And now, whereas I lived in a haunted cottage a *tiny* bit out of town, Taj lived a kilometre of out town on a reserve that was designated unsuitable for humans. See? A way more extreme version.
The teapot boiled and Taj stared down into the steam. "What are you doing here, Lana?"
"I think I need your help, Taj." Those words didn't slide off my tongue easily, they stuck there and I had to cough them out. I didn't like to ask for anyone's help, not even that of Tree Valley's least wanted.
Taj let out a short laugh. "Been a long time since someone asked for my help." He frowned and mused over the matter. "I'm not sure I've ever been helpful to anyone, actually."
"I'm sure that's not true," I said softly as I sat down in the one chair Taj had, an old wooden rocking chair, my back to him. Though I had to wonder for a moment if maybe he was right. I decided he couldn't be -- it wasn't possible for a human to go through their entire life without ever being helpful to anyone. He'd held the tree branch for me only minutes earlier, for one thing.
But I needed him for something far more serious than a tree branch.
"That thing that happened five years ago..." I whispered.
I heard Taj fumble with the teapot and turned around to see that he'd dropped it and only just caught it before it hit the ground.
"That's why you're here?" he asked, incredulous.
What did he think I was there for? The damp air? The delightful smell of the clay that was clogging up my nostrils? (Though to be fair it was quite a unique experience). Obviously, I was only there because he was the only person with first-hand experience of the...landing. That's what the people had called it at the time. The crazy people, those on the fringe, that had been there when the UFO had landed.
Allegedly.
I'd never believed in the stories. Even for someone with my suspicious nature, it was too much. I was suspicious but skeptical. In that way, I was the complete opposite to Taj Robinson. He was gullible, for want of a better word. Too easily taken in by conspiracies. Or at least, that's what I'd always thought until now.
Now I'd seen the pink blood on the beach.
"Are the stories true, Taj? Did it really happen?"
I let the words hang for a moment.
He took a long time to answer. "No." He slammed the teapot back down on the stove. I knew he was lying.
I stood up. "Taj, you're the only person with first-hand experience..."
"Lana, I don't talk about those things anymore." He kept his back turned to me while he dipped a teabag into a mug with shaking hands. I supposed milk was too much to ask for.
Things had changed then. "You used to talk about those things."
Taj turned away again and snapped at me. "And look where that got me." It wasn't like him to snap -- it went against his gentle nature. He was a Cancer.
I held his gaze. "I thought this was how you liked things."
He returned my stare for a moment before he softened and sighed, handing me the mug. "Sorry, it's black. No fridge here."
I like my coffee black, but bitter leaf water is a bit of a different matter. I tried to hide my cringe as I took a sip.
Taj drank his way too quickly, considering it was scolding water. It would have been too much for my throat to handle at the best of times, and this was not the best of times for my throat.
"What's happened?" Taj asked softly. He threw his empty mug back into the bucket he used for a sink and stared at me.
"There was a body found at the beach."
Taj's eyes grew wide. "A dead body?"
"No, I'm here because I spotted a living person taking a paddle into the water."
Taj blinked. "A dead human body?"
"Ye--" I stopped. "She looked human."
Taj's face dropped. "She?"
I nodded. "No ID yet, as far as I know. I didn't recognize her." My stomach turned a little as I looked down into my tea and recounted the facts. "She was face down. It was no accident, Taj. Someone killed her. Her hair was matted with...with..."
It took me a minute to spit it out. The whole time, Taj was staring at me more and more intently, leaning closer and closer to me until our noses just about touched.
"Taj, her blood was pink."
Immediately, he turned away.
I wasn't surprised.
I gulped down the tea, not even caring if it burned my throat, while Taj started to angrily scrub his dirty tea mug.
"Don't go looking for a paranormal explanation for this, Lana..."
"But--"
Taj shook his head and turned back, pacing towards me. "There is a human killer out there." He looked me deep in the eyes and I felt my stomach do a strange little flip. Erm, what was all that about? "And isn't that far scarier? That this is a human crime?"
I had to unlock my eyes from his. Come on Lana, this is not good. You can't go catching feeling for Taj Robinson. Was that even what was happening? Maybe he had some kind of super powers I didn't know about...yes, it was probably mind control that he was using on me. That was a far more logical explanation.
"There is no human crime in Tree Valley," I said simply. "There hasn't been in ten years. Unless you count the corporations..." I had to stop myself before I went off on a rant about May's company. It was neither the time nor the place. I wasn't sure what Taj's shack was ever the place for, come to think of it. Clearly not this conversation...
"That's just what they want you to think," Taj said simply.
What the heck did that mean?
Taj turned away from me and shook his head while he dried the mug, which surprisingly hadn't snapped under the weight of his death grip.
My voice was soft. "People said the UFO was pink, Taj. Five years ago. You were there. Was it? Was it pink?"
He didn't bring his face back up to look at me while he polished the mug as though it were a wine glass.
"You're barking up the wrong tree, Lana. Drop it. You need to be looking for human suspects." He finally brought his face up to look at me. "That is, if you are actually serious about investigating this case." He frowned. "Do you actually have a P.I's licence?"
What was with that question, lately?
"You don't need one to be a paranormal investigator, Taj," I said, grabbing my leather jacket as I started to make my way back towards the door. "Thanks for all your help," I added sarcastically. Maybe he'd been right -- maybe Taj Robinson had never been helpful to anyone in his life.
"Wait," Taj said as I walked towards the door. And for a second I thought he was going to apologise for lying to me, and spill everything. I waited expectantly.
"Don't leave the way you came. There's an easier way out the back, through all the old car parts that people dumped down here in the hole."
'The hole' was a very glamorous way of describing his postcode.
I walked back out the door, intent on ignoring his great advice, holding the branch back for myself this time. I shook my head as I looked round the side of the shack and saw that he was right. There was a makeshift junk yard on the other side. Who lives like this, surrounded by mud and junk? But I saw that he was right about something else as well. On that side, 'the hole' had a much less steep incline -- I'd be able to climb out far more easily than if I tried to climb the clay hill the way I'd come. Though I'd have to make my way through the car parts first. There were old rusty doors and abandoned engines that still smelled like gasoline and still had brown sticky tar on them. I protected my leather jacket as I pressed past them, almost at the end of the tunnel.
I had to step into a tire before I could climb my way out of the hole and almost tripped on my way up, the ankle of my jeans almost getting caught on a piece of hot pink shrapnel on the way out.
Chapter Four
The Mystery Of The Missing Milk.
I thought the buzzing that filled my room was coming from Grace's cat. I wouldn't have chosen to have a pet myself, but Izzy had come with Grace as a two for one deal. And at least she was black. Shelters have a hard time getting b
lack cats adopted because of the superstition surrounding them. People still think they are witches.
When Grace had turned up with the cat, apologetically, she'd asked if I minded. "The cat or the color?" I'd asked, peering down at the tiny critter who was clearly the runt of her litter. "Erm, both," Grace had replied. I'd shrugged and said that as long as I didn't have to buy the cat food I didn't mind (fast forward a month and I'm the only person buying it) and as far as the color went, I had only one thing to say on the matter.
"I'm not worried about it bringing me bad luck. I have enough bad luck already. It can only stay the same."
I'd made a similar remark when I'd been in Kmart a few weeks earlier with May, and smashed a mirror onto the floor. May had looked at me, horrified. "That's seven year's bad luck," she'd said with reverence.
I'd shrugged. "If only it would only last that long."
Anyway. Back to the story. We've got a dead body -- human, alien, otherwise, I didn't know at that stage -- and a murder mystery to solve. The buzzing I could hear was not a cat purring. Izzy had not managed to claw my door open or get the handle to turn (I swear she's done that before) and I was alone in my room.
It was a very loud helicopter overhead. Groaning, I checked the time and saw it was only eight o'clock -- about three hours earlier than I would usually get out of bed. And I hadn't had a great sleep...I'd dreamed of Taj Robinson.
I shuddered then threw the covers off. Better to face the early morning than to risk another Taj-colored dream.
With only three hours of sleep in the engine, I needed fuel so I headed to the kitchen and put the kettle on to make a cup of tea. I could still taste the bitterness of Taj's brew from the night before and could still feel the blisters on my tongue from the blackness, so there was no way I was drinking this cup without milk. I'd been to the supermarket the morning before, before everything had changed in Tree Valley; before the blood on the beach, before my trip to Taj's, before my visit to Gun Employment. Before it all.
But when I opened the fridge door, all that was sitting on my shelf was half a block of cheddar cheese and an old jar of pasta sauce.
"Grace?" I called out, slamming the fridge door shut. Had she really used all my milk up without even asking me?
Grace was a doctor who was temporarily lodging with me while doing a residency at Tree Valley hospital for a few months. She didn't want to waste her doctor's salary on rent so she was fine living in a haunted cottage slightly out of town if it was only charging sixty bucks a week. I didn't usually like sharing my space with people, but since I couldn't sing anymore I needed a way to pay the mortgage and her room and board every week helped out. Grace was blonde and bubbly and not the sort of person you'd usually expect to be a doctor. Nor was she the sort of person you'd usually expect me to hang out with. If we weren't sharing a roof I doubt we'd ever have shared much else.
"What's up?" she asked, wandering into the kitchen. I was surprised to see that she was still in her pajamas, blue things with little cartoon monkey faces all over them. Her shift at the hospital usually started at 8.30. Maybe she was pulling a sickie. I wasn't sure I was in the mood to share my space if she really was staying home for the day.
I opened the fridge again one more time just to be sure before I gave her the third degree. "Did you drink my milk?" I hadn't meant to sound so accusing. I tried to put a smile on my face. "It's just that I bought a new carton yesterday morning and it's not here..."
"You know I don't drink milk." Grace sat down on a bench stool and began to look at something on her iPad. "It makes me bloat."
People who don't like milk really love to tell everyone that they don't like milk. It wasn't the first time she'd told me this fact by a long shot. It was probably my thirteenth reminder of the fact that she didn't drink milk. I just wasn't sure I actually believed her....maybe she had a secret addiction she didn't want anyone knowing about, due to the shame in our society towards milk lovers.
But it was true, that I'd never actually seen her drink milk. And even if she was a milk lover it would have been hard to polish off two litres of it overnight. She'd have to be really addicted.
I wasn't ruling it out.
And I wasn't ruling out the fact that there was a portal in the back of the fridge, a black hole that the milk had magically fallen into.
"I put it in the fridge yesterday," I muttered, slamming the door shut. Boy, I really was a grump that morning, wasn't I? "And now it's not there."
"Maybe you left it at the supermarket."
That was the most logical explanation, fair enough. I knew that. But I didn't love to leap to the most logical explanation. And I swore that I put the milk in the fridge. I was growing agitated that Grace clearly didn't believe me. Maybe I was just over sensitive after the events of the previous day, but I was suddenly hell-bent on proving that I was right. There had to be some sign that the milk had been there...If only I kept a camera in there.
I opened the door again and inspected my shelf of the fridge...Yes, so there was a sign it had been there after all! A little white rim of milk where it had leaked out, a ghostly reminder.
"See?" I said, pointing to the little puddle of white. "There was milk here. You can see it!"
My phone was buzzing in my back pocket so I ignored Grace's shrug of indifference as I answered it. She didn't have much of an imagination for magically disappearing cartons of milk and the otherworldly explanations for said disappearances. That's doctors for you. No belief at all in the supernatural. What would she say if she knew about the body on the beach? I was sure she couldn't have known anything at that stage.
It was May calling. Bit early in the morning for her to call, even though she is the type who is up at 4am to run a quick triathlon before work.
"Everything all right?" I answered without even saying hello.
"You tell me," she said flatly.
Why was her voice so cold?
"Everything is very not all right here," I replied. "I'm investigating the case of the disappearing milk. It seems to have vanished into a top secret portal in the back of the fridge...Narnia, but for milk..."
"That's very nice," May replied with an icy chill that managed to travel through the phone line. I could feel the puff of cold air on my face.
"Are you mad at me?" I said, my foggy, no-tea mind trying to figure out what I had done wrong. Don't tell me she knows I was with Taj. Now the chill was coming from inside me. How could she know?
"You didn't make it to dinner last night..."
Shoot.
Was that better or worse?
I let her reprimands wash over me. "You didn't even call, Lana! Didn't even send a text..."
After crawling out of Taj's mud pit, the only thing on my mind had been washing the clay off me and climbing into my bed. Dinner with May and her new husband had been completely pushed out of my brain by the thought of Taj and UFOs flying through the sky...and Taj in general.
What the hell was wrong with me? I needed a cold shower. Stop thinking about Taj. Those thoughts are for night time only.
THOSE THOUGHTS ARE FOR NEVER.
In the real world, May was still speaking to me.
"Where were you, Lana? Don't tell me you were investigating. If you want an investigations job, you need to get your qualification and come on the books, with me. Don't go rogue."
I couldn't tell her I'd been with Taj. There was a lot that May would forgive me for, a lot of my transgressions she would overlook, and in fact, often did. But seeing Taj Robinson? That was the one thing that May would not forgive me for.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I'll make it up to you. Why don't you and Harris come over for dinner tonight?"
There was so much radio silence on the other end that I thought May had actually hung up. "At your house?" May finally said. The "are you crazy" bit was implied. I glanced around my kitchen with its cracked counter tops and the pile of recycling that was on the floor instead of in the bin. I couldn't really imagine Harris, May's 'r
espectable' new boyfriend, and mayor of the town, sitting down to eat here. But I tried to remain confident.
"Yes. Believe it or not, people do actually eat here," I said, catching Grace's eye as she raised an eyebrow. And they steal milk, I thought. "I'll cook. I promise it will be almost edible."
"Fine," May replied. Her tone was still chilly. "We'll be there at six. Make sure we don't turn up to an empty house. And Lana..." Her voice dropped a register. "Stay out of town today, all right?"
She hung up without clarifying why, exactly. But I had a feeling it had something to do with the helicopters I'd heard above the roof that morning.
"Did you hear?" Grace asked casually. She was munching on a piece of vegemite toast and scrolling through something on her iPad. "There was a body found."
My heart went cold again. "How did you know about that?"
"It's on the Valley News site..." she said, looking up at me, suddenly. "Lana, what the hell?" She looked terrified.
"I thought that working at the hospital you'd be used to dead bodies," I said quietly.
She blinked three times, slowly. "Yeah, people who die of old age. Not young women our age. Not murdered." The color drained from her face and she dropped her vegemite toast, vegemite side down.
"No one knows that's what happened," I said gently. "Try not to worry." So much for Louis making sure this didn't get out. There were helicopters and news stories and terrified doctors. There'd be mass panic in no time.
I leaned against the counter and raised my eyebrows a little. Maybe you're the only hope for this town, Lana, I thought to myself, pursing my lips. The only person who can restore sanity and bring the killer to justice...
My grandstanding was interrupted by my phone again.
New email notification.
Rocco the pirate's threats had not been futile. I'd been cut off. No money coming in for me unless I attended another appointment at Gun Employment, asap.
Pink Blooded: A Lana Pink Mystery Page 3