Then he reappeared, white face looking like a disembodied moon in the pelting rain. It was bizarre. When he ducked into the crystal grotto, Harley smiled. Now she had him. There was no other way out of there. There should be an iron gate he could close to keep him in there until the police showed up. Everything had to be locked up at night because of vandals with the mental acuity of garden slugs who’d found it amusing to spray paint the crystals and the carved Biblical scenes. This time, their low IQs might work in her favor.
Gasping for air that wasn’t full of water, she half-ran, half- slid across the footbridge and slammed shut the iron gate. It took a little work since it was hooked to the wall and heavier than she’d thought it’d be, but if he knew what she was doing, he didn’t try to stop her. When she got the opening barred, she leaned back against it to catch her breath.
And damn if he wasn’t right there in front of her. Outside of the cave instead of inside.
“How the hell . . . ?”
The dark red mouth squared into a silent grin. Every cell in her brain screamed at her to run, but her muscles didn’t get the message in time. Well, what a bitch.
That was her last coherent thought before he pressed something against her arm and a numbing shot of voltage curled her hair and turned her into a flounder.
Fifteen
It was dark. The kind of dark that had to exist before the Big Bang. A musty smell filled the small space, and she had a hell of a headache. Harley tried to sit up, but her head hit a hard surface. Something soft cushioned her, but she didn’t have room to roll over. No noise or sound provided any bearings for where she might be. Damn, it was quiet as a tomb.
No. That’d be too macabre. She shoved with all her strength at the lid over her but it didn’t budge. Okay, don’t panic, she told herself. No point in panicking. It couldn’t be what it seemed to be, she just hadn’t figured out yet where she was or how to get out. Panic would only make it a lot worse.
She sucked in a deep breath that smelled like dirt and tasted like death, and panic took over for a few minutes as she screamed until she was hoarse. When it subsided, she tried to stop shivering.
“All right,” she said aloud so she didn’t seem so alone, and her voice sounded muffled and heavy in the closeness, “I’ll get out of this. Somehow. My karma hasn’t been that bad. I’m nice to dogs and idiots. I love my parents. I visit the elderly.”
Her voice broke a little on the last word. Tears stung her eyes. Her clothes were damp, her head still wet, and her toes felt squishy inside her shoes. She couldn’t have been in here that long. Air must be coming in from somewhere. If . . . if she was buried, it wouldn’t last long.
No nightmare had ever been like this. Maybe she should just go ahead and suck in all the air and get it over with instead of dying slowly. No, dammit. Something stronger than fear took over. She filled her lungs with air and let it out very slowly, a little at a time, then waited to take the next breath. Maybe she should breathe shallowly, but this seemed to work best.
Stale air felt warm and stuffy. After a while sleep tugged at her eyelids, but she kept them open even though she couldn’t see anything. If she fell asleep, she’d never wake up. Not in this life.
That made her think of Diva’s assurance that her spirit guides were always there. Maybe Diva’s spirit guides were always on the job, but apparently her daughter’s spirit guides were still gambling in Vegas. Unlucky in life and love, it seemed.
Morgan. She wondered if he’d miss her, or if he’d just be mad that she hadn’t listened to him. That’d be Bobby’s first reaction. Then he’d think of the past fourteen years and feel regret. As for Morgan, she had no idea what he’d feel. Or even if he’d feel anything. A month ago she’d have had a different opinion, but now?
Thinking of Morgan and Bobby and her own imminent demise made her breathe too heavily, so she focused on something else. She thought about Tootsie and wished she’d made out a will so he could have the last few silk dresses she owned. Cami would take Sam back, of course, and probably keep him the rest of his life since no one else could stand the cat. And the souvenir she’d brought home from that warehouse where she’d almost been killed would really make Nana happy. A wooden penis was just the kind of thing she’d find an appropriate bequest.
Okay. That wasn’t focusing on something else. That was still thinking about dying.
She thought about her brother Eric and some of the stuff they’d done as kids, then how Diva and Yogi may not have been conventional parents, but they’d always been supportive. At least they weren’t judgmental or prejudiced. Except for Yogi’s distrust of anything to do with the government.
That made her think of some of their past protests at meat-packing plants and cosmetic manufacturers rumored to use animals as test subjects, and how she’d had to bail them out of jail. How many times? A lot. Then there were the protests they’d staged for animal rights. Human rights. And civil rights. Wasn’t there something about gay rights?
It got harder to think and she concentrated on breathing in and letting it out slowly. Breathe in, hold, exhale. Breathe in, hold, exhale. It was so hard to keep her eyes open.
Earthquake. Damn, she was underground in an earthquake. What else could happen? And it was wet. She’d probably drown.
“Harley. Dammit, Harley, open your eyes! More oxygen, somebody give her more oxygen!”
Morgan? She opened her eyes, but everything was blurred. And wet. There was some kind of cover over her nose and mouth. Strangers crowded around looking down at her, and she got cranky and started shoving.
“Get . . . off me!”
Someone laughed. Morgan, she thought, but the crowd thinned some.
“Hey you,” Morgan said, his face coming into focus.
“They’re going to take you to the hospital to check you out, okay?”
“So . . . I have . . . a choice?”
“No. We’ll talk later. Just keep breathing for now.”
That sounded like a plan. She nodded and closed her eyes.
When she woke up again, she was on a gurney in the emergency room. Doctors said a lot of things, mostly how lucky she was they’d found her in time, and that she’d be fine with a little rest and a lot of air. They left, and Morgan stood at the side of her bed.
On the other side, Diva and Yogi huddled close by, looking worried. Harley realized it was the first time in years she’d seen that look on her mother’s face.
“Fire my . . . spirit guides,” she whispered, and like someone had turned on a light, a smile chased away the frown on Diva’s face. Harley thought she’d never before quite appreciated how beautiful Diva was. Yogi kept a worried expression. They must have come to the hospital instead of going to the competitions. He still wore his Elvis costume, complete with cape, lacquered hair, gold chains, and long sideburns. How wonderful they both looked.
“If not for your spirit guides,” Diva said in a husky voice, “I wouldn’t have known where to look for you.” Bells sewn into her sleeves tinkled as she dabbed at her eyes.
Yogi nudged closer, one arm around her mother’s shoulders and his other hand reaching through the aluminum bars to touch Harley’s arm. “When I find the guy who did this to you, he’ll wish he hadn’t, I promise!”
“So much for . . . being a pacifist,” Harley got out with a weak laugh.
“Father first. Pacifist second. It’s engraved on my tire iron.”
“Take away his tire iron,” Morgan said to Diva across the hospital bed. “I’ll find the guy, and he’ll wish that all he had to deal with was a tire iron.”
“Yes,” Diva said, “I know.”
A little startled, Harley looked up at Mike. Blue eyes burned behind his half-lowered black lashes. Grooves deepened around his mouth. He put his fingers on her wrist and held it gently. His thumb made small, soft circles on the back
of her hand. But she felt the tension in him, a slight vibration that said a lot more than his words. He had that look on his face again, the predatory one she’d first seen months ago when he was playing the part of Bruno Jett. Maybe he hadn’t been playing a part after all. Maybe that was really him, and the more easygoing Mike was the disguise.
Harley’s heart rate monitor beeped and she sucked in a lungful of oxygen. Probably her blood pressure spiked, too. She closed her eyes. I need morphine before I say something stupid, she thought hazily.
When the doctors released her, Morgan took her home.
She didn’t ask anything, just rested her head against the back of the seat and relished being alive. Answers could come later. Right now she just wanted something to eat, drink, and lots of space around her.
Without asking, Mike stopped at Taco Bell. He ordered her two bean burritos, extra sour cream, and nachos and cheese. He handed her a large drink, and she sucked down half of it before taking a breath.
Wiping her mouth, she said, “God, that tastes good.”
“Thought it might.”
She looked over at him when they pulled out onto the street. He stared straight ahead. It’d stopped raining but the streets were still really slick. Memphis drivers who wanted to get anyplace without the benefit of a tow truck usually kept their eyes on the road in this kind of weather. Mike’s jaw line sported what looked like a three day growth of beard, dark and bristly. A muscle in his jaw flexed a few times. He had a windbreaker on over his tee shirt, one of those navy colored ones with the police logo printed on it in white. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking.
It felt weird to be with him like this, their relationship—if it could be called one—having gone south. At the same time, there was a level of comfort in being with him. Like nothing could get to her as long as he was close. It wasn’t a dependency thing as much as an acknowledgment that his survival skills were a lot better trained than hers were—case in point, being zapped by a mime and buried alive. Morgan would have never let that happen to him.
Neither said much until they went into her apartment.
“What’s that?” Morgan asked, peering into the aquarium on her coffee table, and she remembered the ferret.
“Frank Burns. He’s only temporary.”
“I don’t have to ask to know where you got him. He looks like a skinny raccoon.”
“That’s what I said. Don’t take Shakespeare off the top. Frank’s a flight risk.”
“Sit down before you fall down,” he said, and he didn’t have to say it twice. She flopped back into her stuffed chair.
The tantalizing fragrance of Taco Bell increased with the opening of the white sacks. Intrigued, Sam waited impatiently for his portion as Morgan pulled out her burritos and his chalupas.
“So how did you find me?” she asked when her burritos were just greasy spots on sheets of Taco Bell paper, Frank had gobbled his way through a teaspoon of mushy refried beans, and Sam cleaned chicken chunks from his whiskers. “There are lots of graves out there.”
“It wasn’t easy. Diva found you.”
She arched a brow. “You asked my mother?”
Morgan licked melted cheese off his thumb. “She told Tootsie that you were in grave—if you’ll pardon the pun—danger. Seems like she had a vision of you in trouble, stuck in a close dark space where there were a lot of headstones. Figuring out where the headstones were was easy once I heard you’d gone to Ridgeway Inn right across from Memorial Park. Finding you once we got there wasn’t quite so simple.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in Diva’s visions.”
“I think I said mumbo-jumbo, but this time it worked out. We found your van and tracked like Apache scouts to the place where he’d dragged you. Geronimo couldn’t have done it better.”
“Hunh. It’s all a little hazy, so where did he bury me?”
“You weren’t buried. You were in a broken coffin under a lot of brush ready to be hauled away. I figure he didn’t have enough time to do any digging or find an empty grave. It felt more like a crime of convenience instead of premeditation.”
“I’d have been just as dead.” She wadded up her burrito papers and stuffed them in the empty sack. “How did he know where I’d be? That’s the third time he’s known where I am. I’d like to know just how he’s doing that.”
“So would I.” Morgan frowned. The muscle in his jaw flexed again. “He has a pipeline to all your activities, it seems. Who else knows your work schedule?”
“No one. Usually not even my family. Tootsie does, of course.”
Morgan lifted a brow, and Harley shook her head so hard her eyeballs rattled.
“No way. Tootsie would never be involved in anything like this.”
“Anyone else at the office have access to employee schedules?”
“No. Besides, my schedule lately has been hit and miss, not regular. Like today, Tootsie gave me a pickup at the airport while I waited—omigod! What happened to the tourists left at Graceland?”
“They got some extra time with The King. When Tootsie called Diva, he said he’d had to send someone else after them, and asked if she knew where you were. That’s when she told him about her vision.”
“And he called you.”
“Right.” Morgan leaned back into the cushions of her overstuffed chair. It was a big chair, covered in white and off-white stripes. He dwarfed it. Sprawled with his long legs stuck out in front of him, he looked more like a coiled spring than relaxed. He had his jaw clenched so tightly the muscle kept twitching. “So, any problems with any of the other employees there? You have a disagreement with anybody?”
“Just Rhett Sandler, who does the payroll. But everyone’s had a disagreement with him. I think it’s his only form of entertainment, screwing up paychecks and hours. We get along okay most of the time.”
“Think this Sandler would feel the same way?” He gave her a look that showed nothing but mild curiosity. She knew better.
“Probably not, but if you’re saying he’d try to kill me, why would he kill passengers on our vans? That doesn’t make sense. Unless he thinks he’ll make more collecting unemployment.”
“Maybe Sandler has a grudge against management. Maybe he wants to ruin the business.”
She thought about that. “It’s a possibility, but I wouldn’t know why. Ask Tootsie about the ogre’s son. Rumor is they don’t get along that well.”
“I think I’ll do that.”
She didn’t doubt it.
Sam stepped into her lap from the arm of the chair and curled up. Vibrating with a steady purr like a massager, he reminded her that she’d made it home alive. Horrified tears stung her eyelids and she blinked furiously. Crying was off-limits. It was something other people did, not her. Dammit.
“You okay?”
Morgan sounded really concerned, and that only made it worse. She nodded.
“I’m just fine,” she said between her teeth.
“So I see.” He got up and went into her kitchen. He came back in a few minutes with a glass of chilled white wine. “Drink this.”
“Only because you insist.” She tossed it back in three swallows. Morgan looked down at her with a slightly raised brow, then took her glass and refilled it. This one she slowly sipped. The French doors to the balcony were open, white sheers shifted in the warm wet breeze, and the scent of damp grass and magnolia blossoms teased the air.
“I don’t like Hughes trying to kill me,” she said when Morgan got a Coke and sat down in the chair across from her. “When did he get out of jail? And why didn’t someone tell me?”
“Hughes? He’s not out. He’s been charged with fraud.”
“Fraud? Not murder?”
“Not murder. Details to follow, so just be patient, okay?” She stared at him. “Then who ju
st tried to kill me?”
“Beats me. I thought you might be able to shed a little light on that.”
“You’re the cop. I’m just an innocent citizen. Okay, not exactly innocent, but undeserving of being stalked by a homicidal maniac.”
“I agree.” The muscle in his jaw flexed again, but he looked calm enough. Maybe there was something to that old saying about still waters. Or was it muddy waters? Nana would know. Or not.
“So,” she said, “either I’m being stalked by two killers, or Hughes is just a pissed-off guy with the right motive, no alibi, and bad luck.”
“I’m beginning to think the first.”
“Great. I feel so much better.”
Morgan leaned forward in the chair and clasped his hands while he looked at her intently. “Think, Harley. Someone obviously knows you and wants you out of the way. Who’d want to see you dead?”
“Besides ex-boyfriends, a cheerleader when I was in junior high, my old boss—and quite possibly my current boss—and you, I can’t think of a soul.”
He sat back. “I don’t want you dead. I just want you to quit finding the dead. It occurred to me that you made a few enemies this past spring, but if they’d wanted you dead, you’d already be dead. Besides, they wouldn’t bother killing a few Elvises just to annoy you.”
Harley had to agree with that.
“Anyone else?”
“Well . . . okay, this is probably nothing, but Tootsie and I were talking about the ogre and why he preferred Lydia to his own son joining the family business. Seems like Junior has a few behavior problems and grudges against his father.”
Morgan gave a noncommittal nod. “I’d heard something like that.”
“Then I’m telling you nothing new. As usual, you’re way ahead.”
Morgan’s cell phone rang, and he answered it with the usual “Yeah,” then got up and went out onto the balcony to talk in low tones she couldn’t hear. Dammit. Undercover stuff could be very intriguing. Of course, curiosity had a lot to do with it, too. Who was he talking to out there? Did it have to do with her, or with the other case he was working?
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