loss of sales until I can reopen. What were the Lucys cackling over?”
“They want to tackle Val about the rocks Carmel collected. I’m not sure she can tell us anything new or interesting. I’m still fixated on the Healing Stone, and Cass told us everything she knows about that. I think we’ve reached a dead end, unless Walker has something.” Hannah resisted slipping her hand around his arm. He was walking close enough to do it, but this had to be his choice. She refused to be a Lucy limpet.
“If I can touch the rocks in the jewel casket with your enhancement, we might learn more. I’ve asked Walker if we could have access to it.” Aaron brushed his hand against hers, then curled his fingers around it as they reached the boarded-up shop.
She enjoyed the sensation of their clasped hands a little too much.
“Brilliant idea,” she admitted. “Or a major plunge into time-travel country, not sure which.”
“Madness may be the best way to handle whatever this is between us,” he said grudgingly, unlocking the door. “Sanity is overrated.”
She laughed. “And if the knot in my head grows, it can make me crazy before it makes me dead. Let’s do it.”
Twenty-three
Aaron handed the insurance adjuster his inventory list and rubbed his forehead as he watched the man walk out. Reducing years of collecting unhappy antiques to a print-out of numbers slapped his ego around a little more. Yeah, he knew he had warehouses of far better merchandise, but these had been personal. They’d taught him how to block out bad memories and treat them as a professional hazard.
At least the arsonist hadn’t burned his first editions. Hannah and Wan Hai had scrubbed his bookshelves with vinegar and used fragrant polish to remove the smoke stench. They’d apparently completed that task to their satisfaction and now worked on the books, using a hair dryer to ventilate and heat them to remove any lingering odor. He was immensely grateful that the water damage was limited to the storage room.
That they’d focused their attention on the part of his shop that he loved most spoke of Lucy sensitivities, despite Hannah declaring she had none, and Wan Hai not accepting the designation at all.
The contractor he’d hired demanded his attention in the back of the shop. When Aaron returned to the front, a cleaning brigade was marching through his front door bearing buckets and supplies. Little Wan Hai brightened and immediately took to ordering them about like a general.
Even Teddy’s interior designer sister arrived—without her two munchkins. She’d kept her distance since she’d moved in. She’d suffered badly at the hands of men, and in her high-end business, she had to stay clear of felons convicted of art theft. Aaron respected her reluctance to work with him. So when Sydony marched right up to his counter, he almost bit his tongue in half.
“I know a little about smoke restoration, but I see you’re in good hands with Wan Hai. If you will allow me, I can bring in my crew to clean and repaint the walls. I’ll be happy to help you rehang and redecorate after they’re done.” She handed him her business card.
“Thank you,” he said, too shocked to do better.
Hannah appeared like a mythical house brownie to ease the gap. “You’re Mia and Jeb’s mother, right? Hi, I’m Hannah Simon. I’ll be teaching Zeke and backing up Sally for your two. We should all probably have coffee some time to discuss the direction of the school.”
She led the nervous young mother away, and Aaron had to collapse in his desk chair for a moment while he digested the unusual activity in his normally empty store. He answered the phone, consulted more with his contractor, and when he looked up again, Hannah had returned. She studied him sympathetically, then glided behind him to massage his shoulders. He nearly liquefied in a puddle of gratitude.
“This inventory means something to you,” she guessed.
“Every piece is tragic in one way or another,” he admitted. “It’s a good collection, decent enough for me to have bought each one, but they’re nothing extraordinarily valuable. I just don’t seem able to let go of the unhappiness scarring them.”
“You surround yourself with tragedy?” she asked in disbelief. “Okay, I suppose that resonates with you, given your history. What happens if we clean and polish and rub our hands over each piece?”
He shrugged. “Nothing much. Polish isn’t an emotional element. It doesn’t seep into the molecules the way a hand that’s committed murder will.”
“But if we’re happy when we touch a piece or we do happy things with it, the new memories might bury some of the ugly?” she insisted.
“Possibly,” he said, screwing up his nose in thought, not wanting to give her reason to stop the massage. “Although happiness is less visceral and focused and doesn’t usually leave strong memories.”
She swung his chair so he faced the sight of Brenda, the nurse practitioner, and Orval, the vet, admiring the poker table that had been the scene of a bloody gunfight over a century ago. Aaron wanted to leap up and steer them away, to protect them from the ghosts of that past.
“They like putting puzzles together in the evening,” Hannah whispered. “As I understand it, they’re not rich, but they donate their services to people who can’t afford to pay. They are really good people who would put joy into that table. And they’re here to help you clean up.”
The vet and the nurse had cans of furniture cleaners and were happily working on the battered mahogany. They made an incongruous pair. Orval was big, burly, bearded, and wore his long graying hair in a ponytail. Brenda was petite, wiry, and wore her garishly red hair short. Aaron remembered they’d been together at the lodge the night Carmel had died.
An inkling of an idea formed in the back of his brain. He needed more time to ponder its efficacy, but he could do something positive right now—which was what Hannah was trying to tell him.
“How do you know these things?” he demanded, just to keep her distracted. Reluctantly, he raised himself from the chair, abandoning her soothing hands.
“I observe. It’s what librarians do.” She stood back and let him do what he needed to do in his own way.
She was telling him that his inventory needed to be given positive uses, polished with love, adorned with joy, the ugly past scrubbed away and replaced with happier futures. The same could be said of him, he supposed, but that was a metaphor too optimistic to believe in just yet.
Like the executioner who had once rung it, Aaron tolled a brass gong hanging in a dark corner. The low bong reverberated through the shop, immediately commanding attention of even General Wan Hai. She shut up and glared at him.
“The insurance company will be reimbursing me for clean-up. I don’t want to insult your good deed by offering cash, although I can, if you’ll tell me that’s what you want. But what I’d like to offer is any piece in here that might make you happy. Think of it as a giant garage sale where I get rid of some of my clutter. I truly appreciate everything you’re doing today. I’ll be able to re-open much sooner than expected this way.”
Aaron waited uncomfortably as people he’d known for years gaped at him—in disbelief? Was he perceived as that. . . what, tight-fisted? Standoffish? Yeah, to the latter, he supposed. The incredulous silence was unsettling.
Hannah sidled up to Brenda, whispered something, and nodded at the table.
The wiry nurse brightened, catching on. She waved her hand. “If Orval can haul it in his truck, do you want to get rid of this old table?”
“It would be a pleasure to see it in good hands,” Aaron said, feeling an odd surge of. . . relief? Satisfaction? He’d blocked himself off for so long that he was bad at interpreting his own emotions.
Wan Hai grabbed the red Chinese porcelain teapot and held it up without speaking. Aaron nodded. She beamed so brightly with delight that he almost forgot that it had been used to poison someone’s mother.
Hannah took his arm. “You’re doing the right thing. Quit worrying,” she assured him. “Wan Hai will love that pot to pieces. It will become a treasured heirloom instead of whatever image is in your mind.”
“She’ll dispel the ghost the way Mariah swipes ectoplasm into the ether?” Aaron asked, dubious.
“There is nothing in these things that can harm any living soul except you. I’ll show you the journals of other psychometrists, if you like.”
“I’ll believe you. Maybe it’s time to clean house. But I still want to strangle whoever set the fire. They could have burned down the whole town as well as you. The things don’t matter, but the intent was evil.” He spotted Keegan polishing the medieval cuirass and pressed a kiss on Hannah’s head. “Too many ideas at once,” he murmured, not explaining himself as he crossed the shop to talk to the big Scot.
He could find this killer if he just focused on his own ability and not everyone else’s.
Wearing her usual long black veil, Val appeared at lunchtime, just as everyone’s energy was flagging. She carried big, scrumptious-smelling sacks from the café. Fee had a business to run and hadn’t been able to participate in the cleaning party, but she had still found a way to contribute.
As Aaron’s workers descended on the sacks, Val sought out Hannah. “Amber said you have questions I should answer.”
“I don’t suppose you’re keeping a journal for the library, are you?” Hannah asked, leading the theatrical Death Goddess toward the back where Aaron was working.
“Erratically,” Val admitted. “Cass keeps insisting.”
“She’s right. Someday, another singer might come along who won’t understand how to control her voice, and your experience may make all the difference. Those of us given special gifts have a duty to pass on our knowledge.”
“I will try to do better. As a child, it never occurred to me that my singing was anything unusual.” She hesitated at sight of Aaron ripping off scorched drywall.
Any woman would stop to admire the view.
He’d stripped off his shirt to work, and Hannah admired his wide muscled shoulders and lean tanned back. He turned to greet them with a lifted eyebrow and returned to his work.
“The arsonist attacked Aaron’s shop for a reason,” Hannah said, grateful that Aaron understood that Val might not speak to a man. “What you have to say may affect him more than me.”
Val nodded her veiled head but kept her distance. Hannah knew the actress had been badly scarred by a former lover, but this past year or more she’d been emerging from her solitude. Hannah didn’t want to do anything to drive her back into seclusion.
“We’d like to know more about the stones or crystals that people collected from the Kennedy grotto,” Hannah said, keeping her voice low.
Val shrugged. “I was a kid, and it was all just another game, like following Daisy to find her stash. It had rained all winter, and there was a steady river running off the mountain. The Kennedys did something to control it and created a waterfall into an old sinkhole. We found shiny rocks where the water washed over the boulders. We were like jackdaws, picking up pretty sparkly things, pretending they were gold.”
“Pretty sparkly doesn’t sound like what was in Carmel’s closet,” Hannah said in disappointment.
“The crystal only shines when it’s wet and in the sun. They were just rocks with quartz and pyrite and whatever, completely worthless for the most part. Some of them turned out to be rare and could be sold for a few weeks’ groceries, which sent everyone into reenacting the Gold Rush for a few months. But mostly, they ended up being traded and used for sparkly paint.”
Hannah knew Aaron had to be listening, so she wasn’t startled when he flung his trash outside into a dumpster, then joined them. Val backed off uneasily, but she didn’t flee. Behind the veil, she probably watched him warily.
“The rocks in Carmel’s closet emanated evil. I can’t explain better. She must have thought they had some kind of power if she kept them.” He gestured at his coffee pot, offering Val a cup.
She shook her head. “After the way things eventually turned out, I suppose they could have been evil. But I went off to college and theater and didn’t look back, except from a distance. I do think that all of the adults back then changed over the years, including Carmel. My parents were once loving and generous and opened their farm to their impoverished friends. By the end, they were grasping and angry and nothing pleased them. I hated to see my childhood Eden become what it did.”
“Crystals absorb the intent of the owner,” Hannah murmured. “I’m not sure how the Ives scientist came to that conclusion, but it does seem to have some validity.”
“Ask Lance,” Val said. Without explanation, she departed through the empty shell of the back wall.
Hannah grimaced. “This detective business is tedious. When do we get to the part where we gather the suspects in one room and accuse them all?”
Aaron chuckled around his coffee cup. “I’m working on it. But we need to keep gathering what little information is out there. I don’t know what Lance can tell us, but if we can persuade the old boy to talk, then we should try.”
“It didn’t go well last time,” she reminded him. “He looked ready to kill Carmel all over again.”
“I suspect he had more reason than most. If he knew he’d inherit the lodge, then he had even stronger motive than romantic interference. Siblings often quarrel. I can’t picture it, but he could have smacked his sister with anything that came to hand. What if Carmel had been yelling at Val?”
“Carmel could have been yelling at anyone. She could have argued with Brenda, and Orval whacked her. Carmel apparently had a dislike of Lucys. In which case, I’d be inclined to let the sheriff do his thing and blame it all on Francois, who was probably blackmailing whoever did it.” Hannah grimaced. “But someone who has killed twice isn’t right in the head. We need to find them.” She headed for the shop and lunch.
“Crazy covers half the town,” Aaron called after her.
“Including us,” she acknowledged. “Let’s hire an exorcist.”
Twenty-four
Grabbing one of Fee’s sandwiches, Aaron left his impromptu cleaning crew and departed through the burned-out wall. Guarding Hillvale from the malum lurking in the ground had taken strange paths over the years. But mostly, he’d been able to follow those paths in solitude.
Interviewing people had never been high on his list. That’s what Walker was for. But Lance had told Walker nothing useful. Carmel’s brother was a private person. He wouldn’t want his real thoughts on public record—or Aaron hoped that’s what Val was saying.
He found Lance rearranging an exhibit in the gallery. Many of the pieces had been given to the town over the years in lieu of payment for services, so the proceeds fed the town, not Lance. The artist and retired architect had been more or less living off his sister and her sons for decades.
“Do you think artwork might sell at the lodge?” Lance asked as Aaron entered.
“With the right lighting and price, maybe.” He stopped to admire the painting Lance was removing. “Are you thinking you should get more i
nvolved in operations?”
“The boys can’t afford to buy me out,” Lance said. “It’s been my home for so long, I don’t know any other. Now that Carmel isn’t interfering, I thought I could earn my keep a little.”
“The place could use brightening. Roper won’t give you any trouble?”
Lance shrugged. “He can’t argue with an owner, can he?” He turned to look at Aaron. “You’re not here to ask about the lodge. How can I help you?”
Aaron shoved his hands into his pockets and sought the right words. “We’re trying to understand why Carmel kept those crystal rocks and if they might be important. Val hinted that you might know more. Someone here has killed two people, and we can’t come up with any reason.”
“Not the rocks,” Lance said with certainty, moving his ladder down the wall. “Geoff and Lars both had them appraised in hopes they’d found gold and diamonds. The rocks aren’t even from around here.”
“But there’s something wrong with them,” Aaron said, unused to explaining himself, especially to a Null.
“Carmel was what’s wrong. She believed the things gave her special powers—like Cass’s. My sister wanted anything Cass had. That painting you had? Eversham painted it for Cass, but Carmel offered him a pot of gold and a promise to hang it in the lobby. As soon as Eversham left, she sold it to the first person who promised to take it out of town, just so Cass couldn’t have it.”
Lance knew about his Eversham? Probably from Val, through the Lucys. Aaron wanted to ask a dozen questions, but he bit his tongue and let Lance ramble.
“My sister was jealous of an old woman who has nothing but land no one wants, and Carmel coveted even that. Cass lost everything and everyone she loved, and Carmel still resented that Cass seemed content. My sister was never happy. She never understood that gold and power weren’t the sources of Cass’s happiness.”
Moonstone Shadows Page 21
