The Curse of Tenth Grave

by Darynda Jones

  “Never hurts to ask.”

  “You’re right.”

  Without another word to me, she all but ran back inside to talk to the director.

  23

  I was ready to take on the world,

  until I saw something sparkly.

  —T-SHIRT

  I left Pari in the hopes of finding Osh’ekiel somewhere in the great vastness. But Cookie called before I got very far.

  “Charley’s House of Lederhosen.”

  “Can you talk?”

  “I think so. I might slur my words a bit. Didn’t get much sleep. Otherwise, I’m good.”

  “Gambling.”

  “Oh, hell, yeah. Vegas. Blackjack. Male strippers.”

  “Mr. Adams.”

  “I guess he can go, too, but he has to get his own room.”

  “That’s why all his business ventures failed.”

  I stopped midstride. “Are you trying to tell me Mr. Adams has a gambling problem?”

  “A huuuuuge one,” she said. “He is buried in debt. And not the good kind.”

  Was there a good kind? And now for the $20,000 question. “Who does he owe?”

  “All I could find out is that his bookie is Danny Trejo.” When I didn’t say anything, she said, “Sorry, I saw Trejo and got excited. His bookie is Umberto Trejo.”

  “No way. Surely that’s not the same Umberto Trejo I went to school with. And where did you get this information?” I was totally impressed.

  “I have my sources.”

  “Mm-hm. Uncle Bob?”

  “Yeah. Seems they’ve been looking into Adams, too.”

  “I thought he didn’t know anything about the case.”

  “He hears things. That’s what he said.”

  “And he shared this with you after he threatened to have us arrested because…?”

  “I promised him a very special date night.”

  “Cookie,” I said, sniffing. “You’re growing up so fast.”

  * * *

  With my plans to hunt down Osh thwarted once again, I made a couple of calls and headed to a dive on Mitchel called the Dive. According to my sources, that was where Umberto conducted his business. And if he conducted it there, I had a feeling I knew who he worked for, a seedy lawyer who had his hand in more mold-infested cookie jars than a corrupt congressman.

  I walked in to find several men strewn about the place. Almost every man there turned toward me, their paranoia rearing its ugly head. It had to suck being a criminal and suspicious of every person you saw. There were less stressful ways to make a living.

  The only person who didn’t turn toward me was a short beefy guy who was going over notes in a memo pad. I strolled over to him, all cool nonchalance.

  “If it isn’t Zumberto.” We used to call him that because he zoomed everywhere. Couldn’t sit down for more than a few minutes at a time. He could have been the poster child for an Adderall ad.

  Shocked, he looked up at me. “Charley Davidson?”

  “All day, every day. How have you been?” I sat three stools down from him, closer to the door and freedom should I need to bolt. All eyes were still on me, way too tense, way too ready to torture me for information. Or to just torture me. This was a seriously paranoid lot.

  He shifted, suddenly uncomfortable. “Fine. What’s up? I heard you were working for the cops.”

  “And I can only imagine who you work for.”

  “No one. I own this place.” He indicated the small building by lifting his chin in true gangster style.

  “Let me rephrase. Who you keep books for?”

  He pressed his mouth into a noncommittal smirk and shrugged. “No idea what you’re talking about. And you might think about leaving—now.”

  I moved one stool closer. “I’m here on official business. I’d hate for this place to get raided.” I tsked and took it all in. The dingy wood and dingier mirrors. The floor that sloped north. The pool tables in serious disrepair. “I’d hate to see you lose this gem.”

  “It serves its purpose. Why you threatening? We were cool in school, right?”

  “Yes, we were.” I dared to say we were friends. I always liked the class clowns. “But that was before you started keeping books. Do you collect on the debts, too?” That would explain the muscle hanging out at such an early hour.

  “Davidson, what do you want me to say?”

  I moved another stool closer. Umberto waved a man off who was coming over to strong-arm me. “You can tell me what the deal is with one of your clients.”

  “Do you talk about your clients, Miss PI?”

  “So, you’ve been keeping track of me.”

  “Nah, man, I only know ’cause you helped out my cousin.” He dropped the charade and softened. “He was up for kidnapping and obstruction or some shit. You proved that crazy-ass chick set him up. You an absolute badass, Charlotte Davidson.”

  “No way.” I sat at the stool next to him. “You’re Santiago’s cousin? I used to have such a crush on him.”

  “Everybody did. Damn, that pendejo got all the girls in school.” He nodded to the barkeep. “What can I get you?”

  “Oh, just water. I … had an interesting night. I’m a little dehydrated.”

  “I hear that. So, why you in my business?”

  “I need info on someone you keep books for.”

  “Not sure I can tell you anything, but shoot.”

  I thought of how I could phrase the questions without seeming too obtrusive, but gave up before I got anywhere promising. “How much does Geoff Adams owe you?”

  He was looking straight ahead. A slow grin spread across his face. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  I knew that wouldn’t work. “Then can you tell me if he owed you money?”

  “I just keep the books. If he did owe, say, someone in the organization money, it damned sure wouldn’t be me.”

  “Oh. Okay.” He really didn’t seem like the kingpin type. I decided to appeal to his sense of family. “Umberto,” I said, putting a hand on his arm. “It’s important. His daughter is dead.”

  He bit down, put his drink on the bar, and turned in to me. Then he moved closer. Put a hand on my hip. Leaned forward until his mouth was on mine.

  There was no lust in his eyes. He had no intention of feeling me up. He was, however, feeling for a wire. He slipped a hand under my sweater, up my stomach, and over Danger and Will. Luckily, I wasn’t prudish. His manhandling would’ve seriously flustered someone like Cookie. But me? He could feel me up all day as long as that’s all he did. And he told me what I needed to know at the end of it.

  When he’d felt around to my back and along the waistband of my jeans, slipping his fingers in a little farther than necessary, he used it to pull me across the stool until my crotch straddled his. As he did all that, he did have a niggling of lust, but just a niggling. He’d never been into me, and we both knew it.

  I leaned in so he could press his mouth to my ear. The room had gone quiet. No one moved as they watched the peep show play out before them.

  “I’m only telling you this because we had nothing to do with the girl’s death.”

  “Works for me.”

  Testing me further, seeing just how far he could take the charade, he slipped a hand between my legs, stroking me softly with his thumb.

  “He owed Fernando a shit-ton. The guy was a total fuckup, and he just kept fucking up again and again. Just kept getting deeper and deeper. Deep is not a place you want to be with Fernando.”

  “You could’ve stopped taking his bets.”

  “Hey, if Fernando says give him a marker, I give him a marker. Seems the guy’s father is loaded, and Fernando had a plan.”

  “This sounds bad.”

  He let his lips caress an earlobe. The peach fuzz on his face tickled, and I almost laughed.

  “Let’s just say his last bet was big. Thought he knew something about a game being thrown, but it was going to put him at over three hundred g’s.”
<
br />   “Holy shit.”

  “Fernando took the bet. Told Adams if he lost and couldn’t pay one more time, he’d start killing everyone he loved, starting with his daughter.”

  “Umberto,” I said, suddenly wondering what he’d gotten himself into. I curled my fingers into the sleeve of his jacket.

  He pulled me tighter. “You don’t understand. When the game didn’t go Adams’s way and the girl actually died, Fernando lost it. Like he came unglued, querida. He was so upset. Thought one of his crew did it without his permission, but trust me, that didn’t happen. He … questioned everyone.”

  I leaned back to look at him. “Umberto, you’re sure he didn’t do it? Because that would be one hell of a coincidence.”

  “Go ask him yourself, querida. You’ll see.”

  “Okay. Stay out of trouble?”

  He let me go and spread his hands. “Always. I’m lily white, baby.”

  The men around us laughed as I stood to leave. He caught me and leaned in again. “I didn’t really need the show.”

  “You and I both know that’s not true.”

  Raising his hand to my face, he ran his thumb over my bottom lip and then licked it as though savoring the last trace of chocolate on his fingertips.

  I was shocked. I didn’t feel lust coming off him in waves like I did when a guy was usually interested. Then I realized why. It wasn’t lust he felt, but something deeper.

  He took my hand and pressed it to his chest. “You broke my heart once, querida. I have to guard it now. Get the fuck out.” He winked playfully and then dropped my hand and turned his back to me. It took me several long moments to realize he hadn’t been joking.

  I walked out, racking my brain, trying to remember how and when I could possibly have broken Umberto’s heart. To say we’d been friends was an overstatement. We were in the same class. I knew him. He knew me. But we’d never given each other the time of day.

  Misery purred to life around me, her engine only slightly louder than a 747. I was just about to head back to the office for more recon, mostly on this Fernando character, when I got a text. It must have been from Umberto. It said Fernando could see me in two hours and had an address to meet.

  I didn’t text back.

  * * *

  Since I had some time and I wasn’t going to have to hunt down Fernando, I drove out to Mr. Adams’s house. I couldn’t believe how wrong I’d been about him. I pegged him for a standup guy. A stellar father. A pillar of society. But even his own dad had only bad things to say about him.

  Did Mr. Adams Sr. know that Mr. Adams Jr. was also a degenerate gambler, as cliché as that was? I didn’t think so. He would have told me. But how can someone be that deep into gambling, to lose everything again and again, and no one know? No one I’d talked to, at least.

  Cookie and I chatted on everything she’d found out about Mr. Adams while I was being molested. He’d had a colorful life filled with a lot of unfortunate events. A little too many.

  Mr. Adams was home when I knocked. He was a shell when he answered the door. Pale and withered like he had every intention of just wasting away. The guilt was eating him alive. Umberto had to be wrong about his boss. Fernando had to have done this.

  “Mrs. Davidson. Did you find anything to exonerate Lyle Fiske?” he asked as he held the door open.

  “Not yet, but I’m getting very close.”

  We sat in his messy living room. Magazines lay strewn about the apartment. A laundry basket of clothes sat on one end of the sofa with dirty dishes punctuating the disarray. The cleanest part of the room was a tank with a turtle in it.

  I resisted the urge to introduce myself to the turtle. “Mr. Adams, I am all for finding out what happened to your daughter, but I’ll need your help.”

  “Of course. Anything.”

  “I couldn’t help but notice you’ve had a few unfortunate accidents over the last few years. Strange things like a broken leg. A dislocated shoulder. And you lost two fingers in a construction accident?”

  He folded his hands together. “Mrs. Davidson, what does that have to do with my daughter?”

  “Sir, you promised to be honest with me.” When he said nothing, I added, “I believe it has everything to do with her and a certain bet that you made.”

  I barely got out the last word when Mr. Adams broke completely. He sobbed into a towel he had sitting on the sofa. His shoulders shook so hard I thought he’d rattle his ribs loose.

  “I took the bet,” he said, his voice cracking on every syllable. “I didn’t think he’d do it.”

  “A man who would break your leg? Who would take your fingers?”

  “Fernando didn’t do this.” He held up his hand. His pinkie and ring fingers had been severed at the knuckle. “That was another bookie in another city in another time.”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “Since I was in grade school. I bet on anything. Used to get sent home for running craps games in the schoolyard. I’d go for days without lunch and use that money to make a bet of one kind or another.”

  “Didn’t your father ever get you help?”

  He laughed a long moment. It was bitter and full of pain. “Oh, I have never lived up to his pristine standards, and he doesn’t let me forget it. Adams men don’t need help. They stand on their own two feet.”

  “Is that why you did it? As payback to him?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that I took the bet. I signed my own daughter’s death warrant.” He broke down again.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Adams. But this is all hearsay. It won’t clear Lyle Fiske. The evidence against him is too solid. We need something more to get Lyle off. We need a guarantee.”

  And I might just have one. I couldn’t wear a wire to the meeting with Fernando, but maybe I could get something that would help us. See some clue that would get Lyle acquitted.

  Fernando had to have done it. Who else? Unless a member of his crew really did do it, possibly thinking it would endear him to Fernando. But when he freaked out and started questioning his men, whoever did it clammed up, scared for his life.

  If the guilty party was at the meeting, I would be able to feel it. If nothing else, I could tell Fernando and bargain for the guilty party to turn himself in.

  Just as I stood to leave, I spotted a shotgun in the corner of the living room, and I knew exactly why it was there.

  “I’m sorry, but could I have a glass of water?”

  “Of course.”

  The minute he left the room, I texted Parker. At Adams’s house. Get here now.

  In a meeting. Be there in an hour.

  Wonderful. How was I going to keep Mr. Adams busy for an hour? I had a meeting to get to myself.

  I couldn’t put Cookie in the middle of this. Ubie was busy. I couldn’t drag Pari into this, either. I’d just dragged her into the Heather case. I had no choice.

  When he walked back in, I was pointing the shotgun at him.

  “What’s this?” he asked, alarmed. For good reason.

  “Sit down,” I said, indicating the sofa with a wave of the gun like they did in the movies.

  He stood there, took a drink of the water that was meant for me, and resigned himself to his fate by opening his hands. Damn, I didn’t think of that. Pointing a gun at someone who is suicidal is like Christmas coming early.

  I never think ahead.

  “I mean it,” I said from between clenched teeth, hoping it would make me sound more authentic.

  “Just do it. Please.” Tears still shimmered in his eyes, and as angry as I was at him, my heart still ached.

  I released a loud breath in defeat and started to put the gun down when I remembered the turtle in the tank. I grinned and pointed the gun in its direction. “Sit down.”

  Thank God Mr. Adams had no idea I’d sooner shoot him than the turtle.

  24

  My family’s coat of arms is a wraparound and ties in the back.

  Is that normal?

  —M
OSTLY TRUE FACT

  After tying up Mr. Adams, I put his phone on the table in front of him. “You can call the police when I’m gone. Just use your nose. It works. Trust me.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because, Mr. Adams, you are a danger to yourself. I’ve called Parker, too. Oh, and I’m going to meet with Fernando, so if you could wait to call the cops and have me arrested for about, say, twenty more minutes, I’d appreciate it.”

  “You can’t meet with him,” Mr. Adams said. “Mrs. Davidson, Charley, he is not a nice guy. Look what he did to my baby. Please—”

  “Mr. Adams, this is the only way to get the charges against Fiske dropped. I need to find the real murderer.”

  He bowed his head, grief consuming him.

  I left him alone like that, hoping there wasn’t another gun in the house and Parker really would get there when he said he would. Just in case, I called Uncle Bob, told him I’d tied a man up for his own safety, and asked him to send a uniform in, say, about twenty minutes.

  The last thing I heard before hanging up was “You did what?”

  I pulled around a rather nice house in what was known to the locals as the war zone. The crime rates in this part of town were astronomical.

  I knocked on the front door of the house, a nice adobe with flowers in window trellises and ivies growing up the sides. It wasn’t huge, but it was nicer than most of the houses in the neighborhood.

  “This way.”

  I turned to a man motioning me to go around the side of the house and through a gate to the backyard.

  “Are you Fernando?” When he didn’t answer, I asked, “Strong silent type, huh?”

  When we got to the backyard, a man in his midfifties waved me over with a barbecue fork. I could only hope it would not be the instrument of my death.

  “I’m Fernando.”

  Wait. According to gossip, I was immortal. He couldn’t kill me with a barbecue fork.

  He then raised an eight-inch boning knife.

  But a boning knife?

  “I’m Charley.”

  Desperately needing a shave, he wore his slightly graying hair in a ponytail and a bright Hawaiian shirt with an A-line tank underneath. The sun had made an appearance, but it was far from Hawaiian shirts and barbecuing weather. He was not what I’d expected.