Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet (3 page)

*   *   *

I decided a shower was not out of the question and hopped in as Cookie took inventory
and Aunt Lil decided to see what Africa looked like from her new perspective. I wondered
if she’d ever figure out how long she’d been dead. I certainly wasn’t going to tell
her.

Hot water was one of the best therapies in the world. It washed away stress and soothed
nerves. But Rottweilers were even better. Ever since a gorgeous Rottie by the name
of Artemis had died and become my guardian—against what, I had no idea—I found my
showers more challenging than usual. Mostly because Artemis loved showers, too. She
didn’t come around that often, but the minute I turned on the water, there she was.

“Hey, precious,” I said as she tried to catch a stream of water in her mouth.

She barked playfully, the loud yelp echoing off the walls of the tub. I reached down
and rubbed her ears. The water ran straight through her, so she was dry to the touch,
but she tried so hard to catch the thick droplets on her tongue.

“I know how you feel, girl. Sometimes the things we want most seem completely out
of our reach.”

When she jumped up on me, her stubby tail wagging with delight, her weight sent me
crashing against the tile wall. I clutched on to the showerhead to keep my balance,
then let her lick my neck before another stream of water captured her attention. She
dived for it, almost knocking my feet out from under me. I totally needed a shower
mat. And shaving my legs with a Rottweiler chasing every splash of water known to
man was like taking my life into my own hands, but it had to be done.

After semi-successfully shaving my legs with minimal blood loss, I turned off the
water and nuzzled her to me. She licked my left ear, her front teeth scraping the
lobe and causing goose bumps to spread over my skin, and I laughed out loud. “Oh,
thank you. I needed that ear cleaned. Thank you so much.”

With another yelp, she realized fun time was over. The wonderful world of waterworks
had stopped, so she dived through the exterior wall and disappeared. I wondered if
it was wrong that I took showers with a dog.

I dried my hair and pulled it into something that resembled a ponytail, dressed in
jeans and a white pullover with a zippered collar, then inspected myself in the mirror.
No idea why. I’d only change back into my pajamas in a couple of hours anyway. Why
did I get dressed? Why did I bother? Why did I shower, for that matter?

I pumped a dollop of lotion onto my palm and rubbed my hands together as I examined
the nasty scar on my cheek. It was almost gone. On anyone else, it would have remained
a constant reminder of events better left forgotten. But being the grim reaper had
its benefits. Namely, quick healing and minimal scarring. Nary a shred of visible
evidence to support the reasoning behind my sudden case of mild agoraphobia. I was
so stupid.

I took the lotion I’d been rubbing into my hands and smeared it across the mirror.
White streaks distorted my face. A definite improvement.

Growing more annoyed with myself by the second, I strolled to the window to see if
my traitorous father was at work yet. He seemed to be coming in later and later. Not
that I cared. Any man who would have his own daughter arrested while she lay dying
in a hospital bed after being tortured almost to death didn’t deserve my concern.
I was just curious, and curious was way on the other side of concern. But instead
of seeing my father’s tan SUV, I caught sight of one Mr. Reyes Farrow, and my breath
stilled in my chest. He was leaning against the back of Dad’s bar, arms folded at
his chest, one booted foot leveraged against the building.

And he was out.

I knew he would be, but I had yet to see him. He’d been in prison for ten years for
a crime he didn’t commit. The cops caught on when the guy he’d supposedly killed tied
me up and tortured me. I was glad he’d been freed, but to get there, Reyes’d used
me as bait, so we were once again at an impasse. I was mad at him for using me as
bait. He was mad at me for being mad at him for using me as bait. Our relationship
seemed to hinge on these impasses, but that’s what I got for falling in lust with
the son of Satan. If only he weren’t so deliciously and dangerously hot. I had such
a thing for bad boys.

And this particular bad boy had been dipped in a lake of beauty when he was born.
His arms corded with muscles across a wide chest; his full mouth, too sensual for
my peace of mind, sat in a grim, moody line; his dark hair, forever in need of a trim,
curled at his neck and tumbled over his forehead. And I could just make out his thick
lashes as they fanned across his cheeks.

A man walked past him and waved. Reyes nodded, but then he must have felt me watching
him. He looked down in thought then up directly at me. His angry gaze locked on to
mine, held it for a long, breathless moment, and then slowly, with deliberate purpose,
he dematerialized, his body transforming into smoke and dust until there was nothing
left of it.

He could do that. He could separate from his physical body, and his incorporeal essence—something
I could see as easily as I saw the departed—could go anywhere in the world it wanted
to. That didn’t surprise me in the least. What surprised me was the fact that, while
incorporeal, no one else could see him. But that man had waved. He’d seen Reyes standing
there and waved. That meant his physical body had been leaning against that brick
wall.

That meant his physical body had dematerialized, had vanished into the cool morning
air.

Impossible.

2

Doing nothing is hard.

You never know when you’re done.

—T-SHIRT

It took every ounce of strength I had to tear myself away from the window, wondering
if Reyes Farrow had just dematerialized his human body. Then another thought hit:
What the hell was he doing out there? And then another: Why was he so angry? It was
my turn to be angry. He had no reason to be. And I would have told him that very thing
if I’d felt any incentive to leave my apartment and hunt him down. But my apartment
was cozy. The thought of leaving it just to get in a fight with the son of evil incarnate
made about as much sense as flying ants. Where was the logic in that? Ants were scary
enough without giving them the ability to fly.

I walked into my living room, shaken and disoriented. “Reyes Farrow was outside. Just
leaning against the bar. Watching the apartment.”

Cookie jumped up. She gaped at me for about ten seconds before hurdling the couch
and stumbling into my bedroom, nearly crashing through the window. She was almost
agile where men were concerned. I didn’t have the heart to tell her she’d have had
a better view from the living room, from pretty much right where she’d been sitting.
Nor did I have the heart to tell her that he was already gone.

“He’s not there,” she said, her voice agitated and panicked.

“What?” I asked, pretending to be surprised. I hurried over and peeked out the curtains.
Sure enough, he was gone. “He was there a minute ago.” I scanned the entire area.

She frowned at me. “You knew he was gone.”

I cringed, ashamed. “Sorry. You were just so into your gymnastics routine, I didn’t
want to break your concentration. Do you know how hard it would be to explain to the
cops if you’d crashed through the window and plummeted to your death?” I refocused
on the spot where Reyes had been standing. “But I swear, if that man is tailing me—”

“Hon, you have to go somewhere to be tailed. This would be more like stalking.”

She had a point. One that I could throw in his face if I were ever going to speak
to him again.

I bowed my head as Cookie continued to search the parking lot in the hopes that he
would show up again. I could hardly blame her.

“While we’re on the subject, I think he dematerialized his human body.”

She jumped in surprise. “I thought that was impossible. Are you sure?”

“No.” I walked back into my cluttered living room, because another thought hit. Freaking
ADD. “So, be honest. How broke am I?”

Cookie drew in a deep breath and followed me. She regarded me with a sad expression
before answering. “On a scale of one to ten, you’re not on it. You’re more like a
negative twelve.”

“Crap.” I studied my Jackie Kennedy commemorative bracelet with a great and terrible
weight on my chest, then opened the clasp. “Here, send this back, too.”

She took it. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I was only pretending it went well with Margaret, anyway. Now, if it were black
with skulls on it…”

“Sadly, I don’t think Jackie wore skulls all that often. You know, we still have a
couple of clients who owe us.”

“Really?” This was promising. I wound around boxes to Mr. Coffee. He was the only
action I’d been getting lately.

“Yep.”

When she hesitated, I knew something was up. I refreshed my cup and questioned her
with a quirk of my brows. “Like who?”

“Like Mrs. Allen.”

“Mrs. Allen?” I stirred in creamer and fake sweet stuff. “She pays me in cookies.
I’m not sure how that will help with the bills.”

“True, but she didn’t pay us the last time you found PP.”

PP, otherwise known as Prince Phillip, was Mrs. Allen’s rabid poodle. She should have
called him Houdini. That dog could escape a locked bank vault. But actually, Cookie
was wrong. Guilt had me biting my lip as I stirred, averting my gaze.

She gasped. “Mrs. Allen paid you?”

“Kind of.”

“And you didn’t share?”

“Well—”

“An entire plate of cookies, and you didn’t share? After I did all the legwork?”

My jaw fell open. “The legwork? You walked over to the window and spotted him by the
Dumpster.”

“Yes, and I
walked—
” She crisscrossed her fingers to demonstrate a walking motion, which I found humorous.
“—to the window with my
legs
.”

“Yes, but I was the one who chased that vicious little shit seventeen blocks.”

“Three.”

“And then he bit me.”

“He has no teeth.”

“Gums hurt, too.” I rubbed my arm absently, remembering the horror of it all.

“He’s a poodle. How hard can he gum?”

“Fine, next time you can chase him down.”

After exhaling loudly, she said, “What about that Billy Bob guy? He still owes us
money.”

“You mean Bobby Joe? That guy who thought his girlfriend was trying to kill him with
peanuts? He traded that out.”

“Charley,” she said, her tone admonishing, “you have got to learn to keep it in your
pants.”

“Not like that,” I replied, appalled. “He painted the offices for us.”

After a long, exasperated stare, she asked, “You mean the offices we are no longer
in?”

I offered her a sheepish shrug. “Yeah, I forgot to cancel, and he painted them after
we moved out. He was really happy that they were so clutter free.”

“Well, that’s just fantastic.”

Her enthusiasm seemed disingenuous. It was weird.

“Surely, someone else owes us money,” she said.

Then it hit me. The answer to all our prayers. Or at least a couple of them. “You’re
right,” I said. Reyes Farrow owed me and owed me big. I grinned at Cookie. “I solved
a case. I am due my usual rate, plus medical expenses and mental anguish.”

She looked hopeful. “What case? Who?”

The determined set of my jaw told her exactly who I was talking about. She got that
faraway, dreamy look in her eyes. “Can I help collect?”

“Nope, you have to get all this stuff sent back. How else are we going to eat for
the next month?”

“I never get to have any fun.”

“It’s your own fault.”

She cleared her throat. “How is any of this—” She spread her arms wide. “—my fault?”

“That’s what you get for leaving me unsupervised. Don’t you have return receipts to
fill out?”

She lifted a handful. “Yes.”

“From your apartment?”

“Fine.”

She took the receipts and started to leave me to my own devices. She would never learn.

“Oh,” she said before opening the door, “I took your remote, so don’t even think about
it.”

That was so uncalled for.

*   *   *

After she left, I sat down and tried to think up a plan of action. If only I could
get ahold of Angel. If anyone could find that low-down, dirty—

“How did you do that?”

I jumped at the sound of a voice coming from behind me. It was high. The jump. Not
the voice. I pressed my hands to my heart and turned to the thirteen-year-old departed
gangbanger who went by the name of Angel Garza. He stood in my apartment, wearing
his usual jeans and dirty T-shirt with a bandanna wrapped around his head. “Angel,
what the hell?”

“What do you mean, what the hell? What did you do?”

“What?” I asked, trying to calm my heart. I didn’t normally get that scared when Angel
popped in.

His dark brown eyes narrowed in question. “How did you do that?”

“I don’t know. What did I do?”

“I was at my cousin’s
quinceañera
one minute, then here the next.”

“Really?”

“Did you do that?”

“I don’t think so. I just thought about you, and you were there.”

“Well, stop it. That was weird.” He hugged himself and rubbed his arms.

“This is cool. You never come when I need you.”

“I’m your investigator,
pendeja
, not your lapdog.”

“I can’t believe that worked.”

“What are all these boxes?”

“Did you just call me
pendeja
?”

Then he noticed me at last and got the familiar look in his eyes. “You’re looking
good, boss.”

“And you’re looking thirteen.” Throwing his age in his face always worked. He bristled
and turned to study my new cheese pot. He wouldn’t like what I was about to ask him,
so I stood and faced him head-on, my stance set, my expression hard. “I need to know
where he is.”