The Metaphysical Detective (A Riga Hayworth Paranormal Mystery)

Kirsten Weiss

The Metaphysical Detective

Book One in the Riga Hayworth Series

This book is a work of fiction.  Names, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used factiously.  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.

Copyright ©2011 Kirsten Weiss.  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.  No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author.  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.  Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites and their content.

Misterio Press
eBook edition / July, 2012

Cover image: Night Time © frozenstarro - Fotolia.com

Grapevines image:
Julie Shalda

Visit the author website: 
www.kirstenweiss.com

Thank you!

Thank you to the amazing artist, Julie Shalda, for providing me a grapevine painting for the Riga Hayworth website and to Marcia McCord for allowing me to use images from her Tarot deck, The Picture Postcard Tarot, on the same.  Also, thank you to Elizabeth Barton, for sharing her ghost-busting techniques with me for this book, and to Joy Reichard, M.A. and goddess researcher extraordinaire, for inspiring me with Hecate lore.  Finally, a big thank you to Sheri Brooks, of
Purple Papaya
, for all of her eBook and social media marketing advice!

Chapter 1: A Client Arrives

“My husband is trying to kill me.” 

Helen wrung her hands, a gesture Riga had read about but never actually seen in practice.  It irritated her.  Helen seemed too masculine for this helpless gesture, with her man’s hands and broad shoulders.   Even seated she loomed over Riga.

“Have you spoken to the police?” Riga toyed with a pen. 

Helen shook her head, no, setting her blonde hair swinging loosely about her jaw. 

Riga picked up the phone, and held it out to her across the desk.  It was a replica of a phone from the thirties – black with a crude looking cord and a rotary dial.  “I’m a metaphysical detective.   This is a case for the police, not me.”

“My husband’s dead.”

Riga slowly placed the receiver back on its cradle.

Helen avoided the detective’s gaze, her eyes darting around the room: at the carpet stain shaped like Australia, at the metal bookcases, at the view of the brick building next door.  The office dated back to the 1960s and it showed.

Riga was dated too, though in better condition.  People put her in her thirties, but she was a full decade older.  Once, they would have said she cast a glamour.  But the days when people recognized Riga’s brand of magic were long past. 

Her eyes gleamed violet in the lamplight.  “Why don’t you tell me what’s been happening?”

Helen looked past Riga’s shoulder, at a pigeon on the windowsill.  “My husband died nearly a year ago.  It was a car accident.”  Helen looked at her expectantly. 

Riga wasn’t a psychic, Helen would have to finish her own story.  “Go on.”

Helen’s gaze fixed on a book about Tarot, beside the phone.  It lay face down, cracked open upon its spine as if the detective had just placed it there. 

 “Lately, I’ve been having accidents.  A near slip and fall in the bath, the accelerator of my car sticking, a bad case of food poisoning…  At first I thought they were all just bad luck.  And then someone pushed me.  I was waiting for the bus, and as it pulled to the curb, someone pushed me in front of it.”

 Riga leaned back in her chair, crossed her arms.  “This really sounds like a job for the police.” 

 “There was no one there.”  Helen picked up a deck of Tarot cards from the desk and shuffled through them.   “I wasn’t in a crowd of strangers, I was alone.  But I felt the hand on my back, and it was Hermie’s – I mean Herman’s – hand.” 

The words came in a rush now.  “I know his hand, the shape of it, the feel of it.  I smelled his aftershave.  I asked the driver if she’d seen anyone.  She swore at me and made me get off the bus.” 

Helen replaced the deck.  “I thought I was going crazy, and then I heard about you.  It was at a party, someone was laughing about an ad he’d seen in the yellow pages – your ad.  We joked about it – what does a metaphysical detective do?  Only in San Francisco, right?  But then a few days later I was on the bus – a different bus – and I heard two women talking.  One had gone to you for a problem, some missing jewelry, and you’d found it – made it just reappear the woman said.”

A siren blared outside and Helen’s lips pinched, her gaze drawn again to the half-open window.

Riga angled her chair, looking past the woman.  She relaxed and broadened her vision to check out Helen’s aura: no unusual drains or fluxes, and no tint of magic. 

“It was so strange.” Helen looked at the bookcase to her left, crammed haphazardly with odd-sounding titles.  “I started seeing and hearing references to you everywhere.  If someone wasn’t talking about you, they’d be talking about detectives and ghosts.  I even found your flyer beneath the windshield wipers of my car.  I hate those flyers!”

Riga grimaced.  “Sorry.  It’s my niece, I’ve told her to stop with the flyers.  She wants to be a filmmaker,” she added, as if that explained it. 

There was a long silence.  When Helen didn’t fill it, Riga continued.  “But didn’t you ever think that the reason you were seeing me everywhere was just good advertising?”

“But I’d never seen or heard of you before.”

“You never needed me before.”

“I just… I felt I had to come,” Helen said.  “I don’t know how to explain it.”

 “Why do you think your husband would want to kill you?”

Helen’s gaze dropped to the sleeve of Riga’s white blouse, to the simple gold watch that encircled the detective’s wrist, to the bare fingers.  “I’ve met someone,” Helen said.

Riga hid her surprise.  In her experience, while it wasn’t unusual for widowers to find someone new within a year, the mourning period for widows ran longer.  “Was your husband the jealous type?  Possessive?”

“No.  There was no need to be.  He always said I was his better half.  People used to joke about our names, Herman and Helen, and it really did feel like we were two halves of a better whole.”

Riga shifted in her chair.  The wheels caught in the rug and she jerked forward to free herself.  “Have you had any sudden shocks or traumas recently?”

“I’m not crazy.”

Riga wasn’t ready to rule the crazy option out yet, but let it go.  If Helen was feeling haunted, there could be either a rational or a paranormal reason.  Riga would check out her home and if she couldn’t find anything, terminate the contract.  She didn’t take money from the mentally troubled.  “Sometimes spirits can become attached when you’re weakened – spiritually or physically.  Have you been overtired?  Stressed at work?  Anything like that?”

“No.”

“Have you been practicing any magic?  Ouija boards?”

Helen’s eyes flashed.  “Of course not!” 

Liar
.  The thought popped unasked into Riga’s head.  She reached out again with her senses – nothing. 

“Can you help me?” Helen asked.

“I think so.”  Riga got up and strode to a wooden file cabinet in the corner, her movements sure and graceful.  She opened the top drawer and ran her slender fingers across the files.

“I’ve got it!” Helen said.  “You look like that old actress, the one who married the Aga Khan.  I didn’t see it at first because she was in black and white, but you look just like her.”

“Mm.”  Riga pulled out a plain folder, felt her olive-hued skin darken.  She pasted on a smile and tossed her head.  Her auburn hair gleamed like polished wood, settled in coils about her shoulders. 

She returned to her seat behind the desk, and slid the folder across to Helen, who now stared at her avidly.  “Inside you’ll find two copies of the contract and fee structure.  You’ll need to sign both if you want to move forward.”

Helen tore her eyes from Riga, opened the folder, scanned down the pages.  A furrow appeared between her pale brows.  “This fee structure is… weird.”

“Take it home, read the contract.  There’s no hurry.” 

The words would haunt Riga.

“No, no!  It looks fine.  Have you got a pen?”  Helen looked up from the papers in her hands.  A pen lay before her on the desk.  She hesitated, then snatched it up, and signed hurriedly.  “There!  When can you start?”

“Tomorrow, if you like.  Tell me more about Herman.”

“He was so brilliant, dashing.  He was Chief Financial Officer of the Apollo Group.  Have you heard of it?  It’s a land development company.”

Riga made a note on her blotter.  “What did he do for fun?”

“Magic.”

Riga looked up.  “He was interested in the occult?  Real magic?”

Helen laughed.  “There’s no such thing as real…”  She trailed off, looked uncertain.  “Well, ghosts are different?  Aren’t they?  They’re not magic.”

Riga didn’t say anything.

“He was a stage magician,” Helen said.  “Amateur, just for fun.  Children’s parties, that sort of thing.  He was always pulling something out of his hat, usually at the most inappropriate moment.”

“Sounds like fun,” Riga said dryly.  “You said he had a car accident?”

“Oh.”  Helen worried her lower lip.  “He lost control, hit a Eucalyptus tree.  The car was totaled.  He was killed instantly, they told me.”

Riga silently wondered whether Herman’s accident had really been a suicide.  “That must have been hard for you.  Did Herman’s behavior change at all before the accident?”

“Ye-es.  He’d been working longer nights and felt under pressure at work.”

“What sort of pressure?”

“I don’t know.  Whenever I asked for details…  He didn’t like to talk about it.  He even stopped doing his magic tricks.”

When Helen left, Riga felt her shoulders loosen.  Something about the woman had set Riga’s head buzzing.

She went to the cracked window and watched as Helen emerged onto the sidewalk, two floors below. 

“That one is not ze sharpest tack in the drawer,” a feminine voice rasped from outside the window.  “She has a certain something with ze men though, n'est-ce pas?”

Riga didn’t respond.

From above, Helen looked flattened out.  The shift in perspective caused a sudden snap in Riga’s vision that set her head spinning.  Helen’s figure shone like gold, stretched impossibly tall, and then it was gone.  Riga threw her hand out, bracing herself against the window frame for fear of pitching out.  “Did you see that?”

The gargoyle on the ledge outside turned its head.  “See what?”

“Magic.”  It was there.  Riga had only felt it for a moment, but it was unmistakable.  Why hadn’t she been able to detect it on Helen in her office?

Chapter 2: Two blondes walk into a bar

It was nearly five o’clock, still light out, and Riga figured she had time for a quick drink before dark.  She grabbed her suede jacket off the office’s lopsided coat rack and ducked past her neighbor’s martial arts studio.  She’d missed old Mr. Chen’s last two classes and knew he’d be coming after her soon, demanding explanations. 

Riga trotted down the stairs to the ground level.  The first floor had been leased to a billiard parlor – her default social life.  It served beer and cheap, airline-grade wine and she had taken to keeping her own stuff behind the bar in self-defense. 

“It’s Riga HAYworth!” the owner, Takako, shouted as Riga swung through the door.  Takako bustled past, flipping her glossy black hair over one shoulder and nodding toward the bar.  “Good to see you, hon.  Your friend is at the bar.”

Riga processed what Takako had said.  She peered toward the bar.  Cones of light illuminated the green felt of the pool tables but the bar, far to the back, lay in shadow.   She didn’t have friends.

Realizing she was blocking the entry, she willed her legs to move.  Riga sensed a pair of bikers stopping play, watching covetously as she passed.  She ignored them, used to the looks.  She was the ultimate cosmic joke: Riga Hayworth looked like Rita, the forties screen goddess, curves and all.    

She neared the bar and the dim figures resolved into three people: a broad shouldered man in an expensive-looking business suit, bracketed by two willowy blondes in silver miniskirts.  The blondes twined around him, their hands roving across his back.  An image flashed into Riga’s mind of the blondes as faceless automatons.  She shuddered and carefully did not look at them.