Disembodied Bones (33 page)

And it was just as she remembered as a child.
One had to concentrate, but anyone could eliminate the thoughts of
others. She could lock him out like she was pulling down the blinds
on a window. Some of the family found it hard to get away from
outsiders’ thoughts. Others escaped to sparsely populated regions
of the bayous. But all learned the same kinds of tricks. Leonie was
learning them a little later in life than the others. All the
family’s whispers and comments suddenly made sense to Leonie and it
came together with a jarring sense of completion that shocked
her.

“
Merde
,” she said, and realized what
she’d said when she perceived that Dacey and Elan were staring at
her oddly.

“I suppose he knows all about it now,” Leonie
said, pointing at Elan.

“I told him. About Douglas. About
Whitechapel. The bullet in your head.”

“I would have rather heard it from you,
Leonie,” said Elan gently. “It’s obvious that you have special
abilities. I have enough of an open mind to accept that
you’re-”

“What?” Leonie suddenly snapped out the
words. “A freak? A psychic? I don’t have a choice about it. When
something is missing, someone is missing, I can’t help it. It’s
like a powerful magnet. I have to deal with it, and it hardly
matters whether the child is dead or alive.”

“And the child who’s still missing?” Elan
asked curiously.

“I don’t know about him.” She gritted her
teeth. “I don’t know why. He’s out of range. He’s…something, and I
can’t get a grip on him.”

“I don’t think you’re a freak, Leonie,” Elan
said frankly. “I think you’re beautiful, attractive, intelligent,
and unusual. I’m sorry people have treated you poorly. I’m sorry if
you think I’m that shallow.”

Leonie opened her mouth and said nothing.
From the look on Dacey’s face, the Hispanic woman wanted to melt
away unseen into the ground. Finally, she said diplomatically, “I’m
going to make some coffee.”

“It’s a thousand degrees outside,” said
Leonie, still looking at Elan. She sat back down and straightened
her back, fumbling with her fingers, not knowing exactly what to do
with her hands. “I’d rather have iced tea.”

“The life-saving staple of a million heat
deluged Texans,” declared Dacey, standing up and brushing her own
sable locks away from her face. “Elan, a glass?”

“No, I’m going to go to work in a few
minutes.”

Leonie noticed that Elan was dressed in
business attire. A pale gray suit attired his potent figure with a
dark gray silk tie perfectly knotted around his neck that offset
the black silk shirt underneath the jacket. Leonie only now
recognized that Dacey must have dragged Elan back from wherever he
was in Dallas to rescue poor, little Leonie. Behind Elan, Dacey
prudently vanished into the kitchen and immediately began to bang
dishes around loudly. She might as well been chanting, “I’m not
listening to you all in the living room!” because Leonie knew
perfectly well there was a pitcher of iced tea already made and
chilled in her refrigerator.

Elan knelt in front of her with a graceful
movement of which Leonie found instantly compelling. His handsome
face with his wonderfully formed cheekbones and his coffee colored
eyes were on a level with hers. He reached out with one hand and
took one of hers. His eyes dipped to her hand for a single instant,
before rising to meet hers once again. “I’m sorry your morning was
so traumatic. We talked about a security system before. I think
that would help you out. Either that or you find a new, safer place
to live.” He pursed his lips. “I hate to think that someone might
hurt you.”

“Elan,” Leonie said protestingly. “I’m not
sure that-” She was going to say that she wasn’t sure if Douglas
Trent/Gideon Lily was the threat she needed to be worried about,
but something prevented her from finishing the words. She said
instead, “He’s in jail. For kidnapping Olga. They say he took his
own nephew. There was blood on a shirt they found.”

Elan’s lips flattened into a grim line. She
wondered what it was that could have gotten him so upset. “There
was more, from what I’ve heard.”

Leonie shrugged. Her head lowered and her
straight, black hair draped over her shoulders in the front. Elan’s
other hand reached up and allowed her hair to spill over his
fingers, like waters the shade of a thousand midnights. For a
moment he was entranced with the sheer satin of her hair. “I’ve
always liked your hair. The color of deepest velvet night
contrasted against your pale skin. I’ve never seen its like before
the first time I saw you.”

Surprised, she looked up. “A family trait.
Dark hair. Gold eyes. White skin. They say we’re descended from
Indians in the area. Some say black Scots. No one’s really done a
genealogy that I’ve known of. Just a mix really. Heinz 57, if you
want a label.”

A little curve of amusement tickled crossed
Elan’s lips. “You’re not hurt, are you? Leonie, sweet Leonie. He
didn’t…touch you, did he?”

“He didn’t hurt me,” she said, surprised at
his rapid turn of content. “I’m not sure if he would.”

Elan chuckled. “Trusting Leonie. When he
didn’t get what he wanted from you, whatever that is, then he
wouldn’t be happy. This man, who is so enamored of you, that he
wants you to repeat childhood events, can’t be a man that would be
pleased with your innocent naivety. A man with a bloody shirt of a
child in his barn. What kind of man could that be?”

Leaning in slowly, he pressed his lips
against hers. Leonie suddenly had a mental comparison of Gideon and
Elan. In her mind they stood side by side and she thought for a
solitary moment how they resembled each other fleetingly. They
could be cousins, perhaps even brothers. But Elan didn’t have any
siblings. And Leonie knew that Douglas Trent had only one sister,
the mother of his missing nephew. When Elan pulled away she
composed her face. “You need to go?”

Elan nodded reluctantly. “I’ve been busy at
work. A contract for NATO. You wouldn’t believe the issues we have
working with our European partners. They take the entire month of
August off for a holiday and work grinds to a screaming halt, no
matter what the customer wants. It just means that the American
team has to work all the harder.” He pulled back a little more and
she saw that one of his hands was strangely stiff.

“Is something wrong with your hand,
Elan?”

Elan’s eyes flickered downward for a split
second and an unidentified expression shot across his features. She
immediately knew it was something he didn’t want to discuss. “Not
hardly. An old injury. Nothing for you to be concerned about.” He
stood up and looked down at her with that odd stare on his face.
“You should stay home today. Rest. Relax. Know that you’re safe
now. Your nemesis is in jail and you don’t have to be afraid.”

Leonie nodded. Elan leaned in for another
kiss, but she turned her face so that his lips pressed against her
cheek. He wasn’t fooled, however, and suddenly his right hand
gripped her jaw and turned her head back. “Shy, Leonie?” he
murmured before he kissed her again, this time against her mouth,
an open searching kiss that sought a response in her.

Pulling back with a frown on her face, Leonie
said, “No. Just a little rattled, Elan. You’ll have to forgive
me.”

This time when Elan straightened up, he
smiled politely. “Of course. I’ll call you tonight. To see how
you’re doing.”

When Elan walked out the door, Leonie sat and
stared after him for a while.

Dacey walked back into the small living room
with two glasses of iced tea. “What the hell is up with him?”

Leonie took the iced tea and sighed. She
shook her head. “I don’t know. I guess he’s not exactly happy about
his supernatural gal pal.”

Dacey blinked. “Supernatural gal pal? You
think of that yourself?”

Not answering, Leonie took a drink of the
iced tea. Finally, she put the glass on the coffee table and said,
“What am I going to do, Dacey?”

Perching beside her partner and friend on the
couch, Dacey lined up her own glass with Leonie’s and said, “About
what? Elan? Not sure there. About the newspaper? Let that blow
over. You’ll be old news in a few days or worse, the Buffalo Creek
Downtown Merchants Association will want you to do extra publicity
for them so you can bring even more tourism to the town.” She
nodded her head up and down firmly. “That would be worse.”

Leonie frowned. “Someone hasn’t-uh-approached
you about that?”

The expression on Dacey’s face told
everything.

“Oh, God, that wasn’t what I meant, but that
would be worse. Mrs. Wordlaw suggested that we could have a
‘psychic’ booth at next year’s Bluebonnet Festival, and, you know,
donate the proceeds to some children’s charity.” Dacey stared
straight ahead. “Mrs. Wordlaw has all the sensitivity of a rabid
hyena in heat on the Serengeti.”

It was a little difficult for Leonie to
digest that. “A psychic booth? Where I could locate missing things?
Their love lives? Their Enron stock? Their sense of integrity?
Their 401Ks?”

Dacey snorted. “I don’t think anyone can get
their 401Ks back.” She covered her mouth with a hand. “Erica keeps
asking about you and Michael said it was too exciting to go to work
for Home Depot, even if Tinie looks hot in one of their uniforms.
Business has been up, maybe ten percent, but that won’t last.
There’s a bunch of silly people in the world. I’m not sure what
they expect when they come into the store. You to pop out in full
fortune telling attire and predict that soon tomorrow will
come.”

“Dacey.” Leonie’s gold eyes turned serious.
“Someone said it recently, although I don’t remember who. If I can
go out and find missing children, just like that, why don’t I go
out and do that all the time?”

“I know why,” Dacey answered. “Because they
have to be missed, because when you do do what you do, it’s like
someone is cutting a piece of your soul out of you. Because when
you find one who’s dead, it’s like you’re cutting a piece of their
soul out of their parents’ very being. You’ll never have to explain
that to me, nor justify it. I guess Scott won’t ever be able to
understand it, but I can.” Her lips trembled as she pressed them
together. “I thank God every day that you found Olga before it was
too late. But if all of that comes at a terrible cost to you, then
I’ll do everything I can to help you.”

“He wanted me to find Keefe,” Leonie said,
after a lengthy pause.

“Who? Gideon?” Dacey’s face contorted
uneasily. “Covering his ass. It’s the golden rule. Go to the person
who finds missing children and say, ‘Find my nephew,’ because if he
says that, then it makes him look innocent.”

“They didn’t find the child,” Leonie mused to
herself. “Just his shirt. His bloody shirt.” And his backpack, left
on her porch to taunt her with a riddle.
The pack makes Gideon
look all the more guilty. Sitting on my porch, waiting for me. Did
he drive all the way to Shreveport and back with his nephew, hide
the boy, even murder the boy, and then come to my house to plant
more evidence? Must have been a long night.

“Why would he hide a bloody shirt in the
barn?” Leonie pondered abruptly. “Wouldn’t he have taken it where
the body was or maybe disposed of it in a dumpster ten miles
away?”

“Ug, Leonie,” Dacey said with repugnance in
her tone. “I try not to think of things like that, and I recommend
that you don’t either. As a matter of fact, this whole morning has
given me one mega-headache, which I suspect I got from you and all
of your headaches.”

“I haven’t been getting them as much lately,”
Leonie said softly. “But there’s ibuprofen in the kitchen. You know
where.”

Dacey got up and returned to the kitchen.

But she didn’t answer my question, Leonie
thought.
And maybe I didn’t ask what I should have asked. Should
I go looking for Keefe? Throw all caution to the winds and go
anyway, no matter what I find?

There was an immediate response as if Gideon
could hear what Leonie was thinking and tried his damnedest to
answer her. Leonie ignored the sudden surge of gnarled emotion that
tried to rip through her defenses. There was something he wanted to
tell her, but she wanted to cut him off at the knees. She rubbed
the sides of her face, smoothing her fingers over the scar below
her cheekbone and concentrated on letting out just a little bit, so
that she could tell him what she wanted to know.
Isn’t this what
you wanted? For me to go out and find Keefe? If you didn’t take
him, then you shouldn’t be worried about me.

Leonie, but you’re-

And Leonie threw the doors shut, leaving only
a feeling of impending desperation that trickled through her mind.
Gideon was abruptly angry with her, furious that she wouldn’t
listen to him, and the anger was like a great impenetrable barrier
of sharpened spikes and pointed wires that would rend flesh into
bloody bits if one attempted passage.

Dacey came in a few minutes later and said,
“You know, I don’t feel so good. I took four of your ibuprofen,
which I know is too much, but the doctor gave me 600 mg pills last
year for my back, and I didn’t think twice about taking two of
those. Anyway, I almost immediately began feeling sick. Maybe you
shouldn’t get that generic kind anymore. I would have thought that
was as clear as the side of a barn’s wall.” Dacey appeared confused
for a moment. “My metaphors are all screwed up, that didn’t make
any sense at all.”

“A barn wall?” Leonie looked around for the
phone and an instant of clarity came to her. She called the Pegram
County Sheriff’s Department and waited for Scott Haskell to come
on, identifying herself as Dacey Rojas.

Dacey sat heavily on the couch. She coughed
once and cleared her throat. “Yeah, well, that’ll get him on the
phone quicker. I’m sure he’d talk to you if you said who it was,
but he’s not going to be happy if you tell him it’s me, and it’s
really you.”