Grave Robber for Hire (18 page)

Hot liquid sloshed over the bare skin of my hand, down my boobs, hit my shorts and soak
ed through at the crotch. “Shit-fucking-shit.” I leaped up. Tried to put down my cup, pull the scalding vest fabric away from my boobs, wiggled my ass in a futile attempt to relieve the burning of my girl bits, and cracked my broken arm on the red chair, and … fell over.

Lying on the floor in a puddle of hot coffee, I couldn’t decide what hurt more, boobs, arm, crotch, or the new scald on my back.

Tears streaming down his face, weak from laughing, Tyreal barely managed to take my weight and Vig appeared no more useful. Tyreal lifted and eased me into a chair, disappeared, returning with a glass of water and two painkillers. I took them and waited till he stopped guffawing his delight and listened to Vig’s soft laughter. I don’t mind providing light comic relief, but if I had a gun I’d shoot the bastards. Dead and alive.

Lucy, lips tipping at the end, sipped her coffee. “Are you alright?”

I glared at her and her smudged kohl.
Aha
. She’d been laughing. I’d have to shoot her too. “Yep.”

Tyreal straightened, walked into the kitchen and made me a fresh coffee and Vig went back to watching the English version of Top Gear. He liked the stars
’ antics and the hot cars. The hot cars were good.

With my fresh coffee placed on the table, Lucy pulled a large envelope out of her back pocket. “This is from Dad.”

I snapped in my chin in surprise and took the fat white envelope from her. I opened it and discovered several thick wads of one hundred dollar bills rubber-banded together.

Waving the envelope, I stared at her. “What’s this for?”

“Dad sold your ….” She looked furtively under her thickly mascaraed lashes at Tyreal. “He um found a purchaser for your … spare room decoration.”

Spare room decoration? Spare room …. All my body fluids flushed themselves down the drains in my legs and rushed out of my toes.
Holy moly.

I shoved my chair back, ran down the hall and flung open the bright red door. Sweet-mother-of-every-frigging-god, I was royally, with Queen’s full armory pointed at my head, fucked.

“Not only will I chop off your dad’s nuts, I’m feeding them to the dogs.”

Aunty Glynnis’ dope plant had been reduced to a display of sticks. Not even the tiniest leaf remained. Brett, Lucy’s dad, murdered my plant via buzz-cut. I turned and found Tyreal standing behind me, his face immobile, his eyes holding a desperate light. La
ughter, shock, and WTF all seemed present.

Great, an ex-cop just witnessed me selling, without my permission or knowledge, but still selling and receiving money for drugs.

Darkness edged around my vision.

I’m small. In prison, big butch chicks would eat me alive.
OMG
. I squeezed my legs together—literally. My heart red-lined. Squinting, I glared out the window toward Brett and Lucy’s house. Not just Brett’s nuts, I would also hack off his willy.

Lucy’s giggle sounded a tad nervous. “There’s six grand in the envelope. Dad knew you needed money to put the new stables in. He um, he says he will help erect them if you buy it in kit form.” She dug in her other low hipster jeans pocket and pulled out a tiny zip-lock plastic bag. “Dad saved you fifty seeds from the heads.” She looked at my obviously stricken face and blanched.

“Dad fudged up didn’t he?”

I took the packet, looked at my seeds stash because I couldn’t compute anything else, turned and stared at my pruned and now ugly pot plant.

Fudged up? Nah never.
“Royally. Tell him all his boy junk is dog food.” Stupid stoner neighbors with good intensions.

Lucy looked from Tyreal then back to me. “Well um, I’ll get going. Bye.” She scuttled down the hall. I did a Cheshire cat grin at Tyreal.

The gleam in his eyes brightened. “You’re kind of fun to hang around. I never know what will happen next.”

“Err. Yeah. W
ell people don’t usually break into my house and hack apart and sell my dope plant for me. But Brett wouldn’t mean any harm. He’s a stoner and doesn’t have enough brain cells left to think clearly. Lucy pretty much looks after him. He’d think he was really helping me get the stables in before winter, he has a thing for me.”

“Seems to be a common problem.” Tyreal reached behind me, pulled the door shut. “I saw nothing.” Shoulders shaking, he turned and walked down the hall muttering. “I saw nothing.”

At the dining area, I sat in the blue chair again.

Tyreal whistled at a Lamborghini on T.V. and then gazed out the sliding glass door. Tina, leaning over the fence whinnied at him. “How much are these stables Brett’s so keen for you to get?”

“With flooring, someone to erect them, etc., I’d drain my bank of about twenty grand.”

He stared at me. “Twenty grand?”

“Six bays with a tack and feed room. Cement floor, plumbing to hose it out.”

“And you pay for this out of your own pocket?”

“Yes. I rescue animals and give them a good home. Part of that is to provide good shelter.”

“You’re a treasure.”

“You won’t tattle to the police about the dope?”

“As I said, I saw nothing. Far as I could tell you didn’t mean to sell it or expect to. But get rid of what is left of the plant and don’t plant the seeds. Testifying it was your Aunt’s and sentimental, won’t stop you from finding a whole pile of behind bars love.”

I quivered. I really am a guy girl.

I slid the envelope over and counted out my six ill gained grand. Tyreal waffled on about how to dispose of my pot, his voice a drone of white noise.

I already had twelve grand put aside. Tomorrow I could order the bobcat guy in to level the site, organize the cement slab. The council approval I’d done a month ago. Ill-gotten or not, this little windfall was timely. I could pay for the shed and even order its erection. By the time the builders arrived, I’d have the full amount of money saved. I grinned, stood, and walked over to my aunt’s old tin tea caddy and stuffed in the money.

“You’re like a kid, you’d tuned out every word I said then didn’t you?”

I put the lid back on the caddy. Looked blankly at Tyreal. “What?”

He sighed. “Christ, tell me you don’t keep money in there. That you’ll be taking the cash to the bank.”

“I can’t. That’s where I keep my animal money.”

He rubbed his hand over his face. “How much is in there?”

“Well
now
I have eighteen thousand.”

He dropped his hand and stood still. “In that? Sitting on your shelf? You’re mad.”

“If I pay in cash I get discounts. By the end of the week, most of it will be gone anyway. The bobcat will come in, I’ll have the slab laid, I’ll prepay for the stables kit, only thing left will be the cost of the guys to erect it.”

“But Brett said he’d erect it.”

I sat back at the table and Tyreal joined me. “You don’t ask a stoner to build anything. I want the shed straight and to stay standing. Brett’d have a box of bolts left over and wonder why my stables blew down in the first storm.” Or barest puff of wind.

Asha walked over to Vig, scored a small pat that made Tyreal stare at the couch a little too hard. Pat received
, she ambled into the kitchen and sniffed the rubbish bin in the hope that something tasty sat on top then walked to her bed and fell on it in a loud huff. Misca jumped onto the table, arched gracefully and head-butted my face. I head-butted her back and started stroking her. “I better start checking out Gladys’ items.”

Misca slid through my hand over to Tyreal. In a graceful arc of her black furred body, she head-butted him under his chin. He snapped his head up and scowled.

“You don’t like cats?” Well there was a deal breaker, if we had a deal.

“I’ve not had a lot to do with them. Never had one.”

Misca did a U-turn and ambled the other way, head-butted him again. “She wants a pat, and then she’ll stop doing that.”

I pulled the strap of Gladys’ calico bag and pulled out three accounts ledgers. The second I opened the first book, ooze tingled around my hand. Fantastic, a bonus to my day.

I entered the ether. I didn’t want to be part of the whole room again, a seeable intruder in the scene. I’d try something new. I stood with the ether wind buffeting my hair, searing my face with its dry air. Rather than pull the whole time dimension over the now, I tugged time gone only partially down and peered inside. If I looked the right way, I could still view the whole room Clyde was in and see his thoughts. A time travel peeping Tom. I didn’t know if I could hold it that way, viewing through the small portal rather than being in the whole view, still I had to try.

The screen flickered, I mentally gripped it, holding it with a lot of focus.

#

Two hours later, my head throbbing with dimension holding exhaustion, I slumped in my chair. Tyreal took my hand. “Princess, you look awful.”

Nice of him to notice. “Juice, I need juice.” I’d held that tiny window through all I’d seen. It proved harder, energy sapping harder, than expected. I didn’t care. Clyde had not noticed or attacked me, no snake things or claws imprisoned me or tried to enter my body.

I’d take the shakes and exhaustion.

Vig sat beside me and looked at me. “Okay?”

I gave a tiny nod and took the orange juice Tyreal handed me. He waited till I drank half the glass. “What did you find?”

I drained the glass in a second gulp and gasped in relief. “Eight more murders. Two were prostitutes he killed in Sydney. He also killed a nun in Melbourne.”

“A nun. Did he have sex with a nun?” He looked so shocked I giggled. Reckon it takes a bit to shock an ex-cop.

“You raised Catholic?” Only reason he’d be so shocked. I just saw a woman when I saw a nun.

“Catholic? Sort of.”

“Right. Yep, sex with a nun. She was even dressed in her habit and judging by her groaning she’d been no virgin bride of Christ. After, he slit her throat for her sins.”

“Jesus.”

“I’ve got one journal left. I want to get it read while I have the strength.” I pulled the book toward me before Tyreal could protest, flipped the cover and re-entered the ether. I pulled the time dimension, and nothing happened. My hand fell limp to my side. I lifted it, pushing against the wind and my exhaustion, dug my fingers into the screen and tugged. The screen lowered half way but vibrated as I struggled to hold it in place.

Clyde sat in an overstuffed armchair, his
slippered feet propped on a footstool. A small secretariat balanced on a tray on his lap. A large silver platter came to my mind, a silver coffee set. He wrote and mentally listed a large assortment of silverware. I was more a stainless steel girl myself. Silver suited those who had maids.

Clyde stopped writing. A sly smile stretched his handsome face. A painting of a naked lady, curvaceous and on the plump side of fat, stood next to a tin bath. Backlit, by a fire behind her, her long red hair glowed. The Rembrandt. I slipped, the dimension started to flip up, I grabbed it, pushed it to where I wanted it.
Fuck-a-doodle-doo
. The Rembrandt. My heart started to hammer against the confines of my ribs.

Where is it Clyde? Tell me where you hid it. Come on, think pervert Clyde, where is it hidden? Please, please, pretty, please.

I saw a thin ledger and his fancy desk with the hidden drawer, then his mind morphed to another painting. A Rubens. A Rubens just as Tyreal mentioned. Clyde wrapped the Rubens in multiple layers of oil cloth. He hammered a pre-made wooden crate around it, then wrapped that in oil cloth. In a small pantry or storage room of his residence, he put the Rubens down, placed pre-cut timbers around it and started hammering floorboards on top. Finished, he picked up large slabs of red timber and slid them into place as shelves and refilled the shelves with linen.

With the cupboard full, you would never know the floor now possessed a four inch step.

Had the Rubens been lost too, but forgotten by the family? If I found both it and the Rembrandt, I’d be a billion-squillionaire.

Mind boggling.

I giggled and pulled my hand away. I was exhausted from holding the portal at half-mast. I went to speak. Some drivel slurred out. I slumped onto the table and everything went black.

Chapter 17

I woke in my bed with dawn slicing darkness in a display of welcoming golden rays. My bladder at the point of popping, I rolled over and hit the floor and headed for the bathroom and did what nature demanded. Afterward, I stripped and got to inspect the pink of my coffee burns.

What a specimen of womanhood. Bruises, grazes, breaks, and burns. Sex god.

A hardy sex god.

I ran and slipped into a bath with a wanton sigh, lay back and soaked. My mind hit the snooze button. The door swung open. I rolled my head to the side expecting one of my cats or a dog saying hello. Right on both, three dogs and two cats trotted in, but with them came a pair of long jean clad legs.

I rushed to scrunch up and cover my girl bits. Gidget trotted over and nosed my arm, licked my face. “
Errrk.” Misca and Zac, strutted past the bath and meowed good morning or it might have been feed me. This early, it all sounded the same.

“Sorry, you’d been in here so long I was worried you’d drowned.” Tyreal put a coffee beside me and sat on the side of the bathtub.

“Please, privacy’s not important, make yourself comfy.”

He grinned. “Want me to scrub your back, soap up your breasts?”

“No. Did you stay the night?”

“Yep, and I shared it with a female.”

“You what?”

“Misca the rock cat, slept on my chest all night. Frigging uncomfortable, but every time I moved, she’d just crawl back on.”

I started to feel like my life was mid morph, and I wasn’t ready for a morph. “Why did you stay the night?”

“Because you’d passed out and I didn’t know if you were going to be okay. I even fed the animals. Horses included, but I sort of just threw hay at random spots into the paddock.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it.” I made shooing motions that he ignored. “I want to wash.”

He patted the arm I had wrapped around my knees. “You know I’ve seen it, Princess, but I had hopes for a refresher.” He stood and walked out the door.

“Refresher?” I needed to work on my authoritative bossy voice. The one I’d been using didn’t work.

I drank the perfect coffee, did a one hand was
h and shave. Dressed in a seventies cheesecloth white dress, I headed for the living room. The old wall clock told me it was six forty-five in the morning. Bloody hell, this was wayyyyy too early to be out of bed. But I’d zonked out before eating dinner or the sun set.

“I ache everywhere I can ache.”

Tyreal sat beside me on the couch, pulled my legs onto his lap and started massaging one of my calf muscles.

“What are you doing?” Really? I
was complaining—about a massage? Idiot.

“Easing the tension. Feel good?”

Like magic danced and wove into my skin. Gulp. I should stop him. A calf massage should not be sensual. “Yes.”

“Good. Relax.” After he finished melti
ng me with the calf massage, he moved his magic fingers down to my foot. It hurt in the most fantastic and mildly orgasmic way.

What was it about him? I mean normally I never let a guy near me for more than sex or a little fun. Sure he was my work partner, but here we sat on my couch, at sparrow’s first morning fart while he massaged my foot.

And I never trust men. Yet for some reason I felt safe with Tyreal.

Sure he was gorgeous, but that never caused me to be best buds with a man. He was even a little smothering in a take over the world way, which I hate. Plus, he had some sort of sex voodoo going on I found off putting. I mean, until I’d met Tyreal I’d never thought of sex so constantly, and this constant niggle concerned me. I could be a moth zoning into a testosterone flame.

I saw myself more like a butterfly fluttering in the wind of life, a bit frivolous, free, and pretty, but not singed and dying on the floor.

Tyreal rubbed my other leg and foot, then kissed my big toe. “There you go. Now what did you discover last night? You giggled before you passed out, so I assume you saw something other than a murder this time.”

“I did. We have to find Clyde Owen’s old Brisbane residence and hope to hell it still exists. I saw him hide a painting under a false floor he built in a pantry or linen closet. I also want to feel the soil in the backyard to see if that’s where he buried the two brothers.”

“So you want to enter someone’s house if it still even exists, rip up the flooring, and crawl over their backyard and look for hundred and fifty year old dead bodies?”

I nodded, “Yep.”

“So if the house exists, how do we get inside?”

“I’ve a few tried and tested ways.”

“And they are?”

“Um, different things.” I usually used Viggo to break in. Sometimes he poofed inside and found things for me. He didn’t like doing that, so usually we broke in instead. Apparently he found break and enter more ethical. Crazy guardian.

“Tell me you don’t break in.”

“Okay, I don’t break in.”

“You’re lying.”

“How the hell would you know I was lying?”

“I was a cop. I know a lie.”

“Okay, sometimes I break in.” Sometimes Vig does. “I take nothing other than the item that needs locating.”

“It’s still theft.”

“Not if they don’t know they have it. I don’t take things hanging on the wall or sitting in the display cabinet. I find stuff that’s been hidden and forgotten for years and often generations.”

“Fine line there.”

Gossamer
. “Perhaps. But it’s my line. What’s the big deal? You broke into Josey’s house.”

“Because I thought I was saving an injured animal. Helping people and animals as the break and enter reasoning d
oesn’t worry me. Stealing does.”

“My share will help lots of animals. Does that help your ethics?”

He groaned, squeezed the top of his nose and rubbed his temples.

Tyreal started a cyber-search for the property we had listed as Clyde’s at the time of his death. We narrowed the search to St. Lucia. The street name had stayed the same, except lane was now street, but we weren’t sure about the house number.

“I’ve seen it in his mind in 1876. I might be able to pick it out in the street if the façade hasn’t changed much over the years.”

Tyreal did a satellite search allowing us to cyber walk up the road. Most of the houses, although old, didn’t seem old enough. Then we came to one with a steep central pyramid roofline. Two bay windows encroached on the deep front veranda that wrapped around the house’s sides.

“Stop. That’s it.”

“You sure?”

“Not a hundred percent. It’s changed a little. The roof line is similar, and his house had leadlight bay windows just like those. And look one, two,—five chimneys. Same number.”

“A rich man’s residence.”

“A viscount’s second son sitting on his wife’s inheritance, he’d have nothing else, would he? In fact, I think he thought Brisbane and his house far beneath him.” I looked closer at the image on the screen, the house looked ill kept. Odd, St. Lucia, is prime real estate usually owned by executives, double income, established, and the wealthy.

“Number thirty-six. Let’s type in the address and see what we can find.”

Minutes later Tyreal pointed to the screen and a small real estate sign. “It’s for sale.”

Luck, so rare in the last couple of weeks, tasted damn fine. “Check it out on the real estate agency site.”

“I have, there’s an open house tomorrow afternoon. Or will we book an inspection?”

“Inspection. More private. We can snoop with a smaller audience.”

#

Ready to hunt out a
Rubens bearing closet, that afternoon we arrived in front of number 36 Mitze Street, St. Lucia. A BMW sat in the sun next to a man dressed in Brisbane’s version of a suit, dress trousers, dress shirt and tie. He waited with a small folder. Real estate guy looked approximately five ten in height with a small frame and the paunch men pushing forty highlight with tight shirts, like women exhibit a good set of breasts. The look didn’t do a lot for me.

I wrapped my hand around Tyreal’s arm as we walked toward the real estate guy as if we were a couple wanting to buy our first home together. I’d slipped a huge fake diamond ring on my ring finger, and Tyreal wore a signet ring he normally wore on his right hand on his left ring finger. We’d both dressed expensive yuppie and driven down in Streak since it seemed to make people think of money. With our bullshit rehearsed and set on high voltage, we stopped in front of the man.

“Hi. I’m Craig Benson. Great car. Original?”

He looked at Tyreal, but I answered. Well it is my car and I hate people who just assume and make gender assumptions. “Outside only. The motor and interior are more modern. Took me years to pay for it.”

He nodded enthusiastically as he took Tyreal’s hand.

“Atticus Johansson,” Tyreal said with the straightest of faces. I had to hide my laugh under a
coughing fit. Atticus? That wasn’t the name we rehearsed.

False cough suppressed I extended a reluctant hand. “Shania Johansson.” My fake name, however, was the one we’d agreed on.

“Come in. I’ve opened the house up to let some air flow. Now, as I said when we spoke this morning, the house needs extensive work. Mr. Jones died three months ago and was a hundred years old. He lived here all his life, and I’d say left the place to rot fifty years ago. Some floorboards need replacing. The kitchen is circa nineteen thirty. Bathroom was renovated in the forties.”

Tyreal and I exchanged glances.
Woot.
no one lived here. The agent entered the house while we pretended to admire the front façade, the sagging roof line, the proper leaded windows, the few flakes of remaining paint.

I tugged Tyreal’s hand so he’d drop to my level. “Atticus?”

“The agent has a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird on the dash of his car. The name just popped into my head.” Inside we stepped into a time capsule, and a renovator’s money sucking pit. The furniture still in place was very old. Everything felt neglected and in need of life.

“It’s a deceased estate. Ira Jones’ children died years ago, so the estate’s in the hands of six grandchildren. Furniture and all contents are included in the sale.”

“Cool,” I whispered under my breath. “Clyde and Amelia’s grandson. Look at the furniture, it’s awesome and the real deal.” I pointed to a sideboard with elaborate carving. “That’s Chippendale-authentic, not reproduction.” I pointed to the dining table in the front dining room as we passed it. “Oh wow, so is that. Twelve chairs and a table, they have to be worth fifty thousand easy.”

“Could be Clyde’s original furniture?”

A jolt of extra awesome hit. I grabbed the wall in excitement. “Shit, of course. Look for a desk.” Oh, this was the shit, I just knew it. The desk would lead us to the hidden book and voila, Rembrandt riches.

“What sort of desk?”

“Large, impressive, two side doors, and an ornate front that would hide a secret sliding shelf.” God, I had to stop babbling, the agent would hear me.

Craig, the real estate guy, pushed open an eight panel wooden door with an old porcelain knob. “This is the main living room or front parlor.”

Inside, the room was of grand proportions. A formal fireplace with marble surround took up a good portion of the far wall. The bay window added a sense of grandeur. The room smelt musty, from lack of use, old furniture, and dead ghosts. A 1930’s walnut veneered radiogram appeared to be the room’s most modern furniture.

I stood in the middle of the room and turned in a slow circle. Vases in crystal and porcelain decorated the room along with at least fifteen years of dust, mold, and crusty bug remains.

Viggo poofed in and gazed around. On a shudder, he sniffed the air. “All old.”

Craig flicked open his folder. “A lot of the house’s contents are genuine antiques. The folder you’re holding lists the items’ estimated values.” He showed us the valuation page. “They’re all to be auctioned with the house. I’ll let the two of you have a private look around. The folder contains a rough house-plan.”

Craig left. I clutched Tyreal’s arm, inspected the rough floor plan. “Kitchen or laundry area, old maid’s quarters at the side, I bet that’s where the pantry or cupboard was.”

“You know a lot about old houses and antiques.”

“I cross time, and I’ve spent years valuing the things Aunty Glynnis dragged home from yard sales and auctions. The monster sized Waterford Crystal Vase.” He looked totally blank. “Big clear crystal vase on the sideboard in the front parlor is a Waterford. I estimate its worth to be thirty grand.”

Tyreal flicked open his folder, scanned a few pages. “Waterford Crystal Vase value twenty-five to thirty-five thousand. You know your antique values.”

“Sometimes I go to auctions and buy things then sell them for a profit. I’d love to get my hands on this house’s contents.”

We walked into the kitchen.
I shuddered. I hadn’t expected to time travel so literally. “I’d rather die of starvation than try and make a meal in here.”