Running Scared

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “Connect me with the police,” he said.

  “Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”

  “So am I. At least his mother isn’t alive.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Impatiently Firenze waited while he was put through to whichever badge was chasing tips on the “Hawaiian Shooter,” as the local Vegas channel had dubbed him. It was very important that Firenze, as a casino owner, appear to be cooperating with the police.

  Not that he thought the cops had much chance of finding Socks really soon. Even his fucking stupid nephew would have enough sense to take the money his uncle had sent him and hang out on the houseboat at Lake Mead until they could cook up a passport and ship him off to some distant cousins in Italy and wait for everyone to forget his name.

  Much as Firenze wanted to throttle the miserable son of a bitch himself, blood was still blood.

  Chapter 51

  Sedona

  November 4

  Night

  Risa knocked on Virgil O’Conner’s door again, waited again, knocked again. No light came on inside or out. No sound came from the small house.

  “Still no one stirring?” Shane asked as he came around from the rear of the house.

  “No. Is there a car parked back there?”

  “Just a bike.”

  “As in motorcycle?”

  “As in pedal your ass off.” While Shane spoke, he absently rubbed the back of his neck.

  “Still itchy?” she asked.

  “Yeah. You?”

  She hesitated. “It reminds me of . . .”

  “What?”

  Silence. A sigh. Her hands gleamed in the moonlight as she made a fluid gesture that managed to evoke both giving in and refusing to give in. “Wales.”

  “Where you dreamed?”

  She looked surprised that he had remembered. “Yes.”

  He turned toward the blank windows and closed door of Virgil’s home. The wood was the color of sycamore bark, ghostly. “Is the house making you itchy?”

  “Not quite. Or not only.” Risa made a frustrated sound. “Damn it, I don’t want this! I didn’t want it in Wales, and I don’t want it now.” She hissed between her teeth. “But it’s real, isn’t it?”

  “For some people.”

  “The odd ones, you mean.” The line of her mouth was unhappy.

  “Someone with musical ability is odd to people who are tone deaf.”

  “Are you?”

  “Tone deaf?” he asked, deliberately misunderstanding.

  She simply waited.

  “Yes,” he said after a minute. “I’m one of the odd ones. I guess.” He shrugged. “Hard to tell. All I know for sure is I live in a time and a place that financially rewards an understanding of numbers, of patterns, that damned few people have. The fact that many of my business choices—also known as hunches—have no basis in Western logic is politely ignored. Whenever I’m interviewed, I join in the chorus and sing about long-term trends and short-term gains and analyzing markets with fuzzy formulas and all the reassuring bullshit that explains why I’m rich and the next guy isn’t.”

  “You work hard.”

  “So do other people.”

  “You’re intelligent.”

  “So are—”

  “—other people,” she finished. “But you see things other people who are hardworking and intelligent don’t see, is that it?”

  “If seeing is another word for dreaming, and if dreaming is another word for knowing without logic, yes, I see.”

  “I missed that part of your biography,” she muttered.

  “I never told anyone except you. How many people have you told that you dream of things you have no way of logically knowing?”

  For a few moments it was so quiet that he could hear the night wind sliding down from the top of the bluffs, stirring over the land like a breath out of time.

  “You,” she whispered. “That’s it. I don’t even like admitting it to myself.”

  “Why?”

  She made a sound that could have been a laugh or a cry. “When I was a child, I thought that was the real reason my first mother abandoned me, because I was different. And that finding out about my difference killed my adopted mother.”

  “Did you dream that? Is that how you knew?”

  She paused, then, “No. I don’t dream about myself. Just . . . things. Antiquities. And not all the time or all antiquities. Just special ones. Very special.”

  “Like Wales.”

  “Yes,” she said in a voice as soft as the wind. “Like Wales.”

  “Is it the place or the ritual use of the artifacts associated with them that calls to you?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure they can be separated.” She rubbed her arms and turned away from him, toward the night. “I really don’t want to go into this. Ever since I figured out that most people didn’t react like me, I’ve done my best to ignore it.”

  “It hasn’t gone away, has it?”

  Angrily she spun back toward him. “What do you want from me?”

  “The feeling that I’m not entirely alone in this. I’ve spent my life feeling like odd man out of the human race.”

  “Okay. Fine. I’m odd woman out. Feel better?”

  “Two odds make an even.” He grinned. “That makes us normal.”

  She stared at him, then laughed. “Fuzzy formulas, huh?”

  “Works for me.” He pulled her close, kissed her hard, and looked down into her moon-drenched face. “So do you. Wait here.”

  Risa was still tasting him and at the same time trying to follow his so-called thought processes when she realized that he was opening Virgil O’Conner’s front door.

  “You can’t just—” she began.

  But he already had.

  “—walk in,” she finished.

  With his fingers still wrapped in his nylon wind shell, Shane felt around on the wall until he found a switch. Against the pouring white power of moonlight, the sixty-watt bulb in the overhead fixture looked like a round yellow candle flame. It was enough to show a couch with a pillow and a rumpled blanket, a scattering of thick books lying open on an old dining table, and an unlighted room beyond.

  The only sound was that of something small and nocturnal that had been disturbed by the sudden light and was racing back toward darkness on tiny clawed feet. The air hinted of old food, more a suggestion than a smell. The feel of the place was indefinably empty. Not the ripe emptiness of recent death, but the thin sense of abandonment that comes without human life.

  “Nobody home but the mice,” Shane said, stepping into the light.

  Risa’s breath caught as she saw the gleam of something metallic in his hand. A gun.

  Despite his comforting words, Shane checked out the dark room just off the main living area before he holstered his weapon at the small of his back once more.

  The little room was like the rest of the house. Nobody home.

  Shielding his hand with his jacket, he flipped on the light switch. The bedroom was no more than eight feet by eight feet, just enough space for a narrow bed, a chest of drawers, and a series of pegs on the wall that served as a closet. The area was messy, but not with the wild disorder of a place that has been searched. This was more the normal carelessness of a man who lived alone and didn’t care if dirty clothes gathered dust bunnies in the corner until washday, whenever that might be.

  Rubbing the back of his neck, Shane looked around again. He didn’t know what was nibbling at him; he only knew that something was. Feeling like an idiot, he pulled out a penlight, knelt, and looked under the bed. All he saw were marks in the dust, as though something had been dragged out. Maybe a suitcase. It would explain the fact that no one was home and the only wheels around were on a bicycle.

  He wished he could believe the nice, logical explanation. He couldn’t. He found himself sweeping the area underneath the bed with his light again and again. He knew something was there.

  He just couldn’t see it.

 
“Shane?”

  Something in Risa’s voice brought him to his feet in a rush that didn’t end until he was in the living room near her. “What is it?”

  “The books.”

  “Did you touch them?” he asked more sharply than he meant to.

  “I didn’t have to. Look.”

  He glanced over the top of her head to a book that was open on a table a few feet away. Then he narrowed his eyes and walked closer. A beautiful photo of the Snettisham torc took up one page. The opposite page showed a series of gold brooches.

  “I’m trying to believe it’s a coincidence,” Risa said.

  “Having any luck?”

  “No.”

  “Neither am I.”

  “The gold was kept in those boxes we found at Cherelle’s place,” Risa said bleakly. “I sensed it.”

  Shane didn’t point out that she hadn’t said anything about it. He didn’t have to, because he had sensed the same thing.

  And everything they found tied Risa’s old friend more tightly to a theft that had ended in murder.

  “Cherelle must have gotten the gold from Virgil O’Conner,” Risa said unhappily. “That’s what Socks meant when he said something about her getting it in Sedona. But where did Virgil get it? And how? This isn’t the home of a man who has millions to spend on solid gold antiquities.”

  Shane pulled out his communications unit. “No cell coverage,” he said. “Figures.” He recorded a voice message that would go out to Rarities as soon as the unit got within range of a cell. “Let’s see if we can find anything personal here that would speed up a Rarities search on him. If not, they’ll have to make do with the addresses on the box. Do you have any gloves?”

  “I always carry exam gloves in my purse. They won’t fit you.”

  “Then I’ll just have to watch over your shoulder.”

  “And tell me what to do,” she muttered as she opened her purse.

  “I was looking forward to that especially.”

  “Ha ha.” She snapped on the gloves. “I don’t suppose it would do any good to tell you I feel like slime going through someone’s house this way.”

  “I’m not wild about it myself.”

  “But you’re going to do it.”

  “If it would make my neck stop itching, I’d turn this place upside down.”

  “I’d help,” she admitted.

  Risa started her search right where she was. She flipped through the books with the efficiency of someone accustomed to sorting through pages filled with dense text and artifacts.

  As promised, Shane looked over Risa’s shoulder. The books covered everything possibly gold and probably related to Celtic style from 1000 b.c. to 1000 a.d. The pages that detailed figurines, brooches, torcs, bracelets, knives, and masks were often dog-eared. Other than that, and notes in the margins written with a kind of cramped desperation, the worn books held nothing of Virgil O’Conner’s life before today.

  There were no drawers, wastebaskets, boxes, or any other place in the main living area where papers might have collected.

  Or gold hidden.

  “Was there a desk in the other room?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Telephone?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’ll start in the kitchen.”

  It didn’t take long. The kitchen was smaller than the bedroom. The phone was a primitive wall model that didn’t even have a speed-dial feature. The counter below the phone was stacked with bills and materials marked “Occupant.” O’Conner didn’t have an active social calendar.

  “Electricity,” Risa said, flipping through the messy stack of papers, working backward in time. “Telephone. No water bill, so he must have a well. No personal letters. Property tax bill, soon to be overdue. Bank account statement showing three hundred dollars and thirty-one cents. Savings account with one hundred and one and sixteen cents. Repair bill for a new tube on a bike tire. Random grocery receipts scattered through the rest. End of papers.”

  “No credit card bills,” Shane said. “No vehicle payments. Wonder if he even had a driver’s license.”

  “Maybe he kept business stuff somewhere else.”

  “Maybe,” Shane said, “but I’ve got a feeling he kept everything that mattered to him right here.”

  “A feeling.”

  “Yeah.”

  She sighed and began going through kitchen drawers and cupboards. It didn’t take long, because there wasn’t much to see. None of it was useful, unless you cared that Virgil O’Conner liked pinto beans and rice, with occasional cans of grapefruit juice to spice things up. The electric stove had pots and pans and burned-on food. The refrigerator was small and empty but for a few pickles floating in cloudy liquid. A gel-filled knee brace and a tray of ice cubes waited in the freezer.

  “I really don’t want to paw through his closet,” she said.

  “He doesn’t have one. Just a dresser.”

  “Oh, goody. I feel so much better.”

  Shane watched her walk into the bedroom, sensed her shiver of recognition more than saw it, and waited, wondering if she finally trusted him enough to share what she had spent a lifetime trying to hide.

  “O’Conner kept the gold here,” she said in a low voice.

  “Thank you.”

  The smile she gave Shane was almost sad. “Two odds make an even, right?”

  Chapter 52

  Sedona

  November 4

  Night

  Shane waited for Risa to say something more. He couldn’t see her face, but the tension in her body told him how tightly strung she was. His voice whispered through the darkness like another shade of night. “Is the gold here now?”

  “No. But . . .” Risa rubbed the gooseflesh on her arms. “Can’t you feel it? It was here. And something still is.”

  “Yes, I feel it. I just didn’t identify it as fast as you did.”

  “Practice,” she said bleakly, looking around Virgil O’Conner’s empty cabin. “Christ, I hate feeling like this, knowing I’m different. Maybe I should have been a nurse instead of a curator.”

  “Maybe I should have been a proctologist.”

  She gave him a disbelieving look and then laughed out loud. “Sorry. Was I whining?”

  He touched her cheek gently. “You’re entitled. If there was a way to keep you out of this, I would.”

  “If you tried, I’d fight you tooth and nail.”

  The corners of his mouth turned up. “Could be fun.”

  Shaking her head, she started pulling out dresser drawers. There weren’t many clothes to look at. All were of the kind that gave thrift stores their reputations as centers of low couture.

  No papers. Certainly no gold.

  She glanced at the unmade bed.

  “No need,” Shane said quickly. “Nothing on top or underneath except skid marks in the dust left by suitcases or ammo boxes.”

  “Short of pulling up floorboards and poking holes in the wall, we’re out of luck.”

  “Dead end,” he agreed. “But I know there’s more.”

  “Here?”

  “Or close by.”

  “I wish I didn’t agree with you.” She put her hands on her hips, did a slow circle, and shook her head. “Not this room. The only thing in here . . . isn’t in here anymore.”

  “The gold?”

  She nodded.

  “Like Wales?” he asked.

  “Exactly. Damn it.” She rubbed her arms briskly. “I’ve had tingles from artifacts before, but nothing like Wales until Smith-White’s gold. And now this.”

  Just like, she thought, glancing sideways at Shane, she had had tingles from men before, but nothing like him. What she felt with him was so different it should have terrified her.

  Sometimes it did.

  “Same here,” he said.

  At first she thought she had spoken aloud about how he made her feel. Then she realized that he was simply agreeing with her about the gold.

  “And the gold,
too,” he said.

  “Stop that!”

  He laughed and stroked her bare wrist above the exam gloves. “You have very speaking eyes, darling.”

  “I’ll get mirrored lenses.”

  “Would it help if I said I felt the same way?”

  “About mirrored lenses? Not particularly.”

  He lifted her hand and nipped the skin he’d just stroked. “You know what I mean.”

  The goose bumps that went up her arm owed nothing to ancient Druid gold. “What if it burns out in a few weeks or months?”

  “What if it doesn’t?”

  She blew out a breath that was almost a laugh. “One day at a time, huh?”

  “That’s how life comes. One day at a time.”

  Her smile was shaky but real. “Okay. A day I can do. But I want to get out of this house right now.”

  Silently Shane took her hand and walked through the house into the night. “Better?”

  “Yes.” She peeled off the gloves and put them in her purse. “Much better.”

  “Feel up to a walk?”

  She looked down at her shoes. Since her barefoot sprint through the casino, she had made a point of wearing footgear she could run in. That didn’t mean she was eager to take on rough country in tennis shoes.

  “How far?” she asked.

  He glanced up to the long mesa that loomed behind the house. “Maybe half a mile.”

  She followed his look, tossed her purse inside the truck, and said, “Do you know where we’re going?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, well, that makes it so much better.” She waved a hand toward the cliff looming out of the darkness. “After you, boss.”

  The moon’s radiance was strong enough that Shane didn’t have to use his penlight. The trail was well defined by previous hikers. Even if it hadn’t been, he wouldn’t have hesitated. Every step farther up the rise to the base of the bluff made him certain he was heading the right way.

  “Feel it?” he asked quietly.

  “Yes.” Risa’s voice was clipped, saying more than words about how much she disliked sensing something she knew she couldn’t touch.