The Metaphysical Detective (A Riga Hayworth Paranormal Mystery) (11 page)

“Are you saying Aaron caused your accident?”

“The brakes went out.  The mechanic who looked at it afterward said the lines had worn through, but there had been a leak in them five or six months earlier and I’d had them replaced.”

“And the police?”

“Unfortunately, my chat with the mechanic happened after I came out of the hospital.  By that time, the car had been scrapped.  He showed me his report – the police had looked at it as well.  But without the car itself…” she trailed off.  “Aaron doesn’t like to lose.  And he definitely does not like to be cheated.”

She turned her chair and began wheeling toward the door.  “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”  She stopped by an intercom and pressed the talk button.  “Rosa, we’ll take our tea in the cottage.  For three, please.”

Chapter 17: Klotho

Riga followed Lauren down a long tiled hallway and through a series of doors, then out the house and into the rear garden.  A flagstone path meandered through faded rose bushes, masses of rosemary, and lavender past its bloom.  Riga saw a shimmer of iridescence off to her left and looked quickly in that direction.  A hummingbird darted in and out of a fuchsia in a fat ceramic pot.  Tiny flying insects spiraled lazily, golden in a beam of sunlight.  The hummingbird chirped and zipped away and the spell was broken.

“Was that Donovan’s car I saw leaving?” Riga asked.

“Mmm?  Oh, yes.  He’s an old friend.”

“But not of your husband’s.  What’s between those two?”

“Not me, if that’s what you’re asking.  They never liked each other much.  The antipathy was instant and mutual.”

They rounded a stand of redwoods and high bushes and a cottage came into view.  Riga stopped, staring. 

Lauren laughed at her reaction.  “Yes, it’s my own fairytale cottage.  You have no idea what’s involved in maintaining the thatch.  We have to bring over a specialist from England.”

The bungalow had whitewashed walls and an arched wooden door.  Pumpkins had been piled extravagantly around it.  Sheep grazed in a nearby meadow.

“We make specialty yarns here,” Lauren said, following Riga’s gaze.  “Those are bluefaced sheep.  We have a dickens of a time keeping them out of the gardens.”  She chuckled.

“I feel like Hansel and Gretel.  Well, like Gretel,” Riga corrected.

A copper bell covered in verdigris hung by the gate.  Lauren rang it, then passed beneath the trellis.  Riga followed.

The door swung inward.  Riga made out a dim figure in the shadowy interior. 

“Who’s your friend?” a hostile feminine voice rang out. 

Lauren didn’t pause as she wheeled up the walk.  “Her name’s Riga.  You’ll want to meet her.”

The figure backed away, leaving the door open in an indifferent welcome.

Lauren bumped through the doorway, putting a nick in the inside edge of the wooden door before Riga could leap forward to push it open further. 

Riga followed behind Lauren, her eyes struggling to adjust to the gloomy interior.  The shutters, painted in an engaging old-country floral design, were closed.  The only lighting came from lanterns of colored glass and white pillar candles upon the tables. 

Lauren led her into a small living area.  A low carved table sat surrounded by poufs and cushions in the center of the room.  Upon the table, smoke coiled from a stick of incense, smelling of sandalwood and ancient places.  Striped fabrics with glints of gilt hung in swathes over the dark beams of the cottage, and diaphanous ivory-colored curtains covered the shuttered windows.  The effect was that of a high-priced Turkish restaurant.

A slim shadow in dark gray sweatpants and a matching hoodie detached itself from the wall.  “Sit down,” the woman said, her voice clipped.  She pulled the hood down further over her head, obscuring her face, and sank gracefully onto one of the low, square stools behind the table.

“Lauren, hand me my bag, will you?”

Lauren rolled to one corner of the room, bent and drew a black silk bag from a wicker basket.  She tossed it to the woman in gray, who caught it wordlessly. 

From the bag, the woman withdrew what looked like a brilliantly colored top with a cord tied to it.  She turned the top upside down and began to spin it.  A kaleidoscope of colors flashed and Riga realized that she was spinning wool. 

Riga took a seat on one of the poufs opposite the woman, crossing her legs loosely before her.  The spindle was a gorgeous thing, mesmerizing.  She’d never seen one like it.

“Riga, I’d like you to meet Cleo,” Lauren said, rolling forward.  “She worked for Aaron and I when we were together, and testified in the divorce.”

Riga’s shoulders twitched in surprise.  She recognized the name.  Cleo was the maid Aaron had had the affair with.

Cleo said nothing, continuing to spin, and Riga quelled her rising impatience at the overly dramatic scene. 

Cleo put the spindle down, raised her hands to the hood and pushed it back from her face.  An angry seam ran from her left eyelid, twisting it downward, and ended in her hairline above her ear.  She looked steadily at Riga through clear amber-colored eyes, waiting for a reaction.  She got none.  Riga had seen much worse.

“Did Aaron do that to you?” Riga asked.

Cleo nodded, and replaced the hood.  “He doesn’t like to lose.”

“How did it happen?”

“He tripped me, when I was near the fire.  The fire screen wasn’t in place.  He said it was because he’d just put a log in and hadn’t gotten around to putting it back.  It was deliberate, but how could I prove it?  And who would have listened?  Lauren took me in afterward.  We recovered together.”

From their injuries, or from Aaron?  The women clearly hated him and Riga wondered how much of their story was real?  She found herself wanting to believe them, to sympathize with these women who’d been so terribly damaged.  But Riga never completely believed anyone.

“When you were with him, did you hear anything about an employee named Herman?  Anything about a theft?”

Cleo took up the spindle again.  It spun lightly in her hand as she fed wool into it.  “There was one night – it was a day or two before my testimony.  Aaron was angrier than I’d ever seen him.  He ranted about something that had been taken from him.  It was frightening.”

“Were you afraid he’d take it out on you?”

“No, not then.  It wasn’t like that then.  He was kind to me, understanding.  But that night he was scared and that terrified me.  What,” Cleo asked, “could frighten Aaron?”

“Did you ever find the answer?” Riga said.

Cleo didn’t answer.  She reached into the bag of wool and withdrew a smaller, knit drawstring bag.  It shimmered in the dim candlelight, and Riga recognized the yarn it had been knit with as the same stuff Lauren had been working with.  Cleo closed her eyes and shook the bag rhythmically in her hand.  Something rattled within, grating on Riga’s ears.  Cleo’s body swayed lightly in time to the rhythm and Riga felt pressure building within her skull.

The noise went on.  Riga realized she was clenching her jaw and tried to relax.

With a sudden movement, Cleo upended the bag and polished pieces of stone clattered upon the table.  They had runes carved upon one side, Riga saw.

Cleo sat frozen, one hand still holding the overturned bag high in the air.  Lauren wheeled closer and deftly picked out the runes that had landed face up, dropping them in her lap.  Cleo’s eyelids fluttered, her body jerked spasmodically and she dropped the bag.  Her hands moved in the air, a few inches above the table, as if pulled by an invisible force.  They stopped over two of the runes which remained, face down, upon the table.  “A journey.  Dangerous.  You are forced, but your action may change what the Fates have in store. 
May
change,” she emphasized. 

Her hands jerked forward, to hover over another rune.  She drew a sharp breath inward.  “An implacable force.  Disaster.  Death.”

Riga felt the hair rise on the back of her neck.  She told herself it was just an effective show – and there was nothing wrong with that, the show was important – the shadowed face, the blank runes, the flickering candles, the incense.  But her nerves hummed.

Cleo’s body swung drunkenly to the right, her hands over another rune.  “You are the servant of the trickster, an untrustworthy master.  He has a role in this, but it’s unclear.”

Her hands passed over the final stone on the table, then dropped to her lap.  Cleo’s head turned toward Lauren.  “Yes, I see.  She may succeed but she’ll need help.”

“She has help,” Lauren said.

Cleo just looked at her.

“Anna then?” Lauren asked.

Riga shifted, aware of the ache in her lower back.  Her head throbbed.

Lauren nodded.  “I’ll arrange it.”

“Who’s Anna?” Riga asked, feeling it was time she participated in this conversation.

“Aaron’s first wife,” Lauren said.

“Do you spin?” Cleo asked, abruptly, standing. 

“What?” Riga was caught off-guard, thought of an exercise class she’d hated, but realized Cleo was asking about something else.  “No.  I’ve wanted to try –  I do some knitting,” she fumbled.  Perhaps the room’s atmosphere had gotten to her more than she’d thought.  She felt logy.   

Cleo bent at the waist and a cascade of mahogany-colored hair fell from the hood.  When she straightened, she held the spindle in her hand.  She extended it to Riga.  “Take this.”

When Riga made no motion to move, Cleo continued, “It’s a gift.”

“Thanks.”  Riga took the gift and placed the spindle in an empty section in her leather bag.

Lauren turned her chair and wheeled to the door.  She looked over her shoulder at Riga.  “It’s time for us to go.”

Riga nodded goodbye to Cleo, then followed her out the door.

As she walked back to the house beside Lauren, Riga said, “It’s strange how friendships work.”

“Who says we’re friends?” Lauren paused.  “But we are linked together.  I couldn’t have abandoned Cleo if I wanted to.”

“And Anna?”

Lauren looked up at Riga and smiled wryly.  “Anna doesn’t need anyone’s help.  She’s a force unto herself, the strongest of us all.  If anything, we rely on her.”

Inside the house, Lauren wrote an address upon a pad of paper, tore it off, and handed it to Riga.  “Be there before six,” she said.  She went into the living room and returned with a skein of indigo wool sparkling with silver beads.  “It’s called Milky Way, maybe it will inspire you.”

The yarn felt unbearably soft in Riga’s hands.  “Thanks.”

Riga wouldn’t have much time if she was to get to the address Lauren had given her before six o’clock.  It turned out to be a knitting store in a small town on the Peninsula.  A circle of women sat on folding chairs inside the store, knitting and gossiping.  They looked up when Riga entered. 

A tall, sparse looking woman with graying hair in a loose braid that hung halfway down her back rose to greet her.  “May I help you?”  She wore a knitted red vest over a turtleneck and a skirt that reached nearly to her ankles. 

“My name is Riga.  I’m here to see Anna.  She’s expecting me, I think.”

The woman nodded.  “I’m Anna.”  She looked to a matronly-looking woman in the knitting circle.  “Can you manage things for a bit?”

The other woman nodded, looking pleased.

“Let’s get some coffee,” Anna said, inclining her head towards the door. 

Riga followed her out and down the block, to an Austrian bakery that displayed a selection of pastries within gleaming glass and metal cabinets.   Not one to resist, Riga ordered an espresso and slice of chocolate marble cake, watching with respect as Anna doubled down with a slice of cheesecake.

They slid into a booth, Anna dispensing with the preliminaries as she raised her fork.  “I hear you want to know about my ex?  Why?”

“I’m looking into the death of my client, who was married to one of Aaron’s employees, Herman Baro – also deceased.”

“And you think Aaron is involved?”

“I haven’t seen any evidence to suggest that,” Riga said.

“I don’t know why I should help you.”

“Your friends seemed to think you’d be a good person for me to talk to.”  It was strange, how the three women had come together, Riga thought.  By rights they should have loathed each other. 

“Give me your hands,” Anna said.

Another palm reader, Riga thought, reaching across the table in resignation.  But Anna didn’t look at her hands.  She merely gripped Riga’s wrists and gazed into her eyes, lightly shaking her arms at seemingly random moments. 

Anna’s hazel eyes lost their focus.  “You’ve known betrayal as well.  Not like us, a different kind of treachery there…  That’s not why they wanted me to meet you though.  You’re not right either – an affliction.  You read cards – you should be telling me my fortune.”

Riga snatched her hands back.  It might have been a simple trick, vague pronouncements confirmed or denied by the tension in her wrists.  But she felt exposed.

Anna shot her a look of amusement and picked up her fork.  She stabbed the cheesecake, took a bite.  “I don’t think I’ll be able to help you much.  Aaron and I haven’t kept in touch since the divorce.”

“Was it amicable?”

Anna shrugged.  “He divorced me and I didn’t fight it.  We’d drifted apart – not so unusual for high school sweethearts.  He was the golden boy, the high school quarterback and I, believe it or not, a cheerleader.  It seemed a match made in heaven at the time.  But of course we changed.  At least it wasn’t a gradual thing that takes years before you notice it.  It happened quite suddenly.  I think the shock of it all made it easier.”

“That seems unusual.  What happened?”

“He grew up, or maybe it would be better to say he grew into himself.”

Riga said nothing, hoping she would elaborate. 

Anna took another sip of coffee.  “Aaron was the guy with potential, filled with dreams that went nowhere.  None of it was practical.  He was always hanging on the fringes of some crazy deal – a video game starring a pop star, sales of old Russian MIGs.  Even a telephone sex service – you know, where guys pay ten dollars a minute to talk dirty to a woman who’s probably old enough to be their grandmother but talks like a teen slut?  That should have worked.  How can you fail with something like that? But Aaron’s partner had a heart attack and that fell apart too.  Aaron was all dreams, no action.  Thank God I had a job or we would have been out on the street.”