Azure Secrets

by Patricia Rice

  “Mariah’s still sending over info on him. I’m trying to decide if I have to arrest her or pretend I don’t know where she’s obtaining her information. You don’t want to look at those records and be implicated too. One of us has to be legal.” Walker stood up and pulled on his jacket. “Let’s just say you don’t want Portelli investing in Hillvale.”

  “Shit, shit, shit. How many conmen can Hillvale attract? Is there a big neon sign over our heads that says Hicks here, come fleece them?”

  “We’re an easy distance from the city,” Walker said with a shrug. “I assume Roper and Portelli were simply helping out a friend by reporting they’d found the missing dog.”

  “And shooting Francois in the process?” Monty asked skeptically, following Walker down the stairs of City Hall. “Are you off to see the little bastard?”

  Monty should be the one going down the mountain to visit the hospital. He felt guilty as all kinds of hell not sitting at his mother’s bedside, but he felt like he was barely holding together a dirigible on the brink of explosion.

  “Yup. I’ll talk to Francois, then have a conversation with the cops in Waterville. I’m taking the key and bandanna to the feds before the Lucys hang them on a flagpole as they’ve threatened. Your job is to keep Mariah from slapping people with ectoplasm, and Fee from doing whatever in heck she does. Otherwise, I lock them all up.”

  “Flagpoles are dangerous, but I’m all in favor of a little ectoplasm,” Monty said grudgingly. “It’s better than Mariah going catatonic and taking down the internet. And Fee’s methods are more appealing.”

  Which made him feel slightly better about her Lucy irrationality. At least people got fed while Fee did her hocus-pocus.

  “I want all my ducks in a row before I tackle Portelli and Roper. Keep an eye on them.” Walker started out the door, then leaned back in. “I just got the tests on the Jag driver with snakebite. Someone injected his IV with insulin. Can’t prove that’s what killed him, but that was certainly the intent. We are not dealing with dumb gangbangers.”

  He slammed out. Monty ran his hand through his hair and wondered if he could pretend this was a normal day, and he should just run down the road and have his hair cut.

  If it were a normal day, he’d have to drive down the mountain and visit his mother. Watching after Fiona was a better deal. With a sigh of exasperation, he picked up the landline to call the hospital so he could hear his mother rant about hospital food. Maybe he should have Fee cook her something to keep her quiet.

  At the direction of his thoughts. he pondered pounding his muddled head on the desk.

  Fee wasn’t certain how to join the Lucy meeting. She hadn’t been invited to Cass’s house. All the Lucys she knew best were up there, so she couldn’t ask them for invitations. She even debated taking out her bike and heading back to Waterville, except she had the notion her best resources were here.

  She frowned as she chopped vegetables for Dinah’s pasta salad and sorted through her options. Monty wanted to shove her into a closet, so she couldn’t ask him. Mariah was immersed in her computer. Tullah and Amber were with Cass. Could she approach Harvey or Aaron? They didn’t strike her as the types to get along well with the older woman, but they were all she had.

  She wasn’t certain why she thought Cass might have solutions. It was just obvious cooking wouldn’t find Stacy, and that Walker and Monty were more interested in crime than kids. Someone had to think of the child first.

  “If I wanted celery powder in the salad, I’d use the stuff in the jar,” Dinah complained, swiping the cutting board from Fee.

  She’d cut the vegetables so fine, they were barely visible. “Sorry. Mix them in the oil for the dressing and let everyone think they’re just eating tortellini. It’s like feeding kids by hiding the peas in the mashed potatoes.”

  Dinah snorted. “Need one of them fancy food processors to do that. We ain’t got the time to treat grownups like kids.”

  “Baby food.” Excitedly, Fee unwrapped her apron. “The kidnappers need kid food. I need to go to Waterville. We haven’t had a single customer today we don’t know. The kidnappers aren’t here.”

  Dinah watched her with a worried frown. “Won’t they be back for that dog?”

  “Or me.” Fee shrugged. “Maybe they saw Sukey wasn’t wearing her old collar and aren’t interested in her anymore. Better if I’m not where they expect to find me if they think I have the key.”

  “You take someone with you,” Dinah demanded. “I’m getting too old to handle two kitchens. I don’t want to lose you.”

  “You’re not old.” Fee hugged the diminutive cook. “But you do need a life. I’ll be back.”

  Dinah snorted again as Fee pushed open the door into the café. She needed transportation. Biking up and down a mountain took far too long. She checked the café and found no one useful there.

  Harvey apparently slept during the day at Aaron’s house. She had no idea where that was. So she started with Aaron. He had a truck. She’d love to visit Sukey, and he knew where she was, but that could wait. How did she persuade Aaron away from his shop? Tourists and the bridal party’s wealthy guests were driving down from the lodge, filling up the lot. He’d want to keep his shop open.

  Okay, so maybe they could go tonight. That’s when the rats emerged anyway.

  Aaron was at his desk, working on his bookkeeping from the looks of it. He glanced up at her entrance and went back to work since she obviously wasn’t a customer.

  “What if I can smell kidnappers?” she asked, posing her strongest question first.

  He drew his dark, pointed eyebrows into a frown. Combined with his dark goatee, he had a Mephistopheles look happening. “You would have smelled them the night you found Sukey.”

  “But I didn’t know I was looking for kidnappers then. If they didn’t come into the café, I wouldn’t have noticed them at all. And maybe I could smell a frightened baby girl. That has to be a distinctive smell.” She stood in front of his desk, clenching her fingers.

  “But you’ve never smelled frightened baby girl and wouldn’t recognize it for what it was.” He sounded more as if he were examining the possibilities than arguing. “You can’t wander around, sniffing the air, hoping to find the right scent. They’d have bloodhounds out if that worked.”

  “I could follow the fishy-smelling gang members,” she suggested. “Kidnappers would need to feed a three-year old kid-type food. Maybe I could smell that on them.”

  “Most gang members aren’t childless,” he argued. “Stick with marking your suspects with coconuts and let us follow them.”

  Fee wanted to stomp her feet in frustration. “I can’t just sit here waiting for a kidnapper to show up. It’s just not happening.”

  The shop door opened, letting in daylight. Fee turned, expecting to see a customer. Instead, Amber gestured at her. “Come along. We need you since we don’t have Teddy.”

  “Right.” Fee shot Aaron a glare and marched over to follow Amber. “I’m glad someone appreciates the problem.”

  “Your guardian spirits are having fits,” Amber said prosaically as she limped in the direction of her shop. “Cass is in favor of locking you up. We overruled her. She’s becoming as fussy as the Nulls.”

  “Are guardian spirits like guardian angels?” Fee asked dubiously. Dealing with spirits was the reason she’d tried the more practical Nulls in the first place.

  Amber shrugged her ample shoulders. “Depends on your religion or your definition, I suppose. Doesn’t the Bible specify a limited number of angels who reside in heaven? The ether, however, overflows with spirits, too many to name the way they do in the Bible. We just think of them as the souls of people who have passed from this earth but haven’t chosen to move on to whatever lies beyond.”

  Fee shivered. “Like my parents?”

  “With Malcolm in your name, that’s a good possibility. Did they die suddenly?” Amber unlocked her tarot shop and led the way in, snapping on a dim table lamp and lett
ing the sun light the rest of the interior.

  A fresh scent of lemons and oranges welcomed Fee. She relaxed sufficiently to call up the horror of her childhood. “My mother died of cancer, so no, not suddenly. My father was killed by a terrorist on the other side of the world while my mother was dying. I’d like to think they found each other, if there’s a next world, but given my experience, I don’t exactly believe in any benevolent beings looking after us.”

  “Well, it’s not as if spirits have a lot of power or voice.” In the back room, Amber sat down at a table draped in several colorful cloths with tassels. “Choose a deck and let’s see if we can reach them. If they’re the guardians watching over you, we can’t learn anything coherent while their shouts override everyone else.”

  Her dangling bracelets chiming, Amber indicated an array of colorful tarot decks spread out on the shelves.

  “I don’t want to hear from my parents. I want to find a kidnapped child,” Fee said in frustration, studying the decks. Some of them were pretty darned scary looking with specters of death and skulls. She wondered where the scent of citrus came from—an air freshener? No, this was fresh. She’d rather find the oranges than look at cards.

  “We take information from where we can find it,” Amber said as if she were talking about the city directory. “Whoever is watching you has something to say. Let’s see what it is.” Amber folded her beringed fingers on the table and waited.

  Fee resisted. It had taken her decades to recover from the loss of her familiar home. She didn’t want to stir up painful memories. But if there was some chance spirits could tell her about little Stacy. . . Damn.

  She picked a deck with medieval-looking flowers and figures.

  “The angel deck, perfect! Have a seat. You need to cut the cards.” Amber shuffled the deck, then handed it to Fee. “Cut them any way you like.”

  Angel deck? That figured, talk about angels, pick angel figures. The cards were sturdy cardboard, not easy to shuffle. Fee divided the deck in half and just shoved the two stacks together. “I’m not much of a card player.”

  “Of course you aren’t. Your intuition is attuned to food and stability, not gambling. Sit.” Amber’s command was soft but firm.

  Fee sat, taking a deep breath of the citrus scent to calm herself. She watched the colorful cards as Amber spread them across the table, letting her examine them. Then Amber snapped them into a stack again and asked her to shuffle a second time. That seemed harmless enough.

  Amber began a spiel about allowing the spirits to comfort her, to reach out and guide her, to let the spirits speak through the cards. . .

  The next thing Fee knew, she was snapping awake and Amber was putting the cards away.

  Twenty-six

  Sunday, lunch

  “You’re very resistant to spirit guidance,” Amber said, offering a cup of milky tea.

  Fee sniffed it suspiciously, but the only ingredient seemed to be a very good Earl Grey latte. She gratefully drank in the scent of bergamot. Remembering Harvey’s warning about Amber, she sipped silently. How dangerous was Amber? She couldn’t remember anything about those damned cards.

  “While we were at Cass’s, your guardians kept showing us images of oranges and lemons. We could even smell them. So we thought maybe that’s what they wanted us to convey to you, but apparently, they were telling us you respond to citrus.” Amber sipped her own tea and gestured at the few cards left on the table.

  Her guardians? “When I was real little, my parents grew citrus trees in our yard,” she said warily. Surely her parents. . . No, that was too far-fetched. “I used to love sitting there, smelling the blossoms and fruit. So yeah, they’re a good memory.”

  When Fee continued regarding the cards with suspicion, Amber shrugged. “Your spirits must have recognized that. They worked well through you. Those are the cards they chose. You don’t remember picking them, do you?”

  Fee shook her head. She’d picked cards? Nope, didn’t remember that. “Did you hypnotize me?” she finally asked.

  Amber pursed her lips and thought about it. “Something like that, I suppose, and maybe a little bit like Mariah’s trances. It’s hard to say if we do it to ourselves or if outside sources influence us. I think it’s a little of both. You let your vigilant conscious mind go to sleep, which leaves your subconscious open. That’s where the spirits can communicate.”

  The shop door flew open, letting in a blast of sunlight, fresh air, and the sexy scent that was all Monty. Fee didn’t even have to turn to acknowledge his presence.

  “If this damned town wasn’t full of spies, you’d have scared me half to death when I couldn’t find you at the cafe,” he grumbled. “I thought you’d be half way down the mountain by now.”

  “Given what her guardian spirits are telling us, that might not be the best idea,” Amber said cheerfully, pointing at the cards. “I can’t promise I’m interpreting the cards the way the spirits want, but they seemed to agree with my reading.”

  Fee studied the colorful images, but they just looked like cherubs and swords and a medieval knight or prince. She inhaled the bergamot scent and let the conversation flow over her head. She’d been hypnotized? And her guardian spirits had talked to Amber through cards. She needed to think on that for a while.

  She sensed Monty’s uncertainty. Amber’s shop was frilly feminine, filled with shimmering crystals and flying angels and lace. Fee suspected it usually smelled of candles as well, but the tarot reader had cleansed the air with the citrus, thank all that was holy. The artificial scents of candles made her want to puke.

  “Maybe we should go to the café,” Fee suggested, letting the mayor off the hook. She pushed back her chair, making it more of a command.

  Amber looked reluctant to leave her colorful cave, but she pushed out of her chair and reached for the sign she hung in her window when she stepped out. “I suppose Monty should hear this too, although I’d really like Cass to know.”

  “If Cass needs to know, she’ll be waiting for you at the café,” Monty said dryly. “That’s what she does.”

  Fee didn’t think Amber actually knew anything, but she kept her thoughts to herself. Her own sense of smell offered a nebulous knowing, not actual knowledge—until she tested it. She’d sensed the smell on Monty’s mother was illness, but that could have meant sick in the head or soul or body or just a paper cut, for all she knew. Which was why Carmel had needed to go to the hospital, for professionals to look at.

  So Fee was pretty certain Amber might sense something but she couldn’t know it.

  With that worked out, she was a little more comfortable taking a booth with them at the café. She switched on a muted news channel with closed captioning, then poured coffee for Monty and tea for Amber before she chose a seat. Monty sat across from Amber, so she had to choose between them. Because she liked looking at Monty and she could see the TV, Fee sat next to the tarot reader.

  The news channel was showing County Attorney Haas reporting on a drug case in Waterville. No news there.

  “All right, give me the bad news.” Monty sipped his coffee with an air of resignation.

  “It’s not exactly bad news,” Amber said. “When the spirit guide pulled cherubs, I asked if that meant little Stacy, and they seemed to agree.”

  “Explain seem to.” Fee finally spoke. “I don’t remember any of this.”

  “You might, if you let that formidable mind of yours relax.” Amber patted her hand. “Your spirits wanted to speak directly, without the kind of spirit guide Cass uses. But I’m not a good psychic. I need cards. So they spoke to me by swinging the melodic wind chimes when they agreed, and hit the heavy deep bass one when they didn’t.”

  Fee nodded. “So spirits chose the cards and rang the chimes? Or is this the ectoplasm Mariah catches in her nets?” She gestured at the beaded ghostcatchers near the ceiling.

  Gentle Amber sounded a little annoyed. “I’m not the scientific sort like Mariah. What you suggest is possible, of course. A
ll I am is an interpreter.”

  “Sorry, I’m not used to talking of our gifts. People have asked me to define what I do so often, that I just assume I should question.” Feeling a little shattered that a mysterious someone might actually be watching over her, Fee sat back in the booth and studied Monty to see how he was taking it.

  He seemed wary. Yeah, she got that.

  “So what did the spirits say about Stacy?” Fee asked. “I’ll quit interrupting.”

  “It’s not that they say anything. You’re worried about Stacy, so that comes through in the cherubs. They’re worried about you, so that came through in the swords. They think you need protection. The prophetic cards though, included the Tower and the Fool. I had to go back through the layers of meaning to the original medieval interpretations—the fool as a man so hubris-ridden that he’s chosen the path of evil—before your spirits agreed.”

  Fee held up her palms, indicating she had nothing. Monty nodded agreement.

  Amber ignored them. “The Tower is a catalyst of change, anything from changing one’s mind to revolution. It’s a card of danger, because change doesn’t happen without consequences. Your spirits were really upset when they chose that one. So I asked if you were the catalyst, and again, they agreed.”

  “I change constantly,” Fee said, not understanding. “I’m always changing. The only change that has brought danger was getting fired and finding Sukey.”

  “The cards may mean that you have the power to affect change on the Fool, whoever that is. And since the cherub card was chosen, it might mean the Fool has Stacy, which would be extremely dangerous. No one said interpreting spirits is easy. And since the future can’t be predicted beyond laying out the paths you’re taking, all you can do is be aware.” Amber complacently folded her beringed fingers on the table. “I’ll take this information to Cass and see if her spirit guide can locate the Fool.”

  “Well, now that’s settled,” Monty said dryly. “All we need do is let Fiona wander around until she topples a fool. Will it work if she just shoves her stick between legs until someone falls?”