The Curse of Tenth Grave

by Darynda Jones

Not that I hadn’t figured the woman yelling in his face was a skeleton from the guy’s closet, almost certainly a departed wife, but I wasn’t sure how Kit wanted this to play out. Did she suspect the guy of killing his wife? And since when did she call me Mrs. Davidson?

  “I don’t understand,” he said, looking as perplexed as I felt.

  Mrs. Davidson.

  “Are you having her look into Mandy’s case?”

  Mrs. Davidson.

  Kit shook her head. “No, I think this information just kind of landed in Mrs. Davidson’s lap.”

  It was one thing to know I went by Mrs. Davidson.

  “How does information about a missing persons case in D.C. just happen to fall into a private investigator’s lap in Albuquerque, New Mexico?”

  It was another thing entirely to hear it spoken aloud.

  “Is there a reason you’re getting defensive?”

  Maybe I should hyphenate.

  “Is there a reason you think I should get defensive?”

  Davidson-Farrow.

  “You tell me.”

  Mrs. Davidson-Farrow.

  “Is that why I’m here?” The young agent bolted out of his chair, his movements sharp and on the ragged edge of violence. “Is that why they brought me here?”

  Agent Nguyen had risen, too, readying himself to subdue his volatile colleague. But it was around that time that I noticed something else. The woman had stopped screaming. She was staring at me, almost as curiously as the agent had.

  “Finally,” she said, crossing her arms, the knife resting across her rib cage. She tapped her toes and waited.

  “Well?” Kit asked me, waiting as well.

  I dug deep for a nonchalant smile, hoping for a cue from Kit. Any cue.

  “Oh, my god,” the woman said, throwing her arms up. “She doesn’t know any more than anyone else.”

  I focused on her. “Then tell me.”

  “If I had a nickel for every time someone had new information on my case…”

  She still had no idea I could see her, and she didn’t seem to give a rat’s ass that I was bright enough to sear the retinas from her eyes. Most departed noticed the fact that I hemorrhaged light like a trophy wife hemorrhaged money right off the bat. That usually led to them wanting to cross. I was the flame. They were the moths.

  Maybe her antennae were broken.

  “Tell me what happened,” I said softly. It was hard to miss the blunt-force trauma to her head, or the blood that had saturated her hair and pale pink robe.

  Everyone had stopped and was staring at me, including the woman.

  “Tell me what happened,” I repeated.

  “You—” She took an involuntarily step forward and was now standing with her hips halfway inside the conference table. “You can see me?”

  I nodded.

  “How?” she began, but changed her mind. “Why would—? Wait, no.” She bent her head to think a moment, then looked back up. “What are you?”

  I glanced around at our audience. “That’s hard to say at the moment.”

  “Who is she talking to?” the agent asked.

  Agent Nguyen sat back down and glared at his fingernails. Kit grinned and took another sip of her latte.

  “Do you know where your body is?”

  The woman blinked at me, turned to look behind her to make sure I was talking to her, then refocused on me and nodded.

  “Do you know who killed you?”

  “A psychic?” the agent asked, angrier than ever.

  “Not a psychic,” Kit said, so calm and pleased with herself, I almost giggled. “A prodigy.”

  “In our backyard. And, no, he didn’t do it,” the woman said before I could ask. Then she turned to her husband. “His psychotic, freakazoid sister drugged me, then bashed in my skull with my Miss Kentucky trophy. I can’t believe nobody noticed it was missing.”

  I knew I’d detected an accent.

  “He’s, like, the worst investigator. I’ve been trying to tell him who killed me for two effing years.” And she was off. “Two mother-effing years. I tried to defend myself.” She waved the knife at me.

  I encouraged her to continue with a nod.

  “But it’s hard to fight off batshit crazy, ya know? Woman is effing batshit.”

  So, shit was okay, but fuck was not. She had to be Southern Baptist.

  “Batshit. With a capital B. And then she moves in with him to help him take care of the house. Moves right the fuck in.”

  Or maybe Catholic.

  “Like she owns the place. And there I am, pushin’ up daisies. And I know what you’re thinking.” She leaned her face toward mine. “But I mean that literally. I am literally pushin’ up daisies.”

  I decided to relay the current bits of information while she got it out of her system. “Your sister did it,” I said.

  To say that he had his doubts about my ability would have been an understatement. The sneer on his face could’ve scoured the rust off metal.

  “She planted them over my dead body.”

  “And she buried your wife in your backyard.”

  “It was her way of having the last laugh even though she already had. I mean, hello. I’m dead, aren’t I? But no. That’s not enough. She just can’t let things alone. She has to throw in that final ‘fuck you.’”

  “Your sister didn’t happen to put in a daisy garden when she moved in with you, did she?”

  I knew I’d get the agent’s attention eventually, but his expression when I mentioned the garden didn’t quite go as planned. Instead of a dawning of understanding lighting his features, he turned a lovely shade of purple. I’d never seen that particular hue on a person before and wondered if I could get a picture without him noticing. For research purposes.

  “This is beyond unacceptable,” he said.

  “See!” she screamed, pointing the knife at him. “He. Will. Not. Listen.”

  “Agent Guzman,” I began.

  “Oh, don’t even bother,” she interrupted. “He won’t listen. He is the most bullheaded, stubborn at-shass I’ve ever met.”

  I scanned my extensive repertoire of verbiage and got nothing. “What’s an at-shass?” I asked her.

  She let out a lengthy sigh. “It was something we said. Louie swore I called him that on our first date. I wouldn’t know. I got shitfaced and was apparently trying to call him an asshat. It came out at-shass and stuck.”

  As she explained that she used it as an inside joke when they were around friends to signal to her husband that his bullheadedness was rearing its ugly bull head, I couldn’t help but notice the one-eighty Guzman did.

  His face paled when I said that word aloud. Alas. The lovely purple was gone. But Agent Guzman was coming around.

  I glanced at Kit. “Can you give us a moment?”

  “Oh, hell, no.” She put her mocha latte aside like she was ready to get down to business. “This is my favorite part.”

  “You have a favorite part?” I hadn’t realized we’d done this often enough for her to have a favorite part.

  “Yep. You talk to yourself for a few minutes, try to negotiate with the air around us, beg and plead sometimes, and then come up with these mind-boggling revelations. Then you send us in directions we never would have thought to go, and suddenly the case, whatever that case may be, is solved. Like magic. Oh no, honey. I wouldn’t miss this for early retirement.”

  “And now,” Mandy continued, her rant only just beginning, “he’s going to sit there and pretend he doesn’t know I’m here. Just like before. Just like always. Everything and everyone else comes first. Trying to get his attention is like trying to pull teeth from a lion’s mouth. I’ve even stabbed him in the face.”

  I snapped back to her. “You’ve tried to stab him in the face?”

  “Not tried.” She waved a negating index at me. Girl had spunk. “Did. Many times.” She looked at the knife she carried around. “This thing is as useless as it was the day I picked it up. I tried to stab Cin in the face,
too. Didn’t even come close, but I did get her in the shoulder.”

  “Well, in your defense, you’d been drugged.”

  “True.”

  “If you’d been in your right mind, I’m sure you would have stabbed her in the face. Many times.”

  “You think so?” she said, sniffing.

  I patted her back to console her. “Her face could’ve doubled as a colander.”

  “Aw, thanks.”

  “Are you getting anywhere?” Kit asked, but that was when I noticed Guzman’s reaction.

  “Mandy always said she would stab me in the face if I ever ignored her. It became a joke.”

  I thought about mentioning the fact that the joking days were long gone, but he didn’t need to know she’d stabbed him in the face. Several times. Thankfully, her knife was as incorporeal as she was.

  “Look,” Guzman said, calming even more as his mind raced, “my sister was out of town.”

  “The perfect alibi,” Mandy said. “No one even checked. Like, seriously. She was never even a suspect.”

  I looked back at Guzman. “Did you check to make sure?”

  “What? No. Why would I check my own sister’s alibi?”

  “That’s it,” Mandy said, right before she dive-bombed him. She flew right through him, but she came back kicking. And screaming. And stabbing.

  If she tried that with me, it was going to hurt.

  “Mrs. Guzman!” I said, trying to get her attention. “You have to give him some time. This is not going to be easy.”

  She looked up from her last efforts to puncture his esophagus, blew her bangs out of her face, and said, “Two years. Two effing years.”

  We were back to the effing thing. “I know, hon. But—”

  “I’m out of here,” Guzman said, rising from his chair.

  I rose, too. “Just check it out. Check out your sister’s alibi. And check her credit card records. She drugged your wife first, then hit her with her Miss Kentucky trophy, which, by the way”—I looked at Mandy—“congrats on that.”

  “Thank you,” she said, her face one solid, Southern smile. All sparkly eyes and beautiful teeth. “It was so long ago, really.” She took one hand from her husband’s throat to smooth down her hair.

  “Well, it’s quite an accomplishment.”

  This time when Guzman’s face paled, I honestly thought he would fall. Nguyen did, too. He jumped up and helped the man back into his chair.

  “I haven’t seen that trophy since—”

  “Since your wife went missing?”

  Guzman’s mind raced, his eyes scanning the table in front of him as he played and replayed the investigation. The events of that day. Every second he could recall, all of which, I would bet my bottom dollar, were burned into his mind. What could he have done differently? What did he do wrong? Was she abducted? Did she leave of her own accord?

  So many questions were playing out in his mind, and the pain of them showed on a face that was too young to be as lined as it was.

  He stood, walked out, turned around, and came right back in. “Why? Why would Cin do this?”

  That was a great question. Mandy had been watching her husband, her face alight with all the love she felt for him. “It’s not his fault. Not really. He’s an amazing investigator. No one suspected Cin. No one, least of all me, knew what she was capable of.”

  “Do you know why she did it?”

  Mandy smiled. “She saw us, the way we acted toward each other, the way we spoke to one another, and decided I wasn’t the right girl for her brother. He’d been a star quarterback. The president of his senior class. He was destined for greatness, but she hated me. Thought I didn’t love him.” She reached up to touch her husband’s cheek as everyone waited with bated breath for my answer. “She was wrong. We always talked to each other that way, but it was just our way. We weren’t being mean or belittling one another. That was just how we showed affection.”

  I decided to paraphrase. “Your sister did it because she’s batshit crazy.”

  Mandy snorted.

  “She didn’t understand your relationship,” I said, editing as I went. “She didn’t understand that the way you spoke to one another was how you showed affection.”

  “What?”

  “The little digs? The innuendos? You were just playing. Your sister didn’t understand that.”

  “That’s just how we are. How we were. I loved Mandy more than anything.”

  “Even football?” she asked, and I fought a sad smile.

  “She’s—she’s gone?”

  I hadn’t realized until that moment that he’d been holding out hope. All this time.

  “I’m so sorry, Agent Guzman.”

  “The necklace,” Mandy said as a new thought came to her. She explained, and I relayed.

  “You gave your wife a necklace the morning you left for a conference. You were going to miss your anniversary, so you gave it to her early. Your sister has it in her jewelry box. It came off when she—during the attack.”

  I felt pressure build inside the agent. He didn’t want to believe. He fought it with every ounce of strength he had, but I simply knew too much. He couldn’t deny that.

  “Wait,” his wife said. “There’s something else. I was going to tell him when he got back from his trip.” For the first time, tears sprang to her eyes. She lowered her head, suddenly unable to talk.

  I’d done enough of these to know exactly what she was going to say, but that didn’t make it any easier. I put my hand on hers. “I’m so sorry, Mandy.”

  “I’d just found out. I was going to make a doctor’s appointment that day to make sure before I told him, but I knew. We’d been trying for so long. And I knew.”

  I closed my eyes and felt Guzman stiffen. “What?” he asked.

  “I’m so sorry, Agent Guzman, but she—your wife was—you were going to have baby.”

  In Guzman’s eyes, I’d gone too far. Anger rocketed through him before he got it under control and the truth slowly and painfully set in. “She told you that?”

  “Yes. You’d been trying for a year. It finally took.”

  “No.” He shook his head, not sure if he was the victim of a horrible prank or witnessing the impossible. He decided to give it a shot. “How do I do this? How do I justify digging up my backyard because a crazy woman told me to without looking crazy myself?”

  Kit smiled. “Anonymous tip. Works every time.”

  “You know, you can cross if you’d like,” I said to Mandy. “It’s what I do. I’m a ticket straight to the other side. Straight to your family and friends who are waiting for you.”

  “Are you kidding? And miss seeing Cin’s face when my husband arrests her skank ass? Not likely, sister.”

  I nodded and glanced at Nguyen. He may not have been warming up to me, but I got the feeling he was becoming a believer. He didn’t offer me any praise or anything, but he didn’t glower at me when he stood and walked out. I felt like we were making progress.

  “You know,” Kit said as I was leaving. “You never told me why you called.”

  “Oh, right. So, yeah, thanks.”

  “Thanks?”

  “You know, for New York.”

  “You helped to save a family.”

  “But you believed in me. Even in amnesiac me. It means a lot.”

  “Oh yeah? How much?”

  “How much?” I asked. She had slipped into negotiation mode. “How much we talking?”

  She lifted a shoulder. “Just a little information. Nothing earth-shattering.”

  “What kind of information?”

  She stopped and leveled a serious gaze on me. “How do you do what you do?”

  Kit knew a lot. Much more than the general populace, who dismissed any notions of the supernatural as bogus. But she did not know my many titles, and I planned to keep her virginal in all things Charley Davidson as long as possible.

  “Ancient Chinese secret,” I said.

  “I’m pretty sure the C
hinese culture as a whole would find offense in your using them like that.”

  “True. And they know martial arts and stuff.”

  “Yep.” We’d started for the front entrance again, but she stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. “One day, I’m going to get to the bottom of you, Charley Davidson.”

  I had no idea she was into anal. “Okay, but buy me dinner first?”

  8

  I’m not a ride-or-die kind of girl. I have questions.

  Where are we riding to?

  Why do I have to die?

  Can we get food on the way?

  —MEME

  On the way back to the office, I took the long way around and drove past the Fosters’ house. Mrs. Foster was the woman who, since there was really no way to sugarcoat it, abducted Reyes when he was a baby. When they were on the verge of being busted, they basically sold him to the monster that raised him: Earl Walker.

  Since I’d been back, I made a point of driving through their neighborhood, checking for Mrs. Foster’s car, making sure they were still in the vicinity. I’d also been keeping tabs on their online activity. They had yet to be charged with not one but two abductions, and I’d need all the ammunition I could get when the time came for me to present my case to Ubie. And now that I was working with an assistant district attorney, I could include him in the fun.

  Mrs. Foster was home when I drove by. I’d never actually seen her before, but I made the turn onto her street just as she was walking inside with an armful of groceries. I hated her. Seeing her didn’t change that.

  Instead of taking the outside stairs when I finally made it back to the office, I pulled Misery into her carport and walked to Reyes’s restaurant, planning to enter via the back door. A soft rain, almost warm against the crisp day, misted around me and left me damp and a tad frizzy when I strolled inside and made my way Reyes’s office.

  He sat behind his desk doing paperwork and didn’t look up when I walked in. So, I took the opportunity to peruse his office. It looked exactly as my father had left it, including all the family photos that lined the shelves and punctuated the other paraphernalia on the walls. Mostly cop stuff. A map here. An award there. A set of old handcuffs that sent my mind reeling in the wrong direction.

  I had to get a grip. Either Reyes was affecting me even more than usual, or my fallopian tubes were about to be invaded.