Shades of Gray

by Rachel Ann Nunes

  I shook my head. “Nothing I would be capable of pinpointing. No way I’m touching it again.”

  Shannon put me firmly in the passenger seat of my car. I would have protested more if I’d thought I was capable of driving myself home, but I was beginning to think that reading too many imprints wasn’t like getting a sore muscle. It could be worse. How much worse, I didn’t know.

  He was back within moments, slipping into the driver’s seat. The sun glinted off the blonder streaks in his hair that was starting to curl on the ends. “So,” he said, “where’d you learn those moves?”

  “What moves?”

  “I pulled up just as you took out that guy.”

  “Wait a minute. How’d you find me, anyway? This isn’t your jurisdiction.”

  His eyes narrowed. “A tip from an informant I have watching Russo’s place. I came back when he told me about your flat tire. A little too late to help you with that thug, but you did okay.”

  I contemplated shrugging but decided it would take too much energy. “You’re the one who told me I should take lessons from Steve.”

  He blinked at me.

  “Whaaaat?” I said.

  “You never listen to what I tell you.”

  “I do when I happen to agree with you.”

  He laughed. “That’s a first.”

  We settled into a comfortable silence, and after a while I tilted my seat as far back as it would go. My brain still felt sluggish, and secretly I was a little concerned. What if one day a negative imprint was so strong I couldn’t come back from it? But I wasn’t going to share that thought with Shannon. Besides, it was kind of nice not picking at each other for once.

  “Autumn, wake up.”

  I jerked awake and found myself staring into Jake’s face. “Jake, I—” Looking around, I saw that Shannon had parked outside my shop. I smiled and stretched. “Hi.” After the morning I’d had, Jake looked really good leaning over me.

  “I thought you were going to take it easy for a while with the imprints.”

  “It was sort of an accident. I promise no more touching strange knives.”

  “Knives?” Jake got that worried look that made me wish I’d kept my mouth shut.

  “Don’t worry.” Shannon appeared behind him on the sidewalk. “The guy is paying for his rash behavior.” He winked at me with one of his beautiful eyes before turning back to Jake. “Looks like my ride has caught up to me. Keep an eye on her, would you?”

  “Jake doesn’t make choices for me,” I shot back.

  Shannon only smiled. “Good to hear.”

  Jake frowned as Shannon took his leave. “So,” he said, “what happened really?”

  “Didn’t Shannon tell you?”

  “I want your version.”

  He let me finish recounting the morning’s adventures before he spoke. “Sounds to me like Russo doesn’t know where Dennis is.”

  “Why would he give Sophie a new car?”

  “Maybe Russo is someone from Dennis’s past, but he doesn’t actually want to hurt him.”

  “That doesn’t explain why Dennis was so afraid after seeing him. Why would he run away?”

  “The real question is, Who were those guys shooting at Dennis in Tawnia’s drawing?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe we should call her and see if she’s heard anything else. Maybe Dennis has tried to contact Sophie.”

  “We’ll give her a call—after we clean you up.” Jake gingerly touched my bottom lip. I could feel it swelling, but it didn’t hurt nearly as much as my hip, where the thug had kicked me, or my arms, which I had used to block his blows. I’d have to wear long sleeves to hide the bruises.

  Jake held my hand as we went into Autumn’s Antiques, waving Thera away so she wouldn’t cluck over me. “We’ll explain in a minute,” he said as we headed to my back room.

  I cleaned up in my bathroom, while Jake put on some herbal tea. That was exactly what I needed. I also felt the need to touch something with positive imprints, but I was too exhausted to find anything, and after my fight with the thug, my fingers felt too sore for my antique rings. I left them on the sink in the bathroom and settled for two packages of string cheese in the hopes the protein would help as much as it had last night.

  I settled into my easy chair, pulling my feet up under me, and called Tawnia between bites. “Hey, Autumn,” she said. “I’ve been worried about you.”

  “I’m fine.”

  She hesitated slightly before saying, “Good.”

  “Have you been drawing again?” I hoped she hadn’t drawn me being attacked.

  “No. But Sophie called to tell me that someone has put money into her account. She’s afraid Dennis is into something illegal. She was crying, and I felt so bad for her.”

  “I might know who’s responsible, but it isn’t Dennis.”

  “Who?”

  “Someone from his past. A Nicholas Russo. I don’t have a picture of him, but maybe Sophie’s heard of him.”

  “I’ll ask. But, Autumn, when I said I hadn’t been drawing, I meant today. Last night after we had talked, I did a drawing of a hotel or motel room. Now, that’s not odd, seeing as one of my clients runs a hotel chain and we’ve been brainstorming advertising ideas, but this room looked, well, not like something you’d put in a magazine.”

  “Maybe it’s where Dennis went. Is there anything to identify the place?” I saw Jake staring at me thoughtfully without touching his tea, a frown on his face.

  “It’s really generic. A bed, a slice of a window, and half a table. It’s more what’s on the table that disturbs me.”

  “What?”

  “Something that looked like a stained strip of cloth.”

  “Stained with what?”

  “No clue. It was a pencil sketch. But it could be a makeshift bandage.”

  “Well, there’s nothing we can do about that, I guess.” At my words I felt more than saw Jake relax.

  “I guess not. I’ll be so glad when this is all over. I’m really sorry for dragging you into it.”

  She’d be a lot sorrier if she knew about my street thug. “What are sisters for? You know I thrive on this sort of thing.”

  “I know. And that worries me, too.”

  “Stop worrying. It’s bad for little Ashberry.”

  Tawnia laughed. “Ashberry? Oh, that’ll go over well with Bret. He was thinking more along the lines of Christian.”

  “Wasn’t that his brother’s name?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell him it’s already taken. Bret had enough trouble getting over your dating his brother before him, and I don’t think you need that between you again.” Christian had died in a fall from a tree in the mountains, and Tawnia had been with him at the time. Not a good memory for either of them.

  “Right. Look, Bret and I are taking Sophie out to lunch, so I’d better help him with Saturday chores or we’ll never get out of here.”

  “Have fun.” I didn’t need to tell her to be careful. Tawnia always was.

  Jake was leaning against the sink watching me as I hung up. His muscled arms folded over his stomach, reminding me strangely of Russo’s bodyguard. “Well?”

  I repeated what Tawnia had told me as we sipped our tea. There was a tension that hadn’t been between us before, but I couldn’t pinpoint the reason until Jake spoke.

  “Look,” he said. “About tonight. I promised Kolonda that I’d show a guy her apartments. He’s coming from out of town to look into her construction problems. Want to come along?”

  Not my idea of a Saturday evening, especially when my limbs felt lined with lead. “Actually, I was thinking about going out to Tawnia’s. I want to talk to Sophie again. She might have an idea about which hotel Dennis might choose. People ten
d to be creatures of habit.” If he were smart, he’d be far from Portland, but I suspected his connection with his wife and children was too strong. Good for his marriage but bad for his life expectancy.

  Jake was frowning again. “Maybe it’s time to let the police handle this. If Russo is as connected as he seems to be, it’s too dangerous.”

  Rising from my chair, I set my cup on the sink and put my arms around Jake. “I won’t be in danger tonight. Besides, I can take care of myself. That’s what all those extra tae kwon do lessons are for. You don’t have to worry about me.” As much as I cared about Jake, I couldn’t back away from trying to solve this mystery.

  His arms tightened around me as he bent and gently kissed my swollen bottom lip. “I don’t want to lose you.”

  “You won’t.” I kissed him back, not regretting it even when my lip hurt.

  Bells jingling at both our shop doors broke us apart, and we spent the next few hours helping customers. Among my antiques, I felt stronger. Though many of the imprints were long faded, the vibes were positive and strengthening.

  I almost changed my mind about going with Jake to Kolonda’s apartment building when she appeared in the herb shop. She looked amazing in white shorts and a red top, her long black hair fanning over her back and shoulders. Jake left the customer he was talking to and went to meet her, and I watched them from the register where I had come to help Randa with a short line of people. It went that way on Saturdays—a rush in my store and then in his.

  I rang up my customer, deciding I didn’t like the jealous streak appearing in me. I’d never had a romantic relationship worth fighting for, and the emotion was new. I couldn’t help but notice that Jake and Kolonda looked like a couple who’d stepped from a magazine, their sculpted bronze faces alive and eager.

  “They were going to get married once,” Randa whispered as her customer left. “Doesn’t it bother you to have her hanging around?”

  I had to wait to finish with my customer before I could say, “I trust Jake.”

  “Well, I don’t trust her,” she said, turning to help the last customer.

  I watched Jake and Kolonda as Randa finished. A few people were in my store now, and I really should have gone to help Thera, but I wanted to hear more from Randa. “I take it you don’t like Kolonda?”

  “She dumped my brother because he wasn’t good enough for her. I may have been really young when she did it, but I remember how hurt he was. It was months before he was himself again. Now he’s doing well with this store, and she comes back? Seems too contrived. If you ask me, she just wants him for his money.”

  I didn’t feel like destroying Randa’s view of her brother’s success. The truth was Jake was still making payments to me on the Herb Shoppe, and, like me, he barely made it each month. His clientele was growing, and someday things might change, but if Kolonda wanted money, she was looking in the wrong place.

  “Jake’s a big boy,” I said.

  “I know, but I still don’t like her.”

  Leaving a simmering Randa, I went around the desk to go over to Jake and Kolonda, but Kolonda waved at me and left the shop. Her eyes were reddened, and I wondered what had happened.

  “The guy I know from out of town who was going to look at her apartments called her and canceled,” Jake said when I asked, his brow furrowed. “She thinks they got to him. I’ll call him myself to see what’s what, but it’s really strange. Her two buildings aren’t all that large. I’m not sure why the contractor would go to such extremes.”

  “Maybe it’s not those buildings they want. Maybe it’s the space.”

  He blinked. “I never thought of that. I should probably check out any future plans for the area.”

  “The city offices are closed today.”

  “That’s okay. I know a few people to ask, friends of my grandmother’s. And I still need to find a second opinion on the work she had done.”

  I laughed. “Now who’s the detective?”

  Jake didn’t respond with his normal smile. “There’s a difference, Autumn. This isn’t going to get me attacked with a knife.”

  I was saved from answering by the entrance of several customers and the ringing of my phone. To my surprise, it was Shannon.

  “We found Alex Trogan, the missing witness in Michigan,” he said when I answered. “Unfortunately, he’s dead.”

  Chapter 9

  Oh, no. Is he—” I couldn’t finish the question. If Dennis and Alex were one and the same, Sophie was a widow and her children fatherless.

  “I should have said we found his bones. He’s been dead at least five years. He was actually found a year ago in Lake Michigan, on the Wisconsin side, close to Milwaukee. We had to work to find Alex’s dental records and when they didn’t match Dennis’s, the lab automatically compared them with other unsolved cases. Not sure why they didn’t do that before.”

  “Alex isn’t Dennis then.” I let out a long breath. “He wasn’t the witness the police had in protective custody.”

  “It’s looking that way.”

  “That means there were two witnesses to that murder—Alex and Dennis.”

  “And Alex was killed for it.”

  “So what are you going to do? We have to find Dennis before Russo does. Or whoever else is looking for him. You’re having Russo followed, aren’t you?”

  “I can’t tell you the particulars, but it’s covered.”

  I tried not to be irritated at that. “Thanks for calling me.”

  “I thought you’d want to know.” A pause and then, “You feeling any better?” There was a careful note in his voice, and it dawned on me that this was the real reason he was calling. I would have laughed if the idea hadn’t called to life a warmth I didn’t think I was capable of feeling for Shannon. Maybe we were finally learning how to work together.

  “I haven’t dropped over yet, so I guess I’m fine.”

  “Good. Later.” He hung up, and I stared at the phone until Thera poked her head through the connecting double door and said a customer needed me.

  I usually closed the shop at four or five, whenever the traffic eased. Jake usually had to stay open later, as people always seemed to have urgent last-minute herbal needs. Sometimes I would stay to help him, but he had things well under control in the Herb Shoppe and traffic in my shop had wound down enough for Thera to take care of it. I decided to head to Tawnia’s at barely three o’clock. She and Bret should be back from lunch by now, and I could talk to Sophie.

  Only when I was outside did I remember my tire. Shannon hadn’t filled it on the way home, so hopefully it was still holding. Otherwise, I’d need to find someplace to fix it permanently before making the trek to Tawnia’s. If Jake had brought his car instead of his bike, I could borrow that, but the bike was impossible to drive without shoes. I went around to the driver’s side and squatted down to check out the tire, keeping one eye on traffic.

  The tire was still perfectly inflated.

  I should have been happy, but thinking about it made me uneasy. Since I’d been attacked at the gas station, I assumed the thug was responsible for the flat. That he hadn’t used the knife told me he’d been trying to avoid raising too much suspicion so I wouldn’t call the police. But letting the air from my tire without being seen and even arranging for the thug at all would have taken time, and my first suspect, Russo, hadn’t known I was coming. Plus, the thug had been nowhere near professional, and Russo didn’t seem the type to hire an inexperienced street hood.

  But it had to be Russo, I thought. Maybe I had run over a nail and Russo’s bodyguard, bald Charlie, had called in a favor from the thug when he’d seen the tire, wanting to teach me a lesson without it being connected to them. I’d seen him on the phone. Wait. Maybe he was the informant who tipped off Shannon.

  No, Charlie wouldn’t have survived this long bet
raying a powerful man like Russo. Shaking my head, I climbed into the car and started the engine, checking to make sure no other car parked along the block pulled out after me. Now I was paranoid.

  “I wondered if you’d be coming,” Tawnia said when she opened her door twenty minutes later, looking as if the humidity wasn’t affecting her hair the way it seemed to affect mine. “Hey, Bret helped me hang the curtains in the nursery this morning. Do you want to see?”

  “Sure, but first I’d like you to try to draw a picture of Russo to see if Sophie recognizes him. I can describe him to you pretty well. About our age, dark hair, blue eyes, high cheek bones, square jaw, face a little too wide. Not really good-looking but compelling, confident, a bit arrogant. Oh, and big eyebrows. Not the ugly unibrow, but dominating.”

  Tawnia laughed. “Sounds like you liked the guy.”

  “He hits his wife.” My initial instinct before imprints came into my life might have been to give Russo the benefit of the doubt, which would have changed my attitude and my conversation with him. I would have been wrong, so this time it worked in my favor, but mistrusting my own instincts caused havoc in my personal relationships. It made me second-guess what I knew to be true. Like with Jake.

  “I suppose I can try to draw him from your description.”

  I was hoping her other ability would kick in and do a better job than I could with my description, but I knew she wouldn’t like the idea if I voiced it.

  I took a step inside the house. “Thanks, I really—”

  A shrill scream pierced the air, coming from the direction of Sophie’s house. Tawnia’s eyes went wide as she stared at me, and for an odd moment, it seemed as if I were looking into a mirror. As one we turned and ran down the steps.

  The seconds it took us to cross the lawn seemed the longest I’d known in a long time. The front door was locked, and no one answered our ringing.

  “Around the back,” Tawnia said.

  There was more screaming that quickly turned into sobbing as we ran through the gate. We found Sophie crumpled in a heap near her back fence. “Sophie!” Tawnia and I shouted together.

  When we reached her, I could see a swelling red spot on her cheek the size of a man’s fist. Tears wet her face as she clung to me. “They took him. They took Sawyer!”