She parked in her spot outside her building and grabbed her gym bag. Pierce had not spent Sunday night at her place, but he had met her at the gym this morning before work. She was going to have to fit in a load of wash before he got to her place.
The stacking washer and dryer were so small she had to do her laundry fairly often. And she had the dirty set of gym clothes from Saturday waiting for her, as well as those in her bag. She was planning out how to get her chores done before Pierce arrived, when Mrs. Benoy’s door opened and her smiling neighbor looked out.
“Hey, Diana,” Mrs. Benoy said cheerfully. “How are you doing?”
Diana stopped. She couldn’t blow off the older woman, just because she wanted to get her chores done before Pierce arrived. “I’m just fine,” she said, “How are you Mrs. B?”
“I’m good. I see you got yourself a feller,” Thelma Benoy said.
Diana felt her face flame. But why? She was not ashamed of her relationship with Pierce D’Angelo. “Yes,” she said softly.
“That’s good,” Mrs. Benoy said. “Is he from around here?”
“Pierce is in the Air Force. He’s on medical leave.”
Thelma’s face fell. “Oh,” she said. “You need a steady feller.” She paused delicately. “I suppose you will be too busy to visit me tonight?”
Diana had fallen into the habit of checking on her elderly neighbor. Mrs. Benoy was in generally good health. But she was a diabetic. Like a lot of sufferers, she had limited sensation in her feet and needed regular inspections in case she had untreated wounds. It was not uncommon for diabetics to develop gangrene and lose a limb because they hadn’t feel the pain of a cut or bruise.
For the last few months, Diana had been dropping by once a week to cut her neighbor’s toenails and make sure she had no unattended wounds. It only took a few minutes of her time. But regular care could mean the difference between Mrs. Benoy losing a limb and going into care, or dying at home with both her legs.
“I’ll come before I make supper,” she promised.
Her apartment was stifling. And it stank. As if the air conditioning had failed. Diana checked the thermostat before she realized that she hadn’t needed to turn on the hall light because the blinds and curtains in the living room were open.
The full strength of the Arizona sun had been baking her apartment all afternoon. No wonder the AC hadn’t kept up. The thermostat was set at 78, but it was more like 120 in here. She would have to open the slider and all the windows to let the hot air vent. How had she come to be so careless? Her electricity bill would be a whopper this month.
The broomstick was sitting outside the track. On the floor. But when she opened that door, she stuffed it under the couch so she wouldn’t trip on it while she went to and from the sink with the watering can. Surely she had put it away when she watered this morning? She distinctly recalled fitting it into its slot this morning, and smacking it down with the heel of the paint scraper because it was slightly swollen, which wasn’t always the case.
Her bedroom was not quite as hot as the rest of the place. The curtains and blinds were still tightly closed against the sun. But her comforter was flipped back on one corner. Her closet door was ajar. Had she really been that distracted this morning. For sure she had been in a hurry to leave for the gym — to see Pierce. Even after a single night she had missed him in her bed. She pulled the closet door open. Unlike every other pair of shoes, the toes of her blue sneakers faced away from her. What the hell?
Crap. Someone had been in here. She grabbed her first aid kit from the linen closet and headed for the door. On the counter on the kitchen she saw her pork chop sitting on a dinner plate. No wonder the place smelled like carrion. She had not put meat to thaw on the counter. Not today. Not ever. Her hands were shaking so hard, she had trouble unlocking her deadbolts. Mrs. Benoy was delighted to see her.
“Come in, come in,” she said. She peered at Diana’s face, milky cataracts obscuring her vision. “What is it, granddaughter?”
“I don’t know.” Diana pulled her cell out of her purse and called Pierce.
He answered at once. “Hey, what’s up?”
She told him her suspicions in just a few sentences.
“Get out of there right now,” he said.
“I’m at a neighbor’s place. Apartment 23B.”
“Stay there. Lock that door. Call the police. I’m on my way.”
The 911 operator wanted her to wait outside for the police. Diana went downstairs and stood beside her car. The lot was three-quarters full. She recognized every vehicle. There weren’t any strange vehicles. She was shaking. It took ten minutes for the cruiser to arrive. That was the downside of living in a small town where there weren’t a lot of police officers. The pair in the black and white listened to her story.
“We’ll go check it out,” the taller one said. “Stay here,” she ordered.
Pierce drove up while they were still going through her place. He must’ve broken every land speed record getting into town. He put his arms around her and held her close. “Cops having a look?”
Diana nodded. She pulled herself together. “They said to wait here. I know he’s probably gone. And I don’t know if he stole anything. But there was definitely somebody in my apartment.”
A man and a woman in police uniform came down the side stairs shaking their heads. “You’ll have to do a walk-through with us, tell us if there’s anything missing,” the man said. “It doesn’t look as though it was burgled. But you can tell us if anything has been stolen.”
The cops didn’t seem convinced by the fact that she had found a pork chop thawing on the counter when it should have been in the fridge. Diana pointed out the thaw-ring on the top of the container which was still in the fridge. The cops exchanged glances.
“Maybe you took it back out, and forgot it?” Officer Paloma said.
They weren’t convinced either by the fact that her comforter was flipped up at one corner. And they didn’t find the fact that her closet door was standing open admitting the desert dust indicative of a stranger. They exchanged further glances when she pointed out that her sneakers were reversed. She could almost hear them saying to each other, “Another nut.”
Pierce put a comforting hand on her shoulder and squeezed. He stood outside the bathroom door while she looked at her things. “I didn’t drop talcum powder in the sink and just leave it,” she insisted. “And if I had, the container would have been closed and wouldn’t have spilled.”
Again the cops exchanged glances. She was getting tired of it. “I live alone,” she said. “And I’m very neat. If it was just the air-conditioning, or the open blinds, or the pork chop, or the comforter, or the shoes, or the talc, maybe I would agree I made a mistake and I’m excited over nothing. But I didn’t suddenly change all of my habits in one morning.”
“It’s quite a list,” conceded Officer Busby. “I’ll take a look at the lock again.”
Pierce was bending over peering at it with his hands behind his back. “There are some scratches,” he said. “They could be new, or they could be old. Hard to say.”
“You got any idea who would want to play this kind of a practical joke on you?” Busby asked when he had completed his own examination and taken a few photographs.
Diana shook her head. “There’s no one. I’m on good terms with my neighbors. Most of my friends are my coworkers. They were working the same time I was.”
“Who has a key?” Officer Paloma’s eyes went to Pierce.
“Me. The superintendent. That’s it,” Diana said. “The super rekeyed the lock when I moved in, so the previous tenant doesn’t have a key.”
“What about Maj. D’Angelo?”
“He doesn’t have a key.”
They made some more notes, and they took a few more photographs, and they went away. Diana was left standing in the middle of her not as tidy apartment. “I didn’t imagine it,” she said to Pierce.
“No, you did not. They don’t know
you the way I do. You are meticulous. And you would no more go out to work and leave dinner sitting on the counter to spoil than you would forget to wash your hands when you came home.”
She laughed. “But I did,” she objected. “I was so surprised when the place was hot, that I just went over to the windows to open them. And then I went into the bedroom to check the blinds in there and saw the bed and the closet.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The two cops who caught the 911 call had been downright bored. They probably figured Diana had imagined the whole episode. That she had just been forgetful. They had been polite but essentially uninterested. But Pierce had seen for himself how habitually neat Diana was.
She might have dropped talcum powder in the sink and not cleaned it up. Or left her blinds and curtains open to the sun. Or absentmindedly left meat on the counter. Or for once not put her broomstick in the slider track. Individually each was a plausible oversight. Together they were proof of unauthorized entry.
Besides, the entire apartment reeked of her intruder. The same piece of shit who had killed that misfortunate woman in the New Mexico trailer park had been in Diana’s place. Pierce had brought that renegade shifter down on his woman. Venom was dead meat crawling, whether he knew it or not.
Diana was upset both by what she had found, and by the cops’ flagrant skepticism. Her neighbor had confirmed that a stranger in blue clothes had been walking in the hallway when she took out her trash. Mrs. Benoy knew when too.
“It was just after Wheel of Fortune was over,” Thelma Benoy had told the cops. “I get up and walk every half hour, just like the doctor says I must. I tied up the bag after All My Children, and took it out after Wheel of Fortune, like I do every afternoon. I don’t mind if I miss something on Jeopardy, because at two it is always just a rerun of the day-before’s show.”
Which pegged the time the bastard had left.
The cops were Navajo themselves and they had listened courteously, if skeptically, to Mrs. Benoy. Of course her vision was patently bad. Those cataracts did not make her a perfect witness.
“I said, hey, but he didn’t even stop,” Thelma complained.
Officer Paloma pointed out that the man might have been one of the tenants.
“I never saw that walk before,” Thelma said stubbornly. “He could have been in Helpful Girl’s apartment,” she continued in Navajo, her chin angling towards Diana. “He came from that direction.”
Diana seemed not to understand a word of the conversation between the two officers and her neighbor. But Pierce smiled. Like all phoenixes he had an ear for languages as well as music. He had picked up good Navajo over his years in Arizona. Mrs. Benoy thought the world of his mate and she was taking no prisoners.
“He walked down the hall,” Thelma repeated. “And he didn’t even say, hey. Just went past me cutting his eyes like I was trash. He was a stranger to me. Bilagáana.” A white man.
“How do you know, Grandmother?” asked Paloma patiently.
“By his smell,” the old woman said forthrightly in Navajo. “He smelled like a Bilagáana shape shifter.”
Both officers nodded courteously and wrote in their notebooks. But their skeptical expressions didn’t change.
But Pierce believed her. The officers promised to put in a report. They said that the night patrol would swing by every few hours. And then they left. Diana stood outside her apartment looking defeated. All five foot two of Mrs. Benoy looked mad enough to eat glass.
“Do you have anything you absolutely have to do?” Pierce asked Diana. “Because you are not spending the night in that place.”
“I was going to run a load of wash,” Diana said fretfully. “And I have to get rid of that pork chop. It’s spoiled. And the whole place has to be cleaned.”
He put his hands on her shoulders. “Washing if you want. Meat for sure. But the cleaning can wait. You’re coming to my place. You can’t stay someplace where some creep can just come and go.”
“You believe me?” she asked.
“Of course.” He pulled her into his arms.
Mrs. Benoy smiled benignly. “Helpful Girl was going to cut my toenails,” she said in English.
Pierce smiled grimly. The old gal was half-blind, but she was alert. She had followed their entire conversation. Diana looked briefly frantic. He saw her pull her professional composure into place.
“You’re not staying here tonight,” he said. “I know you don’t like being given orders, but this doesn’t feel safe to me. Some bozo just waltzed through your lock as if it wasn’t there. What about that ex-husband of yours?”
She felt her face go red. “Cody is in prison in Florence,” she whispered. “In Colorado.”
“I’d prefer you stayed with me, but I’ll take you wherever you want to go,” he told her.
“All right, I’ll go to your place,” she agreed. “But I have to clean up first. And cut Mrs. Benoy’s toenails.”
Pierce nodded. “Frist, tell me a bit more about your ex-husband.”
“What do you want to know?”
“For a start, how did you come to marry a guy who would wind up being sent to prison?”
She walked back to her door before she spoke. “He’s doing time for meth cooking.”
“Idiot.”
“Yes. But at least he’s in prison and I’m not married to him.”
“There is that. What’s his full name?”
“Cody Lester Jones.”
“You go look after your neighbor, Diana. I’ll take care of your apartment.”
“Okay.” She rejoined Thelma.
Now that the cops were out of the picture, Pierce wanted to do his own inspection. He had seen for himself that Diana’s locks were slightly scratched around the keyhole, but not otherwise damaged. The scrapes might have been new. Or the bastard might have been great with a lock pick. As they had every reason to believe their subject was. Certainly, Diana had not left her door unlocked as the cops had suggested.
That lowdown, side-winding bastard had set out to terrify her in such a way as to make her report unbelievable. Gaslighting was a real thing. A standard and effective technique used to torment a victim. Logically, Diana’s abusive ex was Pierce’s first suspect. He did a lightning search of his databases. Cody Jones was still incarcerated in Colorado.
It was also staggeringly unlikely that Cody Jones was a snake shifter, or that there were two rogue snakes running amok in the Southwest. What were the odds? Nope this was the work of Venom. He needed to make a report to Bear One ASAP. Once Diana’s things were washing he would call.
Bear One answered on the first ring. This time Pierce was in no doubt that he was talking to Steve Holden late of Delta Force. The cocky son of a bear still had the twang of his native Idaho in his voice. But this was not old boys’ night.
“Report,” Bear One snapped.
“The snake has made me,” Pierce said. “He’s targeted my girlfriend.”
“Define targeted?”
“Subject entered her apartment. Made some changes. Nothing appears to be missing. But the west-facing windows were left uncovered to the Arizona sun. Baby powder was dropped in the sink. Meat was taken out of the fridge and left on the counter. Bunch more stuff. Little things. But enough to be noticeable and frightening.” Pierce stopped.
“Did the V/C call the cops?” Bear One demanded.
“V/C?”
“Victim/Complainant,” Bear One snapped.
Pierce swallowed his pride. “Police thought the V/C had blown her own mistakes out of proportion. But she’s a neat freak. If she makes a bed she doesn’t leave a corner flipped up. Besides, his spoor is everywhere.”
“Prints?” asked Bear One.
“Cops didn’t believe her. They didn’t dust for prints.”
“Is it worth doing?”
“Probably not. He will have worn gloves. He was probably spotted in human in the hall by a neighbor. Old Navajo woman. She says he smelled like a shape shifter. A white shape s
hifter. Could just be Navajo superstition and prejudice — the neighbor is very fond of Helpful Girl — or she may have picked up on something.”
“Helpful Girl would be the V/C, Phoenix Three?” There was almost a smile in Bear One’s deep voice.
“Affirmative.”
“How sure are you it’s our subject?” Bear One asked.
“The stink of whoever killed Millie Block in New Mexico is all over this apartment.”
“I hear you. Your present mission is to keep the Complainant safe.”
“Damn straight.”
“I’m sending a team to assist.” Bear One hung up.
After Pierce turned his phone off, it took almost no time to restore Diana’s apartment to its habitual neatness. He wiped talcum out of the sink. Watered her plants again. Even in October, the Arizona sun would dry out potted plants in half a day. He made sure the broomstick was firmly in place and locked the slider. He closed the blinds and drapes. He dumped the pork chop in the trash and set the bag by the front door to dispose of in the dumpster in the parking lot.
Now it was time to evaluate any potential access points. The bathroom exhaust was the likeliest opening for a slithering intruder to use. Pierce could reach the plastic housing easily, and remove it with one hand. The fan blades unscrewed with his bare hands revealing a broad conduit which undoubtedly went straight up to the roof. He needed to check the vent cap.
The kitchen plumbing offered an even better potential entry for a snake. A wide U had been cut out of the plywood bottom of the sink cabinet to accommodate the water pipes and drain. Pierce emptied the cabinet and removed four screws. The entire bottom lifted out — presumably to facilitate repairs. Pierce’s flashlight played over a nine-inch cavity between Diana’s floorboards and her neighbor’s ceiling. Plenty of room for a rattler.
Pierce scooped up the garbage and took it out to the dumpster in the lot. He made a discovery. Venom had lurked here to surveil Diana. Bastard. Pierce retrieved his plastic bin from his vehicle. It contained everything he needed to lay a trap for Venom. Because that renegade would be back.
Phoenix Ablaze (BBW / Phoenix Shifter Romance) (Alpha Phoenix Book 1) Page 9