Eighth Grave After Dark (12 page)

I put my hand on my hip. “Your pre-honeymoon honeymoon.” When she started to argue, I added, “Amber, Quentin, and I are going to make popcorn and watch
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
.”

Amber nodded exuberantly.

“You're just saying that to get me to leave,” she said, freeing her hair at last. “I know you. Quentin and Amber are going to watch
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
while you work the case.”

She had me dead to rights. “True, but I can do this while you're banging my uncle.”

A loud bark of laughter burst from Amber before she contained it.

“I promise to fill you in the minute you get back. This is your wedding day, Cook.”

“Yeah, Mom,” Amber said. She winked at me. “I have your six, Aunt Charley.”

We high-fived. I loved that kid. But Cookie shook her head as she hung up her dress.

“Robert and I have already agreed. I'm going to help you with the case while he does what he can on his end. He's already gone into town to see if there have been any new developments.”

“Cook, this is insane.”

She walked to the sink to wash the glitter off her face. “Charley, we aren't going on our real honeymoon until after Beep's arrival anyway. It's okay.” I sensed a ripple of apprehension go through Cookie when she mentioned her honeymoon. I'd sensed it almost every time we talked about it. If I didn't know better—and admittedly, I didn't—I would've sworn Cookie didn't want to go on a honeymoon at all.

Still, it was her wedding day, for heaven's sake. No bride should work on her wedding day. I was about 90 percent certain there was a law against it. Then again, who was I to argue?

“Okay, I need everything you can get. Friends. Social media activity. Phone calls lasting more than a couple of minutes.”

“She's fifteen,” Amber reminded me. “All her phone calls last more than a couple of minutes.”

I smiled at her. “Excellent input, grasshopper.” I'd make a PI out of Amber yet.

She flashed her pearly whites.

I took a few pages out of the file Kit had left with me. “I'll go check in with Rocket, inquire about Faris Waters's … status, and then comb through her texts. If I find anything suspicious, we can cross-reference them with her phone calls. If she was lured somewhere by a predator, I want to know.”

Cookie's face brightened as though she'd been champing at the bit to work on a new case. It
had
been a while. We'd done some small side jobs that didn't require our presence, though nothing of this caliber for a long time. But I still couldn't shake the feeling that this had more to do with her honeymoon than with the case.

I reached over and brushed glitter off her cheek, regret consuming me nonetheless. No one's wedding day should be spent looking for a missing child.

“Do you think she's still alive?” Amber asked.

Cookie placed a hand on her shoulder as I glanced up toward the attic.

“One way to find out.”

 

6

My death will probably be caused by being sarcastic at the wrong time.

—TRUE FACT

I left Cookie to get what she could on Faris's social life while Amber went to find Quentin. He was staying the night, since he didn't have to be back at the School for the Deaf in Santa Fe until the next day. While Amber wanted to help with the case, she decided spending quality time with the cutest boy on the planet—her words—would be more fun.

I walked to the end of the hall on the second floor, where another set of stairs led to the attic. Rocket had been staying up there since we moved here. We'd already had to replace the drywall twice. Rocket filled his days scratching the names of those who passed onto the walls. He knew the name of every person who'd died everywhere in the world. There was no way he really wrote them all. I'd read once that there were over 150,000 deaths worldwide every single day. So I wasn't sure why he chose to scratch certain names and not others, but for decades, recording the names of the departed had been what he considered his job. Who was I to argue? Surely there was a method to his madness. I'd have to pay closer attention someday, to see if the names he inscribed had any kind of connection to one another.

Just as I was about to ascend the stairs, I felt a rush of cold air at my neck. It whispered through my hair and caused goose bumps to erupt across my skin. I turned and saw her, the girl I'd been trying to talk to for months. Not the sobbing woman in my closet. She'd shown up just a few days ago. This other girl had already been living in the convent when we moved in. She was a young, almost childlike, nun, but her habit was of an older style than what they generally wore now.

I stopped and turned slowly toward her as one would do with a wild animal one was trying to capture. I didn't want to scare her off. She'd been trying to show me something; I was sure of it. Every time she appeared, she would hurry away from me, stopping to glance back every so often, as though making sure I was following her. But every time I did follow, I'd lose her in the forest.

“Not this time,” I said as she turned away.

She walked quickly down the hall toward the main stairs and disappeared. I descended the stairs and went out the front door, knowing she'd be waiting for me. And she was, her expression full of fear, her lashes spiked with recent tears before, just like always, she ran away.

“I'm not losing you,” I said to her back. She didn't acknowledge me.

We continued on the same path as always, the one that led in the opposite direction from where I'd been earlier, the way long since overgrown with vegetation, and as always, she disappeared from there. I stopped and whirled around in frustration. She couldn't have been more than eighteen years old. What was she trying to show me?

I continued deeper into the forest. “Where did you go?” I asked the empty air around me. Maybe I needed to have Angel tail her. Perhaps he could keep up. She was like Rocket, believing I could run through solid objects just as she could.

The last time we played hide-and-seek, I'd scoured the forest just to the left of the trail where it dead-ended. This time I went right. I stumbled over the uneven ground then got in some cardio when I passed through a spiderweb, flailing my arms and shuddering a lot. I heard growls in the distance. I stopped and the scent of lavender hit me. Very faint, but there nonetheless. Why would I smell lavender out here? After gaining my bearings, I realized I was getting closer to the border, but I still had a few yards yet. Or I did until I felt a sharp push from behind.

I toppled forward as the land slanted beneath me. Barely able to catch myself on a branch, I held on, but my feet had gone out from under me, the branch broke, and I was sliding down the side of the mountain. The trees around me blurred. They scraped and cut until I was able to grab hold of a root. The sudden stop jerked at my shoulder painfully. I had no idea the mountain was so steep on that side of the house. I fought to get my footing and was startled when someone reached out and grabbed me.

I looked up into the huge frightened eyes of the nun. She pulled and I struggled until I had crawled onto even ground. At first, I wondered if she'd pushed me. If so, then she wouldn't have helped me.

“Thank you,” I said, dusting myself off. She didn't answer. “Did you see who pushed me?”

She just stared. I was getting that a lot lately. No matter. I had a very good idea I knew who had done the deed.

After scanning the area, I walked as close to the edge of the drop-off as I dared, keeping a death grip on a tree, because something had caught my attention moments before I went over.

There was one point I could see out over a clearing with a stream running through it. I'd never traveled down there, because it was beyond the border, but neither could Reyes travel that far. Yet there he was, standing pretty as you please by a group of bushes, talking to Angel. My Angel. My sidekick and lead—aka only—investigator.

First off, that was far past the border that Osh had staked out. Reyes should have been mincemeat. Second, what on earth would Reyes and Angel have to discuss?

I eased closer and squinted. The clearing was beautiful. It was one of those places perfect for a picnic. The sun hung low on the horizon, glistening across the field, elongating Reyes's shadow. He looked pensive, angry even, as he spoke to Angel. He no longer wore the tux jacket, and the top buttons of the starched white shirt had been undone, the sleeves rolled up.

He scrubbed his face with his fingers and turned sharply from Angel. He and Angel had never gotten along. Why would they be talking secretively now? Did he know about the Loehrs? Had Angel been spying on me earlier? Fear seized my lungs for a solid ten seconds before reality sank in. I looked awful with a blue face.

I filled my lungs and turned back to the young nun, but she was gone. And being left alone in the woods with someone who was clearly trying to kill me made me a tad uncomfortable, so I hurried back to the convent, doing my best to shake off the dread I felt. Was Duff trying to kill me? He'd said something earlier about pushing me, and I'd definitely been pushed. That couldn't have been a coincidence.

After sneaking back into the house, I rushed upstairs to change again since I was now covered in dirt and grass; then I headed back to the stairs that led to the attic. If the nun showed up again, I was not going to chase her. It was getting dark out, and there was a homicidal pusher roaming the countryside.

I took the steep stairs slowly. I'd been having a pain in my abdomen since my fall, and it was getting sharper with every step I took. I didn't think it was labor. It was too sharp and too concentrated in one area. I'd simply bruised myself on my trip down. Taking in a deep breath, I opened the door to the attic. Rocket was there, scratching a name into the Sheetrock.

He turned and brightened. “Miss Charlotte!” After lifting me into a hug that magnified the pain in my side, he set me down, turned back to his work, and started scratching again.

That was a short conversation. I leaned back against a column and said, “Rocket, I have a name for you.”

“I have too many.”

“Too many names?”

“Yes. Too too many.”

“I'm sorry. Can you check on one for me?”

“I don't think so, Miss Charlotte.”

“Why ever not?” I asked, massaging the pain.

“I have too many.”

“That was a beautiful wedding.” Strawberry stood beside me, holding her bald Barbie doll. “Cookie was so pretty. I wish I could have done her hair.”

A sharp stab of horror washed over me at the thought. “Is Blue here, too?” I had yet to see Rocket's little sister. That girl was the best at hide-and-seek I'd ever seen.

“Yes, she's in the round room.”

I frowned in thought. “What round room?”

“The tiny one.”

“What tiny one?”

“The one downstairs nobody knows about.”

This could go on for days. “Okay,” I said, acquiescing. “Well, I just hope she's having fun.”

“She likes it in there. It's quiet.”

“Wonderful.” I suddenly wondered if she was talking about the closet we couldn't get open. There was a door to a closet or a room or pantry in the laundry room off the kitchen. A door that was stuck. Or locked. Or both. Even Reyes couldn't open it. It became quite the challenge for a while; then we moved on to other, more interesting things.

What no one understood was that nothing,
nothing,
is more interesting than a locked door nobody could open. I had every intention of getting inside that room. I just didn't know how yet.

“Okay, seriously, Rocket. I need you to check on Faris Martina Waters.”

He seemed to sadden. “Not on my list.”

“Oh,” I said, brightening. “That's good.”

“Yet,” he added.

That was bad. “So, soon?” I asked, knowing the answer.

“No breaking rules, Miss Charlotte.” He continued to claw at the drywall.

And though I also knew the answer to my next question, I tried anyway. “Do you know where she is, Rocket?”

“Not where, only if. No breaking rules.”

Damn it. “For your information, rules were made to be broken. Just whose rules are these, Rocket? Who gave them to you?”

He looked at me as though I were on the low end of the IQ totem pole. “Nurse Hobbs.”

“Okay, and when Nurse Hobbs gave you these rules, what was she talking about?”

“Everything,” he said, throwing his arms out wide. “But mostly pudding.”

I had to ask. “Why pudding?”

“Because of that one time I tried to explain to her that the pudding disappeared yesterday and that Rubin took it, but she gave me the rules: Not when. Not who. Just if.”

This conversation was not turning out as I'd imagined. “If?”

“If I took it.”

I gaped at him. For, like, ten minutes. Was he kidding? After all this time, the rules weren't even about the departed or how he knew the names of everyone who'd ever passed, but about pudding? After absorbing that little nugget of gold, I said, “Rocket, I don't think those rules apply here.”

A loud gasp echoed around me. “Miss Charlotte,” he said, chastising me, “the rules apply everywhere. I told you. It wasn't just the pudding, but the corn bread, the honey, the turtle named Blossom—but that was only that one time—and the Thorazine.”

I could not believe what I was hearing. All this time, I'd thought Rocket's rules came from some celestial manual or guideline or flowchart, something official—but all along, they were from a nurse at the mental asylum where he'd lived most of his life? Visions of the charge nurse in
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
came to mind. She was scary.

“Rocket, Nurse Hobbs was not talking about people who have passed away. You can tell me anything about them you want to.”