Deadly Gamble

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Your dad.” I tore off another chunk of bread and dipped it in the dregs of the olive oil and vinegar. “He was a good guy.”

  Jolie smiled softly. “Yeah,” she said. “He’s been gone all this time, and there are still days when I think of something I want to tell him and dial half his phone number before I realize he won’t pick up on the other end.”

  My throat tightened.

  Jolie reached across the table and patted my hand. “How’s by you, Sister Girl?”

  I replenished the olive oil and balsamic vinegar from the bottles the waiter had left behind. “I’m doing okay.” If you don’t count the ghosts, and the flashbacks, and how the harder I try to figure out who I am, the more confused I get.

  “Your mouth is tellin’ me one story,” Jolie observed, with wry good humor, “but your eyes say something else. What’s really going on, Moje?”

  I swallowed. Should I tell her about Nick and Chester? I’d told Bert, but he was a bartender, used to wild tales, and more of an acquaintance than a friend. Jolie was a sister-by-choice, and she was a scientist. It mattered to me whether she thought I was crazy or not.

  The waiter returned, exhibiting the lousy timing that seems to be endemic to the species and stalwartly accepted our decision to split a plate of spaghetti and meatballs. Jolie waited until he was gone, and then prodded me again.

  “Moje? What’s the deal? You look like you’ve been over some rocky roads lately.”

  “I’m not crazy,” I said, as a preface.

  Jolie grinned. “Debatable,” she said. “Spill it, Mojo. Something’s definitely going on with you.”

  I let out a long breath, and almost choked because I’d neglected to take one in first.

  “Are you smoking again?” Jolie demanded, narrowing her eyes.

  I drank a few sips of my recently arrived iced tea to quell the coughing. “Of course not,” I said. It was the safe answer, and mostly true, since I never had a cigarette unless I’d had good—make that great—sex first. Three weeks and counting since Tucker and I had gotten it on, so I was nicotine-free.

  “Is it Lillian?”

  “Partly,” I hedged, interlacing my fingers so I wouldn’t go after the bread and olive oil again. I didn’t exercise, and I wasn’t overweight, but a person never knows when their metabolism is going to turn on them. I’ve seen it happen.

  “Tell me,” Jolie urged.

  I described the Lillian situation as clearly as I could, without getting maudlin.

  Jolie frowned at the mention of the Tarot cards Lillian had given me.

  “Death, the Queen of Pentacles and the Page of Cups,” she reflected thoughtfully, when I was finished. “What do they mean?”

  “I don’t exactly know,” I admitted. Sure, I’d looked them up in the Damn Fool’s Guide, but the descriptions had seemed superficial to me. I had the feeling that I was trying too hard to understand the images, and anyway, there was always the chance that Lillian hadn’t deliberately chosen them.

  I said as much to Jolie, and then remembered the urgent way Lillian had urged those cards on me. “Take!” she’d said. “Take!”

  Tears welled in my eyes. I longed for the old Lillian, the strong woman I used to know.

  Jolie patted me again.

  The spaghetti arrived.

  The conversation stalled until we’d divided the meatballs.

  “Maybe Lillian’s mind is gone,” Jolie ventured, cutting delicately at her share of the protein. I speared my meatball with a fork and nibbled at it like a Popsicle. If anybody’s written The Damn Fool’s Guide to Table Manners, I have yet to come across a copy.

  “It’s possible,” I said. We both knew it was a tad more than possible, but the agreement was tacit.

  “What else?” Jolie asked. She’d have made a great detective, but I guess when you get right down to it, forensic science isn’t all that different. Both involve gathering clues and putting the pieces together.

  I put down the meatball Popsicle. I’d been starving when we came in, but now my appetite was subsiding. Maybe it was the loaf of bread I’d consumed while we were waiting for the main course.

  “Do you believe in ghosts?” I ventured.

  “No,” Jolie said, without hesitation, but she looked intrigued. “Why?”

  “Because Nick popped in the other night.”

  Jolie leaned back, studying me pensively. Probably wondering what I was on. “Shut up,” she said.

  “It happened. You don’t have to believe me.”

  “Don’t get your panties in a wad,” Jolie retorted. “I didn’t say I didn’t believe you.”

  “The cat was real, too,” I insisted. When I get into a hole, I start digging like mad.

  “What cat?”

  “Chester. My half brother killed him during my birthday party. I was four.”

  In the next moment, a vacuum opened, sucked all the air out of the restaurant, and reduced everybody but Jolie to black-and-white still-shots shimmering at the periphery of my vision.

  “You remember that?” Jolie asked, almost whispering.

  I caught my breath. Pulled myself back out of the vortex. Our surroundings solidified, and the noise, returning suddenly, seemed so loud I wanted to clamp both hands over my ears.

  “Yes,” I said, as surprised as Jolie was. I blinked a couple of times. Mom had bought one of those doll cakes for the party, the kind with a frosted skirt. I could see the wax 4 pressed into the front as clearly as the platter of spaghetti on the table between us. There had been presents, and even guests—kids from the neighborhood, all in faded sunsuits.

  Jolie’s eyes were huge. “Oh. My. God.”

  I started to cry. “I went looking for Chester, after the party. I’d saved him a piece of cake.” I paused, drew a tremulous breath. “I found him behind the storage shed in the backyard, Jolie. He’d been shot with one of the arrows from the archery set some idiot—probably my dad—gave Geoff for Christmas.”

  Jolie handed me a red-and-white checked napkin so I could wipe my eyes. I stopped short of blowing my nose.

  “I’m sorry, Moje,” she said. “That must have been beyond awful. But you’re remembering, and that’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I felt things gathering around me, unseen things, dangerous things. They pressed in so hard, I could barely breathe. “I don’t know.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Jolie said. She signaled for the check, turned down the standard dessert pitch from the waiter and paid up.

  Five minutes later, we were back in the Pathfinder.

  I rolled the window down, even though the AC was on. I couldn’t get enough air.

  We went back to the apartment, and Sweetie didn’t even growl when we came in.

  Jolie pressed me into a chair at the kitchen table and rummaged for wineglasses and a bottle of red. Poured us each a double dose. We hadn’t said a word all the way back from the restaurant, but now it was nitty-gritty time.

  “What else do you remember?” Jolie asked.

  I shook my head. “Nothing.”

  “But it’s a start.”

  I wondered why that would be considered good news. When it comes to double homicide and the victims happen to be your parents, ignorance could be bliss.

  “It means you’re getting better,” Jolie persisted.

  “I wasn’t sick in the first place,” I pointed out, testy now that I was receiving an adequate oxygen supply.

  Jolie topped off my wineglass, even though I hadn’t taken a sip. “Okay,” she said, with cheerful resolve. “Let’s talk about something else. The cop. What’s his name again? Or what brings you down here. Or—”

  “The ghosts?” I rested my elbows on the table and shoved the fingers of both hands into my hair.

  “Or the ghosts,” Jolie said slowly.

  “Do-over,” I said. “There weren’t any ghosts. I made it up.”

  “You saw something.”

  “I was hallucinating. That�
��s what you think, isn’t it?”

  Jolie lowered her eyes, licked her lips, took a taste of her wine.

  “Isn’t it?”

  Probably sensing conflict, Sweetie snarled halfheartedly from his bed, which blocked the hallway.

  Great, I thought. If I get up to use the bathroom during the night, I’ll have to get past Dogzilla.

  The glad tidings just kept on coming.

  “All right,” Jolie agreed, with hasty diplomacy, raising both hands and holding them palms out. “Forget the ghosts. Forget Lillian and your fourth birthday. Tell me about the cop.”

  “There’s a poor-to-fair chance he blew up in a car explosion night before last,” I said, and even though the thought that it might be true, by some horrible coincidence, wrenched my gut, I admit I enjoyed watching Jolie’s expression.

  When she found her voice, she said, “Girl, your life is a full-scale terrorist alert. Level Orange.”

  I considered describing my brief sojourn in Cactus Bend, but that would bring us back to the murders, and even though I wanted to know what had really happened the night my folks died, I needed to step back from it. It was like a psychological black hole, and if I didn’t get some kind of grip, I was going to be sucked in and swallowed.

  The whole subject could wait until breakfast. Things always looked better in the morning.

  Didn’t they?

  I was inspired. “Let’s talk about you,” I said. “How’s the job? How’s your love life?”

  “I’m thinking of leaving the university and working as a crime-scene tech,” Jolie said. Which only went to prove I wasn’t the only bomb-dropper in the family.

  “Why would you do that?” I asked. I finally resorted to the wine; downed a couple of gulps while I waited for Jolie’s answer.

  She shrugged. I think you really have to be a black woman to pull that kind of shoulder action off with any style. “I’m tired of being stuck in a lab all the time,” she said. “I’m always one step removed from the action. What I do is so—well—after the fact.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Jolie had a master’s degree in forensic science, and she was working on a Ph.D. She’d waited tables and sold shoes to get through school, and still maintained a four point, throughout. Plus, she really knew her bones.

  “Excuse me,” I said, after clearing my throat, “but if there’s anything that can be described as ‘after the fact,’ it’s a crime scene.”

  “I want to be on the front lines,” she said. “I’m tired of weighing stomachs and counting bone fragments.”

  The meatball I’d eaten earlier did a line-drive up my esophagus and slammed into the back of my throat. I felt the blood drain from my face, and Jolie noticed immediately.

  “Sorry,” she said, with a little wince.

  It was my turn to do the narrow-eyed stare. “What’s really going on here?” Revelation struck, and I snapped my fingers. “I’ve got it. You’re dating a homicide cop, and this is your misguided idea of togetherness.”

  “You should write fiction,” Jolie replied. “I’m not dating anybody. This is about doing something different.”

  “Weighing stomachs and scraping up samples of somebody’s brains are not all that ‘different,’ Jolie,” I pointed out.

  She got that stubborn look I remembered from when Lillian and Ham first got together, over in Ventura Beach. Let’s just say if Jolie had written a letter to Santa Claus that year, Lillian, Greer and I wouldn’t have been on her list of requests.

  “At least it’s a job,” she said.

  I’m not stupid. I know when to take offense. “I have a job,” I retorted. “I do medical billings. Not just any idiot can remember all those codes, damn it.”

  “You live over a biker bar, Moje.” She nodded toward my trash-bag luggage, slumped in the third chair. “You don’t even own a suitcase.”

  “Have you been talking to Greer?”

  “I don’t have to talk to Greer,” Jolie argued coolly. “I’m not blind. You’re flying under the radar, Moje. You have so many secrets that there’s nothing true in your life. Ever since you and Nick split up, you’ve been dodging emotional bullets. You’re always darting from one thing to another, like some kind of moving target.”

  The truth hurts.

  I sat back, feeling as if she’d slapped me.

  Jolie sighed. “That went well.”

  I stood up, reached for my purse, then the garbage bag. I hadn’t touched my wine since those first few sips, and I must have bumped the table, because the stuff trembled in the glass.

  “Moje,” Jolie pleaded. “Please—don’t go.”

  I couldn’t stay.

  I couldn’t even speak.

  I took my purse and garbage bag and left.

  Two and a half hours later, I pulled into Bert’s lot, grabbed my stuff, and locked up the Volvo. There were a couple of bikes and half a dozen cars parked close to the side door, but plenty of noise spilled out into the warm night. I climbed the stairs and let myself into my apartment.

  “Chester?” I called. My hand was on the light switch by the front door, but I wasn’t ready to flip it and throw the whole place into stark relief.

  “Re-oooow,” Chester answered.

  My spirits lifted. I turned on the lights.

  Chester was there, all right. He hopped down off my desk chair—maybe he’d been surfing the Web—and trotted toward me.

  At the same time, Nick meandered out of the kitchen, sniffing an Oreo.

  “I’m getting really tired of this,” I said, but secretly I was glad of the company. Well, I was glad of Chester’s company, anyway, and I could put up with Nick.

  I set the trash bag down, along with my purse, so I could hoist Chester up for a cuddle.

  “Most people,” Nick observed, “carry garbage out, not in.”

  “Don’t start,” I said.

  “You look awful.”

  “Batting a thousand, as usual. You need to sign up for a course in Remedial Tact as soon as you bust out of the train station. And what’s with the Oreo-sniffing?”

  Nick cocked his handsome ghost head to one side. “Touchy,” he said.

  Chester butted the underside of my chin with his head, purring like crazy. My arms tightened around him, just a little. I wanted more than anything to cry, so I didn’t.

  “Your voice mail is probably full,” Nick informed me. “The phone’s been ringing ever since you left here yesterday.”

  Was it only yesterday that I’d packed my trash bag and hit the road?

  God, it seemed as if I’d been gone a week.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t take messages,” I said. I dropped into the easy chair, still holding Chester. “That way, you could have butted into my business in a really focused way.” I glanced at the computer. Wondered if he’d been reading my e-mail.

  Nick sighed and perched elegantly on the arm of the sofa. Tugged irritably at his cuffs. “I have better things to do than listen in on telephone calls,” he said, with icy dignity. “Or read e-mail.”

  I stiffened. Did a little mental backtracking. No. I definitely had not mentioned the e-mail out loud.

  Nick grinned.

  “You can read my mind?” I snapped.

  “Only some of the time,” he said, and did the cuff-tugging thing again. This time, it wasn’t a sign of irritation. It was him being smug.

  “That really bites!” I considered protective noggin gear. All I had on hand was a roll of Reynold’s wrap, so I discarded the idea.

  Nick chuckled. “You wouldn’t actually swath your head in tin foil, would you? It’s an amusing image, though.”

  “Shut up.”

  He softened visibly. “Tough times, huh?”

  “Stop trespassing in my brain. It’s a restricted area.”

  “Sorry,” Nick said. He examined the Oreo, sniffed it once more, and set it on the coffee table, albeit reluctantly. “Forgive me yet?”

  “Not a chance,” I replied.

&n
bsp; Nick sighed.

  “Tell me what it’s like.” Chester gave up the head-butting routine and curled up in my lap for a snooze. I watched Nick with interest, awaiting his answer.

  “Tell you what what’s like?”

  “Don’t be obtuse. If you can read my thoughts, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. Dead City. Toes-up-ville. What’s it like?”

  Nick looked away, looked back. “I couldn’t tell you,” he said. “I’m stuck in the train depot, remember?”

  “Right,” I said. “So tell me about the depot.”

  A slow smile settled on his lips. “You don’t want me to leave.”

  “You’re company. I’d settle for just about any warm body at the moment—not that you really qualify.”

  “That hurts.”

  “Good.”

  Nick’s smile faded. “I’m sorry, Mojo. About the times you waited up for me, and the times you cried. If I could do it over again—”

  “Get out of my head,” I interrupted, shoving the ragtag, disintegrating-marriage memories back into the appropriate mental closet. “I want to know about the train station. And how you happened to hook up with Chester.”

  “It’s just—a train station. Like something you might see in one of those black-and-white movies from the forties. All kinds of people, milling around, confused. Others standing in line for tickets.”

  “It sounds lonely,” I said, and then regretted it. “Isn’t there some kind of intake system? Maybe an orientation session? ‘Dead 101,’ or something like that?”

  “No angels,” Nick said, with somber amusement. “No harps. Definitely no ‘Dead 101.’ It took a while to figure it out, actually—that I’d croaked, I mean.”

  “I thought you said you saw your corpse at the morgue, then attended your own funeral. I don’t want to be crass or anything, but either of those things could be called a clue.”

  Another grin, this one rueful. “At the time, I thought I was dreaming. People who die suddenly, or violently, usually react that way.”

  I felt a stab of something. Maybe it was sympathy. “And if I forgive you, you can get on one of the trains and go—where? Real estate heaven? Are they replacing the streets of gold with asphalt these days, and slapping up little stucco houses that all look alike?”

  “You could be nicer to me, you know,” Nick said. “After all, I am dead.”