The Metaphysical Detective (A Riga Hayworth Paranormal Mystery) (12 page)

She should have sounded frustrated, Riga thought, but Anna’s tone was wistful.

“He’s successful now,” Riga said.

“Somehow, he got it together.  His actions grew into his dreams.  He transformed himself – lost the pudge that came on after he quit playing football, got new clothes, even new diction.”

“And a new wife?”

She nodded, rueful.  “That too.  We had nothing at the time.  I didn’t even bother with alimony and was half afraid he’d try for palimony. He didn’t.”  She turned her coffee cup in her hands.  “I guess I can’t begrudge him his success.  Maybe I was holding him back?”

Riga doubted that.  “What caused the change, do you think?”

“No idea.  It was out of left field, as far as I can see.”

“Was Aaron interested in magic or the occult at all?”

Anna’s hand froze on her coffee cup.  She laughed, a brittle sound.  “How did you know?”  When Riga didn’t answer, she continued, “It started after we got married.  He began buying up books, turned the garage into a – a temple I think he called it.  I wasn’t allowed in.  It would have messed up the energies.”  She put the last word in air quotes.  It was a strange attitude after her earlier performance, which Riga began to find more and more cynical.  She wasn’t sure if Anna was mocking Lauren and Cleo, or Riga. 

“Do you know if he was working with anyone?” Riga asked.  “Did he have any teachers, or was he involved in a group or organization?”

Anna shook her head, no. 

 “Did his temperament change during this time?”

Anna looked deep into her coffee cup.  “I know what the others have told you.  He never hurt me.  Oh, he had a jealous streak – not just of me, but of anything that was his.  But it never got beyond sulks and petulance.  Maybe that changed about him, too, but I can’t say.”  Anna took a gulp of coffee.  “Did you bring your cards with you?”

Riga nodded. 

“May I have a reading?”

Riga took the Tarot deck in its velvet pouch from her purse.   She had many – art decks, decks friends had made, magical decks – but she considered the Visconti deck the classic.  Her reproduction of this 15
^th
century deck was the first she’d learned on, the cards now soft with use and age. 

“Tell me my future.” Anna’s tone was gently mocking.

Riga shuffled, drew the first card.  The Six of Swords. 

“Passage, a journey,” Anna said. “But where am I going?”

Clearly Anna knew her Tarot and Riga was quite willing to let her do her own reading.  She drew another from a random point in the deck.  The Devil. 

Anna smiled unpleasantly.  “Hmm…  I’m not sure I like the look of that.  But Lauren’s been telling me for years I’ve been going to the Devil.  And what will I do when I get there?”

Riga drew the third card and lay it upon the table.  Death. 

“Interesting,” Anna said.  “Usually one dies first before heading in that direction.  But things have been topsy turvy of late.”  She placed her hands on the deck.  “Your turn.  Let’s see what’s in your future.”

Riga returned the three cards to the deck and shuffled seven times.  She only had two Tarot rituals, and seven shuffles was one of them.   Riga drew the first card.  The Six of Swords.  She frowned. 

Anna raised one eyebrow.  “Perhaps we’re going to the Devil together?”

Riga pulled a second card from the center of the deck.  The Devil. 

“Strange how we seem to be leading parallel lives.  I hope yours has a happier ending.”  Anna’s eyes gleamed maliciously.

Riga fanned the deck upon the table, closed her eyes, and picked one.  Death.

“It seems we do have something in common after all, Ms. Hayworth.” 

And who’s behind this?
  Riga thought.  She drew one more card and placed it above the three, then turned it over.  The Magician.

With one finger, Riga flipped the fanned deck over.  The cards were as they should be – no extra Death, Devil or Six of Swords cards had been planted.  She began calculating the odds of choosing the same three cards in the same order from a seventy eight card deck, and figured it as roughly one out of 450,000 but Riga had never been good at math.

Anna’s cheesecake was gone.  She slid from the booth.  “I need to get back to my shop.”

Riga watched Anna leave, walking slowly, as if an older woman inhabited her body. 

Chapter 18: Saving Liz

Riga crept along the freeway, grinding her teeth in frustration at the traffic jam.  By the time she got home, darkness had fallen, and the alternate guard was on duty.  He barely looked up when she entered the lobby, her shoulders and neck tense from the drive.  She rolled her head as she ascended in the elevator, trying to release the pain.

She walked down her hall, catching the driving beat of music from her neighbor’s condo –indie rock.  It pounded in her brain.  She jammed her key into her lock.  The scent of oil paint hung in the air, seeping from beneath Liz’s door.  Riga paused, her hand on the knob, the hair prickling at the back of her neck. 

Something was wrong. 

She looked around the hallway.  It seemed normal – the same Japanese peace lily in the corner pot, no notes for her upon the doorstep, no doors ajar.  The lights in the chandelier above winked at her.  She pocketed her key, and crossed to her neighbor’s door.  Riga knocked, waited a minute, then banged on the door more forcefully.  “Liz?” she called out.

There was no answer.  Maybe Liz couldn’t hear her over the music, or maybe she was in the bathroom, or maybe she was just moving more slowly than usual.  Riga pounded on the door, her sense of unease growing.  She called Liz’s cell.  It went to voice mail.  Riga hung up, and dialed again.

The sense of wrongness was choking now.  Riga returned to her own condo and strode to the balcony outside the guest bedroom.  Liz’s condo mirrored her own – their guest bedrooms were back to back and each had a balcony.  “Brigitte!” she called.

Brigitte crawled around the corner of the building, her claws scrabbling on the stone.  “You wish to speak to me?”

“It’s Liz.  Something’s wrong.  Can you check her windows?”

The gargoyle’s brows scraped together.  “Liz is an independent spirit.  It does not seem right to invade her privacy.”

“She could be hurt.”

The gargoyle threw her chest out.  “Then I shall look.  We ladies must stick together.” With a bound, she crossed the gap between the two balconies and peered through the glass door.  She looked back at Riga.  “I do not see her.  I will check ze other windows.”  Brigitte moved along the building, then turned the corner out of sight.

Moments later, she returned.  “The brave Liz is lying upon ze floor!  We must help her!”

“Right.”  Riga swung one leg over the banister and reached across to Liz’s balcony, careful not to look at the street five floors below.  She hauled herself across, stumbling over a squat cast-iron barbeque that lay on Liz’s balcony, and scraping her left ankle. 

Riga cursed, picked up the barbeque and hurled it through the glass door.  Its safety glass exploded inward, shattering into harmless fragments.  She stepped inside and hurried to Liz, her eyes streaming from the fumes.   Riga knelt beside her, pressed two fingers to her neck.  The flesh was cool but a weak pulse beat there.  Hands trembling, she pulled her cell phone from her pocket and called 911, then called down to the guard to alert him.  She grabbed a soft, black and white checked blanket off the couch and draped it over Liz, then opened the front door to create a breezeway and to let the rescue squad in when they arrived.

Riga took stock of her surroundings for the first time.  The condo was a writhing mass of vines.  Liz had painted twining grapevines on every spare space, even painting over existing paintings.  She’d turned the walls into a mural – a Greek temple, heavy with vines.   How long had it taken Liz to paint all this? 

Slowly, as if drawn there, Riga crossed the room to examine one small, square painting amidst the chaos.  It showed the stairs to a second-story flat, white paint peeling off its crooked wooden walls.  Grapevines wound about the steps and through a metal lattice above the door.  Riga sucked in her breath.  She knew this place.  She’d lived there for three years.  It was her old flat in the Republic of Georgia.  The small purple grapes that grew above her door, she remembered, had been sickeningly sweet and she tasted that sweetness in the back of her throat now. 

How had Liz chosen the scene?  Riga hadn’t shown any photos to her – she had none to share.  They’d spoken of post-Soviet Georgia, but this painting was inexplicable.  Riga prowled the room.  There were more paintings of Georgia – a scene of vineyards below a crumbling church, a narrow cobblestoned street beneath a balcony dripping vines.  These were all scenes Riga knew and loved, but the sight of them here raised goose bumps on her arms.

Riga shook herself.  Now was not the time for this mystery.  The medics would want to know more about Liz’s condition.  She found the bathroom, taking Liz’s prescriptions from the medicine cabinet and setting them upon the coffee table beside Liz for the medics to find.  Riga located the stereo and turned it off, feeling immediate relief in the silence.  The pounding music had been on a continuous loop – there was no telling from it how long her neighbor had lain there. 

An ambulance arrived twenty minutes later, the police and fire department not long after.  Riga explained what she knew of Liz’s medical condition, and handed them the pill bottles.  They said they’d be in touch with her doctor, and let her know (politely) that they’d prefer it if Riga got out of the way.  The police didn’t question her presence there, accepting Riga’s lie that the two had had plans and when Liz didn’t answer the door, she had grown worried enough to check.

Riga escaped as soon as she could.  Hovering in her own doorway, she called down to the security desk and arranged for the guard on duty to board up Liz’s balcony door tonight, until it could be repaired. 

Finally, the medics emerged with a stretcher.

“What hospital are you taking her to?” Riga asked as they wheeled Liz to the elevator.

“Mercy,” one of the medics said, walking backwards.

“Will she be okay?”  She glanced at the small, still form.

He pressed the down button on the elevator.  “It’s too soon to tell.”

Riga nodded.  She closed her door on the scene and went to the window to tell Brigitte, who paced the wall in agitation. 

“We have done all we could,” Brigitte said.

Riga wondered.  She threw herself onto the couch and stared blankly about her, worrying that she had forgotten to do something for Liz.  She thought Liz had a mother in Florida.  She should have checked Liz’s cell to get her mother’s number but it was locked back in Liz’s condo.  She wasn’t going to go over the balcony again for it. 

Too wired to settle in for the night, Riga walked to the billiard parlor, tactical flashlight in hand.  She didn’t need the flashlight to see, but it doubled as a weapon and Riga never took safety for granted in the city.  The chill night air froze her jitters into a quiet stillness.  Street lights darkened as Riga approached, flickering back on after she’d passed. 

As her hand grasped the cool metal handle of the door to the billiard parlor, Riga shivered.  She pulled open the heavy door, hesitating at the threshold.  Dark shapes moved in the gloomy interior, music and voices smothered.   A warm stench rolled outward and Riga wrinkled her nose in disgust, feeling prickles of alarm.

She went inside, winding through the crowd.  People stood shoulder to shoulder and she realized that the odor she smelled was unwashed bodies. The billiard parlor attracted a wide variety of people, she reflected, but they were usually… clean.  A man turned suddenly, bumping into her. 

“Sorry,” he slurred.

She stepped back, startled by the deadened look in his eyes, his stained clothing, his foul breath.  He rubbed his cheek, scratched at the early growth of beard sprouting in patches from his pallid face. 

Riga glanced around, felt her mouth go dry.  Everyone was in a similar state. 

Except for one. 

She made her way through the crowd, where a familiar figure leaned against the bar, watching her.

“Riga,” Donovan said.  “I wondered when you’d turn up.”

Chapter 19: Venus Flytrap

Riga began to say something to Donovan then stopped, shocked by the sight of Surfer Pete.  Behind the bar, Pete moved like the shambling undead, an uneven growth of blonde beard upon his face.  His eyes glowed pink in the dim light. 

“Hi, Riga.  Get you something?” he mumbled.

“Pete!  What happened?  You look terrible!”

He twitched his shoulders.  “Just workin’.  The usual?”

“God, no.  Where’s Takako?“

Takako stumbled from the backroom, ricocheting off the bar.  “Ow,” she mumbled, rubbing her hip.  Her hair was lank, her lips cracked.  “-Lo, Riga. Drink?”

Riga looked around with dawning horror.  The doublemint twins leaned against a pool table, still wearing their spangled silver outfits.  “You’ve been here all this time,” Riga said.  “You haven’t left.  None of you have left.”  She turned to Donovan, feeling pressure build in her head.  “This place has become a trap.  People come in but no one’s left.  Except for you.  And me.”