Grave Robber for Hire (12 page)

“What the? The journal leapt out of your hand.”

I pretended to wipe my hands on the bedspread and grinned at Tyreal. “Slippery little sucker.” I shot Vig a one eyed glare and went to retrieve the book. He slapped his hand on the open page so I couldn’t lift it. I dug my fingers in, and tried to lift it, but Vig kept pressing. My knuckles whitened, and I grunted. Soon sweat would pop out on my forehead. Vig and I eyeballed each other. Battle of wills? Oh yeah, I love these games.

“What the fuck’s happening?”

Damn, party pooper busted my stubborn. I gave Vig one last death stare and let go. Vig reared back from the sudden release and fell off the bed. I laughed.

Wiping a happy tear from my eye I looked at Tyreal. “Nothing’s happening.”

“The end of the bed sprung up and the blankets moved.”

“I moved.”

Anger leaching out of every pore, Vig leaned over me and put his hand on the journal. Now the obviously insane Angel Meyers will look like a freaking twit and start to strangle her guardian angel. We locked gazes. I inched my fingers toward the journal, pushed his hand off and used my nicely manicured fingernail to flip open the page. Oh oops, my finger slipped, and I flipped off Vig.

Maturity’s overrated.

“And you just flipped the bird at?”

Christ did he see everything? “Clyde. It was a metaphorical flip.”

Viggo relaxed, and I got it. He didn’t want me to hold the book or have it in my lap. Fine, but he could have said so. I must
have looked ridiculous fighting with a book. Tyreal was handy to have around, I didn’t want to scare him away. A successful working relationship with a man would be good for me.

Mental lecture over, I opened my sixth sense, entered the ether and slipped into 1865.

Clyde Owen Jones was younger by twelve years than I’d seen him before. He sat at a small secretariat. With soft oil lamps glowing in strategic positions around the room. Clyde stiffened at my arrival but didn’t turn. It freaked me that he knew I watched him, but I forced myself to forget my tingling fear and to concentrate on his thoughts. He thought about a dinner party he and Amelia were to attend that evening and how beautiful she’d look in her new green dress. I drifted out, turned the page. Household accounts, mounting bills. I flipped pages, found more and more everyday dull life.

Three months into the journal, ooze started to tingle up my hand. Funny the other pages had been ooze free. Yet he’d obviously killed people while he still lived in England. The urge to snatch my hand away to protect the ass wearing the sexiest thong ever, hit hard, but what triggered the ooze?

Why did I wonder? Sick interest? A touch of Masochism? Plain stupidity?

Ah yes, good old D. Sick masochistic stupidity—the perfect phrase, I knew I’d find one.

I viewed a tiny but spotlessly clean white-washed room. A narrow bed covered in thin gray blankets hugged a wall. A rag-rug brightened a small portion of the floor. Calico curtains, covering the tiny window, hid the outside rain from view. Horses and carriages rattled and clattered on cobbles. Downstairs, a man raised his voice above the street noise, mentioned the weather, and asked Mrs. Bridges for a wedge of cheddar and a pound of sugar. A busy road below and we were above a store.

The cold in the room almost possessed a personality. I shivered. A dark
green cotton dress lay over a chair. Nestled on the dress was a crisp pound note. Clyde’s face was almost puce as he humped and garroted the woman he pressed against the wall. He must just have had his fly unbuttoned as he still wore trousers, shirt, and jacket.

A small posy of blue and yellow pansies tied by a white ribbon lay discarded on the floor. Ah, a gift from her client. How nice.

Flowers and a fucking to go with your strangulation, who said romance was dead?

I looked around the room for some indication of an address or name. The room appeared to be used for little more than business transactions. I could do nothing to save the already long dead, and didn’t want to see Clyde’s orgasm or the girl’s last agonized breaths.

Before I could pull out, my world spun and whirled, stomach churning into a nauseous vortex. Motion sickness on drugs. I slammed into another day, another time, another room. I flung my hand to my mouth to stop any projectile vomit wanting to make a dramatic appearance. Sweat iced my face. I slumped against a wall.

I viewed a room with blue flowered wallpaper. At the large bay window, royal blue curtains hung in heavy velvet folds, the color matching the fringed carpet on the floor. A blue comforter was scrunched.

Two men faced me; a young man on his hands and knees and Clyde mounting him from behind. A long thin blade flashed as Clyde screamed his orgasm and sliced the boy’s throat. Blood, dark, and rich gushed in an obscene river, flowing over the boy’s soft skin and the pristine blue of the fabrics.

The boy screamed and gurgled. It sounded like he called out, “Mom.”

I landed on something solid, strong and warm, and it held me prisoner. I screamed and thrashed, pushing, clawing against my shackles. I threw my head back, cracked into something hard. Heard a grunt.

“Fuck, Angel, it’s me. You’re safe, Princess, you’re safe.”

My head hurt and I started sobbing. I sucked air, choked, and made keening animal sounds. Real sexy stuff.

Viggo stormed up and down the room. “No more. No more.” A whole pile of angry gibber spewed out. He stopped and pinched the bridge of his nose thudded his right fist into his palm. “No more.” He strode over and took my hand, kissed it and poofed out.

Tyreal stretched over to the bedside and grabbed a couple of tissues and handed them to me. “Can you tell me about it?”

I slipped out of Tyreal’s hol
d and plucked at the generic mostly blue, bedspread. “Two. He remembered killing two people; a woman in her late twenties and a boy around sixteen. Strangled the woman, slit the boys throat. The blood, just … gushed.” I drew in and released a shaky breath.

“He loves the killing. Clyde gets off on the death, the ultimate power—stealing life.”

Tyreal ran his hand down my hair. “I found a man once with his throat cut. Homeless guy who’d huddled in a doorway to escape the cold. Murderer decides homeless guy has shoes he likes, slits his throat and steals them ....” He stopped for a minute. “Clyde was a serial killer, Princess. There’s something dead and wrong in their brains. Quit the case and stop doing this to yourself.”

“As well as wanting the Rembrandt for my client and the fee, I have this gut deep feeling I have to expose the depths of Clyde’s depravity to the world. You have a police background and real investigation skills, together we could identify the victims and prove he killed them.”

“You watch too much Cold Case, Princess. I was a cop, not a magician and not on homicide. I’ll never be able to prove who killed those people. Fifty years would be a stretch for a long term homicide detective, but a hundred and fifty—probably impossible. We might be able to identify names by date of death. That’s it. Nothing we do will help the murdered or their families.”

I ran my hand over my cast and looked at the journals. Late or not, I wanted justice for the dead.

“Stop looking at the journals. Don’t even think of touching one. The sun’s out, we’ll go for a walk.” He slipped off the bed and passed me my handbag.

“No. I’ll do the one closest to the date of the Rembrandt disappearing. It’s why I’m here and I have to have those journals returned to Josey tomorrow morning.” I’d never really understood the term loom until Tyreal stood over me and glowered his disapproval.

“Just one, promise. Then I’ll be exhausted and need a break.”

He glanced at the door, turned and gave me an assessing look.

“You will not carry me out. Besides I weigh too much”

He snorted. “I could carry three of you. But how’d you know I was thinking that?”

“Sadly I think I am getting to understand your assessing squints.”

His laugh was loud and short. “Alright we do this my way.” He sat on the bed against the pillows I just moved from. He pointed to the V between his legs. “Sit here, journal opened flat on the bed in front of you. From this position, I can feel more of the tension in your body, know you’re in something you don’t want to be, and pull you bodily away from the journal.”

I did that cat’s butt moue thing with my lips I like to do, when I was both thinking and a little cranky. The truth is my last Clyde time-walk left me a touch frazzled. Tyreal’s bodily reassurance would probably help.

I wiggled between his thighs, and never once noticed how much they bulged with hard muscles.

“Careful what you wiggle that cute ass against.” Tyreal moved and another hard muscle flexed.

Bloody hell, “Sorry.” I can’t feel it. I’m numb, feel nothing from the eyelids down. I’m in Zen,
ummmmmmmmm
.

The newest journal was bound in navy leather. The lettering 1877 embossed with gold decorated the cover.

The second I opened the book, ooze travelled up my finger and arm. Jeez, I couldn’t catch a break. Stay focused, the ooze can’t kill you, it’s benign, freak and Tyreal will pull you out before you find anything. Six pages went by, but all I found was everyday life, 1877 style. I stood at the rear of a church and watched Clyde, Amelia, and five of his children slip into a pew. They began to sing a hymn, and I almost threw up. The man had no end to his hypocrisy.

And obviously pure evil could enter sanctified land. So much for all those vamp movies.

More pages, more ooze, and I found myself back in the study where I’d first found him. Clyde stretched his arm under the table, fiddled with something, and slid out a two foot wide plank of thin wood. The front of the shelf bore a carved strip of wood perfectly blended with the rest of the table. On the shelf rested a cardboard covered cheap and every-day notebook

He picked it up and flicked to one of the last pages. Quill in hand he noted down a quick description and value of a jewelry piece he’d purchased for his wife that day. Pen resting, he picked up a curved ink blotter and rolled it across the page. Before he shut the ledger, the thoughts of three paintings, other jewelry, and multiple property deeds flashed into his mind.

Three cherries fell into a row. Bells clanged. Mental change fell into the bucket. I’d hit pay-dirt.

I need that notebook. All the books I’d seen were diaries and journals. A couple of Claudia Reese-Jones’ had held accounts, but not like this. This book held the mother-load. It listed his assets.

Of gold, glorious gold, Rembrandt gold.

I pulled out of the room, drew a deep breath, relieved I’d witnessed no more deaths and relaxed against Tyreal. Even pretending to be dead from the eyelids down didn’t stop me from enjoying some sexy man vibes.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Clyde recorded his wealth in a plain cardboard notebook. I bet that’s where we’ll find what happened to the Rembrandt. The catch is, most people throw away cardboard books over the years. There’s a good chance it became compost or landfill a hundred years ago.”

And without it, I had a bad feeling we would be up poo river without a paddle.

Chapter 11

I phoned Claudia to tell her what I’d seen in the last journal and that we needed more written material. “If possible we need to find that particular notebook. I think it’s the key to the Rembrandt.”

“More books? How am I going to find more books without the rest of Clyde’s ancestors finding out what I’m looking for? Can’t you just re-read that journal, see if it gives you more information this time?” her voice hit screech level. I held the phone a foot from my ear, but could still hear her clearly. I knew she’d be overjoyed.

Clients never understood that finding their lost item depended on truckloads of luck. The likelihood the right written words still existed was always a gamble.

Claudia raised her voice higher, “I’m paying you to find this information not have holidays.”

“I don’t have a recipe that will take me to the right words and journal. The writing has to exist, and I have to touch it. We need that notebook.”

“Yes-yes, but we have so much of his writing available, and his grave is not far from here. You did say that you can gather thoughts through graves.”

Yeah, well I hadn’t discovered any witchy poo spells yet, so I wasn’t doing the grave touchy thing for him any time soon.

“I’m reviewing Josey’s journals. So far they’ve not provided any information regarding the Rembrandt.”

An unfriendly sigh blasted over the phone. “Fine,
I’ll
continue making calls, see if I can scrape up more writing. People will start to wonder what I am really hunting for.”

Why, because you’re after the same gold all the ancestors might wish to fondle? Josey suspected my true purpose straight off. A suspicion which I suspect enticed her to trash my room.

“Just tell them you’re doing a list. Hell, type one up and send it around. Never hurts to have family items recorded.”

Afterwards, I might recommend the owners take their books to a priest to be exorcised. Maybe Clyde’s descendants would score a bulk discount. Two exorcisms for the price of one.

I hung up and turned to Tyreal. “Could you do some research on the murders I witnessed this morning and maybe a bit more on Josey? Gut instinct makes me think Josey might have a more checkered past.” She might follow family tradition, and also be a serial killer.

“I’ll meet up with Tony for a beer and ask for a more detailed view of the woman.”

“Would he dig into her past?”

“Any good cop, and Tony is, will already be in deep search mode.”

He called Tony and arranged to meet him downstairs at the bar. He stood to leave. “No journal diving until I return. You look tired and should rest.”

I gave him a salute. “Aye, aye Captain”

He grabbed his wallet, stuffed it into the back of his jeans, and put his phone in his front pocket. “Smart ass.”

He left, so I lay down, and starting replaying brain videos of long ago murders. I flopped over to my side, and forced myself to imagine sheep, food, men, and clothes.
Ugh
. Visions of blood spurting from a young throat just doesn’t make you sleepy. I sat up, turned on the television and channel surfed. I laughed at the ads on the infomercial channel for ugly bras made for nuns and those who wanted none, and hit the red off button.

My handbag seemed to grow and wave at me. Take me shopping, I need fresh air. I have moths suffocating inside me.
Mmmm, I
could
go shopping. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the journals.
Phfft,
or I could do research. I travelled to Sydney for work, and I’d released hundreds of moths yesterday.

Ignoring the lure of bankruptcy because I have such
a strong will—I laughed. Strong willpower! God, I crack myself up. I pulled out my laptop, connected to the hotel’s internet and typed, Sydney Murders, 1865.

And scrolled through hundreds of newspaper articles that had been scanned and made available to the public.

Socialite’s Son Murdered
. Aged seventeen, Alexander William Benedict, had been found in his bed with his throat cut.

So I had an identity. It didn’t change the world or stop the boy from dying. Nor could I, a century and a half later, have Clyde incarcerated or hung. Yet somehow knowing the boy’s name made me feel less a spectator. I browsed obituaries for the woman. Prostitutes and the poor didn’t get many mentions and certainly didn’t rate headlines.

I looked at my watch, nearly dinner time. I’d just sneak a peek at the last two journals of Josey’s. I needed any information the old books held, and had to return them tomorrow. I shot the door a guilty look in case Tyreal returned and he found I was backing down on a promise. A quick shuffle centered me on the bed. Legs crossed, I pulled the newer of the two journals to me.

I peered closely at the fancy cursive of the 1875 journal. People back then, even the insane, wrote with haunting elegance. After deciphering a few lines, I realized he listed the plants growing in his vegetable and flower beds. Wow exciting. This should be a nice benign place to start my search.

I took a deep breath and put my hand on the page. Heart thudding a bongo beat, I opened the ether to the other side. The layer of 1875 was only half in place when ooze darted into my hand and snaked around my wrist in tight tendrils of evil. I squealed, jerked my arm to free myself. The tendrils tightened, seizing my flesh in fettered iron like bands. Searing hot barbs pierced and burrowed into my flesh. The dimensions locked.

Holy crap, I’d been ensnared.

I threw myself sideways then backward. The barbs held tight. Black and purple smoke started to mist around my wrist and hand. I freaked and considered having a stroke.

Just had to enter the journal didn’t I? I should have gone shopping. Instead I’d reached the Everest summit of idiocy.

Through the lesions in my wrist, my flesh started to heat. The burn of a fever pulsed up my arm with each beat of my heart. The fever spread throughout my body. Worse than any illness I’d ever had, the temperature cooked me from the inside out. Sweat trickled down my face as the slide of ice skated down my spine. I shivered, snapping my teeth in a violent spasm.

Influenza, with a kick-boxer’s impact.

Tyreal would return to find me a blackened husk.

A Tawny Frogmouth
woo-wooed
to his or her mate. I stood outside in a half acre sized backyard, sweating and shivering. I looked into the dim light of moonlight and saw my most abhorred dead person. The scent of damp earth, dewy grass, and strong male sweat filled my unappreciative nose.

There’s a lot to be admired in modern deodorants and bathing practices.

Clyde, shovel in hand, stood chest deep in a hole in the ground. A flex of his shoulders, he lifted and hauled out a large chunk of dark soil. Tomatoes, carrots, and other vegetables grew around his digging spot.

In the yard’s far corner, an ancient eucalypt highlighted by moonlight, stretched toward the stars. Covered in cream feathery filament flowers, nectar filled the air with the slightly overdone scent of heavy honey. Two hessian bags filled with something large and lumpy lay beside the mammoth pit that Clyde dug.

Clyde tossed the shovel onto the soil heap and wiped his brow with his no longer white linen sleeve. He turned and grinned at me, flashing a little too much tooth for pleasantry. He climbed out of the hole, bent, and grunted as he picked up and emptied one of the sacks into the hole.

A young boy, brown hair, freckled skinned, and covered in dried blood, flopped into the void.

I threw my red casted hand over my mouth and retched. Clyde picked up the second bag. A slithering sound. Sweet lord, another child flopped out of the bag. With the slap of flesh on flesh, he joined the other boy in the grave.

Both boys were naked and had their throats slit.

I started to convulse. My heart raced until I couldn’t discern individual beats, I gasped in sobbing breaths.

They were only ten or eleven years old—babies.

What monster slaughtered children?

Right. A monster.

The almost full moon illuminated the yard. Enough for me, only ten feet away, to see and smell the death and the blood. To feel anguish for children stolen from life. Hate, acidic and vile burned my throat with inconceivable potency. I seethed with anger, begged the universe to let me measure out undiluted vigilante revenge.

I
wanted to be the one to tear Clyde apart. The one who hacked out his heart. The one who drained his blood. The one who cleaved off his head. But if I’d killed him, I’d have lit a pyre and made sure nothing but ashes remained. Ashes I’d scatter in the wind.

Shame the monster was already dead.

Clyde started shoveling dirt onto the boys, filling their back-yard grave. “Brothers in life and death,” he sniggered. “Taking you gratified my lust. But alas boys, I couldn’t let you live to tell on me now could I?” He spoke in a sickening happy sing-song voice. He finished piling on the dirt, patted it down with the shovel and stomped over it. A tub of plants in his hand, he scraped a trench in the soil and planted a row of tomatoes.

“Next year, I’ll put a fruit tree on top of your grave. You’ll be good fertilizer by then.”

Why did the fates force me to watch this fiasco funeral?

Clyde wiped his hands on a rag, dropped it next to his shovel, and turned to me.

Trapped in a dimension with a psychopath who could see me, I was pretty sure I was in deep, deep, city sewage deep, shit.

His eyes glowed dull red. They cleared and became the color of summer cherries, which looked as if they were backlit with a flashlight. Pretty, if they weren’t glowing in a human. Fear, rich and ripe, fed my racing adrenaline. The bone structure of his face, already sharply cut, became more angular. His skin paled to gray white and his lips thinned to a harsh long line.

“Mary Mother and all the gods.” Clyde wasn’t human. My extremities tingled with excess blood. It thundered in my ears. I thrashed, but the barbs unsympathetic to my terror, latched bone deep into my arm’s flesh.

My scream vibrated the air. Clyde, a horror movie monster in the flesh, cackled, and I couldn’t find the remote to change channel.

The Clyde creature stretched its oversized mouth wide into a mocking grin and exposed pointed shark like teeth.

I stared transfixed by my fear. Monster Clyde didn’t need knives to kill or eat me.

Yay for Clyde.

Boo, boo, for me.

Vomit, bitter and plentiful, rose to my throat. I retched. Through my mind ran the words,
all the better to eat you with my dear
. Fairy tales always add cheer. Too bad I’d forgotten my red cape and hood.

I threw myself backward, tearing my arm, not caring how the claws ripped my flesh, and prayed I didn’t slice an artery. Hopefully the Clyde thing didn’t like to drink blood. The barbs twisted and bit harder. Something wrapped around my ankles
. Shit, don’t’ look. Don’t look and it won’t be real. Right? I looked.

Fuck, I shouldn’t have looked.

Snake headed black mist vines slithered out of the soil wrapping around my feet, ankles, and calves. A nightmare slave sandal made a tawdry fashion statement. Little forked tongues tickled and tasted and repulsed my skin. I tried to kick, but the snakes wound further up my calves holding me prisoner.

Little tongues flicking, flicking, flicking.

Me, freaking, freaking, freaking.

Terror froze my body and blanked my mind. I manned up and sobbed. I love all creatures, but these beasties, I wanted to rip off their heads, stuff them into a blender and hit juice.

Two feet away from me, creature Clyde halted. Chin lowered, he stared. A transformation came over his face, it split, widened into an insane smirk, flashing more jagged teeth. I cringed as he extended his hand and latched onto my wrist in a vice grasp. Squashed under his hands, the evil barbs scored into my bone. My head fell forward with the pain. I sucked a breath that didn’t reach past my throat. Sweet Jesus, could this get worse?

Best not to know.

Blood, black and thick sludged over my hand, and dripped onto the ground. I did a girly squeal sob thing and started praying. I didn’t care which deity heard me as long as one of the bastards answered. And fast, speed seemed appropriate. Although preferably not a Pagan god who demanded a virgin sacrifice. Oh, I wasn’t a virgin.
Phew.

Clyde ran a forked tongue over his razor choppers. “He said you are my reward, that you are mine before I release you to him. And I intend to enjoy you more than I’ve ever enjoyed
anyone
. For you know what I become, what that bitch did to me?” He jerked my hand, pulled me forward and up. Spit-fire pain shot up my arm. I stopped from passing out by sheer shit scared determination. Nothing like the dread of being raped by a monster to keep you conscious.

Clyde tugged my arm again, I dug in my feet, hoped my snake bosom buddies held me close, kept me for themselves and away from Clyde.

They slithered further out of the ground.

Unfaithful bastards. I fell forward. Wind of ice bit into my skin, a roaring of time rushed, pounded in my ears and body. I felt my corporeal
self slipping into 1875.