Grave Alchemy

by Amanda Armour

  Annie turned toward me with a smile that reached up past her eyes, “Come on in, join us.”

  “I think I’ll pass, but it’s nice to see you enjoying yourself,” I grinned, “remind me never to go to karaoke night with you two.”

  “Don’t say that, it’s more fun when you can’t carry a tune,” Natasha said, still using her brush as a microphone. “I stopped by to get a trim and to apologize to you. I know I shouldn’t have been in the file room and I was rude to you and Basil. Is he around? I’d like to apologize to him as well.”

  Who was this person—did she have a personality transplant? Apologize? This was not the same Natasha I had met in Oregon. Annie must be rubbing off on her.

  “Who are you and what have you done to Natasha?”

  She didn’t answer, just stood there grinning. It was a little disconcerting when someone you thought you knew did a complete one eighty.

  “Umm…Basil is upstairs, I’ll let him know you’re here,” I said. This apology had better be a good one, otherwise Basil might be tempted to whack her again.

  “Wait, before you go,” Annie blurted out, “I have a confession to make. There’s something you should know. I asked Natasha to go to the file room because I needed some information. So it’s all my fault.”

  “I’m confused. Why would you need anything from the file room? And if you did, you could have asked me for help, or even Uncle Iggy.”

  “Well…” Annie’s face started to turn a bright red. “See, there’s this new guy, Sean…”

  “And you wanted to know if he was single, unattached. And you didn’t want me or Uncle Iggy to know.”

  “Well, yeah. You wouldn’t take me seriously and you know what Uncle Iggy’s like. It gets embarrassing when I’m interested and they say thanks but I’m married.”

  I had to laugh at that. “Since when do you get embarrassed?” Annie always jumped first and asked questions later. She looked down at her feet, not making eye contact.

  “About this Sean person. You’re actually serious this time, aren’t you? Will wonders never cease. So, is he or isn’t he?”

  “He’s not,” Natasha said with a smirk.

  Annie was a serial dater, no sooner did you get used to one when another would take his place. She had never worried before, if the guy was attached. This had to be one serious crush; I’d have to check out Sean myself. “What’s his last name?”

  “Never mind. I’ll tell you if it works out.” Annie replied.

  “Be that way.” I stuck my tongue out at her and left to find Basil.

  I had to drag him down the stairs, he didn’t believe a word I said about Natasha. He was sure it was just another of her nasty tricks, but curiosity finally got the better of him.

  Natasha plastered on a big smile as he came into the room. “Basil, I want to apologize for hitting you, it was totally uncalled for and I’m sorry. I’m going to make some calls, we need to find someone to fix your horn. I also want to show off my new place, so I’d like you to come for dinner tomorrow. It will be a house warming.”

  That was not my idea of a pleasant evening and I didn’t want to warm her house. So I blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “We’re kind of busy right now, Natasha. We’re investigating the murder of a reaper.”

  “Murder. How exciting.” Natasha stated blandly, rubbing her thumb over her nails. She didn’t seem to care that one of our own had been murdered.

  “Not so exciting for the victim,” Basil replied, looking at her like he had smelled boiled cabbage.

  Annie quickly accepted the dinner invitation for all of us, crossing her arms and glaring as if daring us to refuse. “We’ll all be there, it’s very nice of you to invite us.” She continued, “Felix was a good friend, but I’m sure the police don’t need your help to find the killer.”

  Basil and I stood there, staring wide eyed at each other. Just the other day she had begged to join us. What had changed? Natasha, on the other hand, looked uncomfortable. She sat down in Annie’s chair and played with the bottles of nail polish.

  “And pigs fly,” Basil muttered as I pushed the door open.

  “What?” I was distracted, mulling over Annie’s dig about finding the killer.

  “The cops won’t figure out who murdered Felix,” Basil said as we headed for the attic. “And Nasty’s up to something, I don’t trust her.”

  “I know what you mean. It’s like she’s had a personality transplant.”

  “I don’t believe a word she says. She’s trying to lull us into a false sense of security. No one can fix my horn, it’s done—I bet she’s gonna do something to make the other one fall off. Maybe she’s planning to poison us with her so-called apology dinner?”

  “And take the chance of killing Annie? I don’t think so, she’s the only friend she’s got.”

  “All you had to do was say no,” Basil grumbled and glared at me. “You’re always doing whatever she says—your uncle too.”

  “That’s right, Basil. It’s all my fault.”

  “It’s time we researched Fran Santoro,” I said as Basil settled in front of his computer and I sat down with my iPad. The search didn’t take long, Basil was faster on the internet than I was, even with his claws extended.

  Basil cleared his throat. “Looks like Francesca is quite the society gal. Her father’s Bruno Santoro.”

  “I remember reading something about him,” I interrupted, “isn’t he the boss of the northern area mob?”

  “Yeah. Says here that the Santoro and Delgrosso mobs had an ongoing war over territory. It ended about a year ago when they called a truce, but it doesn’t give any more details.”

  “I remember now, their territories overlapped in Silver Falls.” We’d been run off our feet chasing down the souls from both gangs. They kept putting hits on each other, going round and round in circles. “Anything more on Francesca?”

  Basil looked at me and grinned, “Looks like she’s the reason they decided to join forces. Francesca’s engaged to Dominec Delgrosso.”

  “Engaged? At least that explains the truce, they must have started working together.”

  “Only until someone gets greedy. Then they’ll split up and start killing each other again,” Basil added.

  “I wonder what Felix was doing working for her?”

  “Had to be for the money.”

  “There are easier and safer ways to make money than working for the mob. Besides, I can’t see Felix working for humans.”

  “Maybe he was dealing drugs. I’ve seen rogues strung out on drugs.”

  “I’ve no idea. I can’t see Felix being involved in drugs or gambling; he just wasn’t the type. He was driven, even as a kid. He knew what he exactly wanted.”

  “What did he want?”

  “To join the SIB, it was his dream job.”

  “You haven’t seen him in years. How can you be sure that he didn’t change his mind?”

  “Guess I can’t. It might explain a lot if he had made it into the SIB, but he didn’t, he went rogue.”

  “If it’s not drugs, then it must be money. Bet he was hard up for cash. I say we go ask her.”

  I laughed at that. “Really, we’re just going to walk up to her and ask her why she hired a reaper?”

  “We don’t know why she hired him, or even if she knew he was a reaper. You can pretend to be a friend of his and say he mentioned her name.”

  “I don’t have to pretend. And what about you? She’ll think I’m a kook if I have a parrot on my shoulder.”

  “You should feel right at home then.”

  “Are you calling me a kook?” I threw a pillow at Basil; he ducked, but it got caught on his wing and hung there like an oversized tree ornament.

  Basil rolled his eyes at me, “Oh, sorry. You’re right, you’re as normal as they come.”

  Chapter 12

  “I already told you. I won’t go,” the gray-haired man said thrusting his chin out. He was hovering by the window with his arms crossed
.

  This soul was not the one I came for, he just appeared after I had taken care of Mrs. Ross.

  “But It will be over in seconds. You don’t have to wait.” I was trying to convince him to move on, but he was refusing. He insisted on waiting for his wife, no matter how long it took.

  “Nope, you’re the second one that’s tried to catch me. The other one waved a stick at me, and I barely managed to escape.”

  “I’m not going to force you. Wait a minute, how long have you been hanging around?” I asked, putting away my scepter.

  “I’m not entirely sure. I think it’s been about a week or so, but it could be longer. Why?”

  It sounded like a rogue had tried and failed to snag his soul; he must have died when the scroll glitches were at their peak. “I don’t suppose he told you his name, did he?”

  “It was a woman. I asked her who she was, all she said was that she was just doing her job. She wouldn’t take no for an answer, so I scarpered.”

  “You were lucky. There’s been a lot of missing souls lately, it might have ended badly for you.”

  “So I hear. There’s a rumor going around about someone collecting souls. I ran into a bunch of guys on the west side; they escaped too. They overheard a reaper and some other guy arguing; they were pretty pissed off and yelling at each other. One guy—the one with a scepter—said that it wasn’t his fault souls were escaping, and he didn’t care how many they wanted for their collection. If he did that, they’d all end up dead. The other guy said not to worry, he’d look after it.”

  “Try to stay out of sight until your wife is ready to go. And don’t go off with the first reaper that shows up. Unless it’s me—I look after the souls in this part of town.”

  “I’ll do that,” the man said as he drifted through the wall.

  So, someone was actually collecting souls. We thought that was what had been happening, but it was nice to have it confirmed. Aside from feeding wraiths, I couldn’t see the point of stealing them just for a collection, but I might be missing something.

  Just after midnight, Basil and I crept into the old bank building. Luckily, there didn’t appear to be any type of security aside from an easily picked lock. We entered through the back door and followed the hallway toward the stairs. It should have been a straightforward route, but we kept running into dead ends. We wandered around in the pitch black, with only a tiny penlight to show us the way.

  “Don’t you have any sense of direction?” Basil whined as we navigated the maze of short dark corridors.

  “You’re one to talk. Whoever drew up the plans for this building should be shot. Look at this place, it’s ridiculous how many offices they’ve crammed in. We’ve been walking in circles for 10 minutes.”

  Basil flew off to scout ahead for the second time. “I can see the banister,” he called from somewhere ahead, “make two lefts, then a right.”

  We crept up the stairs to the third floor and easily found Flinders’ office; I remembered this floor's layout, it was much simpler than the main floor. I took out my picks and when I inserted them into the lock, the door swung open. After taking a step back, I glanced at Basil who just shrugged and pushed past me into the room. The office didn’t have any windows; so I wasn’t too concerned when he reached up to flick on the lights. My jaw dropped when the bright lights illuminated the letters sprayed across the wall, they spelled out ‘liar your dead’. The message must have been left recently, as each letter was slowly bleeding down the wall.

  “Looks like Flinders pissed someone off,” Basil said as he flew over to the wall and sniffed the message. He turned back to me and rolled his eyes. “It’s okay Sherlock, it’s just paint.”

  I let out the breath I’d been holding and glared at Basil. “I knew that.”

  Whoever left the message had also searched the office—the contents of one of the filing cabinet littered with the floor. The other four hadn’t been touched—they looked the same as they had earlier—someone had been looking for a specific file. The once towering stacks of paperwork now flowed over the open desk drawers—joining the mess on the floor.

  “How are we gonna find the Santoro file in this mess?” Basil asked as he gazed around the room.

  I picked up a few folders and glanced at the empty filing cabinet. “Shouldn’t be hard, the file we want wasn’t in this cabinet. But we need to be careful, at some point the cops will show up. And really I don’t want to get hauled in again.”

  “I wouldn’t mind, I had a lot of fun last time. Anyway, all they have to do is look for the spouse who can’t spell,” Basil replied as he moved toward the cabinet labeled S.

  After a fruitless search for the Santoro file, we turned our attention to finding Felix’s file. Unfortunately for us, the Ben Dover file would be somewhere in the mess on the floor. It took a few hours to search through all the loose papers. We worked our way from the door toward the back wall, shoving files behind us as we went. Nothing with Ben’s name turned up.

  “This is a waste of time. It’ll take days to go through all this.” Basil said glancing through the final handfuls of paper. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “We may as well check Flinders’ desk before we leave—if we can get to it that is.”

  Basil shrugged and leapt onto the desk, but his feet shot out from under him when he landed on a stray file folder. I didn’t even attempt to stifle the giggle, the sight of him landing on his back was just too funny. He picked himself up and reached around to dislodge a piece of paper that had stuck to one of his wings. “Will ya look at this,” he grinned with glee. “It’s a note with Nasty’s name and phone number. I told you she was involved.”

  I looked at the note Basil held, and sure enough, it was Natasha’s name, phone number and a question mark. “Why would he have her phone number?“

  “You keep asking questions that have no answers,” Basil grumbled after snatching back the note.

  “We need to look at Felix’s photo again. Flinders could be the short man, and I want to know who that other woman was.”

  “Fine, anyway, it’s time we got outta here. And I want to talk to Francesca tomorrow. You free?” Basil inquired.

  “I’m not sure. I’ll have to check my scroll in the morning.”

  “It’s morning already—we can check it when we get home.”

  Basil turned left rather than right as we left Flinders’ office. “Where are you going? You’re going to get us lost again,” I said as I grabbed his wing.

  “Shortcut; we’ll take the back stairs.”

  “What? Did you know about this shortcut before we wasted time walking in circles?”

  “No, I just saw the sign,” Basil shone his flashlight at the exit sign posted on the opposite wall, the arrow pointed left.

  “Figures,” I grumbled as I opened the door and we headed down the trash-covered stairs. “You’d think they’d clean up all this trash—someone could get hurt.”

  Basil stopped and hovered midway down the stairs. “Umm, I don’t think that’s trash.” Basil shone his light at a lump on the landing below. “That looks like a body.”

  I stood where I was, hoping that it was someone just taking a nap. “I don’t see anyone around. Is he still alive?”

  “With his head facing backward? I don’t think so.”

  “I guess the night shift must have reaped him. It looks like he fell down the stairs.”

  “More like hit on the head and pushed,” Basil said as he settled down on the stairs and peered at the body. “It’s Flinders, and he’s still warm. There’s a dent in his skull, it’s murder.”

  “You can’t be sure of that,” I sighed. “Maybe he saw whoever trashed his office. He could have been running away and fell down the stairs. Why do bodies keep piling up wherever we go?”

  “Maybe cause you’re a reaper,” Basil replied sarcastically, “and it’s a body, not bodies.”

  “Why do you think someone killed him?”

  “Duh, he stuck his nose i
n everyone’s business. He’s probably pissed off half the town—like whoever left that message on his wall.”

  “And trashed his office.”

  “Yeah, whoever it was really scared him.”

  “You might be right. Let’s just go. I’ll call Walter when we get home.”

  “Guess we won’t be asking him any more questions,” Basil said as he leapt over the body.

  When I called Walter and told him about finding Flinders in the stairwell, he subjected me to his usual lecture about sneaking around and breaking into crime scenes. I pointed out that the back stairwell looked like it hadn’t been used in a long time, and Tom Flinders’ body wouldn’t have been found until the smell alerted someone. My excuses placated Walter somewhat, but they weren’t enough to spare me the threat of having Uncle Iggy sicced on me again. I managed to get Felix’s autopsy results out of him though—he had died from the gunshot wound, nothing else.

  Francesca Santoro’s newly built Tudor style home was a refreshing change from the rundown Victorians that dominated the suburb of Forest Glen. I was expecting to be greeted by a tall dark haired woman and was taken aback when a fiery redhead flung open the door.

  Oddly enough, aside from the crows feet, hair and makeup, she looked like an older version of Natasha. I hoped she didn’t share her personality. Francesca gathered her hair and pulled it over one shoulder, exposing a pair of emerald and diamond chandelier earrings. Basil was perched on my shoulder, but she barely glanced at him. I introduced myself and assured her that Basil was house trained, but it was only after I mentioned Ben’s death she begrudgingly allowed us to enter her home.

  “I don’t believe Ben ever mentioned you. What is it you want to know?”

  “He was my friend and…”

  “Look. I only hired him because of my father. He recommended him. Ben was a passable supervisor, but other than that, I don’t know a thing about him.”