Opal Fire (9 page)

“How do you know it’s a woman?” Chance asked.

“Because. I saw her face. Once in the mirror...and, and then here.” I waited for one of them to tell me my gears were slipping.

Leo and Chance exchanged glances. For some reason, Cin smiled.

“So you can identify her?” Leo asked.

I nodded and he gave me a weary look. “Don’t repeat that to anyone, kitten,” he said and pulled me close.

I heard Chance whisper to Cinnamon. “Kitten?”

Cin chuckled. “You gotta admit. The girl has nine lives.”

CHAPTER 11

The agate crystal was tucked inside my pillow all night but it didn’t do any good. Lolly had promised it would help me understand my dreams, but all it did was disrupt my sleep. I tossed and turned all night, images of Leo, Cin, and Chance drifting through my mind. The last thing I saw before I woke up was the high school kid, Chip, walking through fire.

I rolled out of bed and glanced at the clock. It was after nine on Saturday, and I wasn’t expected at work. Instead, the plan was to get to the coroner’s office to find out who the girl in the wall was and how she had died.

First, a bathroom break. When I finished, a shriek escaped my throat as I stepped into the living room to find a man sitting on my couch, reading a magazine.

“Chance! You scared the crap out of me. What are you doing here?”

Chance smiled. “Hey, angel. Just keeping you company.”

“How did you get in?”

He stood up, pulled a key from his jeans pocket and dangled it. “Fiona told me to keep the key she gave me after I put the new roof on.” He walked over to me. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said, and cupped my shoulder.

“Leo won’t like this,” I said.

“Who do you think asked me to come here?”

Great. Now I had a babysitter. That left me speechless. Then he tilted in and swept his lips across mine, his hand still guarding my arm.

“Now, that, he wouldn’t like,” he said and pulled away.

It was a soft, friendly kiss, but there was meaning behind it. I knew Chance was toying with me, tempting me. I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to resist.

A phone rang, rattling the room. Chance lifted his cell from the coffee table and answered it.

“Yep, she’s up...will do, chief,” he said and hung up. He looked at me. “Why don’t you get dressed? I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”

I washed up, slipped into cargo pants and a wool sweater and reached for my amethyst necklace, wondering why the only man in my life that didn’t irritate me was my dog, when I remembered the onyx cross necklace from the dirt in the basement of the Opal.

The jeans from the night of the fire were still crammed in the corner of my closet. I rifled through the pockets and pulled out the chain. I stuffed it and the bar tool in my pants pocket, grabbed the book and my bag, and told Chance I was ready. He had fed Moonlight and Thor as I changed.

A dull gray settled over the county, but the air had warmed a bit. Muddy Water Coffee Shop bustled with people when we arrived. The scent of hazelnut and roasted coffee beans teased me as I walked in. We scooted to the counter and Iris called to me. She waved us over to the side bar.

“What’s up, Iris? Got some dirt for the column?”

“Please. As long as Monique is running a brothel disguised as a bar, I got lots of material.”

Chance raised his eyebrows.

“Free Viagra for the elderly every Thursday,” I told him.

Chance nodded. Monique is well known around town for being perpetually in heat. At least now she was spreading the wealth.

“My poor Henry couldn’t put his jack in the box for seven hours. The husbands love it. Wives, not so much.”

I thanked Iris for planting that image in my head and asked what she called me over for.

“Remember that man that was askin’ all the questions? He left you a note.” She plucked a white envelope with my name printed on it from her canvas apron. Then she turned to pour us two cups of house blend as I stuffed the envelope into my pocket.

“What is she talking about?” Chance asked.

I told him about the skinny guy with the mustache and sunglasses. As soon as the words left my mouth, I regretted them.

“Did you tell Leo?”

“No. I forgot all about it until now.”

“You forgot?”

Iris rang in the order, not bothering to hide the fact that she was cataloguing every word. I arced around to the sidebar for cream and sugar. “It’s nothing. I’ve had a lot more things to worry about lately.” Fires, dead bodies, rocks through my window.

“Stace, he could be the guy who lobbed the rock through the window.”

Never thought of that.

“Who?” Leo said behind me.

Holy crap, now I had two watchdogs.

“No, he isn’t,” I said to Chance. “I didn’t get that kind of feeling from him. He’s harmless.” But familiar, which I did not say.

“Who?” Leo asked.

“How do you know? And since when did you start trusting your instincts?” Chance asked, eyes blazing.

“Who the hell are we talking about?” Leo demanded.

“Tell him,” Chance said. They both crossed their arms and stared at me.

I wasn’t enjoying this one bit. I felt like a ping-pong ball caught between two players who enjoyed the game as long as the little ball didn’t bounce off the table.

“All right, what is this? You two are buddies now? And you,” I pointed to Leo. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to pick you up. The coroner said he has time to talk to you.”

I took a huge sip of my coffee, ignored the fact that I just burned my tongue and said, “Listen to me very carefully. I do not appreciate being passed around like last month’s Playboy. I don’t need either one of you to babysit me and the only man I need in my life right now is the one with balls big enough to handle who I am.”

I left them there trying to figure out which one of them was equipped for the job, when behind me I heard Iris say, “I think she means Thor.”

I couldn’t tell if they were fighting over me or ganging up on me. At times like this, I ached for my parents. My father was tender with my mother. I loved to watch them, sharing a moment when they thought I wasn’t near. A touch. A look. A smile. Meaning behind all of it. Sure there were disagreements, but always there was a mutual respect. I couldn’t imagine my father bossing my mother around, treating her like a wounded bird. But if he had, I bet she wouldn’t have trouble diffusing the situation.

I was not gifted with that talent.

For a second, I envisioned my mother walking in stride with me. How do you command respect from a man? I would ask. How do you know someone is
the one
? What is love, really?

Then I would ask why she had left after Dad died, never to be heard from again.

I crossed Main Street and headed up the hill to White Hope Road, dodging piles of gray slush and salt. The note in my pocket piqued my curiosity, but that would have to wait until I got some information under my belt. I stopped off at the corner store to arm myself with the usual bribe. Even though the coroner and I go way back, it never hurt to present an offering to gain entrance into his kingdom. Mr. Sagnoski was smoking a Pall Mall outside the back of the building when I got there.

“Hi there, Stacy.” His teeth were chattering because he wasn’t wearing a coat. His fingers were gnarled from years of cutting open the flesh of friends and neighbors. He was a foot shorter than me and wore the same coke-bottle glasses he wore back when he was my eighth grade biology teacher, although the lenses had thickened some.

“Mr. Sagnoski, it’s freezing out here. Where’s your coat?”

“What are you, my mother?” He laughed as if that was the funniest thing in the world and then coughed up some phlegm.

Guess when you spend most of your time with the dead, you had to find ways to amuse yourself.

He flicked the cigarette butt into the street and said, “The usual arrangement?”

I pulled out a giant box of Skittles and a lottery ticket from my coat. “You don’t tell Helen and I won’t tell the chief,” he said and held the door open for me.

“I still don’t understand why she lets you smoke but you can’t gamble or eat sweets,” I said.

He shrugged. “She believes a man is entitled to one vice.”

The toxic scent of embalming fluid wrestled with the stiff aroma of Pine Sol for the honor to empty my stomach.

I swayed a bit and Mr. Sagnoski steadied me with one arm.

“Whoa, kid. You sure you’re up for this? You couldn’t even dissect a frog in my class. And this ain’t no frog.” He laughed again, followed by a gurgling sound.

She was everywhere. All around me, the presence of the girl in the mirror. The dead girl we rescued from the wall.

What was she trying to tell me?

“I’m fine. Let’s see what you’ve got.” I smiled weakly at my old teacher and followed him through a narrow corridor and down a few steps into a stale room.

The body was covered with a powder blue sheet on a stainless steel table. There was a humming, possibly from the furnace, as Mr. Sagnoski walked up to the table and hopped on a stool, lifting the sheet. He flipped on a light that dangled over the table, painting every corner of the cold room with odd shadows. Various clothing remnants sat on a counter, waiting to be inventoried and bagged. I paused to examine the garments.

“So at first I thought maybe it was a head injury that caused the death,” Mr. Sagnoski was saying.

Among the clothing remains were a poodle skirt, faded and torn, a cashmere cardigan, which could have once been pink, a scarf, and tired, worn saddle shoes. Had she been there since the fifties? Funny, the hairstyle from the image in the mirror didn’t fit that era.

“But now that didn’t jive, so then I thought maybe she was buried alive, okay?”

The horror of that theory made me want to run from the room. Then I saw a pin. Was that a K?

K.

“But if you look real close, here, you can barely see...”

A sharp scream echoed in my head. I looked at Mr. Sagnoski. He hadn’t heard it. Did I imagine it? I palmed my temples.

“…here, there are some imprints where pressure was applied...”

Then I too felt pressure around my throat.

“So my report will indicate the victim was...”

I couldn’t breathe all of a sudden. It was as if I were being... “Strangled,” I said, my hand around my neck.

Mr. Sagnoski chuckled. “That’s right. Guess you were paying attention, Stacy.”

“Guess I was.” I met his stare, the pressure around my neck faded. I nodded towards the clothes. “Are those hers?”

“Yep.” Mr. Sagnoski stepped off his stool and waddled over to me. “In a manner of speaking.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look at the label there.”

I squinted at the label he pointed to on the poodle skirt. It read: CLEVER COSTUMES.

I looked down at the coroner. “It’s a Halloween costume?”

Mr. Sagnoski shrugged. “Could be.”

“I’ve never heard of Clever Costumes. Is it around here?”

He peeled off latex gloves and tossed them in a metal container as he spoke. “They were located in Culver City. Only costume place in the county. Closed in ‘89.”

89. I glanced at the body, picturing the blackened, thin form as the girl she once was. Young, fun-loving, full of hope. She could have been anyone. She could have been me. “Don’t suppose she had ID?” I asked.

“Course not, what fun would that be?” He winked.

“Age?”

“Hard to tell.”

I sighed.

“You can get a copy of the report when I’m through, Stacy,” Mr. Sagnoski said, dismissing me.

I was about to shake his hand and thought better of it. I thanked him and told him I would be in touch.

As I stepped off the curb, heading to the newspaper office, my cell chimed in a text message. I glanced at the phone and got the distinct sensation of déjà vu.

FROM: Birdie 10:02AM. Gramps again. What a hoot. Hike after brkfst, in tune with nature. Kissed Birdie in the woods. C u soon.

FROM: Birdie 10:04AM. They asked me what I wanted to get out of this experience and I said me.

I clicked the phone shut, knowing in my heart this would not end well, but it wasn’t up to me to keep my grandparents’ love lives in order. I couldn’t even keep tabs on my own.

As if on cue, Leo pulled up to the curb just as I crossed Main Street and I stuffed my phone into my pocket.

“Need a ride?”

His warm breath cut the air in a whirl of smoke.

“I’m good.” I kept walking.

He cruised next to me anyway and my pace quickened.

“Who was the note from?”

“I don’t now. A source, probably,” I told him, still looking ahead.

“Is it chilly out here or is it just you?”

The ground was covered with prime packing snow, which I liberated and lobbed at Leo’s face. He ducked and the snowball splattered across the inside of the passenger window of his cruiser.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he asked

“I could give you a list but it would take too long.” I dusted my gloves off.

The newspaper office was a few blocks away, but if I cut to the stairs I could shake him.

“I could have you arrested for that.” He wiped his window.