The Curse of Tenth Grave

by Darynda Jones

  Even though it was getting late, I drove out to the Morningwood Retirement Community—which sounded like it had been designed by a horny botanist. Oddly enough, Mrs. Allen from the complex was now living here, too, with her poodle, Prince Phillip, a.k.a. PP.

  I stopped at the office to let the administrators know who I was and what I was doing there, though the residents had their own apartments. This was assisted living, but not like a nursing home, so that was nice.

  The receptionist drew my route on a map to point me toward Mr. Geoff Adams Sr.’s apartment. I asked about Mrs. Allen as well, but she told me Mrs. A. was in the actual nursing home on account of the fact that she liked to take PP for walks and would sometimes end up on Alameda Boulevard in her nightie and socks. To see her, I’d have to come back during visiting hours and sign in at the next building.

  I made a mental note to come back ASAP and then headed toward Mr. Adams Sr.’s place.

  * * *

  I’d originally thought the name of the retirement center odd, but driving through the housing units confirmed it. I entered on Morningwood Lane. Turned left at Pussy Willow Drive. Right on Peter Pepper Place. Left on Cockscomb Court. And finally right on Wang Peonies Way.

  Oh yeah, this community was definitely planned by a horny botanist.

  A part of me hoped Emery would be with her grandfather. If they were as close as Mr. Adams said and her grandfather was elderly, possibly even sickly, she could’ve stuck around for him. No such luck.

  Mr. Adams Sr. was a hardy man in his early seventies who only lived at the center because he didn’t want to take care of a yard anymore.

  “They do everything,” he said, handing me a cup of coffee, the liquid threatening to spill over the top with his shaking.

  Grief had covered him like a cloak. I worried he’d go downhill now that his granddaughter had passed away.

  He tried so hard to make everything look normal. Like he wasn’t crumbling inside. “They do all the yard work. All the cooking. We have to go to the cafeteria, but the food’s not half-bad. All the cleaning. It’s—it’s great here.”

  As he fell silent, his mind consumed with sadness, I studied him further. He had a full head of silvery-gray hair and a farmer’s tan. He wore shorts in the winter and a country club sweater. And his grief was so all-consuming, I had to block it before I passed out. Again.

  He snapped back to the present and raked a hand over his face. “There’s a golf course and tennis courts right down the road.”

  I nodded. “Mr. Adams, did Emery say anything to you about being worried? Maybe someone was following her or calling and hanging up?” I let a wave of grief wash over him as he fought back tears with all his strength before continuing. “Anything that would suggest she was in danger?”

  His shoulders shook, and he coughed into a handkerchief.

  “She didn’t—no, not that I know of,” he said when he’d recovered. “She never mentioned anything to me.”

  “Did she seem worried or anxious lately?”

  At first he shook his head, then he thought about it. “Actually, yes. For the last few weeks, she’d seemed distracted. Upset, even.”

  “Did she say why?”

  “No, and I didn’t push it. She just said she was having some issues at work.”

  “At the hospital.”

  “Yes. She was the administrator.” His face softened with pride. “Youngest in their history.”

  “I read that. You must have been so proud of her.”

  “Honey, that girl made me proud every time she took a step. She was the perfect kid, which was something considering her childhood.”

  “Her childhood?”

  “Oh, you know. Just everyday stuff, I guess. Need a refill?”

  He was changing the subject, especially since I hadn’t touched my coffee yet. “Mr. Adams, anything you can tell me, no matter how minor or seemingly inconsequential, may help me find who did this.”

  He hung his head. “It’s my fault, really. I should have been harder on the boy.”

  “The boy?”

  “My namesake. My son. He doesn’t have the willpower that Emmy and I have. I worked hard for what I have. I wanted a better life than I had for my boy. Figured out I had a head for business and was very successful at a very young age. So, Junior grew up wanting for nothing. I think—well, my wife, God rest her soul, warned me over and over to stop indulging him, but I was so busy, and it was just easier to give in.”

  “So, he grew up privileged.”

  “He grew up spoiled. Never had the resoluteness that Emmy and I had. It was always one failed venture after another. I finally quit sinking money into his schemes. His marriage had fallen apart. Then Emmy’s mother died.”

  “She died?” I asked.

  “Breast cancer. She was a good woman. A bit hardheaded, but it was a good head. Emmy was the best of both of them. Smart and creative. A good problem solver. She wasn’t afraid of risk, but she always weighed her options and came up with a plan. A thinker, that one. A real thinker.”

  “Which was why she made such a great administrator.”

  He nodded. I rose from the chair to look at the photos on his mantel while he struggled with another wave of grief. He had several pictures of Emery growing up. She was beautiful. Long, dark blond hair. Wide inquisitive eyes. His grief was affecting me, pouring into my rib cage and dissolving my bones.

  “Can you think of any other reason she might have been upset lately?”

  “Like I said. The boy.”

  “Her father? He had upset her?”

  “He always upset her. Again, he’s not the most stable person. Their roles were switched most of her life. She had to be the responsible one while he went off half-cocked on this adventure or that. She didn’t have a childhood, really. Had to grow up entirely too fast. And through it all, through everything Emmy had gone through, she never asked me for anything.”

  “She was independent, even growing up?”

  “Oh yes. She wouldn’t let me do any extra for her. When she was in Girl Scouts, every year she would only let me buy three boxes of cookies, like everyone else who was addicted to Thin Mints. She would not accept favors. When she was in high school, her dad managed to buy her a car. I remember her face. She was so excited, but God only knows how illegal that transaction was.”

  Mr. Adams’s face grew somber.

  “And yet when he lost everything two months later in a Ponzi scheme and had to hock it, she wouldn’t even come to me. She wouldn’t even ask for help to get her car back. Two thousand dollars. He lost a fifteen thousand–dollar car for a two thousand–dollar debt. I carry that much in my front pocket.”

  Alarmed, I asked, “Are you sure that’s safe?”

  He cast me a warm expression. “You want to know the worst part?”

  I nodded even though I kind of didn’t.

  “She wasn’t even upset. She wasn’t disappointed. A junior in high school lost her car, and she wasn’t the least bit agitated. She’d never expected to keep it as long as she had, she was so used to being let down. She was so used to being disappointed. She was so used to coming second to everything else in his life.”

  “Why was she like that?” I asked, more troubled than I thought I would be. “Why wouldn’t she accept money from you? You’re family.”

  “I asked her that once. She told me that she saw how I looked at her dad, at my son, and she never wanted me to look at her that way.”

  His last words were so broken they were hard to decipher. He broke down. His shoulders shaking. A strong hand over his eyes.

  I let him grieve, knowing that was my cue to leave, but there was one more thing that I didn’t quite buy.

  When he recovered enough to continue, I asked him, “Mr. Adams, this is going to be a very indelicate question, but if you have so much money, why are you living in this tiny apartment in a retirement center? I’m not sure I buy the yard work argument. You could afford a hundred gardeners.”

&nb
sp; “About two years ago, right after Emmy got her job at the hospital, I decided I didn’t want to waste another nickel on myself and my stupid spending habits. I retired and liquidated everything. I scraped together every penny I had and put it in a trust fund for Emmy. On the day I die, she was supposed to get millions. I wanted it all to go to her.” He broke down again, and it took him a moment to say, “I never expected to outlive her. How is something like this even fair?”

  It wasn’t.

  After I walked Mr. Adams to the center’s dining room for dinner, I thanked him and headed home. It was late, and smelling the food in the dining room seemed to help my appetite find its way back to me after its recent hiatus. I think it went to Scotland.

  Mr. Adams was a wonderful man, and I would be checking on him every time I came to see Mrs. Allen.

  11

  If one door closes and another one opens,

  your house is probably haunted.

  —BUMPER STICKER

  I walked into the apartment knowing full well Mr. Farrow was there. I felt him as I was walking up the stairs even though we now had an elevator.

  After putting my bag down, I sought him out. “I think we should talk about what’s going on.”

  He almost looked up from his desk. “Why? What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. That’s kind of the problem.”

  I wasn’t used to being ignored. Well, actually I was, but not from Reyes, and yet Reyes had been doing that very thing for several days. It was eating at me in the same way a person on bath salts eats at the flesh of others. Strangely and disturbingly.

  “Are you seeing someone else?”

  I’d shocked him. The look on his face, which I had to rely on because I could no longer decipher his every emotion, told me so. Perhaps that bothered me more than I’d imagined. That I could no longer read him as precisely as I used to. Like an electrical field was fucking with my sensors. Giving me false readings.

  “I did have amnesia. I figured you might have found someone else in that time. You know, someone less work and more fun.” My thoughts went to Mrs. Abelson. I’d made fun of her because she was so high maintenance, but maybe I was, too. Maybe Reyes just needed to play video games with his friends and smoke a little weed. To relax. To get over the stress of living with yours truly. I was exactly like her.

  “Look, you know if you ever just need to play video games and smoke pot, you can tell me, right?”

  “Are you on medication?”

  “No. I’m serious. I know … I know I can be a little much at times. I would understand if you just needed a break.”

  “Okay. Well, thanks for the offer, but I’m good.”

  “Then what’s bothering you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Fine. Okay, then why haven’t we … you know.” I shrugged so he would get the picture.

  “Why haven’t we shrugged?”

  “No. Had sex. Why haven’t we had sex? I mean, a week ago you couldn’t keep your hands off me and now—oh, my god.” It hit me. In the solar plexus. Hard enough to knock the wind out of me.

  “You liked me better as an amnesiac.”

  “Did I?” he asked, amused.

  “Only you can answer that. Why haven’t you—? Why aren’t you—I?”

  “Happy and content? I am.”

  I blew a stray hair out of my eyes. “Let me get this straight. You have no intention of telling me what’s wrong. You don’t want to talk about whatever is wrong. And you’re going to let me continue to believe I’ve done something horrible before you’ll open up. Even if, say, I restrain you? Force it out of you?”

  “The only thing you are going to force out of me under the confinement of restraints is an orgasm.”

  Finally! “So, you’d be open to my restraining you for my own sexual pleasure?”

  “Wide open.”

  “And, it would be something you’d enjoy?”

  “Who wouldn’t?”

  “Then why haven’t we—? I mean, what’s stopping us from—?”

  This was getting me nowhere. I wasn’t a shrinking violet. I knew how to speak my mind. A little too well. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d used my internal filter. It had been so long, I’d forgotten where I stashed it. But when it came to Reyes Alexander Farrow, I lost all sense of uncouth. I turned couth. It was just so unlike me.

  I took a deep breath and started over. “Why haven’t you touched me?”

  He reached over and poked my elbow.

  “Funny, but you know what I mean.”

  “I’m giving you time.”

  “Time for what? Origami lessons?”

  “I’m giving you space.”

  “Space for what? The elephant I’ve been trying to adopt?” I looked around. “He’ll need a pretty big play area.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Just tell me what’s bothering you.” Did he know? Did he know he was a god and that I knew he was a god and that I had the only thing in the universe that could trap him for all eternity? Fingers crossed he didn’t.

  After a long moment of contemplation, he released the breath he’d been holding. “Nothing is bothering me, Dutch.”

  “That’s it,” I said, putting my foot down and girding my loins. Metaphorically. “If you won’t tell me, I’m moving in with Cookie.”

  “Again?”

  I ground my teeth, stomped to our bedroom, took down an overnight bag, and stuffed it with a toothbrush, a few mismatched articles of clothing, and a nightshirt that read DRIVE IT LIKE YOU STOLE IT. Then, without another word, I marched to the door, opened it, and had every intention of slamming it so hard the shock wave would shake the building, when I heard him say, “Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.”

  Appalled, I stopped mid-swing. Or I tried to. I’d put so much energy into the door thing that it kept coming despite my wishes. Only I’d turned back to Reyes. And that was when my face found yet another object to slam into.

  * * *

  “I’m moving in,” I said, marching past Cookie when she opened her door.

  “Again?”

  “I mean it this time, Cook. That man is impossible.” I pointed in the general direction of our apartment in case she didn’t know who I was talking about.

  But before I could form another word, I noticed a particularly mouthwatering scent in the air. “What’s that smell?” I asked, sniffing.

  A nervous laugh bubbled out of her. “What smell? There’s no smell.” She eased toward the kitchen as though to block me. She may have been bigger, but I could tackle a 225-pound tight end given the right motivation.

  Then it hit me. The truth. The betrayal. I gasped. And gaped. And glared. For, like, a really long time, until she crumbled like the cowardly traitor she was.

  “I was hungry,” she said, her shoulders deflating in shame.

  “Really?”

  “You were off doing whatever it is you do.”

  “La Satilla?”

  “And I didn’t feel like cooking.”

  “You got chile rellenos from La Satilla?”

  “Only a few.”

  “And you didn’t feel the need to mention it?”

  “I was going to. I swear. But it all happened so fast.”

  “You know what their chile rellenos do to me.”

  She finally let a saucy grin slip. “I got stuffed sopapillas, too.”

  I dropped my bag and rubbed my hands together. “Looks like I moved in at just the right moment.”

  She laughed as we went to her kitchen and started arranging the feast. Amber strolled in with a dimple-faced Quentin in tow, the two of them as charming as ever.

  “Hey, Aunt Charley,” she said, giving me a quick hug. “Did you move in again? I saw your bag.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Sweet.” She signed the entire time she spoke for Quentin’s benefit, then she turned to him and explained, her movements quick and silent.

  Quentin laughed and said I had a screw loos
e. Like literally. He signed, “Screw loose.” I pounced, attacking him for his insolence, using that as an excuse to give him a great big bear hug. He hugged back, wrapping his long arms around me. He was a really good hugger.

  After the reunion, the two of them made a plate and headed for the family room.

  “Should I talk to her tonight?” I whispered to Cook.

  “Nah. We have some time to decide how to go about it.”

  I nodded.

  “Oh!” Amber shouted back from over her shoulder. “We’re still working on the video. We have a lead we’re checking out now, but it has over eight hundred thousand hits.”

  “That’s so great!” I shouted back.

  Cookie closed her eyes in horror. “That’s so bad.”

  I chuckled and waited for Uncle Bob to walk in. He was in a mood. I could feel him the moment he got out of his car three stories down.

  “Hey, you,” I said when he walked in and hung up his coat.

  “Oh, hey, pumpkin. Moving in again?”

  For the second time in as many minutes, I grabbed the first hug. “Yeah. I’ve named your sofa Fabio.”

  “Fantastic. It looks like a Fabio.”

  “Right? Blond and inviting with hills and valleys in all the right places.”

  “But you know we have seven thousand guest rooms now. You don’t have to sleep on the sofa.” He walked around the island to give his wife a hug. And a kiss. A really long kiss that may or may not have involved tongues.

  I fought my gag reflex and finally interrupted. “So, what’s going on?”

  “Not much.”

  “You seem agitated.”

  He tore his gaze off Cook to look at me. “Nope. Is Amber home yet?”

  I’d thrown Cookie with the agitated comment, but she recovered quickly. “Yeah. She and Quentin are eating in the family room. They’re working on a case.”

  “A case, huh?”

  “The video.”

  “Ah,” he said as he made a plate.

  “Is she in trouble?”

  He stopped and looked up at me. “Why would she be in trouble?”

  “I don’t know. You just seem agitated. And she’s a teen. Fits.”

  “No, Charley, Amber is not in trouble. The day that kid gives us a minute of trouble will be the day I hang up my badge.”