Tempting Danger (9 page)

“Actually, I came here to ask you about that. Being a sensitive, I mean. And about lupi.”

“I read about this in the paper. You are with this killing, are you? No.” Grandmother switched to English, which she spoke perfectly well, though with an accent every bit as bad as Lily’s was in Chinese. “I mean—on the case. You are on the case.”

“I’m lead. And I need to know more about lupi than I do.”

Grandmother tapped the rim of her cup with one long, painted fingernail. “This is your favor? You wish to ask me about lupi?”

Lily answered carefully. Some things were not to be spoken of directly. “I know a little, of course. But there are so many stories. I need help sorting story from truth. Lupi are grouped by families or clans—”

“Eh! I know little about lupus clans. They are a secretive people.”

“Yes, but . . . you can help me understand what they’re capable of, what their weaknesses are. They’re fast. I know that. But how fast? The report I read estimated that they could run a hundred miles an hour in wolf form.”

That sent Grandmother into peals of laughter. “This is experts? Experts believe this? Cheetahs run this fast! Wolves do not.”

“But they aren’t regular wolves.”

“No, but they aren’t cheetah, either.” Her eyes were shiny and damp with mirth. She dabbed at one with her fingertip. “What they have—you know this!—is very quick response. Two times as fast as human? Three times? I don’t know. I don’t put a number to it, but very much faster than humans. When they try,” she added, still amused. “They don’t go around speeded up all the time.”

Two times faster would be plenty quick,
Lily thought. “Weaknesses?”

“They don’t like small, closed-up places. Putting them in jail is bad idea. They go crazy sometimes.”

A race of claustrophobes?
“They can regenerate limbs, right? That’s why registered lupi were tattooed on their foreheads. When they tried tattooing their hands, the lupi cut them off and grew them back without the tattoos.”

Grandmother shrugged. “Sometimes experts are right.”

“What about the rumors about their, ah, sexual potency? Is there anything to the idea that they bespell women?”

Grandmother snorted. “They are potent, yes, but there’s no magic to it. Unless you call it magic when a man pays attention to what a woman wants.” That amused her. “Maybe it is. You have a lupus’s attention, child?”

“I’m meeting with one today, about the case.” She frowned and pushed her hair behind her ear. She hadn’t really thought she’d been bespelled . . . but what
had
happened? “Is there any way for a lupus to lose his magic? A curse, or some kind of magical accident? Can a lupus
be
a lupus without magic?”

“What?” She drew herself up, stern as a cat presented with the wrong food for dinner. “You will explain.”

“I shook his hand. The Nokolai prince. I shook his hand, and I felt nothing.” That wasn’t quite accurate. She flushed. “No magic, that is. I have to know why. If my ability is fading—”

“You know better. You can lose an arm or leg. You cannot lose what you are.”

“Then what happened?” she cried, frustrated. “He’s supposed to be the heir, the number-two muckety-muck in his clan. He must be lupus, yet I didn’t touch magic! I have to know why. I have to know if it’s him or me. If I read him right, then he can’t Change, so he can’t be the killer. Which I won’t be able to explain to anyone or prove, but it’s a starting point.
If
I’m right. I have to—”

“Enough! You are overwrought. Be quiet. I must think.”

With difficulty, Lily subsided. Grandmother’s fingernail tapped the rim of her cup—
ting, ting, ting.
She sat very still, very straight. There was a distant look in her eyes and a worried tuck to her thin lips that made the wrinkles show more than usual.

Of course Grandmother saw the implications, and a good deal more. That’s why Lily was here. A lupus’s magic was innate, like Lily’s ability to sense it. If one could be reft away, so could the other. As could other things.

“You were right to bring this to me,” she said at last, reverting to Chinese. She gave a sharp nod. “But I do not know the meaning. I will have to inquire of . . . another.”

“Who?” Lily asked, startled. “Someone who knows—”

“You will not ask,” Grandmother told her firmly. “This is not someone I go to lightly, but a favor is owed . . . has been owed for a long time. A very long time now.”

Alarming possibilities skittered through Lily’s mind. She leaned forward, touching Grandmother’s hand. Magic purred from the wrinkled skin into hers. “Don’t put yourself at risk.”

The thin lips twitched, and the dark old eyes softened. She patted Lily’s hand. “I am very fond of you, it is true. But I do not do this for you. Not
just
for you. And now,” she said, settling back in her chair, “I will tell you what else I know about lupi.”

THE
Fuentes apartment was in La Mesa. The bland, two-story buildings formed a square with a swimming pool and parking filling the center. Some poet wanna-be had named the complex The Oasis—a name it failed to live up to. There were two royal palms street side. No gardens, porches, or balconies. No green.

At least the exterior wasn’t pink. Lily sighed as she hunted for a parking spot, thinking of her own tiny apartment. She put up with the Pepto-Bismol paint job and lack of space because the place was three blocks from the beach, but sometimes she suffered dwelling envy.

She had to park two blocks away, but the walk was pleasant. It was one of those clear, perfect days that hit the city sometimes in the fall, the kind of day people move to California for. It made Lily want to get her hands in the dirt. Not that she had a garden of her own, except for a few pots, but she had free rein in the naturalized area around Grandmother’s place. Maybe she could squeeze out an hour later.

Lily buzzed Rachel’s unit; after a long wait, the girl told her to come up.

The Fuentes apartment was a corner unit, second floor. The staircase was enclosed, and the stairs themselves were cement and led to a landing that served two apartments. Lily would talk to the residents of 41-C later, see what they knew about Rachel and Carlos Fuentes.

She rang the bell and waited. She was debating whether to ring it again when it opened.

Rachel Fuentes looked like hell. Her face was splotchy, and the big eyes that had glowed last night were dull and red today and hidden behind a pair of rimless glasses. She wore shapeless sweats that had been washed with something red at some point; they were a funny shade of purple. That luxuriant mass of hair was tied in a rough knot at her nape. “I guess I have to talk to you.”

“This is a difficult time, I know. I’m sorry to intrude.”

“Come in.”

Despite the pleasant weather, Rachel had the air conditioning on. The apartment was downright chilly. It was larger than Lily’s, but whose wasn’t? It was also more cluttered—not out of control, but not the place of a neatnik, either. And a lot more colorful.

All the color that tragedy had sucked out of Rachel still lived in her apartment. The walls glowed a rich, multihued gold. The couch was slipcovered in red and strewn with throw pillows in orange, yellow, and lime green. The chairs in the dining area were each painted a different color. There were paintings on the walls, not prints but actual oils—a bright, slightly surreal landscape, a grinning blue dog surrounded by colorful shapes.

“Did you do the room yourself?” Lily asked.

“What?” Rachel paused in the middle of her pretty room, blinking. “Oh. Yes. Carlos likes bright colors, too, but he isn’t . . . he wasn’t interested in decorating.”

“I’m impressed.” And she was. Too bright for her tastes, but it had taken an artist’s eye to put so many vivid colors in a small space and make it work. There was passion here, Lily thought. That didn’t surprise her. The sense of balance and harmony did.

She wasn’t sure Rachel had heard her. The young woman stood near the couch, hugging her elbows to her body and frowning around at the room as if the sofa or table could tell her what she was supposed to do. How do you treat the detective investigating your husband’s death?

Lily tried to help. “Your sister isn’t here?”

“She had to work.”

“Would you rather do this when she can be with you?”

“I want to get it over with. And there are some things . . . it will be easier to talk about it without her. She’s protective.” Rachel shrugged. “My big sister, you know?”

“I’ve got one of those. She’s okay, but she never forgets that she’s the big sister. Can’t quite get it that I know how to tie my own shoes these days.”

A glimmer of humor appeared in Rachel’s dark eyes. “Sounds familiar. Della, she wants to help, but she didn’t think much of Carlos. And she really hated Rule—oh, not him, exactly, but that I was involved with him. It’s hard to be around her right now.”

“Your parents don’t live here, I understand.”

“No. Mama moved back to Tucson after Daddy left, and none of us knows where he is. She . . .” Her grimace held pain and guilt. “She’s praying over me. I hate that. I hate it that she thinks I’m some sort of adulteress. It wasn’t like that.”

“What was it like?”

Rachel gave her a long, hard look, but Lily saw her throat work when she swallowed. “I guess I have to tell you. I want you to catch him. I want him punished, whoever it was. Carlos . . . he was a mess.” She gave a short, harsh laugh. “More of a mess than me, believe it or not. But he didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve to have all his chances taken away.”

“No, he didn’t. Maybe we could sit down, and you can tell me about it.”

“Oh. Sure.” She dropped onto the couch. “I should have . . . I’m not thinking right.”

The chair opposite Rachel was striped in yellow and lime green. Lily moved a newspaper to the floor and sat down. “You won’t be, for awhile.”

“I guess not.” A long strand had worked loose from the knot. Rachel shoved it behind her ear and leaned forward, her hands gripping each other between her spread knees. “You want to know who did it, who killed him. I can’t tell you that, but it wasn’t Rule.”

“You sound pretty sure.”

“He didn’t . . . he couldn’t . . .” She had to stop and swallow. “I could tell you that he couldn’t have sat there with me at the club and talked and smiled if he’d just killed my husband, but that’s just my opinion, isn’t it? And you’re thinking that of course I’d say that. Otherwise Carlos’s death would be my fault. But it is anyway, isn’t it?”

Lily’s throat ached with pity. “Why do you say that?”

“It was a lupus who killed him.” She shot to her feet and began pacing. “It wasn’t Rule, but it was a lupus, so it has to have something to do with Rule, or with the club. Something to do with me. Only I can’t figure out what it could be.”

“I’d say you’re thinking pretty clearly.”

Rachel paused, shot Lily a bitter look. “And maybe that’s not a compliment. Maybe I should be falling apart.”

“We all deal with grief differently.” And there was no doubt in Lily’s mind this woman was grieving. “Did your husband own a gun, Ms. Fuentes?”

“Yeah, he . . .” She rubbed her forehead. “Did you say something about that last night?”

“I did.” But Rachel had been incoherent then. “We found a gun nearby. We’re running the serial number, but it would help if you could tell me what kind of gun your husband had.”

“It’s a pistol. A twenty-two.”

“Did he often carry it with him?”

“No, but when we went to Club Hell, he did. It’s not a safe neighborhood.”

Lily’s eyebrows rose. “He went to the club with you?”

“Not . . . not lately.” She stood very still, hugging her arms to her, looking down—or into the past. “I’m going to tell you how it happened, how Rule and I got together. I don’t want to. I don’t want it to be any of your business, but I want you to catch him. Whoever did it, I want him to pay.”

“Catching him is my job. Making him pay is up to the DA.”

“Good enough.” But she didn’t move or speak, just stood there, her arms wrapped tight around herself.

Lily tried to give her a place to start. “I understand you met Rule Turner at the club.” That much she’d learned from Turner. He’d been closemouthed about most everything else about his relationship with Rachel, though he had admitted to knowing Carlos.

“Yeah.” A small, sad smile played over Rachel’s mouth. Her eyes softened as if she was looking back at memories that comforted. “I never thought it would work. Most men are easy—they think they have a chance at sex, they take it, you know? But Rule . . . he could have pretty much anyone, and I’m nothing special. Not ugly, but not beautiful, either. But he made me feel beautiful.”

Heady stuff,
Lily thought.
And all related in the past tense
. “You fell for him.”

“Not the way you mean. I was dazzled, I guess. But not in love or anything, no more than he was.” She woke from her memories to give Lily a sharp look. “He liked me. He was kind to me, too, the sort of kindness that’s hooked to respect, not pity. But he wasn’t jealous, not at all. You might say he was born with what Carlos wanted, or thought he wanted.”