Dead Demon Walking (4 page)

“
I’ve always wondered about
that place.”

Royal’s shoulder rubbed mine as we
walked. “Wondered?”

“
Who lived here, next to a
cemetery? There’s nothing else for miles. There’s no church, so not
a preacher’s house.”

We could barely walk side by side, our
linked hands pressed between our bodies. Dark copper and gold,
Royal’s wet hair plastered his scalp, a metallic helmet. My sodden
braid weighed heavy down my back. My jacket felt damp and
clammy.

“
Help me help me help
me!”

I nearly jumped out my
skin.

“
Peacocks.”

“
I know!” I said
indignantly.

“
Then why are your nails
digging in my hand?”

“
Surprised me, is all. And
don’t you dare laugh at me.”

Peacocks are gorgeous
birds, but I hate their cry, like a high, tragic, disembodied
voice
calling for help. Through the rain, I
spotted two beneath a tree near the house, tails spread, necks
stiff and erect. I forgot some made this place their stomping
ground. I shuddered and looked ahead.

We broke from the trees to hurry
across the parking area to Royal’s truck. He let go my hand so he
could thoughtfully put on a mini burst of demon speed to reach the
truck first and open the passenger door. I scooted in.

He got the engine rumbling as I
fastened my seatbelt. Water from my braid got under my collar and
dribbled down my neck

“
Are you going to help Dale
Jericho?”

“
I can’t. I can’t tell him
what happened to Jack.” I pushed a few loose, dripping strands off
my forehead. “I don’t believe he was involved in Jack’s murder and
that was all I cared about. I think something happened in New York,
maybe personal. In that case, it’s not my business. I’ll have to
let this one go.”

***

Royal left me outside my house and
drove away. I stood on the little piece of grass I call the front
yard and examined the mountainside. Leaves were rapidly changing
color and I’d seen fewer hummingbirds in the past week. They would
be the young ones, hanging back to fill up on nectar while the
older birds flew to a warmer climate. My few fading perennials in
the border below the kitchen windows were pathetic. With September
a week away, all the signs of approaching fall were suddenly upon
Clarion. Winter would come early this year.

I remembered the first time I saw the
house as I drove through the old neighborhood eying For Sale signs.
The small redbrick affair with a disproportionally large backyard
caught my eye, so I parked outside and peeked in the front windows.
I liked the solid look of the place, and it had an air-conditioning
unit. Most homes back then had swamp coolers. I don’t like swamp
coolers, I do like air-conditioning.

I haggled down the asking price. I
worked three jobs to make payments on the mortgage. It can’t be
called charming by a long stretch, but the house and every stick of
secondhand furniture in there are mine. After all the foster homes
and furnished apartments, that means a lot to me.

I walked beside the house, unlatched
the gate and went in the backyard. The last strong gale brought a
mess of crabapples down from the single tree and the damn thing had
sent shoots up all over the lawn again. I hate those little sprigs,
but the tree looks pretty when it blooms and shades the square
concrete patio. As if sprouting baby crabapples weren’t nuisance
enough, acorns from all the scrub oak lay everywhere. I should rake
them up soon. Mac likes to eat acorns and crabapples, though he
prefers the crabapples when they start to rot.

I went in the back door, in the
kitchen, to be greeted by near-silence, my old refrigerator humming
to itself and the tick of the clock on the wall above it the only
sound. Mel sat on the windowsill, her back to the west windows,
feet on the counter beneath.

Mac ambled in from the hall and went
directly to the pantry. He lowered his rear end and concentrated on
the door. I put hands to hips. “I know you’re hungry, but how am I
supposed to open it with you in the way?”

He didn’t as much as look at
me

I inched the door open, making him
jump up and back away, but not without giving me a reproachful look
from brown eyes half hidden by wiry black-brindle hair. “You
idiot,” I told him as I dipped his bowl in the open bag of
kibble.

“
Did you get anything out
of him?” Mel asked.

“
Old man Frost? Not a
thing. Won’t get a paycheck for that.”

“
Shame. I looked forward to
the new chair you picked out.”

“
I looked forward to food
in the pantry.”

“
Come on, it’s not that
bad.”

Right. I exaggerated. I had a healthy
bank balance, but griping about financial woes became a habit after
pinching pennies for years. I could pay the bills. I would not die
of hypothermia or starvation.

I bent to put the bowl on the floor
off to one side. “Where’s Jack?”

She shrugged. “He won’t speak to
me.”

I went in the hall for my keys. “Did
you two fight?” Stupid question. When did they not
fight?

She stood in the kitchen doorway with
her head down “No. I think it’s to do with that man, Dale
something-or-other. He’s in his room. He doesn’t even tell me to
leave when I go in there, just ignores me, as if he doesn’t hear
me.”

Hm. Jack, silent? I jingled the keys.
“I’ll be back in a few.”

She studied me. “Where are you
going?”

“
Dobey’s. I won’t be
long.”

“
Okay,” she said, sounding
dejected.

I drove to Dobey’s, got my supper at
the drive-thru and drove home, thinking about Jack and Dale Jericho
the entire time.

***

I sat in my kitchen eating the
biggest, juiciest, tastiest bacon-cheeseburger in existence, with
deep-fried beer-battered onion rings, washed down by a thick
chocolate malt shake.

Mel sat across the table, eyes riveted
on me, chin dipping up and down as she watch my hands go from plate
to mouth. I must admit, not having Jack there doing exactly the
same felt odd. The phone rang. I licked ketchup off my thumb as I
got up.

I couldn’t resist saying, “I don’t
want to come back and find you got at my burger.”

She made a snarling noise.

I rested my hip on the counter edge
and picked up the phone. “This is Tiff.”

The voice came faintly, as
if from far away. “
Help
me.
”

It wasn’t a peacock

Chapter Three

After a restless night, I went to
Royal’s apartment at eight. I knew he’d be up and about, keeping an
eye on the renovation which would provide space for our business
office.

Most of our cases are what
I call
regular
detective work - finding people for various reasons, or a
client out to get the dirt on someone else, that kind of thing -
and far from exciting. I don’t care; I’ve had enough excitement to
last me a lifetime. Then there are the clients who require my
special skills, although we turn down most. I can’t help a person
who wants to find something they misplaced, and refuse to work for
a woman who wants to know who her man slept with before he
died.

Staying afloat was touch and go for a
time, but business had improved, we kept busy. We needed an office
in which to meet clients. Royal pointed out the wisdom of
conducting business someplace where Jack and Mel can’t distract me.
I am good at ignoring the terrible twosome, but there are times,
especially if they are in a playful mood, when talking shop is
difficult.

I would have objected to Royal’s
proposal we convert part of his apartment to an office when we
opened the agency, unless I could pay half the renovation costs,
which I could not. But since then I’d discovered some clients are
uncomfortable meeting in a public place where they can be
overheard, and some don’t want you in their home. Royal had space
to spare for an office; he would not miss what we needed. The work
involved slapping a wall across the apartment and putting in a
separate entrance, giving us a fourteen-by-fourteen-foot office, a
half-bathroom and a cubbyhole for a small fridge and
coffeemaker.

His apartment occupies two floors
above an art gallery called Bailey and Cognac. Savvy detective that
I am, until I met Royal I thought the shop sold fortified wine. The
establishments on Royal’s block share connecting, bricked in
stairwells, but many knocked down sections of wall to incorporate
the stairs into their primary space in the mid-1900s, so customers
don’t need to step outside to reach the next floor up. Whoever
owned what is now Bailey’s never bothered. Therefore, to get from
Royal’s main living area on the first floor, to his bedroom on the
top floor, you go outside and up the stairs.

I went up the steps to the first floor
and through the cast-iron gate. The gate is normally locked, but
Royal left if open for the workmen who trudged in and out all day.
They put in another door next to his front door, but two steps
lower with a new step leading up to it. The new door would give
access to the office.

I stepped inside what would be the
living room’s south-east corner, when it had a wall, not a huge
sheet of thick, semitransparent plastic across. The kitchen lamps
were on, but the plastic diffused the light from what were once
Royal’s living room windows, leaving most of the room dim. The
office wall would completely steal the daylight, so the contractors
were going to put two windows in the west wall. I didn’t know how
Royal finagled that. The building is not on the Historic Register,
but it is old and getting a city permit to alter it couldn’t have
been easy. Still, as I well know, Royal has his ways.

The smell of plastic and sawdust
tickled my nose. I pinched my nostrils to suppress a sneeze, but it
blasted out when I took my hand away.

Royal’s living and dining furniture,
the giant Buddha, his lacquered bar, the Christmas trees and dining
set huddled up to the kitchen counters with just a small gap to let
him through. The room is just short of cavernous and he didn’t need
to cram the furniture together, but did so in a vain attempt to
keep it away from the dust raised by the contractors. I, being
female with a brain in my head, would cover the furniture in dust
sheets. Royal, being a guy, doesn’t think like that.

I would like the new
living/dining/kitchen space better than the old. The room is just
too damn long, with gaps - a big gap between living and dining and
another between dining and kitchen. The new setup would be a little
cozier, less sterile.

Royal stood in the kitchen.
He opened the oven door, releasing the wonderful aroma of
fresh-baked-cookies which overpowered the sawdust smell and made
saliva form in my mouth. He
would
offer the two workmen coffee, or soda, or donuts,
and damn me, now he baked cookies. I took a second or two to drink
my fill of him, the roll of shoulder and hitch of buttocks as he
bent to pull another cookie sheet out the oven.

“
Got any to
spare?”

He observed me over his shoulder and
grinned. “For you, always.”

I covered my ears against the almighty
banging from beyond the plastic separator. “What are they doing
now?”

“
Putting up
four-by-fours.”

I snatched a pumpkin-chocolate-chip
cookie off the cooling rack and nearly dropped it when I burned my
fingers. I carefully juggled it between my hands. “Can we go
somewhere quieter, where we can talk?”

“
Sure.”

He yelled at the plastic curtain:
“Help yourselves to cookies. We’ll be upstairs.”

The banging magically
stopped.

***

Royal silk sheets whispered over my
naked skin as his lips delicately scooped the crumbs from around my
mouth. I might have swooned at the sensations that sent clear
through me, were I the swooning type. He followed up with a
kiss.

Every kiss was like the first, two
days after we first met, when he came to my bedroom in the early
morning hours, asking why I saw his true appearance, not the human
male whose picture hung on the wall of Clarion PDs Homicide
Department with his fellow detectives. After I answered him - I
have no more idea why I see demons as they are than why I see the
dead - he teased me, putting on a hot and heavy show, and then he
kissed me.

He took my breath away. He still
did.

In the aftermath of our passion, we
lounged on his bed, a paper plate covered in cookie crumbs between
us. Muffled thuds from below punctuated traffic noise on
Twenty-Second and Grant. Morning sunlight peeked through white
slatted blinds to send hazy bars over the dark board floor, Royal’s
heavy Art Deco desk and cerulean-blue walls. Not a speck of dust on
the big oak armoire, the desk, the three tall bookshelves and
bedside cabinets or what perched on them. Royal is a neat
freak.