Omens ct-1

by Kelley Armstrong

  Chapter Thirty-six

  As we were leaving Marlotte’s place, Gabriel checked his e-mail. One so engrossed him that he walked right past the car.

  “Everything okay?” I called.

  “Hmm.”

  I figured that was all I was getting. Not surprising. I’d only asked to be polite. When we got into the car, though, he started it up and said, “You won’t need to worry about Niles Gunderson anymore.”

  My heart thudded, and I said nothing. Then he looked over, frowning slightly, and I realized some response was required.

  “Been locked up in the psych ward again, has he?” I said, as casually as I could.

  Gabriel’s head tilted. A barely perceptible movement, but I noticed it, and I knew what it meant—that behind those dark shades, his eyes were studying mine. I had to force myself not to turn away. After a moment, I said, “Gabriel?”

  He put the car into reverse and backed from the spot.

  “After the incident at your house, I was concerned that Mr. Gunderson might be a problem for you. I put out a request to various contacts, asking to be alerted if he spoke to the media or issued a threat of any sort.”

  Again, silence. Again, a split second too late I realized a response was required.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  He glanced over at me. Was my tone too casual? As if I’d known that Niles Gunderson wasn’t a threat—and why.

  “You are my client,” he said. “As such, I will look after your interests. It seems, though, that it was unnecessary. Niles Gunderson was found dead in his apartment this morning.”

  “What?”

  Gabriel paused. I was sure I’d sounded shocked enough. Too shocked? Damn it. I should tell him.

  Why? To clear my conscience? Leaving Niles dead in his kitchen was wrong, but if I admitted that, I’d only be burdening—and entrusting—Gabriel with my secret.

  “He’s been dead a few days, it seems,” Gabriel continued. “Natural causes. It doesn’t affect our investigation, but we will need to temporarily avoid contacting his daughter.”

  “Okay,” I said, and lapsed into silence for the rest of the trip.

  My phone rang while I was still sound asleep, and I leapt up, thinking I was late for work. I was so paranoid that I had two alarms for my 7 a.m. shifts—a bedside clock and the one on my phone. In my old life, the only time I woke before eight was when I had an early flight. My biological clock wasn’t liking the new world order.

  When I glanced at the clock, though, I saw that it was just past five thirty. I fumbled for my phone and peered at the screen.

  Gabriel.

  Why would—? Oh, shit. The article. I’d been sure it wouldn’t run today. Lores still had to write it and sell it.

  I answered. “The article ran, didn’t it?”

  “Good morning to you, too. Yes, it did.”

  “How bad?”

  “Not bad at all. I think you’ll be pleased. My apologies for calling so early, but I have court today and I know you’re on the day shift. I’ve e-mailed you the article. I thought you’d want to take a look as soon as possible.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Also, you’ll be getting a delivery at my aunt’s. You can pick it up there after work.”

  “Files?”

  “No, a laptop. I recently replaced mine, and I still had the old one.”

  “I appreciate that, but I don’t want—”

  “—charity. I know. And if I’m not inclined to give it to a homeless man on the corner, I’m certainly not giving it to someone with a multimillion-dollar trust fund. Twenty-five dollars a week seems a reasonable rental fee for a used laptop. Is that acceptable?”

  “Yes, but I’ll still need to find Internet—”

  “My aunt has wireless. I’m sure I can persuade her to part with the password if you promise not to download movies.”

  “I don’t have time to watch movies. Thank you. That will make research much easier.”

  “Which is the point, so gratitude is not required. I despise online research, and I’m happy to delegate all of it to you.”

  “So happy that you’ll reduce the rental to twenty bucks?”

  “No, but I’ll persuade my aunt not to charge you for the Internet.”

  The article was fine. There was nothing to link me to Cainsville. No speculation over what I was doing visiting Pamela Larsen. It was all in my words—or an edited version of them that I was satisfied with. As for the photo, because it was black and white, you couldn’t see the leftover red in my hair or that my makeup wasn’t the right shade for my skin tone. Martin Lores had treated me fairly and gotten his scoop—the first words from the long-lost daughter of Illinois’ most notorious killers. I was old news now. At last.

  After work, I went over to Rose’s to collect my laptop. I’d intended to just grab it and go, but walking into her appointment room was like stepping into a candy store.

  “I’ll make tea,” she said.

  “No.” I yanked my gaze from a spirit photograph. “I mean, thanks, but that’s not necessary.”

  “I’m making tea.” She waved to the room. “Poke around.”

  When she came back, I was leafing through an old book.

  “Which one is that?” she asked as she set down the tea service.

  I showed her the cover.

  “A Magician Among the Spiritualists. Do you know what it is?”

  “Harry Houdini’s accounts of his attempts to debunk spiritualists.” I waved the book. “This cost him his friendship with Conan Doyle.”

  She smiled. “It did. Have you read it?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve read The Edge of the Unknown, Conan Doyle’s response. Wisely published after Houdini’s death.”

  “Indeed. Borrow that if you like. It’s interesting reading.”

  I hesitated, then nodded. As I approached the table, I saw the flower arrangement in the middle and stutter-stepped.

  “Hawthorn blossoms?” I said.

  “Yes. I stole them from Grace’s tree.”

  “No, but … It’s May.” When I saw her expression, I gave an embarrassed laugh. “Sorry. Old wives’ tale. Bringing hawthorn into the house in May is bad luck.”

  “Is it?” She stood and pulled the flowers from the vase, water droplets spraying.

  “No, I didn’t mean— It’s just a superstition.”

  She walked to the window, opened it, and tossed them out. “Yes, and while I’m sure Houdini would be appalled, I prefer to hedge my bets.” She came back to the table. “I also keep a sprig in the rafters to ward off bogarts. I wonder if that’s allowed in May?”

  “Bogarts?”

  “Brownies gone bad.”

  “You keep hawthorn in your attic so your cakes don’t go stale? Freezing them would be much easier.”

  She gave me a look. “I mean brownies of the wee folk variety. Bogarts are a particularly nasty form. Troublemakers. Not to be confused with bogan, which are just as troublesome but less maliciously so.”

  “Bogan…?”

  “Bogan, hobgoblin, bòcan, whatever you wish to call them.”

  “Goblins, I know. They’re like trolls.”

  Her brows shot up, in a look very much like her nephew’s. “My dear girl, you may know your superstitions, and you may know your fake fairy photography, but your knowledge of the wee folk is woefully inadequate. Hobgoblins are not trolls.”

  “Troll-like creatures?”

  A slow, sad shake of her head. “I take it you’ve seen A Midsummer Night’s Dream?”

  “Sure. At the Shakespeare Theater out on Navy Pier.”

  “Do you recall the character of Puck?”

  I nodded.

  “He’s a hobgoblin.”

  I frowned. “Are you sure?”

  An exasperated sigh. She tapped my laptop. “Look it up when you get home.” She poured the tea. “Now, about Houdini and Conan Doyle. What do you know?”

  We fell into a long, nicely distracting chat abou
t spiritualism.

  As I finished my third cup of tea, I said, “Before I go, I have a question for you.”

  “Ah.” A smug smile. “I knew you would eventually.”

  “Not that kind of question. It’s about Gabriel.”

  Her smile evaporated as she said, carefully, “Yes…”

  I leaned forward and lowered my voice. “Is he seeing anyone? ’Cause I think he’s totally hot.”

  “Can’t even finish that one with a straight face, can you?”

  I choked back my laughter. “Sorry. But the way you were looking at me, that’s what you were expecting, and I hate to disappoint.”

  “Actually, no, it wasn’t. I’ve just learned to dread any sentence that contains the phrase ‘question about Gabriel.’”

  “Well, don’t worry. It’s strictly business. Yesterday he suggested I do a media interview. I refused, because I wasn’t ready. We got ambushed by a reporter and he helped me through it. I want to say thank you.”

  “I see.”

  “While I’m sure what he’d really like is a big check, my budget is limited these days. But he did me a favor, and I’d like to acknowledge it.”

  “That’s very thoughtful of you. And I believe I know just the thing.”

  She warmed my tea with another half cup and gave me her suggestion.

  When I returned to my apartment, I had a visitor waiting at my door. The black cat.

  “Sorry, but unless you like toast with peanut butter, there’s nothing in there.”

  It just waited, the tip of its tail flicking, gaze fixed on my door. I opened it. The cat zoomed inside.

  As I set up my new laptop, I heard a squeak. Then a crunch. The cat trotted over to me, dead mouse hanging from its mouth.

  “Oh, so it wasn’t about me at all. Your dinner squeezed under my door.”

  I walked back to the entry hall and opened the door. The cat didn’t follow. I returned to see it crouching in the middle of my kitchen floor, ripping into the mouse, tiny bones crunching.

  “Lovely. You’ll let me know when you want to leave?”

  The cat continued to ignore its host as it chowed down. I shook my head and started working.

  Olivia and Eden

  Rose watched the cat cleaning itself in the girl’s apartment window. She’d seen it around before, sneaking and slinking and killing, as cats were wont to do. So the girl had taken it in? Surprising. She didn’t seem the type. No more than Rose herself. Maybe the girl was lonely. She’d noticed that earlier, when she’d offer more tea and the girl would hesitate before sheepishly accepting. Staving off the return to her empty apartment. Rose knew what that was like.

  The girl. She shouldn’t call her that. She had a name. Two, in fact, which was the problem. Olivia was too haughty. Pretentious. It suited the daughter of the man who owned the Mills & Jones department stores. And it suited the coolly beautiful girl Rose had seen in society page photographs. But it did not suit the young woman who’d been in her house an hour ago. Cool, yes. Self-possessed, yes. But not haughty, not pretentious enough to be an Olivia. An Olivia was all surface, an empty shell of sophistication. With this girl, the shell was a veneer. One that was slowly beginning to crack.

  Eden suited her better. It wasn’t perfect. A little too cute, conjuring up images of idealistic young parents searching naming books to find just the right one for their little treasure. Still better than calling her “the girl.” As long as she remembered not to say it aloud. She couldn’t afford to alienate Eden. Not now.

  Speaking of alienating…

  Rose looked over at her cell phone and stifled the overwhelming urge to call Gabriel and deliver a verbal smack upside the head. That was the price of having her grandnephew in her life. She must not meddle. A lesson she’d learned when he was fifteen, after his mother left.

  A deplorable situation. Her niece had the parenting skills of a … Rose didn’t even know how to finish that sentence. Any creature in nature so incapable of caring for its young would have died out centuries ago.

  Rose pushed the phone aside, then swept the last hawthorn petals from the desk. A test for Eden. There were others, but this was the one she’d noticed. The power to innately detect and decipher omens was a strange skill, one that most psychics would deny even existed. And yet Rose had seen it once before—an old woman who could read omens. She’d been accepted and even quite celebrated in the community; Cainsville was an odd sort of place that way.

  Rose had been only a child at the time, the woman merely a vague memory now, and she knew no more about her and her power. But when she’d seen signs in Eden, she’d set out the tests and Eden had detected one. Only one, though, meaning it was an ability as yet undeveloped. Rose could help with that, and she would, because it was in her best interests. For a Walsh, that’s what it came down to. Eden Larsen or Olivia Taylor-Jones or whomever the girl was becoming would be useful, and it behooved Rose to take advantage of that.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  The cat never did leave. When he finished his mouse, he started meowing at me. I opened the door. He ignored it. I quickly laid out newspaper. He kept meowing. I got a towel—one of only two I owned—and reluctantly surrendered it. He curled up on it and went to sleep.

  My Internet access wasn’t smoking hot, but it was decent enough if I set up close to the front window. I spent the evening scouring the web for anything on Jan Gunderson, Christian Gunderson, Tim Marlotte—anyone and anything that might help me make a case against Christian. Or proved he was innocent and the Larsens had been rightfully convicted. I found nothing.

  I woke up, let the cat out, and went to work. Or something like that. I attempted to let the cat out. But he had apparently stuffed half the dead mouse behind my stove, and when I tried to kick him out, he recovered his breakfast and set about eating it. Then he jumped into my sink and meowed until I got him a bowl of water. At least he didn’t expect cream.

  When I was ready to leave for work, I opened the door again, and even prodded him in that direction. He pretended not to notice. So I scooped him up and carried him out.

  I reached the front doors just as Grace, dressed in a housecoat and a scowl, was retrieving her morning paper.

  She glowered at the cat. “No pets allowed.”

  “Tell that to whoever let him in.” I shifted the cat under my arm. “Also, you have mice.”

  She squawked as I left. Once I reached the sidewalk, I put the cat down. He gave me a baleful look, then tore back into the front yard, leapt onto the porch, and crouched behind a stone urn, gaze fixed on the door, waiting for it to open.

  “So that’s how you do it,” I said. “Just don’t let Grace catch you or you’ll end up baked in a pie.”

  As my shift ended, Gabriel called to say we had evening interviews with one of Jan’s old friends and a former teacher of Christian’s whom the police had questioned about his association with the first female victim, Amanda Mays. It seemed like retreading well-trodden ground, but nothing else was popping up. Should I really expect it to? How many professionals had taken a crack at this case? I sure as hell wasn’t going to prove the Larsens were innocent by questioning two people.

  Gabriel knocked at my door at ten to six. When I let him in, he sniffed the air, frowning slightly. Then he noticed my guest.

  “You have a cat.”

  “Not by choice.” I shut down my laptop. “He came in last night chasing a mouse and apparently he likes it here. I kicked him out in the morning and found him at my door when I got back. I left him in the hall, but he started caterwauling. Grace came. She tried taking him outside. He scratched her arms, so she threw him in here and told me I have a cat.”

  “I see. Does he have a name?”

  “That would imply I’m keeping him.” I scowled at the cat, who simply tucked his paws under himself and continued ignoring me. “He gets a towel, some kitty litter, and that empty tin can for a water dish.”

  “From the looks of him, he’ll settle for that. And
maybe a flea collar.”

  On cue, the cat scratched behind his ear.

  “Great,” I muttered. I started for the door, then I handed Gabriel a box from the counter. “My thanks for getting me through the interview.”

  He took the box gingerly and stood there looking down at it.

  “What? Is it ticking?” I reached over and pulled off the lid. “Cookies. That’s what you smelled earlier—I hope. My first batch ever. Well, actually, my second. There was a test run. I’ll feed them to Grace.”

  He looked down at the cookies.

  “I asked your aunt what I could do to thank you,” I said. “She gave me the recipe. Said they were your favorites.”

  “Ah. Yes. Well … this … wasn’t necessary.”

  “Shit,” I said, leaning back against the counter. “Too personal, isn’t it? I told her that, but she insisted you wouldn’t take it the wrong way.”

  “I’m not. It’s … very thoughtful.”

  “Guess I should have just gone for a card.” I slapped the lid onto the box. “You can throw them out when you get home, but they are edible. I ate two.”

  “They smell good.”

  “Whatever.” I waved him out the door.

  Gabriel drove into a largely residential neighborhood near Garfield Park. He pulled in between two beautifully restored greystones. The lane was clearly marked “Private parking. Violators will be towed.”

  As we got out, I noticed a video camera aimed at the spot where he’d parked.

  “Um, Gabriel?” I gestured to the camera.

  He nodded and ushered me along the lane. We came out between the greystones. In New York, they’d be brownstones. Same concept, different colored brick.

  Gabriel led me up the wide front steps to the front door. As he opened it, I saw a small bronze plaque affixed to the stonework: Gabriel Walsh, Attorney-at-Law.

  “This is your office?” I said.

  Obviously it was. When I’d pictured his office, though, I’d imagined something unrelentingly modern. A sterile chrome and marble suite on the fortieth floor of some skyscraper.

  He hesitated on the stoop, frowning at me slightly. Then he nodded. “Ah, I neglected to mention the pit stop, didn’t I? I need to sign some papers before my secretary arrives in the morning.” He hesitated. “I suppose you could have just waited in the car.”