The Alchemical Detective (Riga Hayworth) (19 page)

 “I’ll meet you at the parking lot in an hour.”

She crossed the railroad tracks, walking toward the river.  After Riga turned a corner, putting a dilapidated building between herself and Cesar, she stopped, pulled in her energies, and cast a simple cloaking spell.  Cloaking spells weren’t perfect.  If someone was looking for her they’d see her.  But the spell would make her less noticeable...  If it worked.  These days, Riga could never tell.  

The snow fell more quickly, a fluffy curtain of white, as if in aid of her need of secrecy.

This part of town had a neglected air to it, and she thought it strange that every railroad town really did have a wrong side of the tracks.  But there were signs of gentrification.  An old, barnlike structure had been converted to a bed and breakfast.  In front of a wood-frame warehouse built to serve the railroad was a sign for a yoga studio, an abstract figure arched into a backbend against a field of purple. 

Riga found Lynn’s home and double checked her address, an abandoned garage on a quiet back street.  It seemed an odd place for a Feng Shui specialist.  Then she saw the yellow police tape fluttering at the top of a wooden, covered exterior staircase.  This was the place.

She walked through the snow, leaving Riga-sized boot prints that no cloaking spell could hide.  The stairs were covered; the only traces she left upon their peeling turquoise steps were puddles of melting snow.  She climbed to the top, and eyed the police tape warily.  A strip of it hung, a limp yellow streamer, off one side of the door as if someone had yanked it down.

She reached out mentally, trying to feel behind the door. 

Nothing. 

Riga sighed.  It could mean there was no one there, or that her magic was off.  And she knew her magic was off.  She twisted the door handle.  Locked.  She knelt, peering at it, and didn’t see any signs of forced entry.  Why then, was the police tape hanging loose?

She had never learned the art of picking locks, had never needed it before.  Riga closed her eyes and took a steadying breath, cleared her mind, and tried to just be.  Wind eased through the pines.  A car passed, its tires whooshing through the wet snow.  It grew so quiet, she thought she heard the flakes settling around her.  She imagined the knob turning, the pins tumbling into place, the door unlocking.  Riga channeled the energies, cool blue from above, red from below, stretched out her hand towards the doorknob, tied the energy to a word, spoke it aloud. 

Riga heard the door swing open and opened her eyes.  The knob had melted, twisted metal dripping down the door.  She grimaced, straightening.  That wasn’t the way the spell was supposed to work, dammit, but at least the door was open.

She gently pushed the door back, and slipped inside.  Riga took in the studio-style apartment – one big room and a kitchen bordered by a linoleum countertop.  Bedding lay crumpled upon the throw rug, the mattress half on, half off the box spring.  Clothing lay beside it, pulled haphazardly from the nearby dresser.  The drawers from an intricate Chinese writing desk lay upon the wooden floor, their contents scattered.   Riga wound through the detritus on the floor to the kitchen.  The drawers here had been wrenched out, and sharp cutlery gleamed upon the linoleum floor. 

The chaos threw her.  There was so much mess, Riga didn’t know where to begin looking.  She closed her eyes to center herself and when she opened them, her gaze was drawn to a distressed red painted cupboard along one wall.  Its doors stood open, exposing rows of books, and Riga walked to these, carefully stepping over a set of bronze candlesticks overturned upon the Chinese carpet.

On one row, she found books on Feng Shui, eastern art, chi gung, Chinese history, and herbal medicine – the tools of Lynn Chen’s trade.  Another held a collection of romantic suspense novels and Riga briefly wondered if Brigitte would enjoy that sort of mystery.  Brigitte’s favorite authors were growing less prolific, and the gargoyle loved drama. 

One of the doors on the shelves was closed, which seemed promising.  Riga unlatched it and found a row of pale blue, leather-bound journals book-ended by a pair of Chinese temple lions.  One journal leaned crookedly against the male lion and Riga picked it up, opened it to the final entry:  June of that year.  She searched the shelf, but was unable to find a journal dated later than that June.  Was it missing?  Taken by the police or the intruder?  Had the intruder searched for this last journal under the pillows, in her desk, in her dresser, and then finally found what he was looking for in the tall cupboards, searched last because they didn’t look like bookcases?  Or had she simply gotten bored with journaling?  Riga sighed, looking at the mess. 

The ceiling creaked above her and she glanced up, then heard the sound of scrabbling.  She relaxed.  An animal, then. 

She shrugged it off and spent the next thirty minutes searching for the final journal.  Riga didn’t find it, and frustration surged into anger when she tried to depart and couldn’t shut the door behind her.  The melted doorknob had hardened around the edge of the door, creating a wedge.  She pressed with her knee and one hand, and managed to jam the door partially shut.  It would have to do, she thought.

Something thumped onto the stairway roof above her and snow showered off its side.  Riga stumbled backward, one foot slipping off a step.  She grabbed wildly at the banister, steadying herself. 

Brigitte flapped down onto the stairs.  “How is ze investigation?”

Riga glared, her heart thudding.  “Aside from nearly taking a header off the stairs?”

The gargoyle clucked. “You must be more careful.”

“What are you doing here?” Riga hissed.  “What if someone sees you?”

“People these days do not pay attention,” Brigitte said dismissively.  “They sleepwalk, heads buried in their little computers and phones.  Besides, it is snowing too hard for people to see me here.  So.  Have you found anything?”

“No, and why have you been following me?  I’ve been feeling like someone was watching me.  Has it been you?”

“I have better things to do than follow you about.  I had simply reached a lull in my work and wanted to see how you were getting on.”

Riga marched down the stairs.  “Your work?”

“I have been studying alchemy as well, so I may help you better.”

“I could use it.  But stop following me, okay?  You’re giving me the heebie jeebies.”

“If you insist.”

When Riga reached the bottom, she was surprised to find Brigitte waddling in the snow behind her.  “Something on your mind?”

“Where are we going next?”

Riga wrinkled her brow, bemused.  “
I
am going to check out Lynn’s office, which is on the main street so you can’t come.  You’ll be seen.”

“Fine.  I shall wait for you in ze car.”

“Ash and Cesar are with me.”

“Then I shall wait for you near ze car.”

Riga stopped to look at the gargoyle.  “What’s going on, Brigitte?  You’re acting a little clingy.”

“Clingy?  Clingy!?  Now you have insulted me, your oldest friend, who has only come here to help you in this desperate time.  And this is ze thanks I get!”

Riga raised her hands in a pacifying gesture.  “Sorry.  But you have to leave before someone sees you.”

“Your ingratitude wounds me.”  The gargoyle sniffed, and flew off.

Riga set off to find Cesar and the others, rubbing her temple.  Aside from reading mystery novels, what
did
Brigitte do when Riga was away?  

The snow turned slushy.  Car tires had made thick strips in the center of the roads, and dirty piles along the shoulders.  An SUV drove past, splashing her legs with brown muck.  She tried to brush it off, but simply impressed the stain more deeply into the fabric of her slacks. 

Lost in gloomy deliberation, Riga found she’d retraced her steps to the restaurant.  Someone shouted from across the street and she looked up.  Pen stood between Cesar and Ash, and waved to her from the parking lot.  She looked across the street to the bank.  James Yacinski stood beside a blue hatchback, fiddling with his keys.  He dropped them, stooped to pick them up, dropped them again. 

Riga checked her watch.  It wasn’t yet three o’clock; he was knocking off early and he was rattled.  By her?  The thought brought a smile to her face and she crossed the street with a bounce in her step. 

Chapter 20: Sublimation

Riga sat on the side of a boat, watching the twinkling lights on the far shore.  The sun had gone down an hour ago, the clouds had parted to reveal stars lighting the sky.  The motor was silent and water lapped quietly against the boat, bobbing in the black lake.  She’d spent the remainder of her afternoon studying her alchemical texts and itched to return to them.  The lake at night was beautiful, but the TV show was feeling more and more like an intrusion into her life than a client.

She turned up the collar of her pea coat, then blew into her hands to warm them.  They’d spent the afternoon cruising Tessie sites on the lake, while Riga lectured on lake monsters, daimons, Jung and the unseen.  The team had exhausted the Tessie interviews but Sam wanted more, and had spent the last half hour trying to talk her into diving for Tessie.

“We’ll get you a dry suit, if you’re worried about the cold,” Sam said, his voice thick with exasperation.  In the darkness, he was reduced to a disembodied voice behind the bright beam of a handheld searchlight he panned across the lake’s inky waters. 

“Dry, wet, it will still be freezing,” Riga said.  “Besides, I don’t dive caves.  They’re too dangerous and I’m not qualified for it.”  They also scared her.  She shivered, imagining the dark waters, narrow passages, the weight of earth above her.

“You won’t have to actually go inside the cave.  Just dive around the outside, look for Tessie tracks.  If she’s in there—”

“It could be a ‘he.’”

“She, he, whatever.  If there’s a lake monster in there and it’s coming through the cave opening, then the signs should be there.  Didn’t some divers find Tessie prints down there years ago?”

Riga didn’t bother to respond.  He already knew the answer and she knew she’d be diving, in spite of her complaints.  She checked her watch.  “Isn’t it time to start shooting again?”

“Right.  Break time’s over.”  He walked to the cabin and shouted down the stairs.  “Griff, Wolfe, let’s go!”

Pen perched on the deck above them, her feet dangling over the side, a small handheld camera cupped in her palm.  The girl tugged irritably at her life vest.  Pen was backup when the crew went on break, just in case something happened.  Nothing had.  Her watcher, Ash, sat in the captain’s chair behind her, peering into the darkness. 

Wolfe was the first to emerge from below deck, carrying his camera loosely at his side.  Griff was next, followed by Angus, holding a boom mic.  She’d had to leave Cesar at the dock, scanning the water with a pair of binoculars; there’d been no innocent way to explain his presence to the crew.

“Looking forward to our dive tomorrow?” Wolfe asked.

“No, she isn’t,” Angus responded for her.

Riga looked at the sound man, questioning, and he tapped the collar of his plaid shirt.  Her hand went involuntarily to her own collar.  Her mic was still clipped to it.

Wolfe scratched his left sideburn.  “Come on, Riga.  This isn’t the arctic. It’s not that cold.” 

Riga looked pointedly at the visible layers Wolfe wore – red thermal underwear, a thick plaid flannel shirt, a down jacket, and an orange life vest.  “Says you.  Look, I’ll dive.  Just stop trying to make me happy about it.  It’s really annoying.”

Griff slung his camera onto one shoulder and a red light at the front switched on.

The boat lurched sideways with a hollow sounding thud.  Riga stumbled.  Sam caught her, his arms encircling her shoulders, dropping the light.  She heard glass shatter.

“What was that?” Sam released Riga and adjusted his glasses.

Wolfe bounded to the side of the boat and looked over it.  “Something hit us.”

Ash scanned fore with his searchlight.  Riga found the light Sam had dropped and checked it.  The glass was broken but the lamp still worked.  She shined it across the waters, walking slowly to the aft of the boat.  An eddy of water on the starboard side vanished in the waves caused by the boat’s rocking.

“See anything?” she called up to Ash.

“No,” he shouted.  “A log?”

“Then where is it?” Wolfe said. “I can’t see anything.”

And then the smell hit her, lifted the hairs on the back of her neck.  “Pen, hang on!”

The boat jerked forward with an earsplitting shriek.  The rear blasted upward and out of the water.  Riga fell hard on one knee.  Pain shot through her leg.  She let go of the searchlight.  It rolled forward, bouncing down the steps.  Riga grabbed the edge of one of the benches and hauled herself upright, her heart pounding. 

The men shouted, cursing.  Riga looked up.  Pen still sat on the edge of the top deck, white-faced and clinging to the rails.

Riga lifted the edge of the bench and grabbed a life jacket from inside.  She was the only person without one; Sam had said the vest “ruined the aesthetic” of the shot.  Well, the hell with aesthetics, Riga thought.  She pulled the vest over one arm and shouted to Ash, “It’s time to get out of here.”

A shadow raced towards her and she ducked.  Then something struck her from behind and the world went white.

*****

Riga’s knee buckled, and struck a rock upon the ground.  Her eyes watered from the sharpness of the blow.  She rose slowly, testing her knee, feeling an eerie sense of familiarity.  Riga stood on a fogbound bluff.  Fat white clouds drifted beneath her and two familiar orange-colored spires pierced them: the Golden Gate Bridge.

“Hey, doll.  Long time no see.”

Riga turned, startled.  A slight man in a white military uniform sat on a stone bench, his hat tucked beneath his arm.  His hair was dark and slicked back, his face unlined, and he wore a startling amount of colored bars on the chest of his World War II era uniform. 

“Do we know each other?” Riga asked.

He yawned.  “Yeah.  Used to.  You probably don’t remember.”