She started toward him, and he turned, moving quickly away.
He rounded a bank of slot machines. Riga broke into a trot, dodging an elderly woman with a fat pink purse. She turned the corner, saw him slip left, and she broke into a run, jagged left. The corridor was suddenly full of people, laughing, a group following a woman with an umbrella raised high. Riga swore under her breath and sidled through the tour group.
They pushed past her and she turned in a circle, unsure of which direction Cam had gone. Riga stood on her toes, but all she could see were gray heads. In desperation, she jumped, and was rewarded by the sight of a black leather jacket headed in the direction of the casino steak house.
A woman trod on her foot, and she yelped, pushed past one person, than another, until she popped out of the crowd like a cork from a champagne bottle.
She scanned the casino.
There. Cam strode forward as if he knew where he was going, past the casino’s steak house. The photographer ducked down a hallway to the conference rooms, and she smiled. Most of the rooms were locked. She’d catch him there.
Riga rushed forward, and collided with Donovan. He grasped her lightly with his leather-gloved hands. His green eyes crinkled and he released her, adjusted the merlot-colored scarf he wore beneath his long black woolen coat. “Whoa there.”
“It’s Cam. I just saw him headed toward the conference rooms.”
“Cam?” Donovan craned his neck. “I don’t see him.”
“He ducked down the corridor. Come on.”
Donovan pulled back the sleeve of his coat, and checked his watch. “We really don’t have time for this, Riga. Our guests are expecting us at the restaurant.”
“Our guests…” She clamped her lips shut, felt her brain silently implode. After everything she’d said to him upstairs, he just assumed they’d trot off to brunch together. The hell of it was, she really did want to go. She had suspects to grill. Riga’s lips stretched into a tight smile. “The brunch isn’t for another hour.”
He brushed an invisible bit of lint off his sleeve. “No, but your aunts will be there early, because they always are, and I have to get there early as well.”
“It’s almost as if you don’t want me to get hold of Cam.”
He put his hand on her elbow and lightly steered her back in the direction she’d come. “Please trust me, when I say that Cam is not our problem.”
“At least you admit there is a problem,” she muttered.
“I simply meant we should let his wife deal with him. She called this morning, and told me Cam hadn’t returned to their room last night.”
Riga thought of the mussed guest room in the penthouse upstairs, and had a pretty fair idea of where Cam had bunked. “Donovan, have you been feeling alright lately?”
He grinned. “Wedding day jitters, you mean?”
“No, I was thinking more along the lines of lost time, a sense of disconnectedness, missing slices of memory.”
He stopped to look directly at her. “Of course not. What are you talking about?”
“I wish you’d tell me what’s wrong.”
He clasped her shoulders, and brushed her forehead with his lips. “Nothing’s wrong.”
Liar.
Her phone rang. Fuming, she pulled it from her pocket, answered without checking the number.
“This is Riga.”
“Riga,” a Russian-accented voice oiled. “How are you? Why won’t you accept my wedding present?”
Riga went cold inside. “The phone? Because I don’t want anything to do with you, Vasily.” Her voice was hard, brittle. The mobster terrified her, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing it.
Who was she kidding? Of course he knew it.
Donovan checked his watch.
Riga continued slowly, feeling her way. The normal Donovan would have been gnashing his teeth at the least, bellowing into the phone at worst, trying to drag the mobster’s attention toward himself, away from her. “What do you want, Vasily?”
“To be your friend. I have an interest in you.”
Riga looked behind her. Was he in the casino? “What sort of interest?”
“The usual sort of interest a man has in a beautiful woman.”
“I’m getting married in a week. Stop sending me phones. Stop calling me.”
Donovan looked at her, frowning.
“But Riga, what’s a marriage? In Russia, we are much more sensible about these things. Marriage is merely a contract, a business deal. We pledge to raise family together and care for each other. There is nothing to stop us from enjoying other people. And besides, wasn’t your engagement to Mr. Mosse rather… quick? How well do you really know him?”
Rage, hot and red, flared through her. “I so enjoy getting love advice from psychopaths. Piss off.” She hung up, turning the phone off for good measure.
Donovan’s eyes darkened with concern. “Problem?”
She jammed her phone in her pocket, balled her hands into fists. “Who are you, and what have you done with Donovan? And why are you wearing a coat? Were you going to leave for the brunch without me?”
“Of course not. I knew you were down here – security had you on the video feed.”
“You were watching me?”
“I was looking for you.”
“Why didn’t you just call my cell?”
“I didn’t think to.”
“Hm.” She didn’t believe a word of it.
The back of her neck prickled and she whipped her head around. A man she didn’t recognize looked quickly away, stuck some quarters in a slot machine.
She was getting paranoid.
*****
Riga stood at the restaurant’s picture window, framed by a drapery of icicles. She stared without seeing at the sunbeams piercing the clouds, the coils of steam rising from the lake, the iridescent glitter of sunlight on the snow-covered dock. Along the deck railing hopped a Stellar Jay, making tracks. It cocked its head, wary. A black cat stalked beneath it. The cat crouched, muscles tensing, and Riga rapped on the glass in warning. The bird’s head swiveled, its crown stiffening. The cat leapt to the railing. Squawking, the Jay flew off, out of the predator’s reach. The cat licked its paws, suddenly engrossed in something between its toes.
Riga closed her eyes. It was time to see.
She gathered the energies from above and below, let them fill her, then opened her eyes, keeping her gaze unfocused. Riga surveyed her guests.
There were people who could diagnose a person’s health through their aura. Riga wasn’t one of them. For Riga, auras were tricky things. A good person in an awful mood could throw out a nasty looking aura, and vice versa. But knowing moods could come in useful, and so could knowing what people were hiding. If someone had attempted to kill Cam, then that someone should be very nervous right now.
Jordan and Annabelle strolled arm-in-arm down the steps and into the room, her furry after-ski boots a gentle backbeat to the rap of Jordan’s cowboy boot heels on the wooden stairs. Annabelle was sleek in a furry vest and tight gold top that seemed to spark beneath her pale pink aura. Too pale? As if stretched thin?
Through Jordan’s aura ran ribbons of angry red, mirroring the plaid of his shirt. There was rage there, repressed. What had caused it? He tipped his hat to Riga, and she nodded, smiling.
The couple made their way around the banquet table, set with a white table cloth and poinsettias. Cam Mitchell’s wife, Terry, rose as they passed, laid a hand on Jordan’s arm, and released it quickly. She moved jerkily, rubbing her thin, bare arms – madness in a Sierra winter. One never knew how well a room would be heated.
Jordan tilted his head toward the writer, patience written across his broad features. Terry said something and his expression flickered.
She placed her hand over her stomach. Dark browns and reds lashed irregularly through her aura, and something darker moved at her solar plexus. Riga broadened her gaze, focused without focusing. A dark, ropey substance like black
licorice extended from Terry’s heart.
What the hell was that?
Riga returned her attention to Annabelle and Jordan. Annabelle had a ropey extrusion too, as did Briian, Madison and the newspaper editor, Dora. Whatever the substance was, it wasn’t normal. Riga shivered.
Pen bounded into her view, her aura a blaze of sparkling blues and pinks and oranges. “Hi! What did Brigitte say?”
Riga blinked, and the aura was gone. “Not here.”
“So when you say ‘not here,’ you mean—”
“We’ll talk about it at home,” Riga said in an undertone.
“That sounds not good.”
“It isn’t good. You may have to go back to San Francisco. We’ll talk about it later.” She took a step back, head at an angle.
Pen jammed her hands in the pockets of her green cargo pants. Her black t-shirt proclaimed: It’s okay, I’m here now. “No one told me I had to dress up for this brunch. So I didn’t.”
Riga raked her hand through her hair. “In the grand scheme of things, I guess it doesn’t matter.”
“And the wedding’s in a week,” Pen argued. “It doesn’t make sense for me to go home now.”
Riga glanced at Donovan, talking to her aunts, his chiseled face intent. Peregrine flapped her arms in an expansive gesture, and Dot ducked beneath them, her loose black blouse looking as if it might slide off at any moment. Dot straightened and peered owlishly at Donovan through thick spectacles, face powder crusted in the wrinkles fanning her lips.
Riga sighed. Donovan not only put up with her relatives, he seemed positively fascinated by whatever they were saying. He was a good man, and she wondered who she was seeing now – the Donovan she knew and loved, or a man possessed?
Chapter 7
Riga faced Donovan across the long banquet table. Coils of steam drifted from the china platters between them. Scrambled eggs, sausages, and coffee cake: Riga’s personal trifecta of breakfast joy. She ignored the fruit (healthy) and swiped a strip of bacon from a tray. Fear and fury made her hungry.
She’d detected that strange dark rope of energy attached to other guests. John Smith, ambiguous agent. Dora, the intrepid editor. Briian with two i’s. Madison, the actress clinging to youth. What were those things?
Mentally, Riga scrolled through her catalog of magical tomes, came up empty. There was something familiar about those cords. If only she could remember…
At least the Aunts and Pen were free of the attachment. And Donovan was clean as well. No indications of an external influence, though the color was atypical for Donovan, blue and gold. She remembered an old joke from her college days. What happened when the smog cleared? UCLA. Did anyone still tell it?
She’d check the auras of Donovan’s family when she saw them next. They’d attended several of the pre-wedding parties, but work and other commitments limited their exposure. Lucky bastards.
Madison fidgeted with the plunging v-neck of her simple red sheath, unconsciously adjusting it around the twisting cord. She stabbed a fragment of broiled tomato with a fork, trailed it around her plate, and put it down. Looked away from Briian. Laid her thin hand in his lap.
The actor quirked his lips, but continued his conversation with Annabelle, seated across from him.
Next to Terry, sat John Smith, taciturn, eyes down, steadily shoveling food into his mouth. Weirdest. Federal agent. Ever.
Peregrine jabbed her with a bony elbow. “Smile, dear. You are the guest of honor.”
“Technically, I’m the hostess,” Riga said. She lowered her voice. “Tell me again what Donovan said to you when he left last night.”
Peregrine’s brows rose. “But he’s here. Why not ask him?”
“There’s a little confusion.”
“Well, I don’t see how I could clear it up,” Peregrine said. “If anything, I’ll add to the muddle. You’ve got the horse’s mouth right across the table. He’ll tell you.”
Riga propped her elbows on the table, interlacing her fingers. “Did you actually see Cam leave last night?”
“Who’s Cam?” Peregrine asked.
“The photographer,” Riga said.
“Oh… I think Dot told me she saw him.”
Dot leaned across Riga. “What? What?”
“I said,” Peregrine said more loudly, “you told me you saw that photographer last night.”
“Well, of course I saw him,” Dot said. “We all saw him. He was taking pictures everywhere.”
“But when he left,” Riga said. “Did you see him leave?”
“Oh.” Dot tapped a finger to her wrinkled lips. “No… I thought you saw him, Peregrine?”
Peregrine scowled. “I thought you told me you saw him.”
“How perplexing,” Dot said. “Do you think he snuck out like little Eddie Pinkerton?”
“Eddie Pinkerton?” Peregrine tucked her chin.
“You remember what an uproar he caused, sneaking away from the church picnic, and then no one could find him and we had to call the police, and there was a manhunt in the woods for him that night, and it turned out he’d gone to a friend’s house?”
“That wasn’t Eddie Pinkerton. That was cousin Sam! And it wasn’t from a church picnic, it was from a scouting jamboree.”
“Oh.” Dot tapped her tooth with her thumbnail. “Are you quite sure it wasn’t Eddie?”
“Quite.”
Dot leaned forward and her sleeve trailed across a bowl of raspberry jam. “But then what happened to little Eddie Pinkerton?”
And away they went on another trip down confused memory lane. Riga reached for her mimosa and slugged it back, caught the waiter’s eye.
He made his way around the table, pitcher of juice in one hand, bottle of champagne in the other. “Another mimosa, ma’am?”
“Hold the orange juice.”
Riga forced herself to sip, while the sisters argued about the Pinkerton kid.
Terry scraped her chair back, and made her way around the table to Riga. She braced one hand on the back of Riga’s chair and bent, her dark hair cascading toward Riga’s eggs. At the last second, she pulled her hair over her shoulder, to safety. “Have you seen Cam?”
“No,” Riga said. “But he’s supposed to be photographing the brunch.”
Terry gnawed on her lower lip. “He didn’t come back to the room last night.”
“I saw him in the casino this morning, but I lost him,” Riga said.
“You… lost him? Were you chasing my husband for some reason?”
“No, of course not. I just thought I saw him in the crowd, and then he disappeared. Have you called the police?”
“I did. They told me he’d have to be missing for forty eight hours, since there’s no evidence of foul play.”
Riga’s insides squirmed. There had been foul play. But what would the police have said if they’d come last night with no body? And she’d seen Cam this morning. “Maybe he’s found better celebrities to chase.”
“Men can be so frustrating,” Dot chimed in, chin wobbling. “Little wonder I never married. Though there was one gentleman…” Her eyes misted.
Peregrine snorted, and speared a sausage with her fork. “Damned inconsiderate if you ask me. Running off without telling anyone. And you say you saw the photographer in the casino this morning?”
“Only for a moment,” Riga said. “But I’m sure it was him. We looked straight at each other.”
The two sisters leaned forward and nodded.
“What?” Terry said.
“I’m sorry to break this to you, Mrs. Reynolds—“
“Reynolds-Mitchell,” Terry said.
“Mrs. Reynolds-Mitchell,” Peregrine said, “but all sorts of things go on in casinos. And men are easily led astray.”
The writer paled.
“Oh, come on,” Riga protested. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly innocent explanation.”
Peregrine crossed her arms over her bony chest. “Like what?”
“Maybe…” Riga scr
ambled. “He had too much to drink last night, and now he’s too hung over to eat.”
Dot’s round face creased with concern. “Oh, dear. You think drunkenness is an innocent explanation? I confess I was a bit worried when they told me you’d moved to Nevada, but when I learned you weren’t in Vegas, I felt some measure of relief. Still. All this drinking, Riga.” She looked pointedly at Riga’s empty glass.
“All what drinking?” Riga said hotly. “I just meant—”
“No, they’re right.” Terry placed her hand lightly over her stomach. “It’s not the first time Cam’s run off without a word. But it doesn’t make it any easier.” She seemed to shake herself. “Riga, we still need to do that interview for the magazine. Are you available later?”
“We can do it now.” Visions of escape danced before Riga, bright, hopeful, a mirage.
Terry laughed. “Oh, no. I don’t want to disrupt the brunch.”
And the mirage evaporated, turned to sand and dust.
“We can do it afterward,” Terry continued. “Where would you like to meet?”
“Why don’t we go back to your hotel room at the casino? It’s close, and Cam has to show up there eventually.” And Riga wanted to see inside Cam’s room.
“He’d better show up,” Terry muttered, and returned to her chair. Beside her, Smith applied himself to a thick slice of coffee cake.
Riga looked across the table at Donovan, joking with Jordan in the chair next to him. Pen choked on her juice at something they said, coughed.
Next to Pen, Dora held her graying head in one hand, an unlit cigarette between the fingers of her other. The newspaper editor tapped the cigarette steadily upon the table, watching Riga. “Something up, kiddo?”
“Cam’s still not...” Riga trailed off, gazing past Dora, out the window, where the cat perched on the railing. A male figure prowled along the snow-covered shore below, staring at the restaurant. “…back.”
Bracing her hands on the table, Riga raised herself halfway out of her chair.
4 The Infernal Detective Page 5