Barbed Wire Heart

by Alexes Razevich

  Silver had meaning in magic. It was the color of the moon, of the feminine spirit and power of intuition, and of healing. Silver is a good conductor of energy, not only magical but psychic energy. It was my metal of choice.

  The rowan tree is also a powerful symbol of protection. My thought was that the meaning of the box was either protection for or protection against all that silver represented. Unfortunately, figuring out which wasn’t in my bag of tricks. I needed help from an expert for that.

  Stop number one was Café Bonaparte. I perused the display case, breathing in the aroma of fresh baked goods and wondering which sweet treat would best entice help from my metal expert. After some back and forth in my head, I settled for a slice of New York cheesecake with blueberries on top. Once that was boxed up and paid for, and I reestablished feeling confident I’d cast Sudie’s protection spell properly, I walked up Pier Avenue to the Community Center, then strolled down into the parking lot that was below street level.

  I walked to the very back of the lot, to a small rectangle of greenery by the tennis courts, which fortunately weren’t in use.

  “Maurice,” I said in a loud whisper, and waited to see if he’d show up. This was his usual haunt, but I hadn’t seen him in a while. He could have moved, or he could be off visiting with some member of his extended family.

  I felt something run across my shoe.

  “Hello,” I said, and crouched down to be as close to the rat’s level as possible.

  Maurice lifted one front foot in a bit of a wave.

  I get it that some people find rats disgusting. I wouldn’t be happy if a plain old wild rat ran across my feet, but Maurice was different.

  “Whatcha bring me?” he asked, his eyes shining and his little pink nose twitching.

  I could have last seen Maurice yesterday or a year ago and I suspect his greeting would be the same. He could be blunt to the point of rudeness, but I’d come to like him and to appreciate his incredible store of knowledge.

  I opened the bright pink pastry box and set it on the ground so the rat could see in.

  “Mmmm. Cheesecake.” His tail twitched. “You must have a pretty important request for me.”

  I sat cross-legged on the asphalt and launched into the whole tale of the crying woman, rowan tree box number one, and rowan tree box number two.

  The rat had nibbled at the cheesecake the whole time I’d talked, but I knew he’d been listening.

  “Do you have the box with you?” he said.

  “It’s at home.”

  “Didn’t want to carry on your person, right?” he said.

  “The box is lovely. It’s silver. It has a rowan tree on it. It shouldn’t freak me out, but it does.”

  “You want to know if the box is cursed or enchanted?”

  I nodded. “It feels off to me. My psychic senses say it’s bad juju, but I need someone with a lot more knowledge than I have—you—to tell me exactly what it is and what to do with it.”

  “I need to see it.”

  I ran my hands over my hair, pushing it back from my face. “I thought you’d say that. I’ll be home. Come by any time.”

  Maurice cleaned his whiskers then said, “I have some things to take care of this afternoon. Seven-thirty tonight good for you?”

  “That’ll be fine.”

  Maurice sat up on his haunches and gave a whistle through his teeth. A dozen or so young rats ran out from the bushes to share in what was left of the cheesecake feast.

  The walk from the Community Center to my house is downhill. At the stop sign at Valley and Pier, I pulled my phone out of my purse and punched up Dee’s number. There were always a lot of cars at this four-way stop intersection and it usually took everyone a bit to figure out who’s turn it was. Pedestrians always had the right of way, but even walkers had to stop and judge when it was their turn to cross or risk getting nudged by a bumper. The call went through as I crossed the street and I listened to the rings until Dee’s “Hey ya,” brought a smile to my face.

  “Hey ya back,” I said as I walked. “Did Tyron tell you I called him today about a silver box someone sent me?”

  “Yeah, he did.”

  I could imagine that conversation.

  Tyron: “Oona thinks we sent her some damn silver box that we didn’t, and she swore at me on the phone. Nice consultant you brought us, Diego.”

  Dee: “Okay. I’ll check on it.”

  “The box is giving me the heebie-jeebies,” I said. “Maurice is coming by tonight at seven-thirty to tell me what he can about it. Come by any time, if you want.”

  “I’m on an all-night watch,” he said. “Burglary suspect. The same house has been hit three times in the last two months. They seem to be coming in through the dog door. My bet is on gnomes, but it might just be kids. You could come sit with me after Maurice leaves.”

  Somehow the idea lacked appeal.

  “Sitting in a car all night? I’ll pass. How about tomorrow?”

  “Once I wake up,” he said. “I’ll give you a call.”

  That was as good as I was going to get. But it was okay. One of my favorite things about Dee was we didn’t crowd each other.

  “I’ll call you later tonight,” I said.

  “Good. It’ll relieve the tedium.”

  I put a sultry tone into my voice. “I can call and talk dirty to you.”

  “You do that, I’ll need more than tedium relieved.”

  We laughed, said our goodbyes, and hung up.

  Maurice was, I knew, extremely fond of brownies with walnuts. I whipped up a batch while I waited for him to arrive. I felt bad that I was plying him only with sweets. I cut up an apple and a carrot to offer as well.

  At 7:30 on the dot, Maurice scratched at my front door.

  “Thank you for coming,” I said as I let him in.

  His nose twitched. “Is that brownies I smell?”

  “An entire pan,” I said.

  The rat scampered down the hall toward the kitchen. By the time I reached the room, which was only a few seconds later since my house isn’t that big, Maurice was already standing in the middle of the pan, nibbling away. He looked up when I came in.

  “Is that the box,” he said, glancing toward where it sat on the table, still in its plastic bag.

  “Yes.”

  He stopped eating and sighed as he stepped out of the pan. He padded over to the box and lay down next to the open end of the plastic bag, his nose twitching.

  “Coin silver,” he said. “Ninety percent silver; ten percent copper.” He glanced up at me. “Not used to make coins, despite the name. You’d be hard pressed to find a coin with silver in it nowadays.”

  “Enchanted or cursed?” I said.

  His nose twitched again. “Oh, enchanted. Definitely. Did you touch it?”

  “No.”

  “Good,” he said. “I’d get rid of it if I were you—without touching it. I’m sure you know silver is a fine conductor of psychic energy. The enchantment on this box turned it into a psychic eavesdropping device. Whoever sent it knows we’re here now discussing getting rid of the thing.”

  “Well, damn,” I said, my hands on my hips. I stared at the box, still unwilling to touch it.

  He motioned with his head for me to come close to him. He dropped his voice low. “Try not to think on what I’m about to say.”

  Just the kind of warning that would pretty much force thought of what he was about to say to reverberate inside my head. I picked a subject to think about instead and nodded.

  “Whoever sent this has a dark heart,” he said softly. “Watch yourself. Stay alert.”

  I nodded to let the rat know I’d heard and understood him and immediately started to rehash my last hockey game in my head. I’d had a pretty good game, but one moment stood out. Not just the goal I’d scored, but the look on the defenseman’s face when he thought he had me. I’d spun away and then put on a burst of speed to fly right by him. Thinking of a moment of strength when I’d been pleased
with myself let me safely tuck away Maurice’s warning to think about later.

  “You want me to do it?” Maurice asked. “Get rid of the box?”

  The box was nearly the same size he was.

  “Can you?” I said.

  Maurice squinted his eyes, sizing the thing up, I thought.

  “Might need some help at that.”

  He sat up and whistled, then turned his gaze to me. “You could open the front door.”

  “What?” I said. “You brought your crew with you?”

  Maurice laughed his high-pitched rat laugh. “Oona, you always set a good table. What sort of rat would I be if I didn’t share?”

  I opened the front door and let in a dozen or so well-groomed rats who immediately scampered down the hallway. I followed at a slower pace.

  The box was still in the plastic bag it had come in. Three rats were tugging it toward the end of the table when I entered the kitchen. The box fell off the table and hit the floor with a bang. I hoped the sound was loud and uncomfortable in the psychic ears of whoever was listening on the other end. I hoped they were super pissed that their plan hadn’t worked—there’d be no more psychic eavesdropping. I opened the back door and watched the rats pull the bag out into the yard.

  “Where will they take it?”

  “To the ocean,” Maurice said. “Salt water will erode the charm over time.”

  “Good,” I said, relieved to have the thing gone, though I didn’t like the idea of it winding up in the ocean, polluting even the tiniest bit of the place from which I drew my power. Salt water would indeed erode the charm over time and would blunt it immediately. The ocean was a big place. A little evil magic wouldn’t change its overall positivity. Still, I’d rather the rats would take it to the desert or something. But then that would pollute the earth from which others drew their power. There was no win with bad juju, no place to put it that didn’t hurt something. The only thing I could do was find who was causing it and try to make them stop. No. Not try. Make them stop.

  The rats who weren’t involved with hauling the silver box away were happily devouring the brownies, apples, and carrots on the table.

  I left them to it and went upstairs to call Dee and tell him what I’d learned. And maybe talk dirty to him. We’d see about that.

  7

  The buzzy ring tone of my cell phone woke me. I pried open my eyes and tried to make my brain focus. Judging by the light streaming in to my bedroom, it was maybe seven a.m. Gulls were likely crying outside, but my mother had pretty near soundproofed the old wooden beach cottage twenty-five years ago, shortly after I was born. Noises outside didn’t penetrate inside. I grabbed the phone and frowned at the unfamiliar number. I tended not to answer calls from numbers that weren’t in my personal phone book, but I pressed the phone on and muttered a sleepy, “Hello.”

  “She called me,” Petra said, breathlessly. “Aunt Mich. She phoned but the call was cut off before I could find out where she was.”

  I sat up, the phone pressed to my ear, all my senses awake and on alert. The skin on the back of my neck prickled. I was getting some sort of weird vibe from Petra again, but I couldn’t pin it down.

  “You have to help me find her,” she said.

  My hand tightened around the phone. I’m not a fan of people telling me what I “have to” do. Especially first thing in the morning before I’ve had my coffee. Not that I have full-blown oppositional defiant disorder or anything. It just rubs me wrong when people feel they can order me around.

  “Please,” Petra said, which mollified me some. “I’m so worried about her.”

  “I’m really sorry,” I said, “but I tried and nothing concrete came through. I don’t have any information that would help you.”

  Nothing but silence came over the line.

  “What did your aunt say?” I asked when the silence had grown uncomfortable.

  “That she was scared and needed help.”

  “Anything else. Any hint of where she was or who she was with?”

  “The call was cut off before she could say more,” Petra said. “She must have gotten hold of a cell phone somehow. I didn’t recognize the number when it came up on my screen. She only got a few words out before I heard a sort of oof sound and the line went dead.”

  I sent my senses out, trying to feel for any subtle clues Petra might have picked up during the call without realizing it, but there was nothing.

  “Please consider calling the police again,” I said, giving her the same advice I’d offered yesterday. “You have a phone number. The police can find out who that phone is registered to. They can track its location.”

  “No,” Petra said. “No police. I don’t trust them.”

  “Then a good private investigator,” I said. “Call Danyon and Peet.”

  The silence on the other end this time was so long that I checked the face of my phone to be sure the time was still racking up and the call was connected.

  “It might be John,” Petra said at last. Her voice choked a little on the name.

  I waited for her to clarify what she meant.

  “I think John might have done something,” Petra said. “She broke his heart. He said he’d never let anyone else have her.”

  The cracked heart I’d drawn last night jammed into my mind.

  “What’s John’s last name?”

  “Broadhurst,” Petra said. “John Michael Broadhurst.”

  A shiver ran down my spine. The name didn’t mean anything to me, but the shiver told me John Broadhurst and Aunt Mich were definitely connected somehow. It seemed entirely possible that he had something to do with her disappearance.

  “Where does John Broadhurst live?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Petra said. “Downtown somewhere. He never took Mich to his house. They only went to hotels. I said he probably had a wife and half a dozen kids at home.”

  That didn’t feel right. Whoever and wherever John Broadhurst was, he didn’t have a wife and kids, or if he did, he felt no emotional connection to them. There was an emotional connection to Aunt Mich though. That came through loud and strong. I rolled my shoulders to relax them. They had tensed, and I wasn’t sure why.

  “All right,” I said. “Let me make some calls, see what I can discover. Maybe I can come up with an address for this guy.”

  A loud, long sigh came across the line. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

  “I’m not promising anything. I’ll just try to find out what I can about the man.”

  We hung up and I padded downstairs to the kitchen to put on some coffee. Caffeine always helped me think. I waited while the coffee brewed, then poured a cup, added honey and almond milk, and drank it down, letting my mind go blank.

  Two cups of coffee later, I fired up my Mac and googled John Broadhurst. I found several John M. Broadhursts who didn’t live in Los Angeles or weren’t the right age. There were a couple of lawyer John Broadhursts, an MMA fighter, and a professor of physics. There were several on LinkedIn, and a slew on Facebook. None of them seemed to be the right age or to live downtown.

  I could try another drawing, but it seemed to me there were quicker, more efficient ways of trying to find the right Mr. Broadhurst.

  I picked up my phone again and punched up the number for Danyon and Peet. I was surprised when Dee’s voice came on the line.

  “Hey,” I said. “You doing the receptionist’s job now?”

  “Yeah. Finally. Terry’s pretty pissed though.”

  “I thought you were going to sleep in this morning?” I said.

  “Things didn’t quite work out that way.”

  I made a sympathetic noise. “Are Tyron or Juliana in? I have a quick question.”

  “Both out, along with Terry. It’s Take your receptionist to breakfast day or something. I’m the only one here.”

  “Could you do me a favor?” I said. “I’m trying to find an address for a John Michael Broadhurst. He lives downtown somewhere.”

  Danyo
n and Peet had access to lots of databases that I didn’t. I thought it might take anywhere from a few minutes to half an hour for Dee to find the information, but not much longer.

  There was a long, long silence before he said, “What’s going on, Oona? It’s not like you to make a joke like that.”

  My hands felt suddenly hot and my fingers tingled. I knew it was a psychic awareness, but it wasn’t a sign I’d felt before. “No joke. I’m trying to find the guy for Petra. She thinks he might have something to do with Aunt Mich’s disappearance.”

  “John Michael Broadhurst?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You were in his apartment, Oona. He’s the man who was murdered. He’s our death job.”

  8

  My brain seemed to simply stop working for a long moment, stunned by the revelation, then spun into overdrive. When I was in Broadhurst’s condo, I’d not picked up the slightest hint or vibe that Aunt Mich and the murdered man had a connection. I should have gotten that right off, but I wasn’t in tune somehow. What was going on with my psychic abilities? They’d worked well enough in the murder house. I’d seen clearly what had happened there. Or had I? If I hadn’t picked up on the Mich/Broadhurst connection, had I even seen the murder correctly? Was the thing that looked like a man that I’d seen licking up John Broadhurst’s blood real or a figment my mind had made up?

  Wait. Was the Broadhurst/Mich connection the reason I’d seen Aunt Mich as the murder victim in my dream? Were my psychic abilities trying hard to tell me there was a connection and I’d been too stupid to catch it? Had Mich killed Broadhurst in an escape attempt?

  That didn’t make sense. Broadhurst had died months earlier. It couldn’t be him Aunt Mich told Petra she’d escaped from this morning.

  If she’d killed Broadhurst, had some ally or family member of his figured that out and kidnapped her? That seemed a stretch.

  The whole thing was giving me a screaming headache.

  “Oona?” Diego said. “Are you there?”

  I snapped back into the here and now.

  “Sorry.” I said.