by C. D. Hersh
“You gotta name?”
“Lila Ramsey.”
The name hit him in the stomach like a sucker punch. “Delaney Ramsey’s daughter?” Harry’s mind scrambled to understand.
“Delaney told me she’s been missing.”
“If this is Delaney’s daughter, then who-” He pressed his lips together, stopping any more incriminating words from jumping out. Who had he seen with Rhys the day Alexi died? Who was sitting in Rhys’ truck the day they faked Alexi’s funeral? Why had they all lied to him?
“We should tell her,” Katrina said.
No kidding. Delaney and Rhys have some answering to do. Questioning her would have to wait. She was going to need him when he broke the bad news.
“I’ll tell her, Ms. Romanovski. I don’t need any more help in my precinct, unless you want to keep Ramsey out of the morgue.”
“You don’t have to worry. She’s out of the office today. Something personal, I think.” She stood, transfixed by Lila’s body.
“Don’t you have tests to run?” Harry asked.
“Yes, but I think I’ll stay here until Delaney comes. I don’t want her to be alone when she has to ID the body.” She turned to the coroner. “Could you use some help?”
He looked at Harry for confirmation. “Might make it go faster. My assistant is out with a root canal.”
“Sure,” he said. “The sooner we figure this out the better it will be for everyone.” Especially Delaney. If this was her daughter, he figured he wouldn’t be able to keep Delaney out anyway. As he left he nearly ran into Rhys coming into the morgue.
“I got here as soon as I could, Captain,” Rhys said.
Grabbing him by the forearm, Harry steered him into the hallway. He might not be able to question Delaney at the moment, but Rhys was another story. “You’ve got some explaining to do, Temple.”
“What’s wrong?”
“The girl lying on the morgue slab is Delaney’s daughter. The woman you introduced me to the day Alexi died.” He placed emphasis on the word died. “She’s been dead nearly a month.”
He blanched and Harry felt a modicum of satisfaction at catching him off guard. “Want to tell me how that’s possible?”
“There’s an explanation, but not one I can give you here.”
Harry released Rhys. “Then let’s go to the house where you and Alexi can tell me what is going on.” He took his cell from his pocket. “I’ve got to contact Delaney first and arrange to meet her. She doesn’t know we found Lila. You might as well come along.”
“Don’t bother. She’s at the house.”
Harry waved Rhys forward. “We’ll take your truck. I don’t trust you out of my sight.”
They rode in silence to the house, Harry brooding at each curve in the road over the deceptions his two favorite detectives, and the woman he was in love with, had played on him.
He wanted honesty from the people who surrounded him. Valued it more than anything else in life. He might be able to forgive Delaney’s deception, after all, she’d told him all along she had secrets. Rhys and Alexi were another matter.
Rhys pulled into the driveway, shut off the engine, and swiveled toward Harry. “Whatever you think, Captain, I don’t want you to place any blame on Alexi. She’s been through a lot recently.”
“You don’t think I know?” He tugged his jacket tighter around him as if he could close off the whole situation. “The problem is I don’t know what to think.” Reaching for the door, he said, “Might as well get this over with.”
Delaney greeted them at the door with a smile followed by a confused expression. “What are you two doing here in the middle of the day?”
“Where’s Alexi?” Rhys asked as Delaney closed the door.
“And that old coot, Eli,” Harry added. “He needs to be here.”
“They’re in the kitchen.” The creases in her forehead deepened. “You guys are scaring me. Is something wrong? Do you have news about Alexi’s would-be assassin?”
Grasping her elbow, Harry gently tried to guide her toward the kitchen. “No. But it’s not good news either.” She shuddered beneath his hold, and he wrapped a protective arm around her waist.
“What is it?”
“Everyone needs to hear this together.” He urged her forward again. This time she went willingly.
Alexi and Eli sat at the kitchen table, their hands wrapped around steaming mugs. When they entered, Alexi rose, gave Rhys a hug, then stepped toward Harry. He put Delaney between them. Alexi caught his motion and frowned, swinging her gaze to Delaney, who shrugged.
“Sit, Delaney,” Harry instructed.
She complied, and he motioned for Rhys to sit. Moving a chair close to Alexi’s place, he guided her to her seat.
Harry stood, towering over the quartet of conspirators. “I’ve got some bad news, and some skeletons to rattle.”
Panic flashed between the four seated at the table. Just as quickly, their expressions settled into masks of calm, except for Delaney. Anxiety and fear shone clearly in her eyes. For a second, he wondered if she had some clue about what he had to say, or perhaps her parental intuition led to the fear flooding her expression.
Scooting a chair close to her, he sat and laid his arm over her shoulders. “A body was delivered to the precinct today,” he said softly.
She gasped, terror growing in her face. She clamped her hand over her mouth.
“Katrina identified the corpse as your daughter.”
Delaney’s intake of breath shattered the silence in the room. She opened her mouth but no sound came out. Eli jumped to his feet faster than Harry thought possible for a man of his age, and knelt beside her, wrapping his arms around her.
“There, there, lassie. ’Twill be all right,” he crooned.
She collapsed into the elder man’s embrace, her body shaking in silent sobs.
Harry’s heart broke for her. Wish she’d reached for my embrace. What is it about her and Eli?
“Take her into the living room,” he suggested to Eli. “I’ve some police business to handle with Rhys and Alexi. She doesn’t need to hear this.”
Wiping her eyes, Delaney straightened and faced Harry. “If it’s about Lila I want to know.” Her voice broke between words as she tried to gain control of her emotions.
Eli loosened his embrace long enough to scoot his chair next to hers then rewrapped his arm around her stiffened body.
Her expression morphed from panic and anxiety to steely resolve and then to hate bubbling at the edges of her eyes. She would take this news and convert it into revenge. He was certain of that.
“The coroner thinks she’s been dead about a month,” Harry said. “Stuffed into someone else’s coffin and shipped to Alaska.” He paused and let the information sink in. Another round of horrified, yet furtive, glances swept across the table. They were all guilty. Of what he wasn’t sure.
“Don’t any of you find it a bit odd Lila was probably already dead when she was attending Alex’s funeral?”
“Well, ’twould have been if we . . . if we hadnae.” Eli stumbled over his words, a sure sign he was searching for some lame excuse.
“If we hadn’t used a latex mask of Lila like we did for Alexi’s corpse,” Rhys interjected.
“Bullshit!” Harry roared. The four suspects jerked in their seats at his angry outburst. “If you’re trying to tell me you had a mask of Lila’s face made, over a month before she died, and used it to hide the fact Alexi wasn’t murdered, then why did I have to find a Jane Doe? Why didn’t you shove Alexi’s mask on Lila and put her in Alexi’s casket instead of jamming her into someone else’s casket and shipping her off to Alaska?”
“You think I had something to do with my own daughter’s death?” Delaney protested.
�
��Stranger things have been known to happen.”
Rage flooded her demeanor. “I didn’t know she was dead, only missing. Eli, Rhys, and Alexi didn’t even know. Lila’s death has nothing to do with Alexi.”
“She sure as hell is connected to Alexi somehow.” Standing, he paced in a tiny circle before approaching them again. “Do you realize what kind of a jam you’ve put me in? How am I going to explain Rhys shouting Lila’s name at Alexi’s funeral and running out mid-eulogy? You know someone’s going to remember.”
“No one is going to remember, Captain,” Rhys said.
“Gladys will, or the nosey Homeland Security Agent Riley, for sure.” Harry placed his palms flat on the table and leaned in. “This whole house of cards-Alexi’s attempted murder, our cover-up, and whatever other secrets the four of you are hiding from me-is going to come crashing down around our ears.”
“And you won’t get your golden retirement,” Delaney whispered.
“We’ll be lucky if we all don’t get sent to prison,” Harry replied. “I pinched a corpse for the four of you to hide Alexi’s attempted murder. I think I can claim reasonable cause for that, but explaining a dead woman stuffed into someone’s coffin is an entirely different story. Someone had better tell me how Lila, who has been dead almost a month, was here the day Alexi was nearly murdered.”
Another round of secretive glances raced around the perimeter of the kitchen table. Whatever they were hiding was big.
“Damn it!” he exclaimed as he pounded the table. “If you don’t tell me what’s going on, I can’t help you.”
Delaney shook her head. “You can’t help me, Harry. No one can.” She stood. “I want to see her.”
“Now?”
“Now,” she replied as she retrieved her purse from the kitchen counter and dug out her car keys.
“I’ll go with ye, lassie.” Eli lumbered to his feet, and Delaney motioned him back down.
“I’m going alone.”
“No, you’re not. I’m driving.” Harry held out his hand for her keys.
She dropped them into his palm.
“Eli, how well do you know the owner of the funeral home who helped us with the Jane Doe?” Harry asked.
Two tiny creases appeared between Eli’s eyebrows. “He’s a guid man, I can assure ye. Why would ye be asking?”
“Because the casket containing Lila’s body came from his mortuary.”
Delaney whirled toward Eli. “He gave me the creeps the minute I saw him. If he had anything to do with Lila’s death I’ll-”
“You’ll do nothing. This investigation is out of your hands,” Harry said.
“No way,” she said, glaring at him. “This is part of the cold cases I’ve been working on. An FBI case. I’m taking charge.”
Harry snorted. “How deep are you going to dig your grave, Delaney?” She gave him a blank stare, and he continued, “I spoke to your boss. You’re not here on official business, and I’m pretty sure there are no cold cases.” He swung his gaze over the four coconspirators. “You’re all hiding something, and I’m not going to stop searching until I find out what it is.”
She paled, sank onto a kitchen chair, and covered her face with her hands. He could hear the tick, tick, tick of the kitchen clock beating out of sync with his heart.
Finally, she raised her head. “You’re not going to believe me if I tell you.”
“Nae, I forbid it,” Eli said loudly. “Ye canna do this, Delaney.”
The old man seemed to grow larger with rage. Harry blinked to clear his vision, and Eli appeared to return to his normal size. What the hell just happened?
She swiveled in the seat toward Eli. “If we don’t come clean, he will keep investigating, and God knows what he’ll find. Better we tell him now.”
“She’s right, Eli,” Rhys said. “He won’t stop until he’s uncovered everything and everyone. Trust me. He makes a better ally than enemy.”
“I’ll do it,” Alexi said.
“Nae, Alexi, dinna do it. ’Tis an order, lassie.”
“He knows something is wrong, Eli. He’s already seen Lila, so it will be easier on him. You’d better sit, Captain,” Alexi said as she stood and rotated away from him. “This will be a shock.”
“Lassie,” Eli warned.
Impatient with their constant bickering, Harry roared, “Someone had better tell me something, right now!”
“We’re doing it,” Rhys said to Eli. “He’s our boss, as much as you are.” Rhys shoved a chair toward Harry. “Sit,” he ordered. When Harry refused, Rhys moved to him and pushed him onto the chair, taking Delaney’s keys from his hand. “Trust me. You won’t want to be standing.”
Shaking him off, Harry eyed the four. As his gaze fell on Alexi he noticed her black hair lightening to brunette, then dishwater blond, and finally a golden sheen. He rubbed his hands over his eyes, certain he was hallucinating. Then she spun on her heel. Lila stared at him. Blood whooshed in his ears in rhythm to his heart pounding in his chest.
“Captain, are you okay?” Alexi’s voice floated from Lila’s mouth.
The room tipped as he fumbled for words. “What the?” But nothing more came out.
Delaney knelt beside him. “I said you wouldn’t believe it.”
“What the hell is ‘it’? Some kind of magic trick?”
“Magic, yes. Trick, no.”
“How’d she do that?” He spun in the seat, checking the room. “It’s a projector, right? A David-Copperfield-makes-the-Statue-of-Liberty-disappear magician’s trick?”
Lila changed back into Alexi. Harry backpedaled the chair against the wall. “Shit, Alexi! Don’t do that!” He stood and ran his hands over the wall behind him, moving the copper gelatin molds aside, searching for the projector hole. “Where is it? The projector?”
“There’s no projector, Harry. Rhys, Alexi, me, we are.” Delaney stopped, afraid to say the last words. “We are shape shifters.”
His jaw dropped, then he snapped it shut so hard his teeth jarred. “What kind of cockamamie story is that?” he asked as he whirled to face her. “Do you think I’m some kind of idiot?”
“If I thought you were an idiot, I would never have told you,” Delaney said.
“There’s no such thing,” Harry insisted.
She sighed. “Then I’ll have to convince you.”
Eli touched her arm. “Ye dinna havetae do any mair, lassie. If he canna believe, then he canna believe.”
“He has to believe, Eli. I need him to believe. I need him to know the truth.”
“The truth would be nice,” Harry said as he eyed Alexi then Rhys.
“This is the truth, Harry.” He turned toward Delaney’s voice in time to see her changing into Alexi. As curly red hair relaxed into long, straight black tresses and Delaney’s porcelain skin tone darkened, he jerked his gaze across the room to Alexi. Her countenance formed into Lila.
Heart racing, Harry swiveled toward Rhys for reassurance, but saw himself standing where Rhys had been seconds before. Harry stumbled backward. The edge of the chair hit his legs, cutting his knees out like a football tackle. He dropped onto the hard wooden surface of the kitchen chair. The shapes moved toward him. He threw his arms skyward to shield himself.
“Enough!” Eli shouted. “Stop!” Everyone stared at him. “Next thing ye know ye’ll be making the poor man’s hair gray.”
Harry touched his head. Could they?
Eli approached him, speaking calmly, and looked him in the eye. “The youngsters dinna understand the shock they’ll be putting ye under with their tricks.”
“Yours are the first words that have made any sense,” Harry said, dropping his arms to his side. “What is this? Carnival tricks?”
Delaney, Rhys, and Alexi-or was it Lila, Alexi, and
himself?-retreated, transforming into their normal personas.
“’Tis nae a carnival trick,” Eli said with a shake of his shaggy head. “Delaney told ye true, but dinna give ye time to adapt before they started shifting like pop-up birthday cards.” He glared reproachfully at her. “If that’s the way ye told all of yer other human lovers, ’tis nae wonder they left ye high and dry.”
“Lover?” Delaney and Harry said in unison, casting questioning glances at each other.