The Metaphysical Detective (A Riga Hayworth Paranormal Mystery) (6 page)

She ignored him.  What if Donovan was there?  What if he wasn’t?  She dropped into an Indian restaurant instead, and filled up on samosas and dal, staring blankly at a pink and orange wall hanging of a two-headed god riding a ram, both his heads engulfed in flames.  Ouch. 

The waitress interrupted her musings, placing a cup of steaming chai before her.  Riga took a sip and screwed up her face, her own head going up in flames.

She lingered until it was time to meet Marta.  They had agreed on neutral territory – a chain coffee shop near Marta’s office on Market Street, where she worked for a realtor.  Marta had brought backup with her – Marilyn and Marie – and the four settled at a cramped table, jostling elbows.  

Marilyn glared suspiciously at Riga.  It wasn’t hard for Riga to take their measure – Marta wanted to talk, Marilyn wanted her to shut up, and Marie was the nervous peacemaker.

“Thanks for meeting me,” Riga said, smiling.  Just girl talk here, nothing to be afraid of.

Marta brushed a wisp of cropped black hair behind her ear.  She was slender, with a dark, Mediterranean look to her, and restlessly tapped her cardboard cup on the table. 

“We couldn’t believe it when we heard.” Marie darted glances between Marta and Marilyn.  She was a mousy woman, with sloping shoulders, and a discreet tire around her middle. 

 “We don’t have much time,” Marilyn snapped.  “We’ve got jobs.”  She compressed her lips into a thin red line and swung one leg over the other.  It was a neat trick in her hounds tooth pencil skirt, even if she did kick Marta in the process.

Marilyn had a stretched, predatorial look to her.  Her face looked like it had been made up in a department store –perfectly swooping black brows, cat’s eye liner, and perfectly blended but a little too much foundation. 

“I’ll jump right into it then,” Riga said.  “Helen hired me—“

“We know,” Marilyn interrupted.  “I told her she was wasting her money.  This city is crawling with psychic frauds.”  Her lips curled into a sneer.   

“I’m not a psychic.”  Riga tried for a smile, just one of the girls.  But she’d never been just one of the girls.

“Are you a fraud?” Marilyn purred.

“Marilyn!” Marta protested, brushing Marilyn’s footprint from her navy slacks.   

Marie shot Riga an apologetic look.  Riga suspected apologies were Marie’s specialty. 

“I’m sorry,” Marie squeaked.  She pulled a pill of wool from her lumpy gray sweater.  “What do you want to know?”

“Hold it.” Marilyn arched forward.  “Why should we tell her anything?  We don’t even know what happened to Helen.”

“Helen’s dead,” Riga said.  “I don’t know how it happened either, but the circumstances are suspicious.”

Marilyn snorted.  “Thank you, psychic hotline.  Why don’t you tell me something I don’t know?”

Riga imagined telling her that Santa was real.  She’d never believe it.   “What can you tell me about Helen’s husband, Herman?” she said instead.

Marta shot Marilyn a look that dared interruption.   “He was alright.” She tapped her paper cup on the table.  “I didn’t know him well.  He showed up a couple times with Helen for drinks.  They seemed to get along, if that’s what you mean.”

“Helen told me she’d met someone new,” Riga said.

The three women glanced at each other, looking surprised. 

Marta shrugged.  “She didn’t say anything to us.”  Tap, tap, tap.

“Seems a little soon if you ask me,” Marilyn said.  “Herman’s been gone less than a year.”

 “Almost exactly a year,” Marta corrected.  “It would be wonderful if it’s true.  Herman’s death hit her hard.  She deserved a little happiness, I think.  I wonder why she wouldn’t have said anything to us, though?”

Riga didn’t wonder about that at all. 

“She was dressing more nicely,” Marie said.  The others looked at her and she shrank in her chair, as if she’d surprised herself by speaking.  Her nose twitched.  “And she’d lost weight.  Do you remember how awful she looked in the months after Herman died?”

Marilyn admired her scarlet claws.  “Just because she was coming out of mourning, doesn’t mean she had a new love in her life.”

“It would have been nice if she had.”  Marta smiled wistfully.  “Kind of gives a girl hope, you know?” She held her cup by the rim and rolled it in circles around her quarter of the table. 

Riga nodded.  She did know.  It was a sort of proof of life.  “Did anything unusual happen that last night at the Cliff House?”

Marilyn’s eyes narrowed to catlike slits.  “How did you know we were at the Cliff House?”

“Helen told me she was meeting friends from work there.  I assumed you were the friends,” Riga said.  It wasn’t a very good lie.  Even if Helen had mentioned such a thing, she wasn’t likely to give Riga their phone numbers. 

Marta shook her head.  “It was a normal night out.  If anything, Helen seemed more relaxed than usual – I think your meeting made her feel better.  She was taking action, doing something.  We talked about you, and Herman.  Of course, none of us really believed he’d returned from the grave to hurt her.  I’m not sure Helen believed it either, but she wasn’t sure, you know?  I think this was a way for her to start putting the past behind her.” 

The past was always behind you, Riga thought.  That was the problem.  It never went away.

Marilyn tore an empty sugar packet into halves, quarters, eighths.  “It was just survivor’s guilt.”

“What do you mean?” Riga asked.  “Was Helen in the car with Herman when he crashed?”

“No, but she’s alive and he’s not,” Marilyn explained.  “Maybe she felt if she’d been there she could have done something.  Maybe he would have been driving more slowly.  So she felt guilty and every little accident she had she magnified into something more.  It’s a better explanation than the ghost of Herman come back to get her!”

Riga nodded.  It was a better explanation.  But, they weren’t little accidents.  The last one had killed her, if it was an accident at all. 

Chapter 10: An Unwelcome Guest

The bookstore receipt in Helen’s purse had come from a shop not far from the café, so Riga headed over, photo in hand.  No one there remembered Helen but Riga’s expectations had been low on that score.  She bought a new mystery novel for Brigitte – a hardback.  They were easier for Brigitte to manage than paperbacks.  And forget about eBooks.  Riga shuddered, thinking of Brigitte with a touch screen. 

She returned to her office.  The Apollo Group was looking for good press, so Riga didn’t have any trouble setting a Monday appointment with its director, Aaron Cunningham. 

“I’ve got all the time in the world for the Fourth Estate!” he told her, full of bonhomie.  He suggested lunch at a private golf club on the Peninsula. 

Aaron was looking to impress, Riga thought, leaning back in her chair and crossing her feet upon the desk.

She went back to her research, scribbling questions for him on the legal pad Pen had left behind, and then turning back to Helen and Herman.  She found a wedding announcement for the two in the online archives of a local paper.  It didn’t tell her anything useful.

Restless, Riga pulled a Tarot card from the deck atop her desk.  It was the Page of Cups: a romantic opportunity, message of love, or a message from the subconscious.  Unhelpful.

Riga shuffled papers across her desk, scanned through a couple books on the occult, then realized the room had darkened.  The day was, to all intents and purposes, over. 

She walked home slowly, enjoying the sting of cool air on her face.  The madman on the corner slept hard against a trash bin, cradling a bottle of liquor.  It seemed as good a way as any to greet the apocalypse, she thought.

The doorman’s dog escorted her in the elevator again; it had become a ritual.  They rode up, she scratched behind its floppy ears, then punched the button so it could return to its master. 

A package wrapped in thick plastic leaned against her door and Riga felt her stomach lurch at the sight.  She approached cautiously, then relaxed, feeling foolish.  It was just a phone book.  Quaint, in the age of the Internet.

She let herself in to her condo, book tucked beneath her arm, and stopped dead inside the doorway, felt the blood drain from her face.  There was a red Valentine on the kitchen counter. 

Her brain kicked into gear and she realized Donovan must have picked it up from the doormat outside and left it there.  A message he’d left beside the Valentine confirmed it: 

A secret admirer?

D

She walked through the condo, making sure Donovan had gone.  Her home was empty but Donovan had left his energy behind him – restless and masculine.  The bed was, naturally, unmade.  Riga straightened the cotton sheets and coverlet, thinking how useless the action was since she’d be taking it all apart in a few hours anyway.

Dropping onto the bed, she pulled her boots and socks off, wriggling her toes with pleasure.  And then she felt it.  Magic.  It tingled at the edges of her aura.  She buried her face in the pillow Donovan’s head had rested upon.  It was stronger here.  He had either used magic on her, or he was a magical being of some sort.  But why hadn’t she sensed it before?  It was like Helen all over again. 

Panic rose in her throat.  Were her powers slipping?  She rolled off the bed and summoned a whisper of energy.  It leapt reassuringly into her as it always had, flowing upward through her feet and down through the top of her head – as above, so below, with Riga as the nexus.  She stretched out her arm and with a word, a book effortlessly flew across the room and into her outstretched hand. 

So, her powers were intact.  Were Donovan and Helen of the same kind, she wondered, or doomed by the same enchantment?  Riga was inclined to believe the former.  They would have to be unusually powerful or inhuman if they were using cloaking spells to hide their magic from her.  And if they were victims of a spell, it was clumsy – why create a spell which killed in the future and required cloaking from magical practitioners?   Much easier to kill now, or to use mundane means like poison. 

She went to the kitchen and stared into the refrigerator, looking for inspiration.  Finally, she removed a wedge of parmesan and sliced off a thick chunk. 

The back of her neck prickled. 

She wasn’t alone. 

Riga turned, scanning the room with all her senses.  A dark-haired figure sat in her leather armchair, facing the fire.

“Donovan!” she yelped.  “How did you get in?”

His head turned slowly towards her.  The knife Riga held slipped from her fingers, clattering upon the tile floor. 

It wasn’t Donovan.  It wasn’t even a “he.”  Whatever it was, its features were frozen in a rictus grin, flesh rotting, dead eyes yellowed.

Riga screamed.

The sound seemed to shatter something.  Riga felt a physical snap, which sent her reeling backwards.  She slipped on the knife handle and went down, falling hard against the refrigerator.  A hail of plastic bottles –vitamins and aspirin – rained down upon her. 

“Shit!”  She scrambled to her feet, snatching the knife from the floor and holding it before her. 

Herman was gone.  Even dead and rotting she knew him.

Riga reached out with her senses, checking her magical wards.  They were intact.  What.  The.  Hell.  She searched her home, trading the knife for a heavy flashlight.  She looked in every closet, in the shower, and under the bed.  She checked the balcony doors – they were locked.  Finally she stood in the center of her living room.  Riga was alone. 

No neighbors had come running at her scream.  On the other hand, she only had one neighbor.

Chapter 11: Banished and Bewildered

Riga centered herself and conducted a ritual banishing.  It was a simple, kindergarten level spell – but it always worked for her.  The ritual focused her, and when she sent her energy rippling through the spell, she knew her home was clean.  What she didn’t know was how a ghost had gotten past her wards.  There was nothing wrong with her wards – they were solid, she could feel it.   A ghost shouldn’t have been able to make it past them.

She went to her balcony and called for Brigitte.  But the gargoyle didn’t come; it was easiest for her to move at night when she would not be seen, and not unusual for Brigitte to escape the building for parts unknown.  Riga never asked where she went, figuring even gargoyles deserved a private life.

Still rattled, she slipped a Montgomery Gentry CD into the player but it didn’t have its usual calming effect.  Riga was used to weird, but a manifestation had never followed her home before.  She looked in the refrigerator, closed it, opened it again, hopeful she’d missed something interesting, closed it.  Wine… no wine tonight. 

Bored, she went across the hall and knocked on Liz’s door.  After a long wait, Liz opened it.  Her eyes were bloodshot, her face gaunt to the point of skeletal.  Liz’s blonde hair hung lank about her shoulders. 

“You look like hell,” Riga said.  “What’s going on?”

“I’ve been painting.”  Liz turned and walked back to her easel.  It stood beside a table laden with paints.

It had not been an enthusiastic invitation, but Riga followed.  Her eyes watered, the place stank of oils.  “Good God, how can you breathe in this?”  She slid open a glass balcony door and gulped fresh air. 

“Thanks,” Liz mumbled, picking up a brush and sitting down on a tall, three-legged stool stained with green paint.

Riga looked around.  A TV was on in the corner, the local weatherman sweeping his arm across a map of the Bay Area dotted with bright yellow suns.  New paintings of vines and Greek temples lined the walls.  “You weren’t kidding about the grapevines.”

“Huh?”  Liz looked up, abstracted.  “Yeah, I’m on a creative roll.  Can’t stop.”

“When’s the last time you’ve eaten?”

“I don’t remember,” Liz said, intent again on her painting.

Riga pulled her cell phone from the pocket of her safari jacket, and ordered Chinese.  Liz kept painting, ignoring her, so she went to the balcony and watched the lights wink at her from across the bay.  Twenty silent minutes later, the food arrived.  Riga paid, then rummaged in Liz’s kitchen for plates and utensils.  She pushed some paints aside on the work table, and set out the food.