Bloodstone

by Gwen Hunter

  “I want to stay with you until Daddy comes home.” She angled her head up and looked at Jubal and Isaac. “I want to stay with you guys, too. Quinn is boring. I’m lonely. And he can’t cook nearly as good as Uncle Jubal.”

  I heard the men laugh and I smiled into her hair. “I think that can be arranged.”

  Jubal held out a huge mug of hot cocoa, and Jane pushed into a sitting position, pulling her cold hands away from my arms. “Thank you.” She drank. Isaac knelt near us and twisted the top off a small plastic jar. Using the tip of one finger, he dabbed some ointment onto Jane’s chapped face. Jubal brought her some cinnamon crisp cookies, her favorites. The total attention of the three adults calmed her and Jane almost managed a smile.

  “Are you going to help them get Daddy back?” she asked us.

  “Of course,” “darn straight,” and “yes” answered her.

  Satisfied, Jane swiveled in my lap, dangling her legs across mine and sipped her drink.

  After the cocoa and cookies, Isaac dressed and together we drove Jane to school, stopping at the principal’s office to make sure that no one except we three, Quinn and David were allowed access to her. In his quiet, competent, Zen-like manner, Isaac impressed on Mrs. Godansky that Jane’s safety was the school’s primary concern. I couldn’t care less that reading, writing, and ’rithmetic were being replaced as the school’s chief goals of the day. I just needed to make certain my niece was safe.

  Just before eleven o’clock, Noelle whirled into the shop, a snowstorm on her heels. “Sorry I’m late,” she called out. “But there’s a front blowing in and a pileup of fender benders on the bridge over Spring Creek. Freaking flatlanders. They should stay home or leave at the first sign of frost.” She swept off her cloak and fluffed out her dark hair. Over the weekend, she’d had it streaked with sections of burgundy and bright blue, and had her nails painted to match. She looked festive, a color-coordinated wild child.

  “Like your parents did?” Jubal asked, droll.

  “No fair. I’m a second-generation mountain girl. My family arrived before the rush of the latest useless immigrants.”

  “They aren’t immigrants. They are wealthy transplants,” Jubal said. “They are our customers, remember? They bring lots of money from far-off places and buy our neat stuff. That is how we make a living and pay for food, clothes and health insurance. Uh-oh.”

  At the last two syllables, we followed Jubal’s eyes to the door. Harry Boone once again stood on the outside staring in, his body wrapped in layers of padded clothes and yet somehow still appearing insubstantial. His eyes watched me through the glass.

  Jubal looked at his watch. “One hour, the man said, and it’s been nearly two. Not at all prompt.” Noelle’s eyes widened. She backed away to Isaac, who put a steadying hand on her arm. “I’ll tell you later,” he said, his eyes never leaving Boone.

  The door opened and Harry stepped in. We locked eyes a moment. What I saw in his gaze didn’t require the family gift to interpret as ugly. The man hated me. When he spoke, his tone was harsh, just on the edge of insulting. “You’re late. The chief sent me to get you. Get your coat.”

  My first reaction was to refuse, argue and stomp my feet, but I restrained myself as a customer slipped in the door after Boone. I had no intention of giving in to my baser desires and getting myself arrested in front of the clientele. Besides, I still felt the body blows my brother had suffered. Davie needed help and I needed information. I grabbed snow boots and coat, gloves and scarf, and prepped for the winter weather. Dressed warmly, I followed Boone outside into the cold, got in the cruiser’s front passenger seat, and allowed the silent, seething man to drive me to the law-enforcement center.

  Though Harry didn’t like it, his boss Jason Reasoner met me at the front door and took me to his office for questioning. Alone. Jason was an okay guy, even though he didn’t really believe me about Boone planting evidence. At five-eleven, hairline receding, waist thickening, he was burly, the way former college athletes get in their late thirties, a bit of extra fat through the chest, shoulders and belly. Jason ushered me in and shut his office door in Harry’s face. I saw a flicker of animosity in Jason’s eyes, and knew he didn’t really like his newest corporal. Which gave me a warm fuzzy feeling.

  After the niceties were over and coffee had been poured, sipped and grimaced over, he sat at his desk and turned on a bulky tape recorder, stated the date, time and our names. Without warning, Jason said, “According to an SBI special investigator, you have something that someone wants. Wants badly enough to kidnap your brother to get. What is it?”

  I sat up in the chair, suddenly cold, for once feeling small in the presence of a larger person. “I have no idea. If I knew, I’d give it to them in a heartbeat.” I put the nasty coffee on the desk in front of me and curled my arms around my body, not liking where this was going. I noticed for the first time in this awful day that my injured hand hurt, a pulse of pain exacerbated by the cold. I tucked it under my armpit.

  “They’ll get back in touch. The technician is at your apartment right now fitting your phone with the tracing system. It’s something new, developed to make use of existing technology but that will let us track not only traditional line-based and cell companies, but also calls rerouted through multiple systems.”

  “Thank you for asking.” The words were out of my mouth before I could think.

  “Harry didn’t get your permission?”

  “No. Harry didn’t get my permission.”

  Jason’s face went beet red. He punched the tape recorder off. Hit rewind.

  Score one for me. “Your corporal has a Lilliputian, bellicose mind and a vengeful, rancorous spirit,” I said, tasting the words as I spoke. “He plants evidence at crime scenes, and he intends to make my life miserable.”

  “You have the apologies of this department. And I’ll speak to Boone.” Jason was bent over a file drawer as he spoke, annoyance oozing from every pore. “Do we have your permission to set up equipment in your apartment and trace your calls? It’s fully automated, run and maintained from here to provide you with a semblance of privacy.” He tossed a consent form across his desk to me.

  I caught it, picked up a pen from his desk, and signed it without reading. “Sure. But I get something in return. What alley was my brother attacked in? And why do you think he staged this himself? And why is Harry Boone working on any incident that involves me?”

  Jason took the form and stashed it out of sight. “He was attacked in the service lane beside Merkle’s Long Ashes.”

  Merkle’s was an upscale tobacco and cigar store across the street from Bloodstone. Mentally I drew up the image of Davie being attacked, the direction he had been moving. My brother was moving away from my shop. “Where had he come from? And more important, where was he going?”

  “We don’t know.”

  Jason wasn’t much of a projector, but I could tell that wasn’t the complete truth. I rephrased. “Where do you think he came from?” The cop’s eyes did a little twitch.

  Gotcha.

  “We think he was coming from your apartment.”

  And suddenly I knew two things. The cops had a warrant for my loft, and they were there now. “Someone is going through my apartment right now, aren’t they? There’s a warrant. And you didn’t bother to tell me.”

  “It’s all perfectly legal. We think he may have been in your apartment some time before he was taken.” The words were genuine, but a sly satisfaction seeped from Jason’s mind. He had made sure I was in the law-enforcement center when the warrant was served. “We got a warrant for your brother’s house, as well.”

  “You little sneak.” The words jumped out of my mouth all by themselves.

  The interview went downhill after that. And I didn’t learn anything.

  Back at my loft, I inspected the little black box at the phone. It was attached with long black cords that snaked from the phone plug to the bedside table. The rest of the apartment had been gently tossed. My b
elongings were only slightly disarranged, not totally trashed as I had seen on television. No fingerprint powder marred any surface, so if they had made a mess, they had cleaned up after themselves. I had expected to feel violated, angry as was my natural inclination. Instead, I was numb. This was crazy. All of this was crazy.

  I was tired and hungry and wanted to do something—anything—for Davie, but there was nothing I could do. Not a blasted thing. So I stripped off the tan shirt and pants I had started the day in, opting for jeans and two body-fitting tees for the rest of the day, chewing a granola bar as I dressed. The unexpected snowstorm had socked us in and downtown was deserted. The shop was empty, presenting us with a chance to work together on the spring line.

  Bloodstone Inc. was divided into sections, with the front third of the hundred-year-old building totally restored for customers, from its burnished, copper-toned, pressed-tin ceiling, down the sponge-painted plaster walls to the stained, three-variety-wood wainscot and the wide boards of the hickory floor. The rear two-thirds were mostly unchanged since the fifties, taken up with the stockroom, the door to the service alley, two kilns and a huge work space cluttered with makeshift tables and work surfaces. The back work area was poorly heated, except when the kilns were cooking and the acetylene torches were fired up to blue cones and Jubal’s braziers were giving off steady warmth. Today it was cold, so I turned on the workroom’s gas logs and twisted the blower knob to high before I started unloading the stock I had bought at the show.

  With my tools—a loupe, a small tapping hammer, a tiny chisel—and naked eye, I analyzed the kyanite, the huge hunk of green turquoise, the rubies, the labradorite I had bargained Rett for, and the pearls and slabs of picture agate that would be so easy to work with. The African bloodstone I inspected with special care. Its colors weren’t as vibrant as some, but the mineral matrix looked strong and even, good for cutting and shaping. It should work well.

  The mixed bag of polished stone cabs I had found weren’t the highest gem quality, but several did have a luster I liked and would work up fast for the online stock offerings. There were eleven amethyst and three emerald stones, with the rest ametrine, citrine, tourmalines, two moonstones and an opal. A nice haul for the spring line of bracelets, necklaces and pins, over half of which would go in the online catalogue or be shipped to the two retailers who handled Bloodstone’s wares, one in New York City, one on Rodeo Drive. The rough, the finer ruby cabochons and one spectacular dependant stone were set aside for something special, for shop-only stock, intricate and detailed items that all three of us could design together.

  Having nothing else I could do, I started working the hunk of labradorite I had been sucker punched over. With a diamond-tipped blade and wet saw, I slowly excised twelve large beads in rectangles, massive squares, rough ovals and several free-form shapes, letting the careful tedious labor numb my mind and worries. If the rough matrix proved stable, each stone would be a pendant or focal bead for a necklace, the blue heart bleeding into the soft green outer area. It was fabulous material, and I already knew I’d be keeping one of the free-form pieces for myself. I could see it hanging from a lace of leather thongs strung with heavy nuggets and glass beads in dark green and blue swirled with gold. It would be exquisite with my coloring.

  My head was filled with the acrid stink of the copper Jubal was heating, and the cleaner smell of his torch. Today he was working droplets of gold into heavy globes and fusing gold dust and swirls of gold wire to copper plate. It looked like an experimental piece intended as a cuff bracelet. I watched a moment as he heated a bit of metal in the blue of the torch flame, and then placed it, bubbling, onto a copper band waiting on the brazier. The torch flame scarcely flickered, its center clear, the fire coning around it, forming a pinpoint of blue flame at the tip. At the moment, Noe’s smallest kiln was heating up, awaiting some combination of glass, metal and chemical that would fuse into her trademark flame-worked beads. Flame was everywhere. Fire as a tool.

  As we bent over our tasks an old rock CD played, the music obscured sporadically by the sound of my saw. Matchbox Twenty blared overhead, Rob Thomas crooning in a smoky, hoarse voice. We had listened to Matchbox for several years; Rob’s rough voice seemed tailor-made for the work we did, and was one of the few artists we could all agree on, even after he went solo. Noelle liked Celtic and Scottish music, and Jubal claimed to like musicals from the fifties, though sometimes I think he played them only to annoy me. I liked seventies rhythm and blues. Matchbox somehow satisfied us all.

  Over two hours passed without conversation, each of us involved with our own thoughts and chores. When I had ten stones cut and ready for drilling and shaping with the grinding wheel, I turned off the saw, wiped the stone dust off my skin, got us colas from the fridge and took a break, wandering the shop, watching my partners at the artistic and skilled labor that had made Bloodstone Inc. a success. Ignoring the cola, which I placed beside one of the shop’s fire extinguishers, Isaac snipped a design into stiff copper, following the contours of a pattern Jubal and I had designed.

  Jubal doused an oval of mixed, fused metals in a heated pickle solution, twisted the top off his cola and took a long drink, wiping the icy can over his sweating forehead before returning to copperplate and gold casting grain. He had used duct tape to create a support for the cool end of the copper. Good old American ingenuity. Make a tool out of duct tape and clothes hangers, then build a shopping mall with it.

  I went to the front of the building, down the narrow, low-ceilinged hallway between workroom and shop. Noelle had tired of working glass and taken a break before I had. Now she was in front, curled in a wing chair, weaving a complex pattern with a crochet needle, stringing on large dichroic beads and depending dangles of copper and red-gold beads. The piece looked both velvety soft and tribal, with tactile as well as visual appeal. A composition of wearable art in shades of lavender and green and gold—I’d have to remember that for the catalogue.

  Noe paused in the work and stretched her shoulders and neck before drinking. No one thought to thank me, each too alone in their creative worlds to actually notice my gesture. It was always this way when the weather made customers unlikely and we all could work together, companionable without the need for speech. Though I would never use my gifts to pry, I loved the busy hum of the thoughts of my friends and business partners, so involved in their tasks that my own mind could remain silent and alone inside my head without effort.

  I was tired, as much from the focused work of cutting stone as from the interview at Jason’s office and the night’s little sleep. Like Noe, I stretched, trying to relax muscles that wanted to freeze in the position I held when using the saw for extended periods of time. Back at my workstation, I set down the labradorite and pulled open a drawer to locate a handful of predrilled, soft green, translucent selenite beads that might blend well with Rett’s lab. I needed to cut and chip some slightly larger stones to be shaped, drilled and polished for stringing, but that was tedious work. My attention wandered.

  Taking my cola can with me, I sauntered into the front to check the weather—still terrible—and back into the workshop, where I set the cola can down before going into the storage room. Stacked in the center of the room were battered wooden crates, pasteboard shipping boxes and other deliveries.

  Each partner in Bloodstone Inc. had specialized talents. Jubal’s talent lay in metalworking and displays; Noelle’s genius was with beads and keeping our books; Isaac, with a Zen-like ability, could do almost anything he might want to try; my talents in the shop were design, stonecutting and shaping, and the stockroom. And the stockroom was in need of some serious attention. I pulled a low stool to the pile and lifted three wooden boxes to the floor, gathered mallet and a crow-bar, and opened each wooden shipping container. The first two crates contained scrap for Noelle—gold filings, broken jewelry pieces, old wine bottles. One box even held screws, nuts, bolts and rusted metal for her to fashion primitive pieces.

  I stored the contents o
n the appropriate shelves and containers and listed them on the master sheet for easy locating. The next three crates were for me, filled with stock I had bought sight unseen on the Internet. There had been a photograph, but if I didn’t get to handle stone and rough, I had no idea how brittle or friable it was and so the purchases were always a gamble. I stored some and put the rest aside for future deliberation. It was frigid in the unheated room, but I thought I could empty a few more cartons before the cold forced me out. I opened a package that had been shipped to Jubal from a refinery. It contained some lovely twenty-four-carat gold buttons and a small sack of casting grain that should have been placed in the store safe when it came. With me out of town, it had lain in the less secure storeroom while my business partners dealt with customers over the weekend. I put it to the side for proper storage.

  I pulled three wooden shipping crates into the open floor space and stopped, surprised at the weight. Stone…

  My chilled flesh was suddenly, instantly, heated with a surge of knowing. This was why—part of why—Davie was being hurt. This was what they wanted. I lifted other crates, sorting through the stacks, muscles straining as I worked. When I was done, there were four wooden packing boxes. Each crate was addressed to Isaac. The return address was a post-office box in town. Davie’s PO box. They were postmarked the Wednesday before he was attacked. Sweat broke out on my arms and tingled down my spine.

  Why send these to Isaac? Why not to me? No flash of insight, intuition or knowing floated in, nothing on the subconscious matrix, the family gray-space of mind-reading gibberish. Aunt Matilda had once called me a reluctant empath. Of course, she had also called me an untrained, undisciplined, insecure, frightened psychic, a St. Claire wild card with spikes of feral talent. Whatever. Out of all that, I usually preferred reluctant empath. Not today. For the first time in my life, I wanted a full-blown, St. Claire-nutty-scary, feral talent to find my brother. And I didn’t have it.