Missing, Suspected Dead: Elisabeth Hicks, Witch Detective

by Rachel Graves

  “You suck, okay? You just suck.” She sighed heavily, no doubt feeling very put upon. “Thankfully, that’s not why I’m here.”

  “No?” I asked, trying not to sound too hopeful.

  “No. For my wedding shower at work we’re doing this game where people bring in pictures of themselves as a kid. I have pictures from everyone except Ted.”

  “I thought you weren’t supposed to plan your own bridal shower. Isn’t it girls only anyway?”

  Gina rolled her eyes. “Crystal’s planning it, okay? I’m just helping with the games. And dividing people up by gender is stupid. Everyone at work gets to come.”

  Her tone made it clear that everyone at work wanted to come, and that I should want to come, too. I scoured the inside of my head for an excuse not to attend.

  “Hel-lo are you still listening to me? Ted won’t give me a picture, no matter how many times I ask.”

  Gina didn’t know what had happened. She had no idea the painful memories she was bringing up and he probably would never tell her. “Maybe he doesn’t want to play?”

  “Not an option. And since you’re his best friend you can get a picture for me.”

  “Uh-huh,” I offered a very non-committal reply. “Why would I want to do that?”

  “Because if you don’t, I’ll tell Mom you’re desperate to come bridesmaid shoe shopping with us.”

  “Fine.” I glared at her.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll give the picture back when the game is over.”

  I hustled her out the door. I had more than an hour of driving to do and I’d probably spend the first twenty minutes annoyed with her.

  Gina, Reggie once, wasn’t what she seemed. There was more to her than constant chatter about fashion and famous people. That was just the shallow surface she showed the world. She’d gotten her license to be a hair dresser while she was still in high school, taking advantage of the fact that high school students got tuition paid for them at the local vocational school. She had a head for numbers that wouldn’t quit. Deep down, she was a genuinely good person. But since she was my kid sister, I had an obligation to see her as a spoiled brat and a duty to put her in her place.

  Lately, I’d had trouble with that last one. We didn’t fight any more. The hair-pulling scratching fights of our youth were done. There didn’t seem to be any way for me to get at her the way she got at me so easily. Really though, the secret marriage that didn’t turn out the way she wanted softened me a little. I’m not totally ruthless. The flip from glamorous movie star’s wife living in a mansion to being a hair dresser married to a retired-star-who-was-considering-becoming-an-apprentice-plumber was a big one. But working at Ted’s spa with her best friend Crystal made Gina very happy once. When things settled down it probably would again.

  My car crawled along the freeway, a gorgeous view of the mountains in my windows. Time to stop thinking about Gina and start thinking about work. I had two errands to run in LA: first, pick up a set of silverware, the kind that’s actually silver, from a pawn shop. Second, explain to the woman who owned it that her husband had been sleeping with the maid who stole it. I didn’t think I’d need the gun for the first part, but it wouldn’t hurt for the second. Now that Jeremy, my movie star brother-in-law, was part of the family, I’d started getting more LA clients. They tended to go crazy more often than my usual customers. Those usual people—drug dealers, the gangsters, the generally not legal types—respected firearms and the damage they caused. The LA people didn’t understand even a small bullet could cause a lifetime of hurt.

  The pawn shop part of my day didn’t take long. Sure, it was delayed, silly me thinking a pawn shop on the bad side of town would be open before noon, but once inside it was no problem. The maid had given me the claim ticket for the pawn. Twenty minutes after I walked in, I left with a wallet five-hundred dollars lighter and a burgundy velvet box under my good arm. Real silver has a weight to it, and I started to sweat a little walking to my car. I cranked the A/C on my way to the next appointment, hoping to get my cool back before I arrived.

  I pulled up to a mansion that would make millionaires jealous. The place was worth more than most people made in a lifetime. The first time I came over, I got a tour of the indoor and outdoor pool, a parking garage that fit seven sports cars, and the tennis courts. Three stories with his and her suites above servants’ quarters in the basement. It rose above the lawns in stately brick, with a long circular driveway, and at least eight acres of manicured gardens behind it. No doubt about it, the house was money.

  A new maid showed me upstairs to the lady of the house’s office. I waited the LA ten, the required time anyone from LA made me wait to teach me how unimportant I was. It didn’t bother me. Eventually the woman of the house stood in front of me, her lips pressed into a thin coral line. All the lipstick she wore couldn’t help the way rage filled her tightened smile. But it was only part of her face that told me anything. The rest of her, the eyes with their fluffed curves of laminated eyebrows, the cheeks and forehead frozen into an unnatural youth, stayed in the perfect lines of an aristocratic wife. She hadn’t liked what I’d had to say but she had enough class not to say anything about it.

  Instead, she turned from me and rapped her knuckles on the window behind her. After a short staccato of sound, she opened the window and leaned halfway out of it. Her husband was on a lower balcony, practicing his golf swing. A bag of clubs rested on the smooth marble terrace. She caught him mid-stroke, club raised in a practice shot.

  “Excuse me, sweetheart?” Her voice was light, lighter than it should have been given the circumstance. “Could you please stop screwing the help?”

  “Sure thing, honey.” The reply came up through the two-story windows light and breezy followed by the immediate tha-whack noise of a golf ball getting hit. My client, the woman at the window, didn’t stop to watch the shot. Instead, she sat down and got out a designer pen.

  “So the maid stole my silver to finance the abortion of my husband’s child, and you’ve recovered the silver but not the maid,” she summarized in a brusque tone.

  “She doesn’t want to come back.” Actually, the woman had spit on the ground and called her lover a lying bastard. She proclaimed his wife an icy whore, and said God himself couldn’t get her back into the house. I didn’t think my client needed the details.

  “A half-finished job.” She reached for a large checkbook, the kind businesses used. “Still, one worth paying for. The silver came over with my grandmother years ago. I’m grateful to you for getting it back.”

  She stood up to hand me the check, looking nearly six feet tall and aristocratic. But her husband had a habit of sleeping with the maids she brought in from various third world countries so I wasn’t impressed.

  “I’m more grateful for your discretion.”

  I told her of course, and left the three-story mansion in the hills before I looked down at the amount. Apparently, my discretion was worth five figures. She cared more about the silver and keeping the affair quiet than she cared about her marriage. Some days I hated LA people.

  I hit traffic again on my way back. Lately it seemed like the arteries around LA stayed permanently clogged. Rush-hour lasted for three hours each morning and evening, with some tough spots around lunch. The drive gave me time to think about vacation. I hadn’t asked Gina about honeymoons. Whatever Jeremy could afford, I couldn’t. I glanced over at the check on the passenger seat. I could afford a little luxury though. Ted’s suggestion of New Orleans came to mind, and I mulled over the rowdiness of Bourbon Street. As I pulled up to the public pool building, I decided against it.

  Swimming offered me respite from all my troubles. No matter what came to me in life, I could always swim it out. Back at Walter Reed, the water had been my first and best form of physical therapy. In the pools there I made my tissue grafts work in time with the rest of my body. The cramps I got when I felt stressed or angry never came in the water, making my doctors believe they were more psychological t
han physiological. I never bothered to figure out why swimming helped so much, I just enjoyed it.

  Today I swam away the anxiety in my life, and back-stroked into a pre-vacation stupor. With the silver returned and my other case closed early due to client death, I could concentrate on bookkeeping while I watched Jo’s new kitten. Then, when she had her present and I had nothing left to do, I’d leave town. My body flew through the water, my hands going over my head in perfect sequence, never meeting. That was what I wanted, to swim and swim, and swim some more, then sleep on a beach next to Ted, waking up to do all sorts of naughty things to him.

  Twenty-five laps later, I called him with my hair still dripping. If I let it dry this way it would end up in a mess of half-curls, two times its usual size. I’d need to shower at home, and if I was lucky Ted would join me. I called while on my way only to find out he had a few things to wrap up at work. I sighed over it for a few minutes, then showered alone, grabbed a bite of dinner, and headed over to his place as the sun began setting. Sunsets in California come in more colors than sunsets in the rest of the world. Our small town might not have a movie theater but the brilliant oranges, pinks, reds, and purple-blues in the night sky put on a great show. I found Ted in his backyard watching them. Before too long I lay close to him, both of us trying to fit on the single lounge chair.

  “How was today?” I asked as the rays of orange light danced across the sky.

  “Not bad, just a few phone calls I had to avoid.”

  “Your mom again?”

  “And again, and again, and again.”

  “Lovely. Are you going to talk to her at all?”

  “No,” he said, without a second’s hesitation. “How about your day?”

  “I ended up in LA, in a pawn shop.” By the time I finished my story his hands had crept up from my jeans to a spot just underneath my T-shirt. The warmth coming off of them left a pleasant tingle on my skin. “Do you really want to talk about this anymore?”

  “I wouldn’t mind, if you want to.”

  “I’d rather get to what you had in mind.” I saw it all in his head. The story of the stolen silver wasn’t nearly as fascinating to him as the feel of my skin. The very idea of my flesh seemed like a wonderful new toy in his mind. He moved his hand around my waist, then up to my back. The near darkness of the night made the world seem like a very private place, but when I heard the slamming of a door through his high wooden fence I knew better.

  “How about we take this inside?” I asked him.

  “I was just thinking the same thing.”

  He led me into the bedroom with one hand in the back pocket of my jeans, and the whole scene reminded me so much of high school that I giggled.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked, pulling me close as he shut the door behind me.

  “It’s just that—” I started, but I didn’t get a chance to answer before his tongue’s movements stole all rational thought from me. By the time it came back, we laid together in the quiet, early evening. He pulled me against him in a spoon position, magic wrapping us in a loop of satisfaction, care, love, and intimate delight. Him, me, us, this was all working so well. We worked so well. I grinned and snuggled closer to him, thinking about the future, the vacation, the things we could do together. My mind drifted, pleasantly half asleep when I remembered Gina’s favor.

  “Hey, can I ask you something?”

  “After what we just did, you can ask about anything you want.” I could tell he had a smile on his face even with my eyes closed.

  “Why don’t you have any pictures of yourself as a kid around?”

  “Gina got to you, huh?” he guessed.

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “’Fraid so.” He paused for a second to nibble on my ear, then twisted in bed to look me in the eye. “You already know the big scary secret: I was literally raised by wolves for three years, no pictures then. But the baby pictures she wants exist. They’re at my dad’s house.”

  “That’s not far, right?” We went into LA all the time. I went for work or we went together to listen to Jo sing. He went alone to pick things up. His dad’s house was in LA so I assumed he stopped by there when he was alone. Somehow in all those trips he never stopped at his dad’s when we were together.

  “Not far. I could take tomorrow off and pick up the pictures.”

  “We could go together.” I wondered what the elder Mr. Falconer would think of me.

  “I’d love to introduce you to my dad.” He pulled me close to him. “But you’d be the first girlfriend that he’s met.”

  “Oh my.”

  “Exactly.” He playfully kissed me, first my bottom lip, then the top. “That’s pretty serious.”

  “I think I can handle it,” I laughed. “I’ll bring my gun.”

  My body wanted me to spend the night at Ted’s place. It whispered all sorts of things about his giant bed and how nice it would be to sleep. Unfortunately, my mind reminded me LaRue was dropping off a kitten. If I didn’t want a shredded couch and kitten damage throughout the place, I needed to go. Ted offered me a sleepy goodbye. A quick kiss let my magic pick up his concern for me, and an undercurrent of real fear. The mention of werewolves had him on edge. I spent the whole trip back to my own place thinking about how I could fix this for him, only to realize there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

  When I noticed someone waiting for me, my mind went to LaRue. But as I got closer, I knew he wouldn’t be dropping off the kitten tonight. Josephine stood on the last steps before my apartment door, her elegant figure topped with a mane of tawny colored hair. LaRue would keep the kitten some place else rather than risk seeing a drop of hurt in her golden-brown eyes. Tonight she wore fabulous blue dress coated with sequins. It hugged the contours of her slim shoulders and petite breasts perfectly. For Jo the dress was a work uniform and she looked like a waitress who had just finished the dinner rush.

  “Why aren’t you waiting for me inside?” I asked as I opened the door for us both.

  “I was for a while, but then it got too peach for me,” Jo replied. Ever since her mother locked her up in a peach-colored prison, she hated the color. “How’s Ted?”

  “He’s okay,” I shrugged. “How’d you know I was there?”

  “It’s late. He’s your boyfriend. But mostly, you smell like sex.”

  “Ick.”

  “Yeah, I know. What can I say, the ability to smell everything is a vampire’s curse.”

  “You poor, poor dear.” I consoled her while I popped open the fridge. I grabbed a beer for myself and a long-necked dark glass bottle for her. In my head it was just Jo’s drink, period, end of sentence, end of discussion. She twisted the top off with a smile. Drinking bottled blood was a guilty indulgence for her, sort of like preferring cheap beer over elegant wine for the rest of us. She raised her glass in a silent salute and took a long pull on her bottle. I did the same.

  I swallowed that first perfect salty lick of beer. “What’s up?”

  “I’m thinking about cutting my hair, maybe going short, what do you think?” She pulled the mass of blonde curls to one side of her head to demonstrate.

  “LaRue likes your hair long. You like your hair long. You’ve never worn it short. I think there’s something else going on.”

  “Maybe.” She tipped her beer to me. “I’m restless… I don’t know…I feel like a change, you know? If it was the old days, I’d call up LaRue to come rescue me or run home to Maman.”

  “Ah, the good old days.”

  “I never said they were good.” She took another long drink. Not too long ago her husband and her mother were sworn to kill each other. She ran from one to the other, dreaming they’d someday get along. Now they did, but it sounded like that didn’t make everything perfect. “They were different, that’s for sure. There was always an adventure, a new city, something to do.”

  “Let’s go do something. You look dressed for a night out.”

  “I was singing but I cut it short. The fi
rst set was great. The band was on. Then I just wasn’t in the mood.”

  “The baby stop by again?” I read between the lines.

  She nodded and drank some more. Lately, when the baby stopped by, Jo stopped singing. “Hey, you want to go to Compton, see if we can have some fun with Dr. What’s-his-name?”

  “Feelgood. Dr. Feelgood, and I don’t want him to have any fun.” His name tasted bad on my tongue. The man slipped me a supernatural drug, doping me with enough of it for me to OD and die, all so he could sleep with me. I owed him a whole lot of pain, and I hadn’t come up with a way to pay it yet.

  “I meant the kind of fun where he doesn’t wake up tomorrow morning.”

  “You feeling homicidal?”

  “A bit,” she admitted. Her bottle was empty, mine, too. I got us both seconds and we went to the couch.

  “I’m not up for that tonight.” I’d killed men in the war, and I wasn’t above that kind of revenge, but I wasn’t sure if Dr. Feelgood should die for what he did. Maybe he should go to prison instead, or I would find a way to pay him back in kind. Either way, taking the role of judge, jury, and executioner seemed like a dangerous step.

  “Suit yourself.” She shrugged, clearly not sharing my inner turmoil. “How about something flirty? We could go to a club; there’s one down in LA where we’re sure to pick up a bit of fluff.” Her eyes narrowed with glee.

  I raised an eyebrow at her. “And then?”

  “Oh the usual, flirting, dancing suggestively…”

  “How would LaRue feel about that?” I expected her husband might object to an evening of flirting with another man.

  “If we picked the right kind of fluff, he wouldn’t mind too much.”

  “Really?” And then, despite having more brains than God gave a peanut, I asked, “What is LaRue’s type?”

  “It’s been ages, let’s see…manly, but not over the top, not a ton of body hair, or anyone big and beefy. Smart, but not arrogant about it.” She cocked her head to the side thinking for a second. “A lot like Ted actually.”