Dead Demon Walking (11 page)

I stroked my sweaty palms over the
table top, smearing the glass. “Sometimes I can.” Not a lie. I can
talk to any shade I see, but they don’t always talk
back.

I rubbed the glass with my sleeve, but
that spread the smear. Gunn made a derogatory noise in his throat.
Vanderkamp smiled at me.

What was it with these guys? Good cop,
bad cop? Believer and skeptic? Nice dude and pain in the
ass?

Garrett cleared his throat, said,
“Could you with these vics?”

“
I don’t know. Some . . .
communicate, some don’t.”

“
We’d like you to
try.”

I glanced at Royal, but he didn’t help
me out. He’d barely said a word since we got here. I didn’t find
that encouraging. I wanted some clue as to which way I should go
with this.

I focused on him until he realized I
wanted his opinion. “It’s your call, Tiff,” he said.

Gee,
thanks
! “Our fee is one hundred dollars an
hour.” I didn’t even twitch as I lied.

Garrett rolled his eyes up. “Your fee
is fifty an hour, but I don’t think you’ll refuse to help your
fellow Americans for want of a few dollars.”

“
Those few dollars pay my
bills and keep a roof over my head, and while we help you we could
be working for paying customers.”

“
Miss Banks, you’re on
vacation,” Vanderkamp said with another smile - did he ever
stop?

“
And that’s another thing.
. . .”

Royal softly cleared his throat.
Right, Tiff, keep that mouth under control. But I wasn’t doing this
for nothing.

I folded my arms over my chest and
gave Garrett a steely look. “Fifty dollars an hour then, and you
pay all travel expenses.”

He bent his head, turned his eyes up,
smiling. “Agreed. I can get approval, but only for time spent at
the crime scene.”

I nodded briskly. “It’s a
deal.”

“
Good.” He checked his
wristwatch. “You’re booked on the five PM to Bentonville via
Dallas. Sol and John will be with you. Mr. Mortensen will take the
six-fifty back to Boston.”

Whoa!
“Mr. Mortensen comes with me.”

“
Not this time.”

“
Then why drag both of us
here?”

Royal cut in smoothly. “They did not
want to leave me in Boston to cause a scene.”

“
Precisely,” Garrett
agreed. “No offense, Mortensen, but we don’t need you.” He switched
his gaze to me. “Miss Banks, you accepted the
assignment.”

I stood and leaned so I
could lay my hands flat on the table, which put me in a position to
look down on Garrett. “We discussed
our
fee. Banks and Mortensen. I’m
Banks.” I poked my clavicle with my index finger, then pointed it
at Royal. “He’s Mortensen.”

I glared at Royal, because he sat
there with a hint of a smile teasing his lips, saying nothing,
letting me handle it. He gave me an innocent look in
return.

I shifted the glare to Garrett,
clenched my jaw and prepared to do battle.

“
Very well,” said
Garrett.

That deflated my indignation. I sat
rather abruptly.

Garrett grinned.

Royal finally deigned to open his
mouth. “What more can you tell us about the murders, or the family
in general?”

Garret put the fingertips of both
hands together and looked my way. “Need to know basis.”

In other words, I would go in
cold.

***

We drove back to Dulles in another
black SUV, with Vanderkamp driving and Gunn riding shotgun.
Forty-five minutes later we boarded our plane.

The flight to Dallas/Fort Worth lasted
three and a half hours, and then we had to wait two hours for our
flight to NW Arkansas Regional Airport in Bentonville. We ate in a
grill and bar, the name of which I don’t remember. The food tasted
blah. It was expensive, like in all airports, but the Suits picked
up the tab. I felt tired and irritable when we boarded for the last
leg. Center seats with Gunn and Vanderkamp flanking for just over
an hour didn’t cheer me. But when I reached the point where I
wanted to hit something or someone, I remembered I had an
appointment with three dead people who died in a particularly
brutal manner, and I withdrew inside myself, not wanting to think
about what lay ahead.

Chapter Nine

I thanked the Almighty the agents put
us in a motel. I didn’t want to see the victims late at night, when
everything seems worse than it is. The reality would be bad
enough.

I woke folded to Royal’s side, my leg
over his flat belly, my cheek on his chest. “Mm.”

His lips touched my hair. “Morning,
sweetheart.”

“
Oh, god. I don’t want it
to be morning. I hate this morning already.”

His voice turned husky. “We can make
it better.”

I smiled against his skin.

“
Unless you wore yourself
out last night.”

I opened my eyes. “Last night?” I
frowned at the ceiling, trying to recall the evening before. We got
inside our motel room; I stripped and fell in bed. I went out like
a light.

“
Last night,” he echoed.
His hand cupped the side of my head. He kissed my brow. “You were
magnificent.”

I was?

I tried to move away, but his hand
held my cheek against him. “Royal, what are you talking
about?”

“
Don’t tell me you don’t
know. I will not believe you.” He released my head and ran one
finger over my collarbone. “I thought the agents would burst in
with weapons drawn, the noise you made.”

I drew my brows together. “Noise? What
are you. . . ?”

The light dawned. Another
of Royal’s sneak tease attacks, one doomed to failure, because I
would
never
forget
our making love.

“
A nasal symphony of epic
proportions.”

My mouth dropped open. He meant I
snored? I knew I didn’t snore; Jack and Mel would delight in
telling me if I did. They would get a lot of mileage out of
that.

“
I do not
snore!”

I went up on one elbow and
ripped the pillow from beneath his head. His skull hit the
headboard with a satisfying
thunk
.

“
Ow!”

“
That’s what you get for -
”

A pillow hit me in the face. Grinning,
I wrestled it down, grasped two corners and swung.

With a minor burst of demon speed,
Royal eeled out of bed. I hit the bedside lamp instead. It crashed
to the floor. The bulb exploded, a crack like a pistol
shot.

I sat back on my haunches. Royal stood
beside the bed in all his naked glory. Vanderkamp and Gunn had
separate rooms either side of ours. I strained my ears for sounds
from either room.

“
Did they hear us,” I
whispered. If they came to our room, they’d ask how we broke the
lamp. If Gunn sneered at me one more time I would slap
him.

“
Our agents are still
asleep.”

“
You’re sure they didn’t
bug our room?”

“
Positive.”

I am suspicious where the FBI is
concerned. I would not put it past them to book our rooms in
advance and plant audio and/or visual devices. They could tell the
clerk to pretend he gave us which room happened to be available
when in fact it was prearranged.

Royal didn’t laugh at me; he knows how
devious the Bureau can be.

Though, it would mean the FBI
mistrusted us. That idea made me even twitchier, but it’s the way I
am. I’m suspicious by nature. I don’t take much at face
value.

Royal bent over, dropped a kiss on my
brow and sauntered to the bathroom.

I saw a small coffeemaker on a tray
atop the dresser and went over there to investigate. Barely enough
grounds for two cups, two sachets of sweetener and a tiny pot of
dry creamer. It was better than nothing, so I went in the bathroom
to fill the carafe as Royal came out.

We sat in the queen-size bed sipping
coffee, until Royal made a face and put his cup aside. Poor Royal,
he likes his coffee gritty with sugar, but we didn’t have
enough.

I tapped my mug with my fingernail.
“This doesn’t add up. FBI headquarters track us down on our
vacation and send agents to shanghai us, because they want a
medium’s help?” I shook my head, making my braid bounce on my
spine. “Set aside they want a psychic - why me? They must have
mediums in DC.”

His forehead pinched. “They
said they kept tabs on you, perhaps not you alone, but you are the
best of them. But I cannot get past that they
are
using a psychic.”

I put my cup on the bedside table. “Me
neither.” I drew my knees up and yawned as I pushed my arms above
my head. “Go with the flow, I guess. I’m for a shower.”

He gave me a purely wicked grin. “Want
company?”

***

The heat and humidity smacked me like
a gigantic damp hand as we left the motel. I felt the weight of
moisture in the unmoving air. I didn’t waste time climbing in the
waiting SUV as Royal put our cases in the back. I took a long drink
of water from my bottle before putting it in the cup
holder.

How many black SUVs with tinted
windows does the FBI own? They must have fleets all over the
nation.

Twenty minutes later we drove along
rural roads. I didn’t know Arkansas was beautiful. Green, hilly,
lush terrain. Grass banks climbed to forests so dense with trees
and wild shrubbery, I bet you’d need a machete to hack a trail
through them. We passed scattered houses and hamlets on the way to
Bella Vinca.

The road narrowed as we drove through
a small valley shaped like a bowl set in rolling hills. The hill to
the east had been cut into, leaving a shelf backed by bare rock
where the skeletons of two large homes waited for walls and roofs.
We wound up the side of the bowl, condominiums clustered below us.
The valley floor spread beyond them, a dark-green swath dotted with
too many copse, ponds and homes for me to count. Carts trundled
over a golf course and stood in neat rows outside the club
house.

We gained the brow of the hill and
angled in to a forest. Leaves cast dappled shadows over the road as
the sun climbed higher. I heard yapping over the hiss of the car’s
air-conditioning. A man on the roadside tossed a stick for his
excited, bouncing border collie and the dog bounded off among the
trees.

The road divided, giving us
the choice of a sharp turn right, or left through iron gates joined
to tall stone pillars. A big wrought-iron sign on one pillar
said
Bella Vinca
in big, curling letters. We bumped over a cattle grid which
spanned the road, and were through.

Nestled in the forest, Bella Vinca is
a community for wealthy residents and well-to-do vacationers who
love golf and boating. I have never seen so many manmade lakes and
golf courses in such a small area, but the dense terrain which
separates them makes you think you’re in the middle of nowhere,
your personal paradise.

Parked in a cul-de-sac, a deputy
leaned on his car. He straightened as we pulled up. Gunn got out
the SUV to talk to him, leaving the engine idling.

Yellow police tape made a barrier at
the top of a steep paved driveway which split narrow manicured
lawns and box-pruned privet hedges. Behind the hedges, trees either
side the driveway gave the Fensham home some privacy from other
properties. Although it opened out wider down below, the property
was narrow with other homes close on both sides. Developers packed
a lot on the banks this side of the lake.

“
Is it still an active
crime scene?” Royal asked Vanderkamp.

“
No, but the clean-up crew
hasn’t been in yet and there’s the usual problem with sightseers.
Some local teens tried to sneak inside the house
yesterday.”

Tragedy attracts people and keeping
them off what constituted a small estate would be difficult. I
wondered how long the sheriff’s department would have to keep a man
in place. “When did you say it happened?” I asked.

“
Three weeks ago,”
Vanderkamp said.

The customary small army of forensics
experts and detectives did their job and left long ago, but the
cleaners had not been in. I could think of only one reason for
that. As I suspected, the Bureau investigated serial killings and
another incident occurred recently, so they kept this scene
available longer than normal.

The deputy slumped on his car again.
Gunn walked back to the SUV

A pale wood sign with black lettering
at the top of the driveway gave the Fensham home a name: Treselik.
I looked down the dramatically sloping driveway to where it circled
a large fountain shaped like a giant stone ewer in a basin, but no
water played in the air. The house was medium sized, one-level,
cream and honey stone and octagonal windows. I saw an expanse of
grass behind the house, a small stand of tall trees, and the
morning sun spreading a glittering path over the lake
beyond.