Bad Blood: Latter-Day Olympians (17 page)

“Your contact?” I asked, dragging my focus back to the conversation. “Has he said anything about what’s going on?”

Yiayia sighed heavily. “He has been—evasive, hard to reach. I have half a mind to fly out there myself and demand answers. If we were on hiatus…”

I laughed. “Yiayia, if only you could get out here to kick butt and take names, we’d have this whole mess cleared up in no time.”

“Darn straight.”

“One more thing—where’s Hermes hiding out these days?”

“Do you not know?” She tsked. “This younger generation, they never listen to us molden oldies. He is a syndicated columnist, Thom Foolery.”

Strangely enough, Yiayia’s call had invigorated me. I’d closed the door on my silly urge-to-give-up pity party and was ready to jump back into things.

Sadly, before I could do anything else, my presence was required down at the station. Lau and Armani, as he’d told me last night, were under increasing pressure to close the Holland and Talbot cases. The chief was maybe twenty-four hours away from ordering a task force. Even knowing it was futile, Armani had passed along the insistence that I come in to work with a police sketch artist. I wondered what the hell I was going to say. I didn’t want to forever ruin my credibility by playing unobservant, but neither could I have the unsuspecting populace turning in some poor man who just happened to look like a made-up perp. Of course, I had held right from the beginning that there was something odd about Circe’s killer, so it would serve them right if I gave them the Swamp Thing.

Chafing at the senseless waste of time, I grabbed a scone and latte on the way to the station to ease my pain. I even grabbed a large dark roast for my shadow, who had pulled over when I did.

Armani was either out following another lead or on Hephaestus watch, but Lau, just as pleasant as ever, babysat my efforts. She huffed and puffed over the ridiculousness of my description, as if she had no idea what was really going on. I was as impressed as I was irritated at her performance.

After the sketch artist finally threw in the towel, Lau and I had a little one-on-one. The stake-out of Hiero Cholas was off. He’d deserted his little
pied a terre
to return to his home base near San Marino. It might have meant that we were completely wrong about Hiero being one of the co-conspirators—only he’d chosen to rent a truck and load all his worldly goods onto it for the trip. It didn’t bode well. If I looked good in sandwich board, I’d be going around with a sign saying “The End is Near”. Or, what the hell, “Nigh”. Might as well wax poetic before the end. It wasn’t as if La La Landians didn’t see weird crap every day and would pay me any heed.

With nothing but a crazy story even the SyFy Channel would reject as too “far out”, there was no way to convince the San Marino PD to keep tabs on Cholas. There was no way to monitor packages he might send out or avenues back into the city. Lau had, apparently, convinced Cholas’s super here in L.A. to let her know if he returned, but the long and short of it was we’d lost him.

I
hated
this part of an investigation, the part where the trails all petered out, where you had to clear-cut a new path without a compass. If this were a dime novel, now would be about the time for a wild hunch. If I were Holmes I’d no doubt have made some logical leap that would leave my everyman partner in awe of my deductive reasoning. As it was, I retreated to my car, pulled the notebook I used to keep track of mileage from above my visor and nibbled on the end of the accompanying pencil while I took refuge in a loose-ends list. I liked lists—they made you feel like you were doing something even when you weren’t. Plus, it felt so good to cross things off.

1- Find out whether Christie knew Circe

(Yeah, I was reaching, but I never had gotten an answer and that niggled at me.)

2- Find Hermes

3- Find Mrs. S’s damned dog

4- Figure out what the hell Apollo meant when he said I was “not quite” mortal

5- Why wasn’t I weak and jittery from my second water escape?

6- Explosives: where from, where set?

7- Which old ones have been jittery or disappearing?

(It was something Apollo had mentioned in passing and a question I should have asked earlier.)

7- Yiayia’s mystery man?

I probably could have gone on all day avoiding real work by coughing up questions, but the thought of me and the rest of L.A. at the bottom of the ocean was pretty damned motivating. Somehow I sensed that Cholas’s move had started the countdown. Maybe it was Apollo’s gift of precognition, maybe it was just those investigator’s instincts I was supposed to have belatedly kicking in. Either way we were screwed.

It irritated the hell out of me that before I could even get to my list I had one very important errand to run—replacing the cell phone Glaucus or whoever had dunked in our very first ocean encounter. I felt oddly cut off from the world without it and certainly from the all-important 9-1-1 in case of emergency, which the way my life was going was not a question of whether but of when. So, with a semi-quick stop at the Radio Shack I’d passed on the way to the station, I rejoined the twenty-first century.
 

No sooner had the door hit my fanny on the way out than the phone rang. I checked the readout. Jesus.

“Yes?” I answered.

“Boss lady, I mean no disrespect, but where the hell are you?”

I blinked.

“The phone has been ringing off the hook. Apollo actually sounds
desperate
—”

Two beeps cut across Jesus’s rant.

“You gave him my cell number,” I accused.

“I’m surprised you didn’t. I mean, aside from the fact that
E Magazine
named him last year’s sexiest man alive—”

My jaw ached from clenching. “I’ll take this up with you later,” I threatened, jamming my finger on the button to cut him off and send Apollo through. At least my virtue was safe over the phone. In theory.

“Karacis Investigations,” I answered, as if I hadn’t recognized the number.

“Tori, you have to come forward,” Apollo demanded without preamble.

“’Scusé?”

“Without a grateful victim, there are some rumors that the rescue was a publicity stunt. I need you in front of a camera.”

Sure, ten million or so registered SAG actresses would give their eyeteeth for such an opportunity and
I
got the call.

“No.”

“Tori—” He imbued it with a boatload of mojo. Even sitting my knees went weak.

“Still no. Hire someone.”

“I’ve hired you.”

“For an investigation. Not to put my life under a magnifying glass.”

He muttered something under his breath. “If I hire some actress, it’s bound to come out, and then my name will be mud. All because I saved your life. I didn’t want to play this card, but
you owe me
.”

There they were, those dreadful words. I hadn’t asked for any of this and still the bill had come due. I just hadn’t expected it so soon.

“The whole life-debt thing, eh? Look, I’d be glad to give my life literally. Any time you want me to leap in front of a bullet or save you from a watery grave, just say the word. Promise. But that’s a one-time deal. If I do this, I’m going to keep paying. Your damned press will pry into my background, lurk outside my door—” talk to my family, “—and make it impossible to do my job. You know, the one you hired me to do?”

He was momentarily hushed. “I don’t suppose you have a sister?”

That surprised a laugh out of me. “Brother. And let me tell you, there’s not enough hot wax in the world to pass him off as a woman.”

“Pity.”

I waited. It couldn’t be that easy.

“Someday—” Apollo’s voice dropped low, gravelly, to a dead-on impression of The Godfather, “—and that day may never come—I’ll call upon you to do a service for me.”

“Cute,” I said wryly.

“I was going for clever.”

“Be glad I gave you cute.”

“You are possibly the most contrary woman I’ve ever met.”

“Am not.”

“I know what you’re doing.”

“Rolling my eyes?”

“
Argotera
, Tori.”

“Anh anh ah—not so fast. I want some answers first. What’s this about my mortality?”

“Tori, my battery’s dying. I have to go.” And just like that he was gone.

I was steamed. This time not in the good way. There’d been no telltale sound or lack thereof, on my end anyway, signaling a foundering battery. That meant evasion; he was hiding something. Finding out what meant more contact than was probably healthy.

It hit me in a flash that my own curiosity was truly the only thing connecting us now. I’d solved the case Apollo had hired me to investigate. I might not be able to prove to a court of law that Poseidon had drowned Sierra Talbot and implicated Circe, leading to her murder, but conviction wasn’t my job. I didn’t know whether to be offended or relieved that Poseidon hadn’t seen me as enough of a threat to drown. Maybe he thought Glaucus would take care of that as well. Anyway, as soon as I turned in a report, my association with Apollo would come to an end. A mischievous thought flitted past, that I could withhold my information as a bargaining chip for the answers
I
wanted, but I was too professional to do it. I put temptation behind me and headed for the office.

If Jesus had possessed a smidgeon of sense, he’d have run for the hills as soon as he saw the whites of my eyes. Instead, he sat behind his desk as though it was an executive model made of pure mahogany rather than veneer over pressboard and actually had the nerve to put
me
on hold with a raised finger while he continued his telephone conversation.

Only the tightest rein on my fury and the fact that it seemed to involve Mrs. Strohmeyer’s missing hound kept me from disconnecting on his behalf.
 

When he finally hung up, I took a deep breath, ready to lay into him with a stream of words and run-on sentences, but Jesus beat me to it.

“Look,
chica
, I do not appreciate being thrown into the middle of your lover’s quarrels,” he said, looking for all the world like a pissy librarian glaring through
pince-nez
even thought he’d never be caught dead in the damned things.

“What the hell?” I burst.

“Apollo-freakin’-Demas,
sí
? I don’t know what you do to get a man so worked up but honest to god,
chica
, you are going to share the secret or I will key your personal information into every Internet dating scheme I find.”

I shuddered. “Jesus, I promise that when all this is over I will take you out for one helluva thank-you dinner and tell all.” I hoped he didn’t notice my crossed fingers. “For now, can we get back to work?”

He eyed me like a Rodeo Drive sales girl. “One thing first, I must know, stud or dud?”

I groaned.

Chapter Fourteen

“If you assume you know nothing, you’re going to be right a good part of the time.”

—Uncle Christos, in a huh? moment when discussing how to begin an investigation without preconceptions

Even with time ticking away on the potential plot to remodel the California coastline, I couldn’t ignore the message leading possibly to Mrs. S’s hound. We’d finally gotten a hit on one of the “Lost Dog” posters. I didn’t think it was any coincidence that it hadn’t happened until Mrs. S had okayed a reward.

So, I set Jesus the task of locating Thom Foolery, grabbed my supplies and set off after the hound of the Baskervilles. I half felt it should be a dark and stormy night, but it was neither. It was a typical gorgeous L.A. day. You might think that all that sunshine would get monotonous; you’d be wrong.

My brain worked in strange and mysterious ways, especially when I needed a plan to capture the damned hound should the “nice doggie” approach fail. When Mrs. S had first signed on the dotted line, I’d asked her for a few things I thought would help, like a favorite chew toy or blanket that might be used to lure Honey into her carrier. What she’d brought was an old sweatshirt that smelled like its name. It had seemed odd to me at the time, the brand new carrier and the fact that the odiferous shirt, which she said Honey had appropriated, wasn’t covered in dog hair. I’d asked whether the dog was a beagle mix, the kind that didn’t shed, but she’d just looked at me funny and sworn that Honey was pure hound.

Added to the new information I’d received from Christos’s police contacts about the girlfriend, who’d raised a hue and a cry the same week Mrs. Strohmeyer had hired me… Well, I wasn’t sure what it meant, but it didn’t add up, at least not to a nice round number.

My job was limited to finding the elusive hound. Period. I had more than enough trouble already without looking for more. Really. Still, it was a mystery and I’d swear to bloodhound rather than gorgon in my own background based on that part of me baying in protest at the thought of giving up the hunt.

I was headed toward East Hollywood, not too far from the Sunset Strip where I’d first heard the hound baying. Interestingly enough, the address of our tipster and that of Dick Strohmeyer’s girlfriend were the same—same building anyway. I wondered whether dog and master had been shacked up with the mistress—and if so why she’d cried bloody murder—or if the hound had followed a scent trail to his owner. I tried to tell myself to mind my own business and stick to the matter at hand, but that had never worked.

Anyway, on arrival Jane Kleinschmidt was waiting for me outside the entrance to an apartment complex like any other. The lady herself could have come from central casting—that indeterminate age between middle and old, housedress, sweater, sensible slipper-shoes. She scanned the walkway, presumably looking for me, though she passed me over when I came into range, only to snap back a moment later as the cage I carried registered.

“Oh, you’re— Somehow, I thought you’d be bigger, you know, more
butch.
”

Ooo-kay.

My lack of response seemed to unsettle her. “Anyway, ah, hello. I’m Jane Kleinschmidt, but I guess you know that if you’re here.”