Delia's Shadow (16 page)

Sadie was half-right in her campaign to push us together. Gabe needed friends and I liked him more the longer I knew him. Guilt over causing him pain, however unwitting, weighed on me. “Jack has a point. You should talk about her and share your memories. Perhaps you could tell me about Victoria over dinner. I’m a very good listener.”

He tipped his head and studied me, that unreadable look in his eyes again. “I’m not sure I have the right to impose on you that way.”

“You’re not imposing. I asked you to talk about Victoria. We’ve become friends and I’d really like to know.” The awkwardness I’d felt earlier returned, but I pressed on. “And I truly am a good listener. I’d have to be in order to survive living with Sadie.”

Gabe looked away, a hint of a smile beginning to form. “On my best day I’m not a match for Sadie. I can’t promise that talking about Victoria will be easy or that I’ll manage more than a few words. But two friends should be able to come up with something interesting to talk about over dinner. Discussing something other than ghosts and this case would be nice.”

“Never fear, Sadie keeps me well supplied with gossip for occasions like this.” I couldn’t bring myself to tell Gabe that speaking of Victoria didn’t truly turn the topic away from ghosts, not for me. The prospect of normal conversation was daunting, but I’d find a way to rise to the occasion. What I couldn’t do was stand in that spot another second. I went back to petting the sleeping cat. “I can even dredge up a juicy scandal if you like. Name any public figure and I’m sure Sadie’s told me something about them.”

“That could be useful.” He sat in a visitor’s chair near the desk. A glint of mischief showed in his eyes. “What do you know about the mayor?”

The office door opened and Colin hurried inside, the gilt-edged book in his hand held high. “I’ve got it. Now we can get to work solving your mystery.”

We gathered around Colin’s desk. Gabe pulled the packet of letters from his inside pocket. He shuffled through them and spread pale blue sheets of stationery across the desk blotter. The drawings at the bottom of each page were crisp, clearly drawn in dark ink.

The sharpness of the images made it easier to recognize the blurred figures from the mask. Paint had run and smeared on the canvas, but the lines and flourishes framing each one were the same. I was certain they’d been drawn by the same hand. My heart beat faster and I leaned against the desk to keep from trembling. “Gabe, I’ve seen some of these before.”

He looked up sharply. “Are you sure?”

“I’m certain.” I pointed, careful not to touch the paper. Shadow’s memories were still close to the surface. Contact with something touched by her killer might strip away my hard-won control. “This one, this, and this.”

“May I?” Colin asked. At Gabe’s nod, he picked up one of the pages and studied the drawings with a magnifying glass. He set the paper aside and leafed through his book, settling on a page with a triumphant smile. “You should congratulate Delia on her perception and excellent memory. These are hieroglyphics. A reasonable reproduction at that. Have you made a study of the Egyptians, Delia?”

Colin knew nothing of ghosts and dreams. I wasn’t about to tell him, but I didn’t want to lie either. “No, not formally. I attended an exhibition at the Natural History Museum in New York last year. The hieroglyphics fascinated me.”

Gabe spoke up, stopping Colin from questioning me further. “Knowing what the pictures are is only the first step. Can you tell me what they mean?”

“These figures are representations of Egyptian gods.” Colin laid the open book on the desktop. He pointed to the drawings in the book and each corresponding figure on the letters in turn. “This is Anubis. He was most often drawn as a man with the head of a jackal. And this is Horus, shown with the head of a hawk. Both of them were sons of this man, Osiris, king of the underworld. This last one, the ibis, is Thoth. All of them were involved in Egyptian legends about the judgment of the dead.”

“No wonder Dad thought the symbols were deranged gibberish. That’s not general knowledge, which makes me wonder how our killer knew.” Gabe turned to me with a tentative half-smile. “I’m in your debt, Delia. I’d never have thought to show these to Colin without your suggestion. Knowing what this means doesn’t tell me who this man is, but it’s a step forward.”

Colin picked up the letters one by one, examining each one with a deepening frown. He finished and tapped a sheet of stationery with a finger. “Are the killer’s letters all signed this way? With the symbols in this order?”

Gabe gestured at the letters and envelopes spread across the desk. “Every one. What does that tell you?”

“This is only a guess, Gabe. I can’t know for certain what this man is thinking.” He sighed and pushed his spectacles back into place. “But … your killer could be more deranged than your father thought. He might believe he’s enacting judgment in the court of the underworld.”

The pressure in my chest increased, a warning of the ghost’s nearness, distress, and fear. That alone was enough to convince me that Colin had guessed right. I hugged my pocketbook to my chest and silently entreated Shadow to stay away a little longer.

“Explain that to me.” Gabe rubbed the back of his neck and peered at the letters with narrowed eyes, as if he might coax secrets from ink and paper that way. “I don’t see what you see.”

Colin touched a symbol. “It’s the pattern. Anubis is always first. His job was to escort the dead to Osiris’s court for judgment. The deceased’s heart was weighted to see how heavy his sins were in life and the results recorded by Thoth. Then Horus takes the newly judged to Osiris for the final verdict. If a person’s sins weren’t too heavy, he passed through to the afterlife. The heart of any who failed the test was fed to a beast, Ammut, and denied eternal life. If Ammut ate your heart, you became a wandering spirit.”

“Ghosts.” I met Gabe’s eyes across the desk, thinking of Shadow and being locked in darkness. “Those who fail his test become ghosts.”

Others had died in that cold, dirt-walled room. I prayed at least one had found the strength to haunt the man who killed them and that he knew. He deserved a taste of their fear.

Nefertiti leapt up from sleep, back arched and hissing. The cat streaked across the desk, disappearing out the open door into the hallway. Envelopes and blue stationery fluttered in all directions.

“Blasted cat.” Colin crawled under the desk to retrieve an envelope, grumbling under his breath. “I don’t know what gets into her.”

Shadow shimmered into view near the corner of the desk, her shawl draped neatly over her shoulders and across her chest. Her hands hung loose at her sides. She stared at the stack of letters in the center of the desk. The ghost understood what the letters were, what they meant.

Shadow understood better than any of us.

CHAPTER 9

Gabe

The inside of the restaurant was smaller than Gabe remembered, but the lunch counter up front was new and took up space once occupied by tables. On a weeknight like this the counter was empty and only two other couples, both older, sat at a table. He left Henderson seated on a high-backed stool at the counter, reading a menu and with instructions to order anything he liked. Marshall could have his own supper and still keep an eye on the car from there.

Their waitress was young, high school–aged at most. She wore a white bib apron over a gray cotton dress and a lacy frilled cap, starched to stand stiffly. A hand-lettered name tag labeled her Kari Lynne.

Gabe stopped himself from lecturing her about displaying her name openly. He couldn’t afford to start thinking that every shopgirl, every woman serving food or drinks in taverns and cafés was being stalked by the killer. Everyone was prey, from dockworkers and men working the rail yards, to cab drivers like Terrance Owens. He couldn’t lose sight of that.

Warning everyone he spoke with would accomplish nothing, aside from spreading fear. Catching the murderer and ending the threat would let all of them live normal lives. Gabe included himself in that assessment.

Kari Lynne led them to a small table near a window. The wide expanse of plateglass offered a view of the East Bay hills far off in the distance. Early evening sunlight tinted the hilltops, grass already browned by the beginning of summer heat glowed rose and apricot. Purple shadows gathered in sheltered hollows, cuts eroded by winter rains, and shallow canyons, a prelude to nightfall.

Gabe held Delia’s chair, letting her get settled before he took his own seat. The waitress offered menus and a smile. Kari Lynne’s white, straight teeth added even more charm to freckled cheeks and dimples. She might have been the model for an advertisement touting the health benefits of country living. “Let me know when the two of you are ready to order. Can I bring water or coffee while you decide?”

Delia tucked her gloves into her handbag. “Do you have tea and lemon? I’d like some if you do.”

“Tea and lemon.” Kari Lynne scribbled on her order pad. “You, sir?”

“Coffee, please.” Gabe gestured toward Henderson. “The officer at the counter. Would you make sure his order goes on my check?”

She made another note on the order pad before hurrying off. “I’ll remember.”

Discussing menus and ordering took up time, stirring sugar into coffee and sending Kari Lynne back for the lemon she forgot took up a little more. Gabe toyed with his spoon, out of excuses and reasons to stall. Conversation of some kind couldn’t be that hard.

He cleared his throat. “How’s the tea?”

“It’s very good.” Delia took another sip and set the gold-rimmed teacup on its mismatched saucer. She looked around the room, smiling at the older woman who nodded in greeting. “This is a very charming place. My father used to enjoy discovering out-of-the-way restaurants and neighborhood cafés. My mother found most of them disreputable, but I loved exploring with him. I think Papa would have liked this one.”

“What did your father do for a living?” Gabe wrapped his hands around the coffee mug, annoyed that they wanted to shake and needing something to hold. She’d given him something to talk about, but Jack’s warning stuck with him. “If my asking makes you uncomfortable we can talk about something else. I don’t mean to pry.”

“I’m not that complex or devious, Gabe. If I didn’t want to talk about Papa I wouldn’t mention him.” Delia leaned back in her chair, tracing squares on the red-checkered tablecloth with a fingertip. She glanced up at him and smiled, her face soft with memories. “My father was a banker. He was very good at his job, but Papa always told me the best thing about managing the bank was being home by four every afternoon. That gave him more time to paint.”

Gabe loosened his death grip on the mug and rested his hands on the table, reminding himself to breathe. He’d been eighteen the last time he’d been this nervous talking to a woman. That woman had been Victoria and he hadn’t made a single attempt to get to know any women since her death, not even as casual friends. Outside of work, he’d kept to himself.

And Gabe wanted to know Delia, to have a friend if nothing else. He needed to make this work. He needed to breathe. “I can’t imagine my Dad or my banker with a brush in their hand. What did your father like to paint?”

“Most of his work was landscapes and seascapes. We’d spend the day at some scenic locale and Papa would fill his sketchbook to set the scenes in his mind. Later he’d transfer the ones he liked best to canvas. He was very talented.” She gazed out the window, sunlight waking glimmers of gold in her brown hair. “Papa loved to do portraits, but I was young and sitting still was boring. Mama only sat for him once, not long after they were first married. He painted dozens of pictures of colleagues and friends, but the painting he did of Mama was always my favorite. Other than my parents, it’s the one thing I wish the fire had left me.”

Tears filled her eyes, but didn’t spill over. Gabe didn’t know how to comfort her or if he could, but he kept talking, hoping he’d stumble over the right words. “You must miss them a great deal. I wish I’d had a chance to meet him and your mother. Your father sounds like he was an interesting man and I have a hunch your mother was just as strong as her daughter.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment, Lieutenant Ryan. Mama ran two hospital charities and bred roses in the back garden, but she never thought of herself as accomplished. Papa and I knew better.” Delia studied him, sober and solemn, nothing in her expression hinting at what she might be thinking. She surprised him then and took his hand, her small, soft fingers wrapping tight around his. “I’ve done all the talking so far. You promised to tell me about Victoria and I’m going to hold you to that. How did the two of you meet? I’d really like to know.”

Gabe silently counted up the long string of days that mounded into years of mourning Victoria and their child. All the happiness and laughter they’d had together had been lost in his misery. He needed to remember something joyful about Victoria before those memories vanished, fading like the memories of her face.

Delia opened all the doors for him, the least he could do was walk through.

Even when it hurt.

“Colin introduced us,” Gabe said. “He and I both love baseball and we became acquainted watching the Seals play out at Recreation Park. After watching a few games and having supper after, Colin and I started making plans to meet. One Saturday I arrived to find Colin had dragged his younger sister to the game. Victoria came back the next week and every week after for the entire season. She knew the rules as well or better than I did, and before long she was arguing with me over plays. A year later we were married. We had two years together.”

Grief took hold again. He couldn’t say “before I lost her,” not without choking on the words. Not yet.

Delia squeezed his fingers, pulling him back. “Colin sounds as much of a matchmaker as Sadie.”

“Oh, he was.” Gabe shook his head, remembering Colin’s declarations of innocence and was amused all over again. “I didn’t mind so much, but Victoria was convinced Colin thought she couldn’t find a beau on her own. That was far from the truth. I was lucky she liked me enough to overlook her older brother’s plotting. Colin redeemed himself with Victoria eventually.”