by Tanya Huff
Vicki sighed. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “But I’ll think of something. Maybe I should find a reason for Trembley and her partner being killed when the staff at the ROM were only . . . uh, mind-wiped.”
“Maybe I should have another talk with Dr. Shane.”
“Well, why not. She already seems to be mistakenly impressed.” Idiot! I don’t believe I said that. Vicki smacked herself in the head with her free hand. Brain first, mouth second!
She could hear his eyebrows rise. “When did you meet Dr. Shane?”
“Yesterday at the museum.” Not telling him would only cause him to jump to the asinine conclusion she’d been checking up on him. “During my investigation of your mummy.”
“Right.”
The smile in his voice set her teeth on edge. “Fuck off, Celluci. It’s too early in the morning for that shit. Call me if she has anything useful to say.” She hung up before he could answer.
“He thinks I’m jealous,” she told her reflection in the glossy black side of Henry’s stereo cabinet. “Why should I be jealous of Rachel Shane when I haven’t been jealous of any of the busty bimbets he’s bounced over the years?”
“Because Dr. Shane is a lot like you?” her reflection suggested.
She flipped it the finger and dragged herself up out of the chair. “It is really too early in the morning for this.”
It had stopped raining, but the sky looked low enough to touch and a cold west wind had chased Vicki all the way down College Street to Police Headquarters. After a long nap and a leisurely breakfast of canned ravioli, she’d realized that Inspector Cantree’s speaking to the Chief about a routine departmental matter still bothered her.
“And it’s not like I have any other leads,” she reminded herself, waiting for the light at Bay. Across the street, Headquarters loomed like an art deco Lego set. A number of people hated it, but Vicki thought it looked cheerful and had always appreciated the image/reality contrast.
She paused for a moment on the steps. Although she’d been back a couple of times in the fourteen months since she’d left the force, it had always been to one of the safe areas, like the morgue or forensics, never to homicide. To get to Inspector Cantree’s office, she’d have to run the gauntlet through the entire homicide department. Where someone else would be using her desk. Where old friends and colleagues would still be fighting to keep the city from going down the sewer.
Where none of them can do the job you’re doing now against a threat just as real. That helped. She glanced at her watch—twelve twenty-seven. “Oh, hell.” She squared her shoulders and reached for the door. “Maybe they’ll all be out for lunch.”
They weren’t, but the big office was empty enough that Vicki, her visitor’s pass hanging off her lapel like a scarlet letter, only saw two people she knew—and one of them barely had time to call a greeting before he had to turn his attention back to the phone. Unfortunately, person number two had time on his hands.
“Well, well, well. If it isn’t Victory Nelson, returning to the fold.”
“Hey, Sid.” Although a number of the other women on the force had complained that he was a bit of a tomcat, Vicki had nothing personal against Detective Sidney Austen. Professionally, she thought he didn’t take his job seriously enough and was a little surprised to see him still in homicide. “How’s it going?”
He perched on the edge of his desk and grinned at her. “You know the drill; overworked and underpaid.” She saw him noting the thickness of her glasses, wondering how much she could see. “So, what did you do with your seeing eye dog?”
“I made stew.”
His shout of laughter drowned out the grinding of her teeth. “Seriously, Victory, how’s life as a private investigator?”
“Not so bad.”
“Yeah? Celluci says you’re doing pretty good.”
Trust Celluci to issue bulletins. “I’m managing.”
“I hear a couple of the others have tossed a few cases your way, too.” He recognized her expression and hurriedly spread his hands. “Hey, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
“I’m sure you didn’t.” Her smile felt tight.
Sid shook his head. “Jesus. It doesn’t seem like you’ve been gone more than a year. You could come back right now and it’d be like you were never away. Speaking of which,” he pulled his brows down in an exaggerated frown, “how come you haven’t been back more often? You know, just dropping in and touching base?”
Because it sticks a knife in my heart and twists it, you asshole. But she couldn’t say that to him. Instead, she shrugged and asked, “If you got out of this shithole, would you come back?” knowing he’d misunderstand the edge on her voice. “I’ve got to go. The Inspector’s expecting me.”
Stepping into Inspector Cantree’s office was like stepping into the past. How many times had she gone through that door? A hundred? A thousand? A hundred thousand? The last time, just before she left, they’d both been painfully polite. The memory hurt but not so much as she’d feared. She had a new life now and the place where they’d amputated the old had pretty much scarred over.
“Welcome back. Nelson.” Cantree covered the mouthpiece of the phone and jerked his head toward the coffee maker on the filing cabinet. “Get yourself something to drink, I’ll be with you in a minute.”
The coffee had the thick, black, iridescent look of an oil slick. Vicki half-filled a pressed cardboard cup and added two large spoonfuls of powdered whitener, past experience having taught her that after the first couple of mouthfuls her taste buds would surrender and she’d be able to get the rest down without gagging. Someone had suggested once that offering the Inspector’s coffee to suspects might convince them to confess, but the idea had to be abandoned as a potential human rights violation.
“So.” Cantree hung up the phone as Vicki pulled a chair closer to the desk and sat down. “It’s good to see you again, Nelson.” He sounded like he meant it. “I’ve been following your new career when I can. You’ve been responsible for a couple of nice convictions along with the lost dogs and cheating husbands. I’m sorry we had to lose you.”
“Not as sorry as I was to be lost.” She managed a wry smile as she said it.
The Inspector nodded acknowledgment, of both the statement and the delivery. “How are the eyes?”
“Still in my head.” But as he was one of the four people in the world who she felt was owed an honest answer, she continued, “Piss useless after dark but fully functional in bright light, as long as I’m willing to face the world square on. Peripheral’s closed in another twenty-five percent in the last year.”
“Could be worse.”
“Could be raining!” she snapped and savagely swallowed a mouthful of coffee but, after it seared a trail the length of her esophagus, the pressure of his gaze forced her to add, “All right, it could be worse.”
Cantree smiled. “You know you’re welcome back any time, but as this is the first you’ve darkened my door since you turned in your badge, I assume there’s a reason for the visit.”
“I’ve been hired to look into the deaths at the ROM and I wondered what you could tell me about them.”
“Hired by who?”
Vicki smiled in turn. “I can’t tell you that.”
“All right, tell me this: Why aren’t you picking Celluci’s brain.”
“Picked clean. And, as he tells me you’ve taken him off the case, I just wondered why.”
“You’ve never just wondered anything in your life, Nelson, but, in view of past services and because I’m a nice guy, I’ll tell you what I told him . . .”
As he spoke, Vicki hid a frown. He was telling her exactly what he told Celluci, word for word, as though it were something he’d memorized and now repeated by rote. And try as she would, she couldn’t get him to expand on it. Finally, she gave up and stood. “Well, thanks for the time and the coffee, but I’ve got to be . . .” A thick cream-colored envelope, its return address done in embossed gold ink
caught her eye. “You going to a wedding?” she asked, picking it up.
“I’m going to a Halloween party at the Solicitor General’s.” Cantree snatched it out of her hand and Vicki stared at him.
“You’re bullshitting me?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He slapped the envelope down on his blotter. “Apparently the Honorable Member’s got some hot new adviser he wants everyone from department heads on up to meet.”
“Who?”
“How should I know? I haven’t met him yet. Some new guy in town with a lot of big ideas no doubt.”
Vicki reached down and twitched the invitation free. “The thirty-first. Next Saturday. Halloween. How nice, it’s a costume party.” She had an image of Inspector Cantree—who did look remarkably like James Earl Jones—dressed as Thulsa Doom, the villain of the first Conan movie, and hid a smile.
“Sure, nice for you, you haven’t been ordered to attend.” He grimaced and Vicki barely managed to save her fingers as he swept both invitation and envelope into the top drawer of his desk. “The Chief says we’re going, no excuses, and I hear the local OPP boys’ll be there as well. Not to mention the goddamned Solicitor General’s entire goddamned department.” The grimace hardened into a scowl. “Just the way I look forward to spending a Saturday night, talking shop with a bunch of politicians and political cops.”
“And very powerful people . . .” She caught the Inspector’s expression and grinned, masking a sudden rush of apprehension. “I see you at least got enough notice to get your loins properly girded.”
“You leave my loins out of this. And the damn thing came by special courier this morning.”
“Special courier? Don’t you find that a little strange?”
He snorted. “Ours is not to reason why . . .” The rest of the quote got lost in the shrilling of the phone and she mouthed, I’ll see myself out, as she backed toward the door.
Out on the street, Vicki looked back at Headquarters and shook her head. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.
Sometimes, only a cliché seemed adequate.
Eight
“Did you ever find those papers you misplaced?”
“Papers?” Celluci asked, holding open the restaurant door.
“The papers your cousin came over to the museum for.” Dr. Shane shook her head at his blank expression. “You called her yesterday, asked her to check for them at the museum after work . . . ?”
All at once, Celluci understood. “Oh, that cousin. Those papers.” He wondered if Vicki had left him in the dark on purpose or if it just hadn’t occurred to her to fill him in on their new relationship. “They turned up this afternoon at the office. I guess I should’ve called to let you know.” He tried a charming smile and made a mental note to take care of Vicki later. “I did call to ask you to dinner.”
“So you did.”
She didn’t appear particularly charmed, but neither did she appear completely immune.
Celluci was having a little trouble deciding how to approach the evening. Rachel Shane could have information that would help them find and capture the mummy, which meant he’d have to question her and, to complicate matters, he couldn’t question her directly or she’d want to know why. He couldn’t tell her why.
“Look, this is where things stand: the mummy that killed Dr. Rax is now rampaging through the city and we need your knowledge to catch it.”
“And where did this mummy come from?”
“The sarcophagus in your workroom. ”
“But I told you that was empty. ”
“The mummy messed with your mind.”
“Excuse me, waiter, could you call 911 ? I’m having dinner with a crazy man.”
No. Telling her would merely cut off the only source of information they had. A scientist trained to pull knowledge out of bits of old bone and pottery simply wouldn’t believe that a few of those old bones got up and committed murder on the say-so of a homicide detective, a smart-mouthed PI, and a . . . a romance writer. She’d need proof and he simply didn’t have any.
Telling her would also ensure that he’d never see her again, but with four people dead what she thought of him personally became significantly less important.
When it came right down to it, he needed the information and he’d have to use her interest in him—or, more exactly, her perception of his interest in her—to get it. He’d once watched Vicki pump a man dry by spending two hours batting her eyelashes and interjecting a breathless “Oh really?” into every pause in the conversation. He wouldn’t have to sink that low, but even so, Rachel Shane deserved better. God willing, he’d get a chance to make it up to her another time.
As dinner progressed, he had no trouble getting her to talk about herself and her work. The police had long since learned to exploit the human fondness for self-exposure and an amazing number of crimes were solved every year when the perpetrator just couldn’t keep quiet any longer and told all. Nor was it difficult to steer the conversation sideways into ancient Egypt.
“I have the feeling,” she said as the waiter set desert and coffee on the table, “that I should only have given you my name, rank, and serial number. I haven’t been so thoroughly interrogated since I defended my thesis.”
Celluci pushed the curl of hair back off his forehead and searched for something to say. He had, perhaps, been probing a little deeply. And he had, perhaps, not been as subtle as he could have been. The desire to be honest kept fighting with the need to be devious. “It’s just that it’s a relief not to be talking about police work,” he told her at last.
A chestnut brow rose. “Now, why don’t I believe that,” she mused, stirring cream into her coffee. “You’re trying to find something out, something important to you.” Lifting her chin, she looked him squarely in the eye. “You’d find out a lot faster, if you’d come right out and asked me. And then you wouldn’t have wasted an evening.”
“I don’t consider the evening to be a waste,” he protested.
“Ah. Then you found out what you needed to know.”
“Damnit, Vicki, don’t twist my words!”
Both brows rose, their movement cutting the silence to shreds. “Vicki?”
He did say Vicki. Oh, shit. “She’s an old colleague. We argue a lot. It just seems natural that a protest like that would have her name attached.”
The brows remained up.
Celluci sighed and spread his hands in surrender. “Rachel, I’m sorry. You were right, I did need information, but I can’t tell you why.”
“Why not?” The brows were down, but the tone was decidedly cool.
“It would put you in too much danger.” He waited for her protest, and when it didn’t come he realized he was waiting for Vicki’s protest.
“Does this have anything to do with Dr. Rax’s death?”
“Only indirectly.”
“I thought you were taken off the case.”
He shrugged. Anything he said at this point could give her ideas and telling her about hiring Vicki—not to mention Vicki’s supernatural sidekick—would only complicate things further.
“You know I’ll help in any way I can.”
Most of the people Celluci met divided the man and the cop into two very neat and separate packages. Certain subtle differences in tone and bearing indicated Rachel Shane had just closed the first package and opened the second.
She kept him in police officer mode for the rest of the evening, and when he dropped her off at her condo he had to admit that, although he felt like he’d just finished Archaeology 101, as far as dates went, it hadn’t been exactly a success. She obviously had no intention of inviting him in.
“Thank you for dinner, Mike.”
“You’re welcome. Can I call you again?”
“Well, I tell you what.” She looked up at him, her expression speculative. “You decide you want to see me and not the Assistant Curator of the Royal Ontario Museum’s Department of Egyptology and you dump the hidden agendas and I’ll think abou
t it.” Tossing a half smile back over her shoulder, she went into the building.
Celluci shook his head and slid back into his car. In a number of ways Rachel reminded him of Vicki. Only not quite so . . . so . . .
“So Vicki,” he decided at last, pulling out of the driveway and turning east toward Huron Street without really thinking. It wasn’t until he was searching for a parking space, which was, as usual, in short supply around Vicki’s apartment, that he wondered what the hell he was doing.
He drove twice more around the block before a space opened up and he decided he didn’t need an excuse for being here; he didn’t even particularly need a reason.
When Vicki heard the key in the lock, she knew it had to be Celluci and, for one brief moment, she entertained two completely opposing reactions. By the time he got the door open, she’d managed to force order on the mental chaos and was ready for him.
If he thinks he’s going to get sympathy after Dr. Shane dumped him early, he can think again. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Why?” He threw his jacket over the brass hook in the hall. “Are you expecting Fitzroy?”
“What’s it to you?” She pushed up her glasses and rubbed at her eyes. “As a matter of fact, I’m not. He’s writing tonight.”
“Good for him. How long has this coffee been sitting here?”
“About an hour.” Settling her glasses back on her nose, she watched him fill a mug and rummage in the fridge for cream. He seemed, well, if she had to put a name to it, she’d say melancholy came closest. Christ, maybe Dr. Shane broke his heart. Her own heart gave a curious twist. She ignored it. “So. How went the date?”
He took a swallow of coffee. Two strides brought him across the tiny kitchen and up against the back of Vicki’s chair. “It went. What’s with all the books?”
“Research. Believe it or not, a history degree is appallingly short on coverage of ancient Egypt.”
Behind her, Celluci snorted. “You’re not going to find much help from historians.”
Vicki tilted her head back and smiled smugly up at him. “That’s why I’m researching myths and legends. So, uh, Dr. Shane didn’t respond to the celebrated Celluci charm? Guaranteed to get a confession at fifty paces?”