The Hermetic Detective (A Riga Hayworth Paranormal Mystery Book 7)

by Kirsten Weiss

  “One moment please.” Swiveling her chair, she picked up a phone and pressed a call button. “Ms. Verdun? Mr. Mosse and Ms. Hayworth are here to see you… Yes… I’ll let them know.” She spun to the window, the wheels of her chair rattling on the linoleum. “She’ll be right with you. If you’d like to take a seat?” She motioned toward the plastic chairs.

  “Thanks,” Riga said.

  She and Donovan wandered to the chairs but remained standing. If Riga sat, she might fall asleep.

  “What are we looking for?” he asked.

  “Anything out of the ordinary. Yesterday, the police asked at the Towers about Gold Watch, and everyone denied knowledge. But he was in their parking lot, in uniform. And he was pretty distinctive.”

  “Are you certain he wore a nurse’s uniform?”

  “It was white, and he wasn’t a sailor.” She smothered a yawn.

  “Fair enough.”

  The elevator doors slid open, and a diminutive woman glided toward them. She wore an elegant violet jacket over brown linen trousers and a matching silk shell.

  “Mr. Mosse, Mrs. Hayworth, I’m Morgan Verdun.” She tossed back her hair, black as mourning and cut in a short, practical style.

  Riga shook her hand, studying the woman. Verdun’s wide brown eyes gleamed. She reminded Riga of an elegant dragonfly, colorful and fragile. But the woman’s grip was firm, no-nonsense.

  “Call me Riga.”

  “Donovan,” he said, taking her hand.

  “My office is on the fourth floor, but Mr. Jamison said you were interested in a tour. Why don’t we begin here, and we can work our way to my office? Though I’m afraid you may have to dodge paint cans. We’re sprucing up the building.”

  Donovan shrugged. “Why not?”

  She smiled, a razor-blade grimace, and led them down the hall, weaving around a wheeled, metal case stacked with food trays. The electronic ping of a machine echoed off the bare walls. “The first floor is for our temporary residents, people discharged from a hospital but not quite ready to return home or shift to a permanent facility.”

  Two policemen spoke in low voices with a nurse. Riga averted her gaze, hoping they wouldn’t recognize her. In the few years they’d lived at Lake Tahoe, both she and Donovan had spent far too much time at the local sheriff’s station.

  The manager pushed through a pair of double doors leading into a wide, high-ceilinged room. Drop cloths lined the floor. Men in splattered overalls raced rollers up the walls, spreading sand-colored paint.

  Eyes watering, Riga pressed the back of her hand against her nostrils.

  “This used to be a cafeteria,” Verdun said, “but we’re turning it into a conference room. The fact is, most of our first-floor residents are in poor health. Food is brought to their bedside. We’ve also got two restaurants upstairs.”

  They rode up the elevator, stopping floor by floor. The assisted living levels on the fifth and sixth floors weren't bad. Residents lived in their own apartments, getting help with meals and housekeeping. Mrs. Norton had told her she and her husband had lived here once. At what point had the woman’s dementia become too much for her husband to manage?

  A man with a stepladder under one arm bustled down the hall and stopped in front of them. Riga couldn’t decide if he was fantastically ugly or outrageously attractive. Eyes like blueberries; full lips and high cheekbones; hair the color of milk chocolate. His tan uniform fit like a latex glove. “Loose wire.” He bounced on his toes. “Nothing serious, but it’s fixed now.”

  “This is our facilities manager,” Verdun said. “Arwood Wilde.”

  One of the names on Mrs. Norton’s list.

  Donovan shook his hand and jerked his chin toward the stepladder. “For a manager, you seem to be hands-on.”

  “Sometimes it’s easier to just do it yourself.”

  “And what does a facilities manager do?” Riga asked.

  Wilde grinned. “Everything from safety to custodial to grounds-keeping. I’m your classic jack of all trades.”

  Which would make him ideally placed to get up to all sorts of no good. He’d have the key to every room in the building, could slip Gold Watch in and out unobserved. Her eyes narrowed.

  The facilities manager turned to Verdun. “Any idea when the new hire will be on board?”

  She stiffened. “No.”

  “All right,” Wilde said. “But it would be nice to have a full team again.” He tipped an imaginary hat to them and strode down the hall. A handkerchief of pink and white hearts flapped farewell from his back pocket.

  “You’re in charge of human resources too?” Donovan asked.

  “I’d love to have my own HR department, but that’s not in the cards,” Verdun said. “We use an outside firm to find candidates, but at the end of the day, the hiring’s on me.”

  At the sixth floor, the administrator motioned toward the elevator doors. “And that is our tour. Would you like to return to my office, and I can answer any other questions you may have?”

  “And the seventh floor?” Riga asked.

  Verdun frowned. “The dementia unit. I’m afraid it would be too disturbing to the residents for us to tour the space.”

  And yet Riga had been up there yesterday. Because the nurse had been flustered by her wandering patient? Or was this a newly invented rule?

  “Of course,” Donovan said. “I’m curious about the return on investment by type of patient.”

  Riga smothered a smile. Return on investment. Donovan was in his element when spewing financial jargon. Since finances weren’t one of her strengths, she was happy to let him tackle that end.

  “We prefer to think of them as guests or residents rather than as patients,” Verdun said. “They pay for our services and are our customers, after all.”

  They followed Verdun into the elevator. It descended, rattling.

  Riga smothered a yawn, glad to have Donovan with her. She was having trouble formulating intelligent questions. Relaxing, she leaned against the elevator wall and probed the facility with her mind.

  Death magic shivered through her, a pulsing ache. Her breathing quickened, a spark stirring in her core.

  Clenching her jaw, she forced away the sensation. Whatever spells had been cast here, their trace was faint. Perhaps the magic had been cloaked. Or the spell hadn’t yet come into fruition.

  And she still hadn’t seen a single ghost.

  “…are constant,” Verdun was saying. “But we try to minimize them to avoid disrupting our client’s lives.”

  The doors slid open, and they walked down a corridor with faux-wood flooring and prints of Lake Tahoe on the walls. Verdun opened an office door and quirked a brow. “And here’s my office, where the magic happens.”

  Riga stiffened. “Is there a lady’s room nearby?”

  “Down the hall and on the left.” The administrator pointed.

  “Thanks.” She hurried in the direction Verdun had indicated. Inside the tiled bathroom, she whipped off her jacket and turned it inside out, exposing the white lining. Tugging off her scarf, she stuffed it inside her pocket, then twisted her hair into a neat bun. As disguises went, this one was basic, but it would have to do.

  Pulling in the energies from the above, below, and in-between, she cast a simple cloaking spell. She smiled, feeling the energies lock into place around her. It was a solid cloak. But if someone was looking for her or staring straight at her, they’d penetrate the illusion.

  Her satchel was the proverbial fly in the ointment. Slung over her shoulder, it gave her away as a visitor should someone see past the cloak. But after yesterday’s disaster, she wasn’t ready to leave her bag of magical protection behind.

  Slipping her oversized purse from her shoulder, she held it under one arm. Better, but not perfect. She’d have to trust to the cloak.

  Riga slipped from the bathroom and strode down the hall as if she had somewhere to be.

  Her gaze flicked to the elevator. The sixth floor light was illuminated. She co
uldn’t wait for it to return to the office level. Ducking into the stairwell, she took the concrete steps two at a time.

  On the seventh floor, she paused to catch her breath. In spite of what her sister claimed, caring for two babies was no substitute for regular exercise.

  She opened the metal door and strode into the hallway. A man’s groans echoed, a chorus for the piercing beep of a medical alarm. If Mrs. Norton hadn’t been insane before she’d been sent up here, this racket would have sent her around the bend.

  The nurse who’d shown her here yesterday, Jalonik, stood by the nurses station. She shook her finger at a scrawny man in white. “You’re supposed to keep count of the medications!” She tightened her hands into fists.

  “Get help up here,” the male nurse said, yawning. “I barely have time to deal with the patients much less fill out the damn forms.”

  Nurse Jalonik yanked down the hem of her pale blue cardigan. “Residents, not patients!”

  Riga walked past them, past the private nurse, seated in a chair beside a half-closed door and reading what looked like the same thriller. At room 702, Riga turned the doorknob, slid inside. Mrs. Norton lay strapped on the bed, her blankets taut, a blessing in this chill room.

  Riga’s face warmed, a muscle twitching in her jaw. The straps would keep the woman from wandering, but they seemed barbaric. Primitive. Cruel.

  Her roommate stared at the ceiling, the woman’s mouth moving silently.

  A gray blur shifted in the corner of the room, and Riga’s gaze whipped toward the movement. A plastic pitcher tumbled from the bureau beside Mrs. Norton’s roommate.

  Riga’s brow wrinkled. She might have imagined the movement, but there was no reason for the pitcher to fall to the floor. She padded toward the area, her senses extended.

  Nothing.

  She picked up the pitcher and filled it with tap water, returned it to the bureau.

  “Are you the detective?” a weak voice croaked.

  Riga turned.

  Mrs. Norton’s roommate raised her head. Her whispy white hair made a wild and rumpled halo.

  “I am.” Riga studied the woman. She’d easily penetrated Riga’s magical cloak. But perhaps madness provided its own sort of vision. In a low voice, she said, “Can I get anything for you?”

  “My son. Find my son.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Terrence. He always hated that name. He prefers Terry. Terry Washington. He needs to get me out of this place. They’re trying to kill us.”

  “Why?”

  “For the insurance money. Terry tried to kill me too. Poison. But I’d rather die at home than in this place. All those pills. The pills.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Riga said.

  Her head thumped back to the pillow. “Good. Good.”

  Riga drifted to Mrs. Norton’s side. Mrs. Washington had seen through Riga’s cloak, but Mrs. Norton wasn’t seeing anything, her blue eyes vacant. The phrase “bag of bones” drifted into Riga’s mind. The woman’s eye sockets and cheekbones pressed hard against her papery skin. It was hard to believe this was the same woman who’d walked seven miles to her home yesterday. A lump swelled Riga’s throat.

  Gently, Riga cradled her hand. “You were right, Mrs. Norton. Something is going on here, and I’m investigating.”

  The hand remained limp in her grasp.

  “And tell that man not to come back,” her roommate shouted. “I don’t like him, always drifting around. Shiftless!”

  Riga laid Mrs. Norton’s hand atop the blanket.

  “I don’t like him!” Her roommate’s voice rose to a shriek.

  Heart thudding, Riga backed from the room. The saner people at this facility might not pierce Riga’s cloak, but they’d hear Mrs. Washington’s shouting. And Riga had been in the “ladies room” too long. Rehearsing an excuse, she hurried down the corridor.

  Nurse Jalonik walked past, clipboard beneath one arm, brow furrowed. She stared straight through Riga.

  Riga darted into the stairwell. Setting down her bag on the concrete landing, she yanked off her blazer and turned it right side out. She slung her satchel over one shoulder and set off down the stairs.

  A metal door clunked shut below her.

  Riga continued her quick descent, pulling her scarf from her pocket. She had her cloak, and even if she was discovered, she was already a floor away from the dementia unit. She could be a legitimate visitor, who wanted to stretch her legs on the stairs rather than taking the elevator.

  Cigarette smoke drifted up the steps.

  She smiled, knotting the scarf around her neck. Someone on a smoke break, someone who wouldn’t want to get caught. She stepped onto the landing and reached for the door latch, glanced down.

  On the landing below, Gold Watch caught her gaze, the overhead light glinting off his bald head.

  Her heart stopped.

  His eyes, animalistic, burning pools of oil, caught her, freezing her muscles. He raised his hand, and the air rippled, shimmering darkly. Stinking of rotten garbage, it bubbled toward her.

  Her flesh crawled, stomach heaving. Every nerve in her body shrieked to recoil, to run. But she couldn’t move. Her limbs locked into place, disgust and desire tangling. Magic, dark and enticing flowed toward her and she wanted, she wanted…

  A wail echoed down the stairs, distorted, high and thin like a baby’s.

  Her muscles jerked, and she reached for the in-between, for escape. It slipped from her fingers. The dank wave crested, reaching for her.

  She flung out one hand, focused her will. “Tolle!”

  The dark magic splintered, washed backward, away.

  Dropping his cigarette, Gold Watch leapt up the stairs.

  Cursing, she wrenched the door open and slammed into a solid mass — Donovan.

  “There you are.” He lightly grasped her shoulders, his eyes crinkling.

  “Gold Watch,” Riga said. “He’s right behind—”

  “Where were you?” Beside Donovan, Verdun’s brown eyes snapped. Now her elegant features were more dragon than dragonfly. “What were you doing?”

  “He’s right behind…” And Riga realized the footfalls on the steps were growing fainter. Gold Watch wasn’t plunging through the open door, weapon in hand.

  Donovan hurtled past her and dashed down the steps.

  “I smell cigarettes.” Verdun grasped Riga’s upper arm. “Were you smoking? This is strictly a non-smoking facility.”

  “There was a man in a nurse’s uniform in the stairwell.” Riga jerked away.

  “We have lots of male nurses,” the administrator said. “The question is, what were you doing in there?”

  “He’s wanted by the police for murder.”

  Her lips formed a thin line. “If you’re insinuating—”

  “He may be headed for the basement. Come on.”

  “Ridiculous. Only Arwood and myself have keys.” Her jaw jutted forward.

  And that confirmed Mrs. Norton’s story. There were only two people with keys to that basement. Unless a trusted nurse like Jalonik had somehow managed to make a copy.

  Riga whirled and raced through the slowly closing door after Donovan. She shouldn’t have stopped to spar with the administrator, but Mrs. Norton had said there had been two voices, two villains. As administrator of the facility, Morgan Verdun could do what she wished. She’d make an ideal ally.

  Riga raced down the steps. This is where the magic happens. Had Verdun been taunting her?

  She burst through the ground floor door and looked down the branching corridors. Donovan and Gold Watch were nowhere in sight.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Breathing hard, Riga hesitated, clenching her fists. Which way had Donovan gone?

  She stood at the junction of the two corridors. One hallway led deep into the building. There was likely an exit to the outside somewhere amidst its clutter of IV stands and food carts. The other led past the reception area and to the parking lot.

  Donova
n was strong, but he wasn't trained to defend against dark magic. Hell, she’d barely fought off Gold Watch. She chose the hallway to the parking lot, running past the closed, reception desk window.

  The glass doors slid open, and Donovan walked inside, shaking his head.

  Her shoulders slumped. “Donovan.”

  “I lost him. You weren’t kidding about how fast he is.”

  Gripping his lapels, she pulled herself closer to him.

  He bent his head and their foreheads touched. His arms came around her. “I’m fine.”

  Shaky, she took a step back. “Maybe we should stick together from now on.”

  One corner of his mouth coiled upward. “You’re a fine one to talk. What is he?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “And what the hell does he want here? Is he just another necromancer, sacrificing patients to his death magic?”

  “That would make sense. Why should anyone pay much attention when an elderly resident dies? Most of their relatives probably feel relieved when that day comes. No more dipping into their inheritances to pay for granny’s declining years.” Her jaw tightened. “But this guy is more than human. He’s not a simple necromancer.” A simple necromancer. As if there was such an animal.

  The elevator door opened and Morgan Verdun strode out, her violet jacket flaring about her hips. “There you are. If you’re trying to damage the reputation of the Sunset Towers—”

  “Why would we want to do that?” Donovan asked.

  Her brown eyes narrowed. “To drive the price down so you could snatch it up at a bargain?”

  “Is the Towers for sale?” Riga asked.

  A muscle in her jaw pulsed. “No. It isn’t.”

  “Then consider us concerned citizens.” He checked his watch. “We’ve got time to stop at the sheriff’s station before my next meeting. Would you like to follow us?”

  Verdun blinked. “The sheriff’s station? Why?”

  “A murder suspect was loitering in your stairwell,” Donovan said. “I’d call that cause for concern.”

  Verdun stiffened. “As I didn’t see this man, there’s not much point in my going, is there?”

  “The police must have questioned you about him,” Riga said.