Second Grave on the Left

by Darynda Jones

  Just as I was about to cut the water off, I felt him. A fiery heat drifted toward me and the air charged with electricity. The earthy smell of him, like a lightning storm at midnight, wafted around me, encircled me, and I breathed deep. I could hear his heartbeat. I could feel it reverberate through the room and pound against my chest. The sound was glorious, and I couldn’t wait for the day I would once again get to meet him in person. The flesh-and-blood Reyes. The real deal.

  He didn’t make a sound, didn’t make a move toward me, and I began to wonder if he had another kind of superpower. “Can you see through this shower curtain?” I asked, only half-kidding.

  I heard the zing of metal a split second before he slashed through the plastic liner. It floated down and pooled on the floor. “I can now,” he said, a lopsided grin tilting his full mouth, and I felt my own heart tumble in response.

  He sheathed his blade under the folds of his robe; then it disappeared to reveal the hills and valleys of his solid body. He was wearing the same T-shirt, only no lines of blood streaked across the torso. But I knew if he faltered, if his human self reawakened, he would be reduced to the shredded man his corporeal body had become. My stomach contracted at the thought, and I forced it aside. I had another chance staring me in the face. Another opportunity to convince him to tell me where he was. And I was not above bribery in any way, shape, or form. Nor stone-cold blackmail.

  I turned off the water and reached for a towel. He reached over and took it out of my hand, leaving me naked and dripping wet. Which I used to the best of my ability.

  “Is this what you want?” I asked, opening my arms, exposing myself to him completely, and hoping he didn’t mind the superglue. That shit was hard to get off.

  With a look of hunger, he stepped forward and took me into his arms. But he paused, hesitated, his gaze boring into mine a long moment, as if in wonder. He ran his fingers along my jaw, brushed his thumb over my lips, his eyes the color of coffee in sunlight. Gold and green flecks shimmered like glitter until his thick lashes lowered and he pressed his mouth against mine. The kiss was blisteringly hot as his tongue separated my lips and dived inside. He tasted dark and dangerous.

  A wayward hand dipped, cupped my ass as his mouth left mine in search of my pulse. Pleasure shuddered through me, and it took every ounce of strength I had to whisper into his ear. “You can have me, all of me, after you tell me where you are.”

  He stilled, waited a long moment to get his breathing under control, then stepped back and narrowed his eyes on me. “After I tell you.”

  “After.”

  The room cooled significantly in a matter of seconds. I had angered him, and in the blink of an eye we were back to our impasse. I was worried about whiplash at this point, the back-and-forth nuances of our relationship so finite, so unmovable.

  “You would use your body to get what you want?”

  “In a heartbeat.”

  He was hurt. I could feel it echo through him. He stepped closer again, leveled his face inches from mine, and whispered in the softest of voices, “Whore.”

  “You can leave now,” I said, unable to quell the sting his statement elicited.

  He vanished, a void of bitter emptiness churning in his wake. Then it hit me. The whore, or, um, prostitute. The silver screen star. What had I been thinking?

  * * *

  “Cookie, hurry, get up.” I shook her hard enough to make her teeth rattle, then made a beeline for her closet.

  She bolted upright and tossed up her dukes like a cartoon character. I would have doubled over laughing if my concussed head had not been throbbing.

  But I did giggle. “You have some serious bed-head, girlfriend.”

  She smoothed her hair self-consciously and squinted at me. “What’s going on?”

  “I have an idea.”

  “An idea?” She glowered a solid minute until a pair of sweats smacked her in the face. I couldn’t help it. I sucked it up and doubled over in laughter. Mostly ’cause revenge was a dish best served cold. Or at least a little chilly.

  “You need to work on your aim,” she said, peeling off the sweats and offering me a sleepy frown.

  “My aim is perfect, I’ll have you know.”

  My head felt on the verge of a nuclear disaster as we sneaked out the back and around to Misery in a shameful attempt to avoid the cops on watch. I felt bad, but if I showed up with a police escort, I doubted I would get anywhere fast. When we pulled up to the Chocolate Coffee Café, Cookie cast a hopeful gaze my way. “Did we miss something? Did you find more evidence?”

  “Not exactly.” I turned to her before we got out. “I have an idea. It’s just going to look odd to Norma and Brad and anyone else who might be in there, so I need your help.”

  “As long as it doesn’t involve pole dancing.”

  We stepped into the café and scanned the area. Norma was indeed on duty, but we couldn’t see who was cooking. And there were two customers sitting in a very inconvenient spot. But I’d deal with that later.

  I gestured toward the bar with a nod, and Cookie and I strolled forward. My silver screen star was standing at it, leaning on his elbows, legs crossed at the ankle. His tan fedora and trench coat came straight out of the forties, the Humphrey Bogart look undeniable. And the entire picture left me a little breathless. Cookie and I loved us some Humphrey.

  I sat on the stool right beside him as Norma strolled up. “Hey, sweethearts, did you find who you were looking for?”

  Cookie sat beside me, but on the wrong side. I grabbed her jacket underneath the counter and steered her around me. “No,” I said sadly. “We’re still looking.”

  Norma tsked and poured us two cups without even asking. I was actually a little worried about drinking coffee with my head throbbing like it was, but still, saying no to coffee would be like saying no to world peace. Everyone involved would benefit from a resounding yes. The moment someone came out with a way to mainline it, I was so in.

  Cookie sat down, then cast me a nervous look underneath her lashes.

  “Do you remember your lines?” I asked her.

  Her brows slid together, but she played along and nodded.

  I smiled. “Good, we have to get them down before tomorrow night’s dress rehearsal.”

  “Oh, right,” she said with a shaky giggle. “The dress rehearsal.”

  “You two in a play or something?” Norma asked, passing us menus.

  “Yeah, at the Stage House. Nothing special.”

  “Wonderful,” she said, going back to wiping down the counters. “I did some acting in high school. Let me know when you’re ready.”

  “Thanks,” I said before looking back at Cookie.

  Bogart was between us. He cast me a sideways glance.

  “Hi,” I said, hoping to come across innocuous.

  He turned toward me, a grim line thinning his mouth. “Of all the cafés in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”

  My heart skipped a beat. He was so much like Bogart. It killed me that Cookie couldn’t see him.

  “You here to collect my soul?” he asked.

  I was a little surprised he knew my job description. “If you don’t mind,” I answered. I fished out the picture I had of Mimi Jacobs and held it up. “Have you seen this woman?”

  He turned back to stare through Brad’s pass-out window. “Don’t look around much.”

  I smiled. “You looked at me.”

  “You’re kinda hard to miss.”

  Fair enough. “Why don’t you want to cross?”

  He shrugged. “Do I have a choice?”

  “Of course. I take the grim out of being a grim reaper. I can’t force you to cross.”

  He looked back at me in surprise. “Sweetheart, you’re the only one who can.”

  I wasn’t going to argue with him. “Well, I won’t. If you don’t want to cross, I’m not going to make you.”

  I looked past him at Cookie. She sat staring at me, nodding, as if critiquing my perfor
mance. I snorted, and she glanced around self-consciously.

  “Are you laughing at me?” she asked through her teeth, pretending not to be talking.

  “No,” I promised before focusing on Bogart again.

  “Babe!”

  I turned and grinned at Brad as he stuck his head through the pass-out window. “You came back to me.”

  “Naturally,” I said. “And I’m hungry, handsome.”

  A confident grin slid across his face. “You just said the magic words, baby.”

  He ducked back in and started cooking God only knew what. But I was fairly certain his creation would be nothing short of a work of art.

  “Sometimes,” I said to Bogart, “our memories are hidden, buried. And when people cross, I can see them. I was hoping you might have seen Mimi, taken note of something everyone else missed. If you cross through me, I can scan your memories, look for her. But I won’t make you cross.” I didn’t bother to mention that I couldn’t do that anyway.

  He shook his head. “Don’t really have anyone waiting on me.”

  “Nonsense. Everyone has somebody waiting. I promise, you might not know it, but you have someone.”

  “Oh, I got people.” After a heavy sigh, he said, “I think I’ll pass, if it’s all the same.”

  My heart broke a little. He did have people waiting, he knew that, but he didn’t feel worthy to cross. He’d done something in his past, something that caused a rift, most likely in his family.

  I was hoping I could talk him into it. He didn’t realize what he was missing by remaining earthbound. But he had his reasons. I wasn’t going to push.

  “When you’re ready,” I said, placing a hand on his arm. He looked down, picked up my hand, and raised it to his cool mouth. After placing a soft kiss on my knuckles, he disappeared.

  I glanced at Cookie in defeat. “He didn’t buy it.”

  “You can see their memories?” she asked in awe. Why anything should awe her at this point was beyond me.

  “I can, but I’ve never tried to scan them, to look for anything in particular. I think I could, though. I have to try. And I have one more person to talk to.”

  I gestured for her to pick up her cup and follow me into the dining area. About a dozen tables peppered the large room that was lined with booths along the walls. The lights were low, and a young couple sat whispering by one of the large plateglass windows that overlooked the intersection. At a table farther back sat the woman who looked like she’d been a drug-addicted prostitute. From the look of her skin, she’d done her fair share of meth.

  I eyed the chair, then Cookie. “You’ll be cold,” I told her, regret filling my voice. But we were already getting odd looks from Norma. I really needed her in front of me while I talked to the woman.

  As if walking on eggshells, she took a careful step forward then sat down, curling inside herself. The woman filtered through her, completely oblivious of the fact that her personal space had been invaded. “This is disturbing on so many levels,” Cookie said.

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “No,” she chastised, “for Mimi, I’d do this all day. Just wiggle your fingers, do your magic, and find out where she is.”

  I grinned and sat across from her. “You got it.”

  The woman’s arms were on the table as she stared out the window. She kept rubbing her wrists together, and I suddenly realized she’d cut them. But the wounds had healed, scarred up, so that wasn’t how she died. Whatever did her in, she looked like she’d had a rock-hard life.

  “Sweetheart,” I said, reaching out and touching an arm.

  She paused her OCD behavior and leveled an empty gaze on me.

  “My name is Charlotte. I’m here to help you.”

  “You’re beautiful,” she said, raising a hand to my face. I smiled as she ran her fingers over my cheeks and mouth. “Like a million stars.”

  “If you want to cross through me, you can.”

  She jerked her hand back and shook her head. “I can’t. I’m going to hell.”

  I reached over and took her hands into mine. “No, you’re not. If you were going to hell, honey, you’d already be there. I have no jurisdiction, and hell is pretty hell-bent on taking care of its own.”

  Her mouth trembled as tears pooled in her lashes. “I’m … I’m not going to hell? But … I just thought that since I didn’t go to heaven…”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Lori.”

  “Lori, I have to admit, even I don’t always understand why someone doesn’t cross. Oftentimes it’s when the departed has been the victim of a violent crime. Can you tell me how you died?”

  Cookie hugged her arms to her, fighting off the chill.

  “I don’t remember,” Lori said, leaning forward and wrapping her fingers around mine. “Knowing me, I probably OD’d on something.” She cast me a shameful look. “I was not a good person, Charlotte.”

  “I’m sure you did the best you could. Obviously someone thinks so, or like I said, you would have gone the other direction. But you’re here. You’re just confused, maybe.” I took out the picture of Mimi and showed it to her. “Have you seen this woman?”

  She narrowed her eyes, shook her head in memory. “She seems familiar. I’m just not sure. I don’t always pay attention to people. They’re so far away.”

  “When you cross, if you decide to, can I have permission to look through your memories and see if I can find her in there?”

  She blinked in surprise. “Of course. Is that possible?”

  “I have no idea,” I said with a chuckle.

  She smiled. “So, what do I do?”

  I stood up. “You walk through me. The rest just seems to happen.”

  After a long intake of breath, she stood. The air around us danced with excitement. I was happy for her. She’d seemed so completely lost. Maybe this is what Rocket was always talking about. Maybe many of those who stay behind are lost and need me to find them instead of them finding me. But I didn’t know how, short of traveling around the country nonstop.

  I had to concentrate, to focus on searching her memories. Just as I took a deep breath, Lori took a step forward, and I heard her whisper, “Oh, my god.”

  Her life came rushing at me full-force. From the time she was a child and her mother sold her to a neighbor for the afternoon to get her fix to the time she was in high school and a group of girls pulled her hair as they walked past in the locker room. But the heartbreak was quickly overshadowed when I saw a poem of hers win a contest. It was published in a local paper along with her picture. She had never been so proud. She cleaned up and went to college a semester, but she quickly fell behind, and the heavy weight of failure took root again. She went back to the life she knew, life on the streets peddling herself for her next high, and died of an overdose in a dirty hotel room.

  I had to push past the salient parts, to scan her memories before she was gone completely. I found the first time she walked into the café. She sat down and never got up again, remaining locked inside herself for years. I crawled forward, saw patron after patron, too many to look through, so I forced Mimi’s image to the forefront, and I saw a woman stumble in the front door, her face full of fear, her eyes wide and searching.

  She sat down and waited, but as car after car pulled up, her nerves got the better of her, and she grabbed an unopened Sharpie off the register and hurried to the bathroom. About a minute later, another woman entered the bathroom, and Mimi rushed out the door, the darkness of night enveloping her.

  With a gasp of air, I opened my eyes and clutched at my chest as if emerging from a pool. I filled my lungs and eased back into the chair, blinking in surprise. I’d done it. I’d searched her memories. It took a moment for me to absorb everything I saw. I fought down the sadness that threatened to overwhelm me. Lori’s life had been anything but easy. But she was most definitely in a better place, as hokey as that sounded.

  And I found her. I found Mimi.

  I glanced back
at Cookie, a tiny grin tugging at my mouth. “Let me ask you a question,” I said breathlessly.

  “Okay.”

  “If you were the wife of a very well-off businessman with a humongoid house and gorgeous children whom you loved more than life, where is the last place anyone would look for you?”

  Cookie’s expression changed to hope. “Did it work?”

  “It worked.” I glanced over my shoulder and pointed across the street.

  “That homeless shelter?” she asked, her voice brimming with disbelief.

  I looked back at her with a shrug. “It’s perfect. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before. She was right under our noses the whole time.”

  “But … oh, my god, okay, what do we do now?” She patted her palms on the table, her enthusiasm barely containable.

  “We go say hi.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  YOU KNOW THOSE BAD THINGS THAT HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE? I’M THAT.

  —T-SHIRT

  I dropped a twenty on the counter as we ran past. “Brad, can you make our orders to go?”

  He stuck his head through the pass-out window, his palms raised in question.

  “We’ll be right back.”

  We raced across the street to a brick building with bars on the windows and a large metal door. It was starting to sprinkle.

  “I don’t think they’re open,” Cookie said, panting behind me.

  I pounded on the door, waited a moment, then pounded again. After a long while, a sleepy-eyed Hulk opened up.

  I decided to smile. Mostly ’cause I didn’t want to incur his wrath. “Hi.” I held up my license. “My name is Charlotte Davidson, and this is Cookie Kowalski. I’m a private investigator on a case for the Albuquerque Police Department,” I half lied. “Can I talk to you?”

  “No.” Hulk was grumpy when awakened in the middle of the night. The show never mentioned that aspect of his character. I’d have to write the producers.

  And clearly he was not impressed with my license. I held up a twenty instead. “I just want to ask you a couple of questions. I’m looking for a missing woman.”