Eighth Grave After Dark

by Darynda Jones

  Cookie cast a doubtful gaze. “Like clairvoyant clairvoyant?”

  “Yep. Maybe that’s where Amber gets it.”

  Cookie’s expression did a 180, shifting from doubt to horror. “Bite your tongue. Amber is nothing like Lucille.” I felt a spike of fear shudder through her. “That woman has sample packs of Preparation H from the 1970s.”

  “That may be, but it must run in your family. There is something very special about your daughter.”

  “Yes. Special. Just not that special.”

  I cracked up. “You’re right. Odds are, Lucille was labeled insane at a very young age. But she’s really just—”

  “Eccentric,” Cookie finished. “I get it. I just didn’t know she was gifted.”

  “I doubt anyone does. But at least you know to nurture Amber’s gifts. Not suppress them before they have a chance to bloom and then she becomes the lady that collects samples of hemorrhoid medication.”

  “I will do anything to avoid that.” She indicated Lucille with a nod. The poor woman was asking everyone who was left if they’d seen Tommy.

  “Hey,” I said, frowning at her, “aren’t you supposed to be on your way to your one-night stand? I mean, your pre-honeymoon honeymoon?”

  She laughed. “Well, we were, but there is a missing girl out there. She takes precedence.”

  “What?” A jolt of alarm swept through me, not unlike a body shot might have. “Cook, no. This is your wedding day. You are not, under any circumstances, working. Oh my God, I can’t even—”

  My phone chimed and I looked down. It was the text I’d been waiting for.

  “I have to go—”

  “Go?”

  “—but you are going on your pre-honeymoon honeymoon, and that is an order.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I mean it, Cook,” I said as I hurried—aka waddled faster than usual—past her. “I don’t want to see you when I get back.”

  “You can’t leave the grounds.”

  I grabbed a sweater, then rushed out the front door, saying just before it closed, “Go!”

  * * *

  I walked quickly past some guests loitering by the cars out front, hoping they wouldn’t wave me down for a chat. I also avoided eye contact with the departed who stood between me and my destination, winding through them, hoping I didn’t look drunk to the loiterers. Seriously, didn’t they have homes? I kept my head down and my stride quick. I had places to be, and I couldn’t risk Reyes coming back to find me gone. He would definitely come looking for me.

  Fortunately, he wouldn’t see me go into the woods from the backyard unless he was specifically watching. I made sure to go straight for the cover of trees and stuck to them until I came around to a path that led to an access road about a hundred yards from the convent. I hurried as fast as my legs could carry the two of us, wobbling through the brush and dry yellow grass, dodging tree branches and departed alike. Even though I knew the Twelve couldn’t come onto the sacred ground, I still kept a constant vigil. I’d been attacked more than once. Their teeth were like razors set on thick, powerful jaws. It was not something I wanted to experience again.

  I could hear them growling in the distance, the sound a low rumble over the land, reminding me that in all the months we’d been here, they’d never stopped patrolling the borders. The access road came into view at last. The deeper I ventured into the woods, the more nervous I became. A blue sedan sat parked there. I stopped, my ankles aching from traversing the uneven ground. The growls had grown louder, echoing off the trees around me and reverberating in my chest. I fought to control my fear lest I accidentally summon the one man I didn’t want to know I was meeting another of his gender. Alone. But it wasn’t easy. The hellhounds knew I was taking a direct path to their jaws. I could go only a few more feet before they would latch on to me and pull me off the blessed dirt. I glanced back one more time to make sure Reyes hadn’t followed me; then I called out to him.

  “I’m here,” I said.

  A man, tall, in his early sixties, wearing a suit and a military cut, stepped from behind a tree and walked toward me.

  “Mr. Alaniz,” I said as he greeted me with a once-over.

  “Ms. Davidson. I didn’t realize this was a formal affair.”

  “This old thing?” I asked, teasing. “I just threw this on at the last minute.” When he winked at me, I added, “Actually, my best friend got married today. I didn’t have time to change.”

  “I understand, but I would advise against walking out here in those shoes again, especially in your condition.”

  “I know, but I had to sneak away. Thanks again, by the way, for meeting me like this.”

  “My pleasure,” he said, his curiosity about me and our clandestine meetings clawing at him. I could feel it, but it wasn’t his place to ask.

  Mr. Alaniz was the private investigator I’d hired a couple of weeks after we’d absconded to the convent. Since I couldn’t be out there trying to figure out firsthand who murdered my father, I’d hired someone who could. True, Uncle Bob and the entire Albuquerque Police Department were on the case, but I’d never felt so helpless, so useless. Freedom meant a lot more to me than it used to, and I had to conduct my own investigation one way or another. I had to do what I could, and if that meant doing it against Reyes’s and Uncle Bob’s wishes, so be it.

  He looked past me, then said, “I’m not going to ask why we meet in secret like this, but I have to know if you are in danger.”

  I listened to the heavy breathing of the hounds. If he only knew.

  “No,” I said, dismissing the thought with a wave. “Absolutely not.” And I wasn’t. Not in the way that he meant. He wanted to know if I was in any danger from Reyes or anyone else who could stumble upon us.

  “And if you get caught? What then?”

  What then, indeed. “Let’s just say my husband would be upset with me, but, no, I would never be in any danger from him. Never.”

  He seemed satisfied with my answer but looked past me again for good measure.

  “What did you find out?” I asked, trying to hurry this along. Reyes would notice my absence soon. I was a little surprised he hadn’t figured out my secret meetings with Mr. Alaniz before now. I was bright, according to everyone around me. So bright, I could be seen from anywhere on the planet. Why, then, didn’t he see when I snuck out of the convent? How did he not know where I was every minute of every day?

  A growl rumbled not ten feet away from me. I stilled and watched as a glistening of silver appeared, then disappeared in the trees. Fear tightened around my chest as Mr. Alaniz scratched his chin where a smattering of blond stubble grew. He pulled out a notepad.

  I’d been to this spot a dozen times. They had never gotten this close. Right after we’d escaped to the convent, Osh had marked the sacred grounds with stakes, then threaded string around the entire area to indicate the border. Either I was closer to the border than I thought, or Osh’s calculations were wrong.

  I saw another flash of silver as a hellhound’s muscles rolled in the shadows of the trees. I could hear its breathing, causing me to retreat involuntarily, but it kept its distance. As long as we had an accord, I didn’t feel the need to run screaming back to the convent, but an uneasiness settled in my shoulders and neck, my senses on high alert.

  “Your uncle is on the right track,” Mr. Alaniz said.

  I blinked back to him. “In what way?”

  “You were right. After the last time we met, I staked out the place.” He gestured toward another small access road above us. “I waited there, and sure enough, a man showed up and parked right about where I am parked now.” He indicated his car with a nod, and an excited thrill ran up my spine.

  “Were you able to follow him?” I asked. The entire police department had been looking for this guy, but he seemed to be a ghost. Until now.

  “I was.”

  I clapped. It was the first good news we’d had in months. Apparently, some guy had been following
me my entire life. My father figured it out and had been tailing the man when he died. We found pictures that my dad had taken of him, but we could never get an ID. So while my father was able to track him, we couldn’t get within a mile of the guy. That we knew of, anyway. I began to wonder if he’d vanished until I was out walking Beep and Artemis one day and saw a car parked on the access road. The moment I looked up, the driver started the car and sped off, but I recognized him from the pictures my father had shot of him.

  When my dad went missing, we found those pictures along with a whole slew of other photographs in the hotel room where he’d been staying. Photographs of me growing up. Some were as recent as mere days before my father died, and it couldn’t have been a coincidence that he died soon after finding this guy. Whoever he was, he could have had something to do with my dad’s death. And even if he didn’t, I really wanted to know why he had been following me, literally, since the day I was born.

  “But there’s more to it. While you were right, he does have pictures of you from when you were very young, when I tailed him back to his apartment, I managed to snap some shots through his windows. Just like you said, he had pictures of you, articles, yearbook photos, pretty much your entire life pasted on his walls, but some of them were from just after you were born.”

  “And?”

  “And, he isn’t old enough to have been following you that long. He’s barely in his thirties. Unless he took up stalking at age five, someone else is involved. Has been involved for a very long time.”

  He was right, and I had a feeling I knew who—or more precisely, what—was behind this.

  Mr. Alaniz handed me a photograph.

  I nodded. “That’s him. That’s the guy from my dad’s surveillance photos.”

  “Then you were right. He does work for the Vatican.”

  I knew it. A former client, Father Glenn, had clued me into the fact that the Vatican had been keeping a file on me since I was born—but why? And if my dad discovered the truth, would the Church have had him killed? Over a few photos? Either way, I needed proof of this man’s existence. And his address.

  But first, “How do you know he was working for the Vatican for sure? Do you have any proof?”

  “They’re paying his bills, for one thing,” he replied with a shrug. “He also gets a call from a number in Italy about once a week, a number registered to an office in Vatican City. I don’t know much about the Vatican, I have to admit, but I’m sure they have several dozen departments. I couldn’t determine which one this number was registered to, however.”

  “And how did you find out he got a call from them at all?” I asked, liking his results.

  “It was weird. The guy just left his phone on a table at a restaurant,” he said, lying through his teeth. “By the time I ran it out to him, I’d accidentally scrolled through all his incoming calls. And read his texts.”

  “One of those freak occurrences?”

  “Exactly.” He handed me a manila envelope. “And all that information may or may not be in this envelope.”

  “I’ll have to think positive,” I said, taking it from him, already coming up with ways to sneak it into the convent. “Did you find a connection between him and my father? Something that might implicate him in my dad’s death?”

  “No, and I don’t think you will.”

  “Why?”

  “He just doesn’t seem the type to kill someone and leave his body in a storage shed.”

  The reminder of how my father was found shuddered through me. “Why do you say that?”

  “He’s a vegan, for starters. Most vegans are nonviolent. And he never misses Mass.”

  “Makes sense. He does work for the Vatican.”

  “I think his only job is to observe and report. For some reason, the Vatican wants to keep a very close eye on you. I just don’t get a killer kind of vibe from this guy.”

  I nodded, trusting his instincts. “I don’t suppose you got a name?”

  “Howard, if that’s his real name.”

  “Howard?” I asked, a little disappointed. I expected something exotic and Italian like Alberto or Ceasario. But Howard?

  “Howard Berkowitz.”

  “Now you’re just teasing me.”

  He grinned. “Nope. That’s what he goes by.”

  “Okay, I’ll look this over. In the meantime, I need you to grab Howard and bring him here.”

  He chuckled softly. “I’m sorry, Ms. Davidson, but I don’t kidnap people.”

  “I don’t mean kidnap. ‘Kidnap’ is such a strong word. I mean coax. Encourage. Maybe roofie him.”

  “Well, again, I can’t do that. I have a better idea.”

  “There can’t possibly be a better idea,” I said, deflating. And here I was, thinking his ethics were on the same level as mine: practically nonexistent.

  “How about we tell your uncle, the APD detective, so he can at least bring the guy in and question him.”

  I toed a rock at my feet. “That might work, but I won’t be able to be there.”

  “You don’t trust your uncle to get to the truth?”

  Not when I could tell if he were lying instantly, but I wasn’t about to tell Alaniz that. “No, I do. I guess I’ll have to. But we have to get this information to my uncle without him knowing I was involved.”

  “I think I can handle that.”

  “Perfect.” At least it was a step in the right direction. I scanned the area to make sure they hadn’t sent out a search party for me. So far, so good. “Okay, what about that other thing we talked about?”

  “Which one?” he asked, his voice full of amusement.

  I had him working on several cases for me at once. “The brother thing.”

  “Ah.” He flipped through his notepad.

  This was the tricky part. The part Reyes didn’t want me looking into. The part where Mr. Alaniz’s fears for my safety could actually come to fruition. Reyes would never hurt me, but I couldn’t say the same for any unfortunate passerby should my husband find out I’d been delving into his past.

  5

  SOME DAYS I LOOK BACK ON MY LIFE

  AND I’M EXTREMELY IMPRESSED I’M STILL ALIVE.

  —T-SHIRT

  When Reyes, aka Rey’aziel, had decided to be born on earth to be with me, he chose a wonderful couple to raise him. Or that’s the story I got. But he was kidnapped as an infant. I thought he’d been kidnapped by Earl Walker, the monster who raised him. I didn’t find out until just before being banished to the convent that Earl didn’t abduct him. A couple in Albuquerque, the Fosters, did. They’d abducted him from a rest stop in North Carolina.

  How Earl Walker got ahold of him was a little less clear. Perhaps the Fosters feared they were about to get caught and sold him to Earl, and now they had another son. I’d asked Mr. Alaniz to find out two things: One, was the man the Fosters claimed as their son really their son, or had they abducted him as well? And, two, who was the couple that Reyes had been abducted from, the one he’d originally chosen to be his family?

  The latter boiled down to one thing: That couple still lost a child thirty years ago. Their hearts were still broken, their dreams shattered, and I wanted them to know that their son had grown into a wonderful and honorable man.

  Because I knew the time frame and the area where Reyes had been abducted—a rest stop in North Carolina about thirty years ago—it wasn’t difficult for Alaniz to find his birth parents. But if he knew I’d sought them out, Reyes would be livid. He told me so, made me promise not to look for them, but after becoming pregnant with Beep, after knowing that bond that exists between a parent and a child, I couldn’t let them go to their graves wondering whether their son was alive or dead. If he was happy. If he’d suffered.

  They didn’t need to know that he had indeed suffered. Beyond belief. But I felt they did need to know that he was alive and healthy and happy … for now, anyway. Hopefully he wouldn’t find out what I’d done, and he would remain happy for a very long time to come.
My meddling was a grave violation of his wishes, but I couldn’t imagine losing Beep. I couldn’t imagine her vanishing without a trace and me not knowing what ever became of her. No parent should ever have to go through that, and if it meant risking my husband’s wrath, so be it. At least I would sleep better at night with them knowing what a wonderful man their son had become.

  So, I devised a plan once Mr. Alaniz found out who Reyes’s birth parents were. I wrote a letter as though it were coming from a neutral private investigator, and he would send it anonymously. I didn’t tell them Reyes’s name or where he lived or what he’d gone through. I’d told them only the essentials, just enough to bring them closure and allow them to move on with their lives.

  Or that was the hope.

  “I’m fairly certain, judging from the Fosters’ son’s coloring and age, he is one of three children that went missing around the time the Fosters adopted him.”

  “So, he’d supposedly been adopted by the Fosters. Are you sure he wasn’t?”

  “The adoption agency is out of business, but from what I could find out, they were in business only a few months and facilitated three adoptions.”

  “Three?”

  “Exactly. But I have to admit, he seems … okay. Are you sure you want to open that can of worms?”

  “Are you kidding? I love worms. And if they abducted him, his birth parents have the right to know. He has the right to know. Wait, do you think he knows?”

  “I doubt it. According to his records, he was only a few weeks old.”

  “Okay, well, we have to decide how to handle this. What about the other thing?”

  Writing that letter, the one where I told Reyes’s birth parents their son was alive and well, that they could rest easy, knowing he’d grown up an honorable man, was a lot harder than I’d expected. I couldn’t find anything about how to tell the grieving parents of a missing child that their son was A-OK in any of Emily Post’s books.

  Then there was the tiny hiccup in which Reyes had forbidden me from contacting them, so I didn’t. I had nothing to do with sending that letter. Mr. Alaniz did. Of course, I failed to mention to Mr. Alaniz Reyes’s habit of severing spines before he did it. My love muffin would never in a million years find out anyway. A good thing, because if he did, the power of his anger could destroy this side of the world. Thankfully, I covered my tracks beautifully.