Disembodied Bones (13 page)

“Dacey,” Leonie Simoneaud said protestingly,
almost shocked enough to believe her for a moment. She glanced up
at her partner with a little smile on her face and Dacey thought it
was a shame that a woman with such exquisite features had an ugly
scar on her face. It started out at the top of her cheekbone and
slashed down toward her jaw line, a faint white line of scar tissue
that attested to its age. It didn’t seem to matter to the men who
repeatedly asked her out and Leonie didn’t seem to pay it any heed,
either. “Well, I winked at him, anyway.”

“Who was the auctioneer?” Leonie asked
absently. Her fingers ran over the chest like she would stroke a
beloved swain and Dacey was positive that she wasn’t aware of her
actions.

“His name is Nick Herley. You don’t know
him.” Dacey’s eyes became mischievous. “He’s like ninety years old.
Has a potbelly that would make Santa jealous. And he smells like
rotting sardines. He said if we did a threesome with him, he’d
slash his cut by ten percent.”

Leonie nodded inattentively. “Uh-huh. Sounds
nice.”

Dacey’s eyes rolled. They were standing in
the back of the nineteenth century building they jointly owned
where they went through purchases, priced items, and performed
minimal restoration. All around them were items that ranged from
five to two hundred years old. Although they owned an antique
store, most of their antiques weren’t true antiques, having to be
at least a hundred years old to justly qualify the designation.
Many of the items for sale in the Gingerbread House were replicas
or collectibles or present-day folk art.

Leonie was lost in the motion of running her
hand over the lovely chest. “So many owners,” she murmured. “Some
of them valued it as the treasure it is. Some of them didn’t
realize its significance at all, the utter care that went into its
construction.” Her fingers stopped their movement and she suddenly
opened the lid. It creaked slightly and she made a mental note to
herself to oil the hinges.

Dacey made a warning noise and glanced
around. Their employees were all on the floor. It was a Saturday
and the tourists were in volume. School had been out for more than
a month and mommies were making the short trek to antiques-ville to
cater to their own whims. “You’re not going to do one of those
things. I thought you weren’t doing that anymore. It’s been months.
And if you knew how much that creeps me out, Leonie...”

Leonie was staring inside the chest. “It was
like a hope chest, you know. Her name was something simple. Mary.
Liza. Something very German. No. Lise. She had pretty blonde hair.
One day the bankers came and took their possessions, including this
chest, and she missed it. Oh, she cried for a week.”

Dacey’s smile slipped from her face. Leonie’s
eyes had shut. There were dozens of old things that went through
their store and many of them had interesting histories if they but
knew them. The first time Leonie told a little story about a ring
she’d found in a dresser, Dacey thought it was her way of adding
interest to a marketable item, but she quickly discovered that
Leonie was very serious. Dacey couldn’t find out anything about the
ring. But there had been other items Leonie had looked at that
Dacey had uncovered a history about. Leonie had some kind of
strange gift. It didn’t emerge very often but when she did do it,
it was like someone running their fingernails down a
chalkboard.

“Leonie,” she said sharply. Then she repeated
it louder. “Leonie!”

Leonie took a breath and her eyes snapped
open. She shut the chest with another sigh and rose to her feet.
Dressed in denim coveralls with an old white T-shirt underneath she
looked like a farm girl, much younger than her thirty years.
“Sorry,” she said with a dismissive shake of her head. “It was
talking to me.”

“If I didn’t know you, Leonie, I’d swear you
were half a bubble off plumb.”

Shrugging, Leonie brushed off her hands. “So
I have a quirk. Otherwise, I’m perfect. I always come to work on
time. I’ve been sick only once in the last five years.” She
mentally chastised herself for the minor untruth. The headaches
she’d been increasingly having in the last months didn’t really
count. “And I never complain about my love life. Unlike some people
who work for us. And I would never flash an auctioneer to get a
better price.”

Dacey muttered something under her breath but
Leonie heard it anyway and protested amicably, “I do so have a love
life.”

“You’re dating this guy for six months and
you’ve what, kissed him?” Dacey put her hands on her hips and
Leonie was momentarily distracted. Her partner was an attractive,
outgoing woman with a spectacularly curvaceous figure. She was
divorced with one wonderful little daughter named Olga and could
have just about any man she desired, if she put her mind to it. But
most of the time she was too involved with their business and
motherhood to put her mind to it, not that it stopped her from
supervising everyone’s affairs or lack of them.

“You sound like the anti-mother.” Leonie
waved at dust motes around her face. “Are you suggesting I should
just hop in bed with him. Use him like a stud?” A grin whipped
across her face. “Ride that cowboy. Yee-haw.”

“Oh my God,” Dacey said. “You’ve been
watching soap operas again, haven’t you? It’s okay to sleep with
someone. It’s okay to have a sexual relationship with someone.”

Leonie laughed. “That’s not what you’re going
to be saying when Olga turns sixteen.”

“No. I’m going to be saying, ‘You better not
and if you do, I’ll kill you.’” Dacey sighed theatrically, with the
back of one hand resting against her forehead. “And I’ll be in the
market for a chastity belt. But Olga’s not thirty-three years old.
Elan looks healthy. He’s not Bluebeard with ten dead wives locked
in a room. And he’s into you big time. Go ahead. It’ll be good for
you.”

“I think we should charge a fortune for this
chest,” Leonie announced diplomatically, not willing to discuss her
most recent relationship. Elan Carter was all the things a man
should be, good looking, not married, attracted to her, and
interesting to be around. But Leonie was used to taking things
slowly.

The curtains that represented the door
between the back area and the front parted and Erica Jones stuck
her head through them. She was a thirty-five year old black woman
who worked part-time for the pair as well as a close friend. “I can
hear you half way to the front, little miss big mouths. Personally,
I think Mr. Carter is one hunky beefcake, but if you don’t want to
do the horizontal bop with him then don’t. But please don’t
announce it to the customers. I think some of them are more into
that than the merchandise.”

Leonie glared at Dacey and blushed.

A wicked little smile crossed Erica’s lips.
“And your friend is back, Leonie.”

Dacey groaned. “You’d think the guy would
just give it up or move on.”

They were talking about a man who came into
the Gingerbread House at least once a month. He usually bought
several items, but it was obvious to everyone that he was really
there to stare surreptitiously at Leonie. Standing six feet tall
with broad shoulders, dark brown hair and a pleasant face, he
wasn’t wretched to look upon, but he shied away from direct contact
with Leonie. When she went to help him or she was at the register
he didn’t purchase anything or waved her away with an embarrassed
expression.

Leonie had been aware of him for months.
Dacey was certain he had been stalking Leonie for longer than that,
which was what the other woman called it. “You should probably get
a restraining order on him,” she told Leonie firmly.

“He hasn’t done anything wrong,” Leonie
defended him gently. Parting the curtains with a hand, Leonie
peeked out. The man was standing near some railroading memorabilia.
There was a Union Pacific railroad lock in his hand that he was
examining carefully. The previous week the store had acquired a lot
of railroad collectibles from the widow of an avid collector.

She had a moment to study him while he looked
at what he held. Previously, he had paid with a credit card and she
knew from Erica that his name was G. Lily. So far his first name
was unknown. He was not so much taller than she, only four or five
inches and he was close to her age, although she would have guessed
he was a little younger. He had a long-sleeved cotton shirt on that
clung to the breadth of his shoulders. The broadness there narrowed
into a trim waist and a flat stomach that was accentuated by
well-worn jeans. Lean but muscular, he wasn’t bad looking by any
means, but he was furtive and that was what bothered Dacey.

Something about him made Leonie give pause.
Dacey was whispering something behind her, something that slipped
over Leonie’s consciousness without registering the words. It
wasn’t the first time she had taken a moment to look at her
not-so-secret admirer, if that was what he was. She thought perhaps
it was something else. Was he one of those people who knew about
her? One of those people who had something missing that they wanted
her so desperately to find? Did he have a problem approaching her
with the issue? Enough that he could be patient enough to feel her
out and possibly get under her skin?
Leonie
?

Leonie started for a moment. The thought had
popped into her head and for a moment it was as if someone was
speaking to her. There was an abrupt pain in the center of her
forehead, but then it shut itself off like a trapdoor leaving a
sense of nothingness. The pain flowed away like rainwater. She
frowned and her thoughts went back to her so-called psychic
abilities.

Ever since she was thirteen years old, there
had been others who wanted to use her in that way. One finger came
up unconsciously to stroke the scar at her cheekbone. The detective
she had first gone to in Shreveport to tell about Douglas Trent
hadn’t meant to cause her such publicity, but the media had grasped
the story like a lifeline and it had made national news. With the
publicity came the others, some scientific in nature, some pleading
with her, some desperate to find their missing children. They tried
to sneak into her hospital room for the weeks she was there. They
left her pleading notes and photographs of children who grinned
happily into the camera lens, clearly not aware of their fates.

But Leonie had been left with nightmares.
Dead children called to her from their graves, lost in a world
where darkness was their only friend, where roots caressed their
bones and animals dragged away what was left of their clothing. The
family protected her until she could protect herself. And because
she was different from the family, she found she didn’t want to
stay with them any longer.

She stared at G. Lily until he turned his
face to look back at her. There was a moment when brown eyes met
gold ones. Shock rippled down his features for a moment and he
seemed to be immovable, the lock held tightly in his hand. It was
an angular face with strong lines and bold cheekbones. His eyes
seemed huge and brown in his face, making everything else look pale
in comparison, although his flesh was well-tanned by the sun. His
hair fell unevenly over his forehead and obscured his eyes for a
moment. One browned hand came up and awkwardly brushed strands
away. Then his eyes dipped and he put the lock back on the display
table. He almost fell over another customer in his haste to move
away and before Leonie could even blink, he was moving out the door
into the bright sunlight. In the moment he opened the door to
escape, he sidestepped a black-haired, little girl on her way
inside, and he held the door open for a moment so the child could
pass by him. Then he was gone.

Dacey moved into the doorway beside Leonie
and yanked the curtain back with a clatter of metal rings knocking
together. “Well, boy-howdy-doody. That boy doesn’t care to be
looked at by you? What’s he afraid of, that he’s going to turn into
stone?”

Leonie wasn’t sure what to say for a moment.
A vein in her forehead had begun to throb almost from the moment
she looked on G. Lily’s face. There was a certain feeling that he
caused in her. Uncertainty. She hadn’t been uncertain for years.
Once she had discovered a love for antiques and studied business in
college, she hadn’t looked back. She couldn’t live with the family,
like a half-woman, and she wouldn’t wait for the desperate ones to
send her little boxes with things that belonged to their missing
loved ones. She had moved on, two hundred miles away from Twilight
Lake, so she could make a new life for herself. She had a little
house, a cottage really that had been built in 1909 and she was in
the process of renovating and restoration. She had half-ownership
of a successful business with three employees. She was dating a
kind, generous and handsome man who had similar feelings about her.
Uncertainty wasn’t a factor. It couldn’t be.

“Are you saying I’m a medusa?” Leonie asked
with a hint of indignation.

“A glare from you,
amiga
, and even the
strongest man trembles,” Dacey said laughingly.

“You know, you can’t have it both ways,”
Leonie said quietly. “Either he’s a threat to me or I’m a threat to
him.”

“Mrs. Embry from Loving Antiques said he’s
some kind of computer nerd,” Dacey said thoughtfully. “A super
computer nerd.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means he works at home. Likes his
privacy.” Dacey added teasingly, “You know, where he’d drag you off
to ravish you.”

“How’s he going to do that if he can’t even
look me in the face?”

“Oh, dear. I knew you weren’t that sexually
experienced.” Dacey covered her mouth with her hand and
giggled.

Leonie shook her head at the teasing remarks
from her partner and smiled indulgently. “I’ve got a ton of work to
do. Starting with that chest.”