Fifth Grave Past the Light (8 page)

Really? Did she not know me at all?

I texted her back.

I walked Cookie through a quick lesson on how to cock a gun – or, since she was using a semiautomatic, how to chamber a round – without pinching the ever-loving crap out of herself. I’d been there. I knew the price. That steel sliding against steel was unforgiving, even on the smallest versions. She seemed to do okay once I gave her a few pointers, so I decided to do a quick search to see if I could get a hit on my new roommates. Surely there would be something about them in the news. But site after site yielded exactly squat. Nothing. Not a word about a group of murdered blond women.

“You need to go.”

I jumped and turned to the departed thirteen-year-old gangbanger standing behind me. He looked at the door, his eyes wide with barely contained panic, then back at me.

“Really, you need to go. Somewhere else. Leave.” He put his arms under mine and yanked, trying to lift me out of my chair, his hands alarmingly close to the girls, Danger and Will Robinson. My breasts were all I had. I had to maintain their integrity. Allowing a thirteen-year-old to grope them would be wrong on so many levels.

“But it’s my office,” I said, slapping at him. “You go.” I kicked against my desk until he dropped me back into my ninety-nine-dollar office chair.

He knelt beside me. “Please, Charley, just go.”

I grew wary. People had a tendency to try to kill me at the most inopportune times. But his pleading was much less “life-threatening situation” and much more “I screwed up.”

“Angel Garza, did you steal all the toilet paper from the women’s restroom again? We’ve talked about this.”

“No, I promise. You just need to leave.” The front door opened, and he dropped his head into his hands. Apparently, it was too late for me to escape. I was caught like a fly in a spider’s web. I could only pray for survival.

I took a sip of coffee instead as a Hispanic woman walked into Cookie’s office, a curious determination to her gait. I didn’t recognize her, but I felt like I knew the face. She was in her late fifties with long black hair that hung in pretty waves over her shoulders. And she was dressed to kill. Hopefully not me, though. She wore skintight jeans, knee-high black leather boots, a soft gray sweater, and a D&G bag that hung from her shoulder like an Uzi. I liked her.

She spotted me and made a beeline to my desk.

“You can’t tell her, Charley,” Angel said, panic rounding his eyes again. And I suddenly knew who she was.

I looked up at her and tried to hide my utter shock as she came to a stop in front of my desk. “Are you Charley Davidson?” she asked, her Mexican accent soft, the sharpness in her tone anything but.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I panicked right alongside Angel. It was the only thing I could think to say. “I don’t know. What?”

She blinked at me, then realized I was panicking. Honestly, it was like admitting to murder before being interrogated.

“Ms. Davidson,” she began, but I decided to trip her up, to throw her off the trail of blood I’d left like an injured animal.

“I don’t speak English.”

“I’ve asked around about you,” she continued undeterred. “I know who you are. What you do. But what I can’t figure out for the life of me is why you would be depositing money in my bank account every month. How do you know my account number? And why would anyone do such a thing?”

“What? Me?” I looked around, hoping she was talking to someone else.

“You can’t tell her, Charley.”

“I won’t,” I whispered through my teeth. Then again, his mother looked a tad hell-bent. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do.” She crossed her arms and tapped her toes on my carpeted floor.

“Can you just excuse me for one moment?”

“Look, I’m not accusing you of anything, but you’ve been putting money in my bank account. Five hundred dollars every month for almost three years now.”

“Five hundred dollars a month?” Angel asked, appalled. “Is that all I’m worth to you?”

I grabbed his arm and held up an index finger to put his mother in pause mode as I herded him out the side door, the one that led to the interior stairs of Dad’s bar. “Excuse me just one sec.”

“Five hundred dollars a month? I could haunt a rich guy’s ex for five hundred dollars a month.”

When Mrs. Garza eyed me, her expression part leery and part suspicion, I smiled and closed the door between us. “Look —”

“Migrant workers make more than I do.”

“Angel, you are part-time.
Part
-time. And that was all I could afford when I first opened up.”

“Yeah, well screw you. I quit.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, eyeing him. “You know exactly how much you make. You’ve known the whole time. I told you.”

“I know.” He shrugged. “I was just hoping for a raise. My mother needs a new car.”

“And I have to supply it?” I asked, taking my turn at being appalled.

“If you want to keep your best investigator, you do.”

I poked his chest with an index finger. “This is extortion, buddy.”

“It’s business,
pendeja
. Pay up or shut up.”

“And just who says you are my best investigator? You’re my
only
investigator.”

“Either way.”

“This is wonderful. What am I supposed to tell her?”

“You’re the one with all the answers. And you’re a PI. Tell her an uncle died and left you in charge of doling out the money or something. Isn’t that what rich people do?”

“That’s a job for lawyers.”

“Then I don’t know. I can’t think of everything.”

“Angel,” I said, placing a hand on his shoulder. His eyes were such a deep, rich brown and his face was so young, his chin sprinkled with the soft beginnings of facial hair. He died too young. Way too young. I often wondered what he would have done with his life if he’d had a chance. He was such a good kid. “Maybe we should tell her.”

“Fuck that.” His stormy eyes suddenly turned angry. “No.”

“If I were your mother, I would want to know you were okay.”

“If you were my mother, I’d need therapy. I’ve had thoughts, you know.” He gestured to Danger and Will with a nod, but I didn’t let his confession – though it wasn’t exactly news – deter me.

“I would want to know what an awesome kid you are.”

One corner of his full mouth rose in a playful gesture. “You think I’m awesome?”

Uh-oh.

“Am I awesome enough to see you naked?”

Why did I bother? “Or I could just tell her what a perv you’ve become.”

“Okay, never mind. But you didn’t see her. She cried all the time, for months after I died. I can’t do that to her.”

Like I said, awesome. “Okay, sweetheart. I won’t tell her. But your mother is sharp and stronger than you give her credit for.”

“She’s as tough as they come.” Pride swelled across his chest. She was probably in her early thirties when he died. It had been at least twenty years.

I stepped back into my office. Mrs. Garza, who had also lost her husband after Angel died, was examining a painting on my wall. She turned to me, her expression still set on hell-bent.

“You’re right,” I said, defeat evident in my sagging shoulders. “I know who you are, Mrs. Garza. Would you like some coffee?”

I couldn’t help but notice how close she was to the dark elixir. I liked to stand near it, too. It was like standing next to a fire in the middle of winter, warm and comforting.

She relaxed her shoulders, but just barely. “I guess.”

I poured her a cup, then let her doctor it as she pleased while I sat back behind my desk.

After she sat down, I said, “I do put money into your account every month. A great-uncle of yours had me track you down a few years ago and he left provisions for you before he died.”

“Great story,” Angel said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. Smartass.

Her brows knitted in suspicion. “A great-uncle? Which great-uncle?”

“Um, the great one on your aunt’s side.”

“I’m Mexican American, Ms. Davidson. Catholic. We like to procreate. Do you know how many aunts I have?”

“Right…”

“And we are very close.”

I was so going to that special hell. “This is a great-uncle that no one knew about. He was… a recluse.”

“Does this have anything to do with Angel?” She pronounced his name in true Spanish fashion.
Ahn
-hell. But her voice wavered when she said it.

“No, Mrs. Garza. It doesn’t.”

She nodded and got up to leave. “Like I said, I checked around. When you want to tell me the truth, you obviously know where I’ll be.”

“That was the truth,” I promised her.

She put her coffee cup down and left, completely unconvinced. And I was so good at lying.

I put an arm around Angel. “I’m so sorry, hon. I had no idea she knew about me.”

“She’s smart. She checked up on you. It’s not your fault.”

He walked back out the door and looked over the railing into the restaurant downstairs. “Why is he here anyway?”

“Who?” I walked over and looked down, too, but the place hadn’t opened for business yet. Empty tables and chairs sat strategically positioned, ready for patrons.

“You have another visitor,” he said, then vanished before I could say anything else. I was learning more about what I could and could not do, and I knew that I could’ve brought him back if I’d wanted to, but he needed some time to process what had just happened. With his mother so open and willing to know more, craving to know more, I was a little surprised that he still didn’t want me to tell her. It made me more curious. Was there something in particular he didn’t want her to know? Was he hiding something?

But sure enough, I had another visitor. I wasn’t meeting Mrs. Tidwell for another half hour, so I was surprised the front door opened again. I looked over as Captain Eckert, my uncle’s boss, stepped in, dressed impeccably as always. He wasn’t like the captains in the movies, with their ties crooked and their jackets in dire need of an iron, though that pretty much described Ubie to a T. Captain Eckert was more like an older cover model for
GQ.
His clothes were always pressed, his tie always straight, his back always rigid. I could only imagine the anal jokes that floated around the precinct.

“Captain,” I said, letting the surprise I felt filter into my voice. It was weird how every time I said the word
captain,
I wanted to tack on a
Jack Sparrow
at the end.

The last time we’d spoken was a few days ago when I’d basically solved three cases in one fell swoop. Possibly four. It was the wrong thing to do. He took note and had been curious about me, about my role at the station as a consultant, ever since. I wasn’t sure what to make of his curiosity. He seemed suspicious, but unless he knew that there was a grim reaper roaming the lands solving his cases for him, what on earth could he be suspicious about? “What brings you to my neck of the woods?”

He analyzed my offices a full minute before answering. With his back to me as he took in the same painting Mrs. Garza had, he said, “I’ve decided to keep closer tabs on any and all consultants the APD has on payroll.”

Crap. “Really? H-how many are there?”

“Removing any experts we occasionally use, like psychologists and the like, CIs and any consultants who are not actually on the payroll, that pretty much leaves just one.”

“Oh.” I offered up my best Sunday smile. “Surely you don’t mean little ole me?”

He executed a perfect heel-to-toe turn. “I do, in fact.”

I tried not to be intimidated. It didn’t work. “Well, okay, this is my office.”

“I was a detective, Davidson.”

“Right, I just meant that this is pretty much all there is. I’m not sure what kind of tabs you wanted to keep, but —”

“How do you do it?” He’d turned back to study the books on my bookshelf. I prayed he didn’t pay too close attention.
Sweet Savage Love
was probably not the kind of material he wanted his consultants to read.

I sat back behind my desk and took a sip of coffee. Liquid courage. “I’m sorry?”

“You seem to be very adept at solving cases and I was just wondering what your methods were.”

“Oh, well, you know. I’m a detective.” I laughed, sounding slightly more insane than I’d intended. “I detect.”

He strolled over and sat in the chair opposite me, laying his hat in his lap. “And what methods of
detection
do you use?”

“Just the everyday kind,” I said, having no idea what to say to that. What was he trying to get from me? “I just think to myself, ‘What would Sherlock do?’ ”

“Sherlock?”

“I even have a bracelet with the acronym WWSD on it. It’s my favorite. It’s plastic.” I was losing it. Spurting out inconsequential facts. He was so going to bust me. But for what? Why was I so nervous? I had a difficult time with confrontations. Two in one morning was going to be my undoing.

“And when you were nine? What methods of detection did you use then?”

I coughed. “Nine?”

“And how about when you were five? How did you solve cases for your father when you were five years old?”

“M-my father?”

“I’ve been doing some research,” he said, picking lint off his hat, “conducting a few interviews. It seems you helped your father for years and now you assist your uncle. Have been for some time now.”

Holy cow, was this air-the-dirty-laundry day? I would’ve worn my good underwear instead of the ones that said
admission by invitation only
. “I’m not really sure what you mean. I just became a PI a little over two years ago.”

“I mean, you’ve been helping your relatives advance their careers for quite some time now. I just want to know how.”

“You know, some people would find that idea ludicrous.”

“But not you.”

“No, sir. Probably not me. But I do have to meet a client, if you don’t mind.”