The Trouble With Twelfth Grave

by Darynda Jones

  “I need to run an errand. To interview a potential witness.” I could have called Chanel Newell, but I wanted to interview her face-to-face. To gauge her reaction to my questions, because most people who are sensitive to the otherworld had a difficult time admitting it, even to someone like me.

  “Again?” Cookie asked. “You get to have all the fun.”

  “It’s the woman from the other night whose grandmother was haunting her house but the grandmother thought that the granddaughter was haunting her house and I had to tell the grandmother that she had died thirty-eight years ago and that she was, in fact, the haunter, not the hauntee.”

  “Oh,” Cookie said, standing to walk back to her desk. “Okay, then. I’m good here.”

  “Thought so,” I said, unable to suppress a slight giggle.

  I headed that way. Or tried to. The door opened before I could get to it, and one Detective Forrest Joplin stepped into the humble offices of Davidson Investigations.

  I tensed. Mostly because he hated me with a fiery passion. He didn’t understand how I solved cases. Thought Uncle Bob indulged me too much. Thought I used nefarious means.

  He was right. I used any means necessary, but that was no reason to hate my innards. My innards had nothing to do with my cases.

  “Detective,” I said, sweet as could be. My world may have been coming to an end, my friends may have been attacked and suspected of foul play, my husband may have been turned into a volatile god, and I may not have slept in several days, but no way was I letting Detective Joplin know any of that. I beamed at him. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  Agitated, probably by my mere presence, he glanced at Cookie, then back at me. “Can we talk in your office?”

  My smile widened. “Of course. As long as Cookie can be in there as well. I may need a witness.”

  “A witness?”

  “You seem miffed. If I get another heated scolding because I solved one of your cases behind your back, I need a witness. You know, for when I file a complaint.”

  He raked a hand through his military buzz. “I’m not here to scold you, Davidson. I’m here to warn you.”

  I clapped in excitement. “Even better. Can we record it?”

  He stepped closer to me. “Your uncle is snooping around my case, and if he’s snooping, odds are you put him up to it.”

  I looked over at Cookie. Her face turned an odd shade of purple.

  “Cook, you talked to Uncle Bob already? I thought that was going to be, you know, pillow talk.”

  “It was. That was the plan, but then—”

  “Cookie,” I said with a gasp, beaming at her with pride. “You got a quickie?”

  “Charley, I hardly think this is the time.”

  I propped a hip on her desk. “Oh, it’s the perfect time.”

  “I just asked him if he could check into that thing we were talking about when we were talking about, you know, that thing.” God, she was good at collusion.

  After another moment of awkwardness in an already awkward stalemate, my quota for the day had been filled, and I let her off the hook.

  I turned to the surly detective. “Yes, I was just wondering if you had a COD on one of your victims. A man named Hector Felix.”

  “Why?”

  “Right? It’s such an odd name. It’s like two first names put together. But I have no idea why anyone would name him that.”

  He bit down, his jaw working. “Why do you want to know?”

  I had a feeling he was making nice in front of Cookie. That woman was invaluable in ways she couldn’t even imagine. “I’m asking for a friend.”

  “That friend wouldn’t happen to be a local tattoo artist?”

  Cookie gasped. Loudly.

  I slammed my eyes shut, then said, “No.”

  But he was already wearing a smirk when I opened my eyes again. “Well, they did date.” He picked up Cookie’s stapler. “He did blow her off.” He set it down, feigning complete intrigue in mundane office supplies. “And poisoning is the number-one MO when females kill.”

  “Poison?” I asked, astonished. It took everything in me not to turn to Cookie for a high five. Pari was so off the hook, as were the Lobo football players.

  “Yes,” he said, missing my skyrocketing euphoria. “Less violent.”

  I almost giggled. “Clearly, you don’t know Pari.”

  “Clearly, you do.” He pinned me with a victorious smirk, which was so much more annoying than his smug one.

  Oops. “Yes, but I also know she had nothing to do with his death.”

  “He’d also been beaten recently. Any thoughts on that?”

  “Not that I can share.”

  “So, I can add obstruction to my list of grievances against you.”

  “You have a list of grievances against me?”

  “Several pages’ worth.”

  Dude did not like me.

  “Either way,” he added, “count your friend lucky. This was the last girl who tried to break up with Hector Felix.”

  I’d noticed the manila envelope in his hands but hadn’t paid it much mind until he brought out an eight-by-ten glossy of a girl whose face had been slashed to ribbons.

  My hands flew to my mouth as did Cookie’s. She sank into her chair and stared in shock.

  “Straight razor,” he said.

  The poor girl, a blonde in a light blue hospital gown, had about a thousand stitches closing the numerous slashes along her cheeks, forehead, nose, and chin. Each more gruesome than the last. She also had a swollen shiner and the whites of that eye were blood red, so she was probably beaten as well.

  “Who would do this?” I asked, my chest constricting the flow and ebb of air to my bloodstream.

  He took the picture out of my hands, stuffed it back into the envelope, then handed it back to me, as though to make a point. “Something to think about.”

  “Detective—”

  “Mrs. Davidson,” he said, then turned and strode out.

  “Oh, Charley,” Cookie said from behind her clasped hands.

  I took the photo out. The woman’s name, Judianna Ayers, was on the bottom.

  “Okay,” I said to the door Joplin had just walked out of. “I’ll bite.” I handed the photo, as badly as I hated to do it, to Cookie. “Get me everything on this woman. I have an errand to run. Be back in an hour.”

  “What did you mean, you’ll bite?”

  “He gave this to us for a reason, Cook. Asshole wants me to look into it? I’ll look into it.”

  “You think he wants you to solve this woman’s attack?”

  “Maybe he can’t pin it on Hector.” I grabbed my bag and stalked toward the door. “But I damned sure can.”

  15

  That which doesn’t kill me,

  makes me weirder and harder to relate to.

  —T-SHIRT

  I drove to Chanel Newell’s house. I’d remembered her saying she had a few days off and she wanted to get a jump start on spring cleaning, so I hoped to find her home.

  A white Encore sat in the driveway of the house I’d staked out only a couple of nights earlier. I walked to the door and knocked. Blue Öyster Cult filtered through the wooden door.

  A girl after my own heart.

  The door opened. “Mrs. Davidson,” she said, surprised.

  “Hey, Mrs. Newell.”

  “Chanel, please. Come in.” She opened the screen door and ushered me inside. “The kids are at my sister’s house. She’s helping me out so I can get some cleaning done.” She yanked off a pair of yellow rubber gloves and led me to the kitchen so she could turn down the music.

  “And call me Charley. Please.”

  “Sure. Would you like some tea?”

  “I don’t want to keep you. I just had a couple of questions.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  She moved some magazines and papers off the kitchen table, embarrassed, and offered me a seat.

  “Chanel, I am going to ask you an odd question, and I just want you to kn
ow that I am completely open to any answer you give me.”

  A nervous laugh bubbled out of her. “This sounds ominous.”

  “You let me into your home the other day, having no idea who I was when I told you I believed your house was haunted.”

  “Yes.” She nodded evasively. “I did.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. You had a card. You seemed legit.”

  I couldn’t help but grin. “I think it was because you knew before I even said anything that the house was haunted.”

  “What?” She scoffed lightly. “No. Why—? How would I know such a thing?”

  “I believe you’re sensitive to the supernatural realm. And if I’m right, the supernatural realm is just as sensitive to you.”

  She tensed, and a line formed between her brows. “What does that mean?”

  “Is your son also sensitive?”

  After chewing on her lip a moment, she caved. “Yes. More than I am.”

  “But not your daughter?”

  “No. It tends to run in my family. My daughter was my husband’s. He passed away a couple of years ago.”

  “I’m so sorry, Chanel.”

  “We’re doing okay, though. Better.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “What did you mean, the supernatural realm is just as sensitive to me?”

  The last thing I wanted to do was frighten her, but she deserved to know. “I’m going to be honest, Chanel. I investigate, well, all kinds of anomalies. Even those with a supernatural spin.”

  “Okay,” she said, growing leery.

  “There have been three murders and an attack, and they look, as crazy as this will sound, to have a supernatural element to them. I could be wrong, of course,” I added when she started to ease away from me.

  Even the sensitive had a difficult time with my level of supernatural phenomena.

  “But, sadly, I don’t think so. I don’t know if proximity has anything to do with what’s going on or if there have been victims with the same type of wounds in other cities, but I need you to leave for a few days. Get out of town with your children. Especially Charlie.”

  Alarm stopped her in her tracks. “What are you saying? We’re in danger?”

  “I don’t know. This is an educated guess at best.”

  “So, if we can see them, they can see us?”

  I nodded, then turned to the other woman sitting at the table, the one I had yet to acknowledge, Mrs. Blomme. “What do you think, hon?”

  She frowned. She’d been excited to see me when I first came in, but my message worried her.

  “Can you see your great-granddaughter?”

  She shook her head. “Not a bit. I’ve tried, too. I can see Chanel talk to her, but she just isn’t there.”

  “I was worried about that. And that puts paid to it,” I said, quoting Jane Austen. I turned back to Chanel. “Do you have anywhere you can go?”

  Chanel, lost in my conversation with her grandmother, snapped back to me. “What? Well, yes, I suppose. I have a brother in south Texas. Will that be far enough?”

  “I hope so. It’s certainly worth the effort. I’ll let you know the minute I get this straightened out.”

  “I’ll keep an eye on them,” Mrs. Blomme said.

  “Chanel, I know you can see your grandmother, or see her essence. But can you communicate with her?”

  Chanel shook her head. “I can’t, but I think Charlie can.”

  “That little darling and his gravy boat,” Mrs. Blomme said, slapping her knee in delight. “He’s such a doll. I have a beautiful family, Mrs. Davidson.”

  “Yes, you do. Can you keep an eye on them for me? Come and get me the minute something seems amiss?”

  She straightened and saluted. “Absolutely.”

  “You know how to find me?”

  She cackled. “You’re a little hard to miss.”

  “Thank you.”

  I left the Blomme-slash-Newell family to see what Cookie had discovered about our girl, Judianna Ayers, the woman Hector Felix took a straight razor to. But first, once inside Misery, I summoned Angel.

  “Hola, chica,” he said, gesturing with a nod from my passenger’s seat.

  I shifted toward him, planting my knee on the console. “Hey, sweet pea.”

  He cringed at my term of endearment.

  I ignored him. “I have a question for you.”

  He let out a long sigh and raked a hand down his face. “Yes, you can see me naked, but this is the last time.”

  “Angel.”

  “I mean it. There’s only so much a man can take.”

  I coughed to cover my soft burst of laughter. He hated the fact that I didn’t think of him as a man. Just because he was technically older than I was didn’t mean I thought of him that way. He’d died at thirteen and still looked thirteen.

  “Are you going to insist on making out again?” he continued.

  I reached over and ran my fingers over the peach fuzz on his chin. “In your dreams, sweetness.”

  He caught my hand and raised it to his cool lips. If we hadn’t been hit with a heat wave by the name of Rey’azikeen the Erratic, he would have held it longer. Instead, he lowered it and asked, “What’s up?”

  “Are there some departed who can’t see humans? I mean, you can see anyone. And I remember the case with the three lawyers, Sussman, Ellery and Barber. They could see humans, too. But—”

  “They’d just died,” he said, interrupting.

  “What?”

  “The lawyers. They’d just died.”

  I shook my head, trying to understand, to think back to my cases and all the departed I’d worked with over the years. I’d started working with my dad, helping him solve crimes, when I was five years old, and in all that time, I’d never noticed the fact that some could see into the Earthly plane and some could not.

  Despite the heat of the volatile deity lingering nearby, Angel had kept hold of my hand in his lap. He was getting braver by the moment, but I wasn’t sure what Rey’azikeen could do to him. If anything. Although I had seen him choke Angel out once. Clearly, the teenager could be hurt.

  “The fresher the death,” Angel explained, “the more we can see.”

  I slumped against my seat, dumbfounded. “This is the first I’m hearing about this. How could I not know?”

  He shrugged. “It’s never been an issue before.”

  He was right. It had never been an issue, but it damned sure was now.

  Then another thought hit me. Mrs. Blomme had been gone for thirty-eight years and could only see those humans sensitive to the supernatural realm. Angel had been gone for over twenty years. I took his hand into both of mine, and asked, “Angel, are you … losing the ability to see humans?”

  He squeezed my hands. “Not yet. I don’t know if it happens to all of us, but I guess it might someday.”

  “Why does it happen? What does time have to do with it?” It made sense. The priest had been dead for over six hundred years. It would definitely explain a few things.

  “Think about it,” he said, keeping his gaze averted. “Would you want to see people, dozens of people every day, if they couldn’t see you back? It gets … lonely.”

  “Angel.” I leaned forward again and placed my hand on his cheek.

  “You know, just in case, you might want to let me see you naked now before I lose the ability.”

  “Good try, gorgeous.”

  “Something to think about,” he said a microsecond before he vanished.

  Now in a state of melancholy, I called Cookie.

  “From what I can tell,” she said, knowing exactly why I’d called, “she’s in protective custody.”

  “Really?” I said, impressed. “How’d you deduce that?”

  “I have a vast underground network of spies, so I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

  “I see. How’d you really figure it out?”

  “You don’t believe me?” she asked, appalled.<
br />
  “Not even a little.”

  “Robert told me,” she said, giving in. “It’s why Joplin’s so frustrated. Well, one reason, anyway. I’m pretty sure he’s sexually frustrated as well, but that’s a story for another time. He’d been trying to pin something on Hector Felix for a couple of years to no avail. And then Hector ups and dies on him.”

  “The nerve of him,” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “Uncle Bob didn’t happen to say where she was staying while in protective custody?”

  “It’s super hush-hush. Not even the captain knows. Robert didn’t really say it in so many words, but I think it’s an FBI thing.”

  “That’s so weird. I just happen to know an FBI agent. A couple of them, in fact.”

  “Charley, you know they can’t tell you.”

  “True. But that doesn’t mean I can’t accidently stumble upon information regarding the whereabouts of a certain traumatized young lady.”

  “And how do you plan on doing that?”

  “It starts with an A and ends with an ngel.”

  “I already know where she is, boss,” Angel said from the passenger’s seat.

  I jumped, nigh lodging my heart in my throat, then leveled a glare on him before hanging up with Cook.

  He sat laughing, his shoulders, so close to being the wide-set chick magnets they’d promised to be, shaking. “You kill me,” he said between chuckles.

  “Oh, yeah, well, you … you laugh like a girl.”

  He laughed harder. “That’s all you got? You need to get some sleep. You’re losing your touch.”

  He was so very, very adorable. I loved every inch of his charming, inquisitive self. So, I knew what I was about to do was going to hurt me more than it hurt him.

  I hauled off and punched him on the arm. Sadly, my attempt at payback only served to fuel his mirth.

  I needed new friends.

  “Whatever. I need you to go on a stakeout.”

  “I’m always on a stakeout.”

  “Because you’re so good at it.”

  “True,” he said, sobering. “Please tell me she’s pretty.”

  “As a matter of fact, she is.”

  I filled him in on my plan, which involved us tricking one Special Agent Kit Carson of the F, B, and I.