by Celia Ashley
“Right. Well, it’s a big sign now, purple with gold letters. I have another question.”
“Go ahead.”
“What made you ask for me? I need a real answer to that.”
Maris bent her head. She moved her fingers across the supple surface of her purse. She wanted to grab her keys from the front pocket, walk out the door, and not look back. But she couldn’t run away. Not this time.
Clearing her throat, she met his eyes, the stunning blue that made her think of the sky. “Because Alva told me to. She said you were the one.”
“In your dream.”
“No. After the dream. While I was driving. The dead do speak, you know.”
He didn’t respond, but after a moment, he set the pen down on the desk as if dismissing the need for its use. The discussion clearly over, she gathered her purse against her chest, readying to rise from her seat. She was halfway up when he spoke again.
“Forensically, yes, they do speak. Outside of that, I have experienced some…unexplained incidents here in Alcina Cove. It’s not called ‘haunted Alcina Cove’ for nothing, I suppose.” He snorted, more in self-derision than amusement.
Maris sat back down.
“And I’d like to believe you—”
“Except you don’t,” Maris whispered.
“Except I don’t,” he agreed.
“I thought…my aunt—well, that you would find out everything about tonight.”
Once more she met his gaze. Something moved in his eyes, a knowledge of darkness, fear. He blinked, banishing the ghosts in his life back to where he kept them hidden. He picked up the pen again. Click.
“There’s another problem with what you’re saying. There’s nothing to discover. It would appear Alva Mabry passed from the most natural of causes—old age.”
With a twist deep in her abdomen, Maris stood. “I don’t understand.”
“The ME believes it to be the case. As I do. I don’t like having my time wasted, Ms. Granger. Especially at this hour.”
“I’m not trying to waste your time. I’m trying to get answers.”
“There aren’t any answers to get. I suggest you go to wherever you’re staying for the night, and tomorrow I’ll take you to the house. If the estrangement you spoke of really exists, you may need an address book in order to make funeral arrangements.”
“Fine. But I’d rather go now.”
“Now?”
“Right now.”
He beat a rolling rhythm across the desktop with his fingertips, the pen in his other hand keeping time in counterpoint. She had a sudden urge to take the pen from him and throw it across the room.
“All right.”
Maris’s shoulders relaxed. “Thank you.”
Dan Stauffer heaved himself up from the chair. He wasn’t a big man. Less than six feet with a natural build. Not the sort of man who tended to muscular bulk, even if he worked at it. But not weak. Not for one moment. He moved as if the man inside of him, inside his head, was huge. He probably lived his life with the same attitude, fearless but for the darkness he had known. She might wrestle the information of his experience out of him, but she doubted it. He’d never give her the time…or reveal that weakness.
Chapter 4
Dan felt himself hunching over the steering wheel in a defensive position. He tried to settle down, sit back, but found he couldn’t. The knuckles of his hand shone white beneath the skin in the streetlights’ glow. In the passenger seat, Maris sat with her own hands folded in her lap.
“Detective.”
“Yeah?”
“Relax. I’m not the big bad wolf. I’m not scary.”
The hell you aren’t. He thought of another woman he had known, a woman with dreams who’d allowed an evil into her life, and into his, too.
“Take deep breaths. In through your nose, out through your mouth.”
Part of him wanted to lash out at her words, but the less primal portion of his brain recognized the sense in them. He breathed in, let the air out.
“Once more.”
He did so, loosening his grip on the wheel. With a release of the curve in his spine, he settled back against the seat, filling his lungs again.
“What are you afraid of? Psychic ability isn’t a malevolent gift.”
His breath left him in an audible rush. “I’m not afraid, least of all of you. It’s been a very long day, starting at about five o’clock yesterday morning with less than two hours of sleep in between.”
“But that’s not my fault.” She glanced at him. “Is it?”
“I didn’t say it was. I’m just explaining—”
“Okay.”
His molars ground together. “I don’t believe there’s any such thing as clairvoyance either. Sorry.” God, when had he become such a bald-faced liar? When necessity had made him one, he supposed.
“Were you out celebrating something last night?”
He glanced at her and away, back to the road. “Yes. My promotion to detective several months ago. Finally got the chance. Why? Did you ‘see’ that, too?”
“No.” She shifted in the seat, turning her attention to the street outside the window. “You smell a bit like alcohol. You know, when it’s been in your system a while.”
Dan shook his head. If she could smell it, Whitley and Green and even Rankin and his assistant had probably gotten a good whiff, too. “Today was supposed to be my day off. I never would have picked last night if I’d known I’d be working.” Why was he explaining himself to her?
“And perfume.”
“What?” He bent his head, sniffing at his shirt collar.
“Very nice scent, actually. I couldn’t smell any of this in the office, but now that we’re confined in your car, well…”
He suppressed a groan of frustration. Like her great-aunt, Maris Granger noticed a damned sight too much, a talent that made people susceptible to their load of crap. They weren’t reading anything, “seeing” anything. They paid attention. Period.
“Was that who you were expecting?” Maris went on, relentless. “When you came in and saw me, I mean. The woman whose perfume is clinging to your clothes?”
Jaw clenched, Dan applied the turn signal. “Would you mind not talking, please?”
In the light thrown from the dashboard, he witnessed her deadpan expression broaden into a grin. The volcanic eruption of his blood at the sight of her surprisingly sexy smile burned the inclination to snap at her to ashes.
Oh no you don’t, Danny boy. That’s about as screwed up as you could get.
He pulled the car to the curb. “Well, Ms. Granger, here we are.”
“Maris.”
Nope. He wasn’t going to allow himself that familiarity. Not after the heat that had whipped through him. He turned off the ignition and climbed out of the car. Maris followed a moment later. She stood beside him on the sidewalk, her gaze straying to the one patrol unit still parked out front.
“Finishing up, I expect,” he said.
“With what?”
“Securing the place.”
“You can ask the neighbors about me if you need to. Don’t think they’ll remember.” She took a long moment in consideration of Alva Mabry’s house, brow creased in an attitude he couldn’t read. The bangs of her short dark hair drifted over her smoke-colored eyes in a current of air. What had Mac said? Hot in so many strange but perfect ways. Dan could see that. Yeah, he could see that.
He cleared his throat. “How long ago did you move away?”
“Twenty years? Long time. Long enough for no one around here to remember anymore, I’m sure.”
Dan shoved his hands into his jacket pockets, giving her a minute. She took a step closer to the lawn and paused. He eyed her clothing, the black, laced-up boots, the mid-calf skirt that looked as if it had been manufactured in another century, the coat, too, fitted and flared in an old-fashioned design. Not a style he would have picked out in a crowd except
maybe to gawk at, but something about it suited her. Marched to her own drummer, Maris Granger did.
“Did the people of this town come to respect my aunt before she died? For…for what she practiced?”
He hesitated before answering. He didn’t want to tell her the truth because he knew the truth would hurt her. And why should that matter?
“I’m sure they did,” he found himself saying. “Maybe not all, but I know she did a good business.”
Maris nodded. He contemplated her profile, the petite features almost elfin in character. He pictured her in a red Santa hat and almost laughed.
“What you’re thinking, Detective Stauffer? Not funny.”
He sucked in a breath. “Okay. That was just creepy.”
“Sorry.” She spun to face him again. “Can we go inside now?”
God, yes. Anything but standing outside staring at a strange woman while besotted school boy thoughts ran through his brain. Once he got himself under control, he would chalk it up to lack of sleep and whatever trace of alcohol might still be in his bloodstream. For now, though, he hastened ahead of her and held open the door. She stepped inside and stopped.
“I remember this,” she said quietly. Officer Whitley paused in reaching for the light switch nearest the door. He looked from Maris to Dan, his eyes as wide as a shying horse.
“Detective?”
“Sorry. Maris Granger, Officer Dick Whitley. Ms. Granger came to the station to speak with me about the death of Alva Mabry. Her great-aunt.”
“But how did she even know Mabry had died?”
“A very good question to have answered,” Dan said. From the corner of his eye, he saw the arched wings of Maris’s eyebrows lift. She opened her mouth, probably to voice her objection to being spoken about as if she wasn’t present, or worse, to tell Whitley what she had told him, about the nonsense of her “dreams.” Dan forestalled the mention of either. “We’ll lock up. Thanks, Whitley.”
Whitley gave Dan an uncertain nod. “Nice to meet you, Ms. Granger. I’m sorry about your aunt.” He left, pulling the door closed behind him.
Maris headed into the darkened parlor and paused on the threshold. She ran her hand over the wall in search of the switch and turned on the fixture over the table.
“Don’t touch anything,” Dan instructed.
“You said you believed her death was natural.”
“I did. I do. But until there’s definite confirmation, we’re going to keep our hands in our pockets, got it?”
“Got it.”
Dan resisted the urge to grab his shirt where the Priestess card lay tucked away. Too late to sneak it back onto the table. Damn it. How could he have done something so idiotic? Especially fresh into his newly promoted position. Fuck.
“Something wrong, Detective?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Did I curse out loud? I’m sorry.”
“Nope. You didn’t.”
Intuition. A long study of body language. Something. She was not reading his mind. Not. No freaking way.
She walked around the table much as he had done earlier, her hands clasped together behind her back. Instead of looking at the floor, though, her gaze was on the papered walls, taking in the few paintings. She came fully round to the chair and nodded at it. “Is this where you found her?”
He cleared his throat with a brief cough. “Yes.”
“Sitting up?”
A chill danced along his nape. “Yes.”
She studied the layout of the cards, her dark hair swinging forward along her neck. He did his best not to follow the movement but the dark, silky strands against the paleness of her skin fascinated him.
“She was performing a reading for someone.”
“No, I don’t think so.” He jerked his chin toward the opposite side of the table. “The other chair was pushed up. The carpet was unmarked. There would have been indentations had anyone been sitting in the chair and moved it back. She, your aunt, hadn’t been gone very long when she was found.”
Maris lifted her head, gazing toward the far side of the room. “How long?”
“I’m not a medical professional, but I’d wager a few hours only.”
Maris closed her eyes, tipped back her head, her neck slender, long, and graceful. He pictured his mouth against it and looked away. Fantasies like these could land him in deep trouble. He didn’t even know the woman. He hadn’t known the woman in the bar either, yet off he’d run to the station imagining she’d come looking for him. Imagining a good deal more than that. He needed a grip on reality.
“There’s a card missing.”
Dan started guiltily. “Is there?” The Priestess flashed into his mind’s eye in her blue garment, dark hair long and curling. He mentally shoved it away, apprehensive that she would see it, too. An absurd notion he couldn’t shake.
“Right here. From the formation.” She pointed at the empty space on the cloth. “Of course, she might have been in the process of laying them out when she died.” She turned and looked at him directly, her eyes almond-shaped, long-lashed, and so very pale. There was no denying the familial relationship between her and Alva Mabry. Strange how much they looked alike. He couldn’t imagine a generation lay between them based on the photo.
Scanning the table again, Maris’s gaze flickered over the surface, then seemed to linger on the empty place among the Tarot cards. He had a feeling she knew exactly where the missing card had ended up. The sensation of her knowledge troubled him more than if she had accused him outright, called him out on a mistake, a momentary lapse of awareness. But to pull the stupid thing from his pocket now would make him look like an ass. Dishonest even. And yet he wanted to. Wanted to ask her to tell him what the card meant, explain its significance. As if he’d ever really given a crap about something like that.
“Detective.”
He released a breath. “What?”
“Someone was here. Aunt Alva was not alone when she died. She’s telling me that.”
“No.”
“What?”
“No. In no way am I going to believe your deceased aunt is giving you information from beyond.” And yet he’d known others who’d experienced the unexplained—people with whom he shared more than the acquaintance of a mere half an hour. God, he’d seen things himself that sometimes caused him to wake out of a sound sleep soaked in sweat and reaching for the light. The vanishing figure behind his car tonight paled in comparison. Had strangeness become so commonplace that he rejected and mocked it?
“Believe what you want. As her only surviving blood relative, I am asking you to check. Do not dismiss my aunt’s death so easily. I don’t care how old she was. I think she deserves a few hours of your time. I’m not denying her death was natural, but whoever was here with her might be able to tell me something about her last moments.”
“Ms. Granger…”
“Maris. Call me Maris, will you? Calling me ‘Ms’ anything isn’t going to make a difference in what you feel about everything I’ve said.”
Dan scratched his head, observing Maris across the room as she tucked her hair behind her ear. Multiple earrings glittered in the light, a feather dangling from her lobe drifting in the current of air created by her hand. How had he missed that? She was…outlandish, not his type at all. And yet…and yet nothing. “I think it’s time for me to bring you back to your car. You can get on to wherever it is you’re staying for the night, and we can discuss this further tomorrow after I’ve had a few more hours of sleep.”
“May I go upstairs first?”
“No.”
“I’d really like—”
“No.”
She cocked a hip. In another woman, there might have been something sexy about it. In her, the movement looked like an issued challenge. He shrugged. “Tomorrow. Take it or leave it. I want sleep and the opportunity to think about what you’re saying. I mean, look at the place. Nothing disturbed, no signs of anything amiss. Your aunt was ni
nety-three, Maris. She lived a good long life.” He moved toward the light switch. “Let’s go.”
Maris hesitated. “Someone was here with her when she died. Maybe it was natural causes, maybe not. But someone was here.”
With a sigh, Dan snapped off the light, plunging the room into darkness. Only the porch fixture shining through glass cast a dim illumination over Maris’s features. Dan indicated the front door with a jerk of his head.
“Then why doesn’t she just tell you who the hell it was and save me the trouble?”
Maris strode past him and yanked open the door. “It doesn’t work that way. I wish to God it did.”
Dan followed. “You wouldn’t happen to have a key?”
“Of course not.”
Dan pulled the door shut after locking it in order to secure the house overnight. Tomorrow they’d have to get a locksmith out here to make a key. “Give me your number. I’ll call. We’ll take it from there.”
With a nod, she strode to his car, walking with a provocative but baffling elemental grace. He hit the key fob to unlock the door. She’d gotten into his vehicle and yanked the seat belt into place before he’d reached the driver’s side.
They rode in silence back in the direction of the station. He tried to think of something to say. An apology worked its way to his lips as he tapped the steering wheel in indecision. Finally, he bit the words back. What the hell did he need to apologize for? What he needed to do was double-check Maris’s claims of estrangement, her whereabouts for the evening. Without all the mumbo jumbo she had thrown at him, her knowledge of her aunt’s demise was suspicious. Maybe the woman really hadn’t died of natural causes and her supposed grandniece was merely trying to throw him off.
“I’m not guilty of anything but responding to a call for help.”
Dan snorted. “Is my face that easy to read?”
“Everyone’s is.”
“So you admit that’s how you and others like your aunt fool people?”
“Having no idea what others do, I don’t admit to anything.”