Kirsten Weiss
The Metaphysical Detective
Book One in the Riga Hayworth Series
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used factiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright ©2011 Kirsten Weiss. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites and their content.
Misterio Press eBook edition / July, 2012
Cover image: Night Time © frozenstarro - Fotolia.com
Grapevines image: Julie Shalda
Visit the author website: www.kirstenweiss.com
Thank you!
Thank you to the amazing artist, Julie Shalda, for providing me a grapevine painting for the Riga Hayworth website and to Marcia McCord for allowing me to use images from her Tarot deck, The Picture Postcard Tarot, on the same. Also, thank you to Elizabeth Barton, for sharing her ghost-busting techniques with me for this book, and to Joy Reichard, M.A. and goddess researcher extraordinaire, for inspiring me with Hecate lore. Finally, a big thank you to Sheri Brooks, of Purple Papaya, for all of her eBook and social media marketing advice!
Chapter 1: A Client Arrives
“My husband is trying to kill me.”
Helen wrung her hands, a gesture Riga had read about but never actually seen in practice. It irritated her. Helen seemed too masculine for this helpless gesture, with her man’s hands and broad shoulders. Even seated she loomed over Riga.
“Have you spoken to the police?” Riga toyed with a pen.
Helen shook her head, no, setting her blonde hair swinging loosely about her jaw.
Riga picked up the phone, and held it out to her across the desk. It was a replica of a phone from the thirties – black with a crude looking cord and a rotary dial. “I’m a metaphysical detective. This is a case for the police, not me.”
“My husband’s dead.”
Riga slowly placed the receiver back on its cradle.
Helen avoided the detective’s gaze, her eyes darting around the room: at the carpet stain shaped like Australia, at the metal bookcases, at the view of the brick building next door. The office dated back to the 1960s and it showed.
Riga was dated too, though in better condition. People put her in her thirties, but she was a full decade older. Once, they would have said she cast a glamour. But the days when people recognized Riga’s brand of magic were long past.
Her eyes gleamed violet in the lamplight. “Why don’t you tell me what’s been happening?”
Helen looked past Riga’s shoulder, at a pigeon on the windowsill. “My husband died nearly a year ago. It was a car accident.” Helen looked at her expectantly.
Riga wasn’t a psychic, Helen would have to finish her own story. “Go on.”
Helen’s gaze fixed on a book about Tarot, beside the phone. It lay face down, cracked open upon its spine as if the detective had just placed it there.
“Lately, I’ve been having accidents. A near slip and fall in the bath, the accelerator of my car sticking, a bad case of food poisoning… At first I thought they were all just bad luck. And then someone pushed me. I was waiting for the bus, and as it pulled to the curb, someone pushed me in front of it.”
Riga leaned back in her chair, crossed her arms. “This really sounds like a job for the police.”
“There was no one there.” Helen picked up a deck of Tarot cards from the desk and shuffled through them. “I wasn’t in a crowd of strangers, I was alone. But I felt the hand on my back, and it was Hermie’s – I mean Herman’s – hand.”
The words came in a rush now. “I know his hand, the shape of it, the feel of it. I smelled his aftershave. I asked the driver if she’d seen anyone. She swore at me and made me get off the bus.”
Helen replaced the deck. “I thought I was going crazy, and then I heard about you. It was at a party, someone was laughing about an ad he’d seen in the yellow pages – your ad. We joked about it – what does a metaphysical detective do? Only in San Francisco, right? But then a few days later I was on the bus – a different bus – and I heard two women talking. One had gone to you for a problem, some missing jewelry, and you’d found it – made it just reappear the woman said.”
A siren blared outside and Helen’s lips pinched, her gaze drawn again to the half-open window.
Riga angled her chair, looking past the woman. She relaxed and broadened her vision to check out Helen’s aura: no unusual drains or fluxes, and no tint of magic.
“It was so strange.” Helen looked at the bookcase to her left, crammed haphazardly with odd-sounding titles. “I started seeing and hearing references to you everywhere. If someone wasn’t talking about you, they’d be talking about detectives and ghosts. I even found your flyer beneath the windshield wipers of my car. I hate those flyers!”
Riga grimaced. “Sorry. It’s my niece, I’ve told her to stop with the flyers. She wants to be a filmmaker,” she added, as if that explained it.
There was a long silence. When Helen didn’t fill it, Riga continued. “But didn’t you ever think that the reason you were seeing me everywhere was just good advertising?”
“But I’d never seen or heard of you before.”
“You never needed me before.”
“I just… I felt I had to come,” Helen said. “I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Why do you think your husband would want to kill you?”
Helen’s gaze dropped to the sleeve of Riga’s white blouse, to the simple gold watch that encircled the detective’s wrist, to the bare fingers. “I’ve met someone,” Helen said.
Riga hid her surprise. In her experience, while it wasn’t unusual for widowers to find someone new within a year, the mourning period for widows ran longer. “Was your husband the jealous type? Possessive?”
“No. There was no need to be. He always said I was his better half. People used to joke about our names, Herman and Helen, and it really did feel like we were two halves of a better whole.”
Riga shifted in her chair. The wheels caught in the rug and she jerked forward to free herself. “Have you had any sudden shocks or traumas recently?”
“I’m not crazy.”
Riga wasn’t ready to rule the crazy option out yet, but let it go. If Helen was feeling haunted, there could be either a rational or a paranormal reason. Riga would check out her home and if she couldn’t find anything, terminate the contract. She didn’t take money from the mentally troubled. “Sometimes spirits can become attached when you’re weakened – spiritually or physically. Have you been overtired? Stressed at work? Anything like that?”
“No.”
“Have you been practicing any magic? Ouija boards?”
Helen’s eyes flashed. “Of course not!”
Liar. The thought popped unasked into Riga’s head. She reached
out again with her senses – nothing.
“Can you help me?” Helen asked.
“I think so.” Riga got up and strode to a wooden file cabinet in the corner, her movements sure and graceful. She opened the top drawer and ran her slender fingers across the files.
“I’ve got it!” Helen said. “You look like that old actress, the one who married the Aga Khan. I didn’t see it at first because she was in black and white, but you look just like her.”
“Mm.” Riga pulled out a plain folder, felt her olive-hued skin darken. She pasted on a smile and tossed her head. Her auburn hair gleamed like polished wood, settled in coils about her shoulders.
She returned to her seat behind the desk, and slid the folder across to Helen, who now stared at her avidly. “Inside you’ll find two copies of the contract and fee structure. You’ll need to sign both if you want to move forward.”
Helen tore her eyes from Riga, opened the folder, scanned down the pages. A furrow appeared between her pale brows. “This fee structure is… weird.”
“Take it home, read the contract. There’s no hurry.”
The words would haunt Riga.
“No, no! It looks fine. Have you got a pen?” Helen looked up from the papers in her hands. A pen lay before her on the desk. She hesitated, then snatched it up, and signed hurriedly. “There! When can you start?”
“Tomorrow, if you like. Tell me more about Herman.”
“He was so brilliant, dashing. He was Chief Financial Officer of the Apollo Group. Have you heard of it? It’s a land development company.”
Riga made a note on her blotter. “What did he do for fun?”
“Magic.”
Riga looked up. “He was interested in the occult? Real magic?”
Helen laughed. “There’s no such thing as real…” She trailed off, looked uncertain. “Well, ghosts are different? Aren’t they? They’re not magic.”
Riga didn’t say anything.
“He was a stage magician,” Helen said. “Amateur, just for fun. Children’s parties, that sort of thing. He was always pulling something out of his hat, usually at the most inappropriate moment.”
“Sounds like fun,” Riga said dryly. “You said he had a car accident?”
“Oh.” Helen worried her lower lip. “He lost control, hit a Eucalyptus tree. The car was totaled. He was killed instantly, they told me.”
Riga silently wondered whether Herman’s accident had really been a suicide. “That must have been hard for you. Did Herman’s behavior change at all before the accident?”
“Ye-es. He’d been working longer nights and felt under pressure at work.”
“What sort of pressure?”
“I don’t know. Whenever I asked for details… He didn’t like to talk about it. He even stopped doing his magic tricks.”
When Helen left, Riga felt her shoulders loosen. Something about the woman had set Riga’s head buzzing.
She went to the cracked window and watched as Helen emerged onto the sidewalk, two floors below.
“That one is not ze sharpest tack in the drawer,” a feminine voice rasped from outside the window. “She has a certain something with ze men though, n'est-ce pas?”
Riga didn’t respond.
From above, Helen looked flattened out. The shift in perspective caused a sudden snap in Riga’s vision that set her head spinning. Helen’s figure shone like gold, stretched impossibly tall, and then it was gone. Riga threw her hand out, bracing herself against the window frame for fear of pitching out. “Did you see that?”
The gargoyle on the ledge outside turned its head. “See what?”
“Magic.” It was there. Riga had only felt it for a moment, but it was unmistakable. Why hadn’t she been able to detect it on Helen in her office?
Chapter 2: Two blondes walk into a bar
It was nearly five o’clock, still light out, and Riga figured she had time for a quick drink before dark. She grabbed her suede jacket off the office’s lopsided coat rack and ducked past her neighbor’s martial arts studio. She’d missed old Mr. Chen’s last two classes and knew he’d be coming after her soon, demanding explanations.
Riga trotted down the stairs to the ground level. The first floor had been leased to a billiard parlor – her default social life. It served beer and cheap, airline-grade wine and she had taken to keeping her own stuff behind the bar in self-defense.
“It’s Riga HAYworth!” the owner, Takako, shouted as Riga swung through the door. Takako bustled past, flipping her glossy black hair over one shoulder and nodding toward the bar. “Good to see you, hon. Your friend is at the bar.”
Riga processed what Takako had said. She peered toward the bar. Cones of light illuminated the green felt of the pool tables but the bar, far to the back, lay in shadow. She didn’t have friends.
Realizing she was blocking the entry, she willed her legs to move. Riga sensed a pair of bikers stopping play, watching covetously as she passed. She ignored them, used to the looks. She was the ultimate cosmic joke: Riga Hayworth looked like Rita, the forties screen goddess, curves and all.
She neared the bar and the dim figures resolved into three people: a broad shouldered man in an expensive-looking business suit, bracketed by two willowy blondes in silver miniskirts. The blondes twined around him, their hands roving across his back. An image flashed into Riga’s mind of the blondes as faceless automatons. She shuddered and carefully did not look at them.
Riga climbed onto a stool, rested one foot on the brass rail. Surfer Pete worked the bar on Thursdays. He was a shameless flirt and good looking in a beach boy sort of way. She enjoyed the flirting, but Pete was half her age and Riga old-fashioned enough to think that still meant something.
Pete threw his bar rag over one muscled shoulder and ambled over. He tossed his shaggy head, knocking back the dirty blonde hair that had fallen into his eyes. “Hey, Riga. What are you drinking tonight?”
“I’ll take the Zin.”
He grinned, his teeth gleaming whitely against his tanned skin. “You’re out, doll.”
“I brought a case in last week. I couldn’t have gone through it all.” Riga clutched the edge of the bar, panicked – the alcoholic was always the last to know she had a problem. “How’s that possible? Did I drink it?”
Pete motioned toward the trio on Riga’s left with his chin. “No, your buddy and his girlfriends did. They’ve really been putting it away.”
Riga looked at the stranger, her lips compressing. One of her bottles (her last?) was open on the bar in front of the trio. Riga reached across one of the blondes and grabbed it. “I don’t know the guy,” she said to Pete. “You’ve been conned. Get me a glass, will you?”
Pete laughed, grabbing a wine glass from beneath the counter. He twirled it in his fingers and placed it before her. “Come off it, Riga.”
The man leaned backward, craning his neck so he could look past his companion at her. “If you wanted me to buy you a drink, all you had to do was ask.” His voice was low and sensuous and she felt its vibration deep in her chest.
She gave him a long look. Thousand dollar suit, face like a chiseled Greek statue, voluptuous lips, ebony hair cut and styled to perfection. With looks like that, he must have women throwing themselves at him. Money and all the women he wanted, whenever he wanted – hardly a path to character building experiences. Her lip curled.
“This is my wine you’re drinking,” she said.
He smiled, slow and seductive. The light in his eyes, an unusual green brown, shifted like river water. “No need to be like that, Riga. We’re old friends.”
The use of her name by the stranger rattled her. Then she remembered: Takako had bellowed it out when Riga came in. Mystery number one solved. Mystery number two, how he’d tricked Pete out of her wine, still festered.
Riga turned back toward the bar and stared at the rows of bottles, her reflection mirrored back to her. Now she looked like a spitting mad Rita Hayworth, her delicate features hardening, her hair
glinting copper in the dim light.
There was a whiff of magic about the man in the suit, but it slid away from her mental probing, she couldn’t pin it down. That annoyed her. Twice in one day – was she slipping? She took a deep breath, but her irritation grew in spite of it. She’d been taken for some wine, that was all. Riga took a swallow from her own glass but couldn’t taste it. She took another drink, then put the glass down and left, avoiding the man’s gaze.
She stopped Takako on her way out. “That guy’s no friend of mine,” Riga said. “If he comes in again, he can buy his own drinks.”
She stalked out, pushing the door open with more force than necessary. It banged against the back wall and Riga had to skip out of the way to avoid its rebound.
She didn’t hear Takako’s bemused reply: “But you two have been coming here together for years.”
Chapter 3: A Funny Valentine
Riga walked home, her long strides burning off her annoyance, the steep hills burning her thighs. She lived in a condo atop Nob Hill, behind Grace Cathedral, and stopped at the Cathedral for a quick walk through the outdoor labyrinth, a simple design set in the paving stones. The tourists were gone at this time of day and she blitzkrieged along its path – one way in, one way out. Even at top speed, the labyrinth calmed her, forcing her to pay attention to where she placed each foot, focusing her thoughts, until she finally slowed, then stopped in its hub. When she left the labyrinth, she was centered again.
She walked the last blocks more sedately now, enjoying the hint of salt in the air, the coming chill in the wind, the art deco lines of her building, rising out of the hillside. Riga could never have afforded the place on her haphazard income and fortunately, she didn’t have to. She’d landed an extended house sitting gig, and with another two hundred and twenty-odd years left on the assignment, wasn’t worried about having to find a new place anytime soon.
Riga nodded to the doorman and his dog barked at her in welcome. She’d once asked him what kind of dog it was – it looked like something out of an old English hunt painting, should have had a dead pheasant at its paws. The doorman had shrugged. It was just a dog, he’d said, and that was what he’d named it. Poor Dog, he answered to everyone.
The Metaphysical Detective (A Riga Hayworth Paranormal Mystery) Page 1