Trace (TraceWorld Book 1) (11 page)

That was a long time ago. As she turned up the road that would eventually take her to Greenbriar—she figured she might as well do this now on her way out of town—she thought about how many couples she knew who had replaced love and affection with a sort of knee-jerk instinct to contradict, to defy—to hurt, even. When she was in an especially dark mood, she would look at people’s homes as she drove by and wonder just how much suffering was going on behind those walls, masked by tidy lawns and well-kept beds of geraniums.

And here was Greenbriar, an entire community of homes waiting to be filled with human joy and human misery. They did look like very nice houses, as her mother had said, at least the ones that were finished, and Nola had no doubt the others would look pretty much the same. There had been a time when the ordinary life represented by houses like this seemed like the worst fate ever. Now Nola could see what a snobbish sort of belief that was. She could afford to shun the ordinary; a lot of people could not.

She followed signs pointing her to the real estate office, which unsurprisingly looked identical to the houses. She parked and entered the office, finding herself in an overly A/C-chilled room with racks of pamphlets and floor plans. A woman about Nola’s age in a dark blue suit and nylons sat behind a desk and chirped cheerfully on the phone. She nodded and mouthed something with her heavily lipsticked mouth at Nola, probably “be with you in a minute.” Nola nodded and busied herself gathering literature.
            “Sooo sorry about that,” the woman was saying now, having finished her call. Nola resisted the urge to say something sarcastic like
Yes, how incredibly rude of you to continue a work-related phone conversation at your place of work.
Something about situations that demanded a thick social veneer often made Nola prickly and uncomfortable. She hated that about herself and tried very hard to get over it but failed frequently.

The woman, Patty something, went through the expected questions—“How did you hear about Greenbriar? When were you looking to move? Do you rent or own now”—and was in the middle of suggesting a tour of the grounds, which was the main thing that had interested Nola to begin with, when Vincent Kirke appeared from seemingly out of nowhere. He looked just as surprised to see Nola as Nola was to see him, and for a weird moment they stood there gaping at each other. Vincent recovered first, easing a smile onto his face. “Ms. Lantri, isn’t it? How good to see you again. I heard Patty saying you’re looking into Greenbriar for your mother, is that right? Patty, I can take over here—I’ll give you the grand tour.”

This was not quite what Nola had planned. So much for not defying Dalton. She realized she had not spoken yet, so to deflect the awkwardness, she blurted, “Do we get to ride in one of those golf carts? I love those things.”

If she could have smacked her forehead without looking even more like a teenager, she would have. And to think she made fun of her mother’s conversational weirdness.

Vincent grinned. “Unfortunately, no, just an ordinary old car. Hmm, note to self: get golf cart.” He opened the door of a silver Acura parked next to Nola’s old Ford Taurus, looking even shabbier for the contrast. She itched to tell Vincent he really ought to write that “note to self” in earnest. These were supposed to be houses geared toward lower-income families, after all, and she wasn’t sure it was such a good idea to be taking them around in a fancy new car, especially when there were rumors, at least in the construction business, that corners had been cut.

“We’re still under construction, as you can see, so I can’t show you everything, but we do have some models for you to look at, and I think you’ll find them as beautiful as I do—and so will your mother.”

As she listened to Vincent’s salesman speech describing the many delightful amenities of Greenbriar, Nola wondered how to find out what she really wanted to know. There didn’t seem to be any subtle way of asking him if these really were the high-quality materials promised or if her father had been correct in his assessment that it was all, as he put it, shit. If she appeared critical, he would either laugh at her obvious lack of knowledge about construction or become defensive at the implications. Either way she’d gain nothing.

They went through two of the model homes, Nola murmuring appropriate remarks of praise and appreciation, all the while frustrated that she was wasting her time. It was true that the models did not look terribly luxurious, even from her own inexpert view—cabinet doors were pine with a cherry wood-like stain, and the carpets and tiles were clearly not top-of-the-line—but that meant very little. Her father had suggested that the whole thing was cheap and shoddy, not just the frills, and at the moment Nola had no way of discovering whether that was true.

Getting back into the car after seeing the three-bedroom Hillcrest (did they always have to have the same bland names?), she expected Vincent to take her to the next model (Sunvista, or would it be Riverglen?), which would be larger and way too big for one person, but of course real estate types always liked to push upgrades at you. To her surprise, however, he turned the car around and headed back for the office. “Are there any models of the bigger homes?” she asked just to have something to ask.

“Not yet.”

He did not seem inclined to elaborate. This was interesting. The problem was that Nola couldn’t figure out what it could mean or if it had any importance at all. She cast about for something else to say before the drive was over. “My mother likes the location especially, though I imagine some people were probably worried about the factory.”

He shot her an odd look. “What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “A lot of people hear
factory
these days and think ‘toxic waste dumped in my water.’ Even though they shut it down, like, thirty years ago.”

Victor chuckled. For some reason, it annoyed Nola. It reminded her of a used-car salesman laughing when a woman asks a question about gas mileage. She almost expected him to say something like
Don’t you worry your pretty little head about that
. Instead, he said, “We did extensive testing of soil and water for just that very reason. Everything passed. You can see copies of the reports in the office if you wish.”

Nola was sure she already knew what the reports would look like: pages and pages of incomprehensible data that would make most people stop reading and say,
Looks good to me
. “That’s OK, I should get going.”

Was there relief on his face? Nola wasn’t sure, and anyway Vincent Kirke had struck her from the start as being tough to read. She thanked him and got into her car. He remained standing there, she noticed, watching as she pulled out. Was he trying to see if she would leave Greenbriar entirely or circle around on her own? She wished she had the guts to circle around on her own, but the truth was that she really did have to get going, and besides, she doubted she’d have learned anything useful.

It occurred to her only when she was well on her way to Albany that they hadn’t said a single thing about Culver Bryant the whole time they’d talked.

10

It had been easy to find her; she was the only Villagomez in Albany. She ran a health food store in the university district, one that also sold New Agey sorts of books, music, and decorations, though most of the shelves were stocked with mysterious jars and bags of what Nola could only assume were edible substances. As she stared blankly at the shelves, she heard movement in the back of the store and a faint call of “I’ll be right with you,” followed by “Please do try the free samples.” On a card table in the middle of the store, there were little baskets of . . . something. They looked like the pellets she’d fed her pet guinea pig when she was a kid. Nola liked to think she ate healthily and responsibly enough, though one certainly couldn’t help the occasional extra slice or two of nitrate-meat-heavy pizza, but here she was clearly out of her element. She’d never even heard of a lot of the things in the store, and being able to see what they were didn’t often give her a clue as to how you were supposed to cook them—or
if
you cooked them, or what they were supposed to taste like, or even what sort of flora or fauna they came from.        

“You’re here about Grayson.”

Nola whirled around, almost losing her balance in the process and not regaining it right away when she stood face-to-face with Anna Villagomez. She probably shouldn’t have been surprised. She still was, though, as startled as she’d be if Anna really were psychic and not just tracist. She was even more startled by the fact that Anna was movie-star gorgeous: flawless olive skin, full lips, silky hair, a figure that somehow managed to be both slender and curvy at the same time. Somehow Nola had pictured someone more earth-motherly, which she knew was a bad stereotype but an unavoidable one given her surroundings. But of course Grayson would be attracted to a woman who was more chic than hippie.

Grayson. Nola snapped back into the moment and regarded Anna as coolly as Anna did her.

“You know about me,” Nola said quietly.

“Of course,” Anna said.

It occurred to Nola that while she’d meant this to mean Anna knew about her work as a tracist, it might have been taken differently:
you know about me and Grayson.
Not that there was a “me and Grayson,” Nola reflected, in the same way that there had been an Anna and Grayson, but she couldn’t help thinking Anna was sizing her up at that moment like a rival. Ridiculous, Nola wanted to say. She didn’t say it. She had come here for information, and she intended to get it.

“Do you have a minute to talk?” Nola said, still keeping her voice sounding calm and quiet but, she hoped, not timid.

Anna stared at her a moment longer and then gestured toward the back of the shop, where a few bistro tables and chairs were arranged. Nola sat at one of the tables while Anna busied herself at a tiny kitchenette, brewing herbal tea. “You still work with the police?” she asked. Nola nodded, and Anna made a faint sound like a snort. “I gave that up at the beginning of the year. I got tired of the disrespect. It’s a lot worse when you look like me, you know.”

It took Nola a second to figure out what she meant: Anna was talking about being Latina, which was obvious even if you didn’t know her last name.

“They’d think all sorts of things about me,” she went on, anger flashing in her eyes. “They’d ask if I was into ‘voodoo.’ There are so many stupid racist things about that, I can’t even begin. So I got out. I started this store. And I am also a personal tracist.”

“What, er, does that entail?” Nola asked.

“Once in a while, a realtor contacts me because a superstitious client wants to make sure the house they want to buy is ‘clean.’ There’s good money in it—these are the kind of people who consult feng shui experts. One couple in Manhattan paid for my train ticket and a night at the Plaza just so I could tell them nobody had died in their dream SoHo loft. Other than that—well, you can probably guess, can’t you?” She smiled in a way that seemed less friendly than mocking. “I go to a house where someone died, and I tell the bereaved about the trace of the recently departed.”

Nola looked at her blankly.

“I tell them what they want to hear. It’s peaceful. It’s beautiful. Their loved ones are happy.”

“But . . .” Nola stopped herself from continuing. Anna was a tiny woman, but there was something intimidating about her even as she simply sat there sipping tea.

“But it’s a lie? Is that what you’re going to say?” Anna laughed outright. “It comforts them. That’s more than I can say for what I used to do—for what
you
do. That brought them nothing but suffering, so I suffered, too.”

She sounded so much like Grayson at that moment that Nola wondered which one had influenced the other. She soon found out.

“Grayson was the one who made me see this. Now he’s going to make you see it. Oh, don’t look so innocent. I know him. I know the effect he can have. And he is obviously having that effect on you, because you are here. You wanted to find out about me because of him, because of what I used to have with him. So find out. Ask what you want to know.”

Nola found herself momentarily stunned. She lifted her cup to her lips, but her tea had turned unpalatably lukewarm, which was fine; she couldn’t swallow it anyway. She put the cup down and decided she had nothing to lose. She had come all this way. “Grayson is a suspect in his brother’s disappearance.”

“That’s bullshit,” Anna said without waiting for more. The tiniest bit of an accent rendered the word
bull-sheet
. Her tone made it clear she had no doubts.

“You trust him?”

“Yes.” No hesitation at all.

“Do you . . .” Nola stopped, not sure what she wanted to ask next.

“Do I love him? Yes. Does he love me?” Anna’s dark red lips curled slightly. “He needed me, once.”

Nola didn’t know what to say to that either, so she didn’t address it at all, instead asking the next thing that came into her mind. “Do you feel the same way about trace that he does? Do you . . . take it? Use it? Enjoy it?”

This time it was Anna who seemed to find Nola’s words unexpected. She took her time before answering. “I did when I was with him.”

“And now?”

Anna picked up their cups and took them to the sink behind Nola’s chair, even though Nola hadn’t finished her tea. She rinsed them carefully, wordless. Nola sat looking straight ahead, out into the little shop with its crystals and candles, its bags of teff and amaranth, its bottles of natural cleaning products.

“That bird,” Anna finally said from the sink.

Nola froze, afraid to turn around, afraid almost to breathe. For the second time that morning, she thought Anna Villagomez might be a psychic. Nola could have asked what bird, but there didn’t seem to be much point. “Yes?”

Anna came around and stood before her, face impassive. “I put it there.”

Nola looked up at her. There was neither threat nor shame in the words or in her face. Anna was simply stating a fact. “That pigeon and the note, you mean? You did that?”