Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet (39 page)

Uncle Bob shifted in his chair.

“That is weird,” I said, biting my bottom lip. “I mean, wasn’t he pretty young?”

“Thirty-two,” she said. “And he just happened to have an uncle whose wife works at
the branch that was robbed yesterday. Seems those three were in it together. Something
about it being Edwards’s idea to blackmail his friends, certain members of the Bandits
motorcycle club, in the first place. I don’t have all the details yet, but we have
the uncle in custody. He’s filling in the blanks now.”

If my shock didn’t show that time, I was going to Hollywood. What a scumbag. Dad and
Uncle Bob were busy looking elsewhere—too elsewhere—but no way could this work out
so easily. Life wasn’t a stack of cards that just magically fell into place when dropped.
Unless life was named David Copperfield.

That was it. I would name my life. The minute I came up with a name for my sofa, which
might or might not go by the name of Sigourney Weaver, I would name my life. Now I
had something to live for. And I had a decision to make, a big decision. What name
would incorporate all that life entailed, every aspect of uncertainty, of beauty and
surrealism and encounters with crazy people? It would have to speak of the ups and
downs life had to offer, like being too broke for daily mocha lattes. If I lived through
that, I could live through anything.

After another few minutes of conversation that had my head throbbing, the captain
and Special Agent Carson left, but not before one last look back. Agent Carson smiled.
The captain eyed me like he really, really, really wanted to get to the bottom of
my involvement. That couldn’t be good.

I turned to Uncle Bob as we waited for the discharge papers. “This is all way too
neat. Way too tidy. They’re going to figure out this couldn’t possibly have happened
the way it looks, and I don’t want you in trouble.”

“Neat?” Dad asked. “Tidy? That is exactly the way they like it, pumpkin. All wrapped
up in a bow. Trust me, it means less paperwork, and that’s always a good thing.” Dad
helped me to my feet. “I got the phones at the office turned back on. And I had Sammy’s
wife clean the place up.” He was bound and determined I’d move back into the offices
above his bar.

“So, how are you?” I asked, pretending not to care.

A smile lit his eyes anyway. “I’m okay. It seems I don’t have cancer after all.” He
looked around, then whispered, awe evident in his voice, “Did you have anything to
do with that?”

I tried to smile. “No, Dad. I don’t have that kind of power.”

“It’s just—” He bowed his head. “It’s just, I had pancreatic cancer.”

His words sent a piercing pain through my heart.

“They did every test known to man, and I had it. Then after you found out, after you
touched me in the office … well, it seems to have vanished.”

“When did I touch you?”

“You poked my chest with your index finger when you were chastising me for trying
to shoot you.”

Oh, right. I only wished I could do cool stuff like that. “It wasn’t me, Dad. But
I’m glad.”

“I’m glad, too,” he said, placating me. He didn’t believe me for a minute.

Gemma rushed in like a whirlwind on meth. “Well?” she asked, looking from Uncle Bob
to Dad to Cookie, then finally at me. “What happened this time?”

After a long moment of contemplation, I said, “Fine, I’ll accept counseling, but only
from you.”

“Charley, while I’m thrilled, completely and totally thrilled, I can’t treat you.
That would be in violation of my code of conduct.”

“Screw the code. Get a new code. I can’t see anyone else without them trying to lock
me away.” I clenched my teeth and said, “Grim reaper, Gem.”

She almost giggled in delight. “No, I know someone. I promise, it’ll be okay.”

“I swear, the minute they bring out a straitjacket, I’m crossing your name off my
Christmas list.”

“Deal,” she said, a satisfied smirk on her face. “But if they do put you in a straitjacket,
can I take your picture? You know, for research purposes?”

“Not if you value your cuticles.”

She jerked back her hands. “That’s just mean.”

I shrugged my brows. “You mess with the reaper, you get the scythe.”

“You don’t really carry a scythe.”

“So not the point.”

*   *   *

Before we went home, I had Cookie drive me to the convent. Dawn had just barely peeked
on the horizon, but this was important. Quentin had to know he would be okay. That
it was safe to go out. He needed that weight off his shoulders.

We were met by a very austere-looking mother superior, and I couldn’t help but wonder
what qualifications it took to become the supreme mommy figure. Clearly a mean death
stare was a prerequisite, but what else? Surliness? Advanced algebra?

She showed us into the kitchen again as Sister Mary Elizabeth brought Quentin down.
He looked half asleep in his pajamas, and his hair had been trimmed, but it still
brushed his shoulders. He rushed into my arms, then realized I was hurt.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his signs and expression sincere. He put on his sunglasses and
pointed to a bandage on my arm. Thankfully, the knife had barely grazed both it and
my side. “What happened?”

“The same thing that happened to you, only from the opposite end. Other people who
were possessed attacked me, but I wanted you to know, it’s safe now. It’s okay. They
won’t come after you again. The being that instigated it all has been killed.”

Relief washed through him, and I led him to a table to sit down.

“Are you okay here? Have they been slapping your hands with rulers or anything? I’ve
heard nuns do that.”

The mother superior cleared her throat. Apparently, she knew sign, too.

“We enrolled him in school,” Sister Mary Elizabeth said, hardly able to contain her
excitement. “At the School for the Deaf in Santa Fe. He’ll live there during the week,
then come home on the weekends.”

Quentin didn’t seem quite so thrilled. He pressed his mouth together.

I leaned into him. “Are you okay with that?” When he shrugged, I asked the sister,
“He’ll come home on the weekends?”

She smiled. “Here.” She put a hand on his arm. “He’ll come here until we can find
a more permanent home. Oh!” She looked at me. “And he can stay with you every so often,
too, if you’d like.”

“I’d love,” I said. I glanced over my shoulder at Cookie. “I have a feeling Amber
will be wanting to learn ASL.”

Cookie nodded and offered me a dreamy expression. “He is darling.”

When I signed what she said to Quentin, he blushed and offered a soft thank-you, only
he spoke it, his vowels clipped and his voice deep and soft.

“Okay,” Cookie continued, “I’m in love.”

Quentin tapped my hand. “I have a name sign for you.”

I straightened in surprise. “Really? Wow.”

He took his right hand, splayed his fingers, and formed a modified eight where his
middle finger was bent forward slightly more than the rest. Then he touched the tip
of it to his right shoulder and twisted it up and out away from him, shaking it ever
so slightly.

I put my hands over my heart. It was the sign for
sparkle,
only from the shoulder. He was telling me that I sparkled. I felt a sting in the
backs of my eyes, and he dipped his head sheepishly. I couldn’t help it. I threw my
arms around his neck. He let me hug him a solid minute before asking, “Can I stay
with you sometimes?”

“I would love for you to stay with me sometimes.”

I leaned in and kissed his cheek to the abrasive sound of the mother superior clearing
her throat again.

*   *   *

“Well, that boy is a living doll,” Cookie said as we made our way to the third floor
of our apartment building.

“Isn’t he?”

There were still cops outside, still investigators combing the area inside and out
of yellow caution tape. They had taken my clothes as evidence, but the only blood
on them, besides mine, was Reyes’s. Would they know that? Was he in a DNA database
somewhere?

“How’s your head?” she asked. “Are you okay?” She was such a dear friend. She put
up with so much from me. And it was a wonder she was still alive, all things considered.

“Yeah, I’m okay.”

“Good.” As I turned to unlock my door, she slapped me upside the head. Fred thrust
forward and knocked against the doorjamb.

I turned back to her, aghast. “That head is concussed, I’ll have you know.”

“I know. And I’m glad, for your information.”

“That’s not a very neighborly attitude.”

“You almost die right outside the apartment building, and you didn’t think to, perhaps,
yell my name? Call out for help?”

“And what would you have done, Cook, besides get attacked coming to my rescue?”

“You know, that excuse is going to get old one of these days.” Her eyes watered, and
she looked down. “Do you know how I felt when I found out Earl Walker had tortured
you not fifty feet from me?”

The chambers in my heart squeezed shut.

Against my better judgment, Cookie needed to know the truth about what it really meant
to be in my life.

I leaned back against my door and folded my arms. “Amber was there,” I said, my voice
a mere whisper.

Alarm rushed through her. “What? Amber was there last night?”

“No.
That
night. When Earl came.”

Her alarm ebbed, and she took a step back. “I don’t understand.”

“When I walked into the apartment,” I said, unable to stop a floodgate of tears as
they pushed past my lashes, “Earl was there. And so was Amber.”

Cookie’s hand flew to cover her mouth. She’d had no idea, and I’d been too much of
a coward to tell her.

I wiped at my cheeks, angry that all I seemed to be able to do lately was cry. Because
crying helped so much. “She was asleep on my sofa.” I saw the image in my mind so
clearly, and my stomach lurched with the thought as bad as it had that night. “He
had a gun to her head.”

She covered her whole face and shook as a sob wrenched through my chest. I tightened
my arms and curled into myself. I was about to lose one of the best things that had
ever happened to me, but she had to know the truth.

“As long as I was quiet and cooperated, he said she’d live. You’d both live. He let
me lead her to your apartment. She was so sleepy, she never saw him. But he was there
because of me, Cookie. Amber almost died because of me.”

After a long moment of contemplation, she took a deep breath and tilted her face toward
the heavens. “No,” she said, steeling herself. “No. Earl Walker used Amber to get
you to do what he wanted. And it worked, Charley. He knew it would. This is not your
fault.”

I gaped at her. “It’s entirely my fault. All of it.”

“Charley,” she said, putting a hand on my shoulder, “I told you this before. You do
incredible things, and I get to be a part of it. That incident was one in a million.
And it’s over. We have to move past it. The odds of anything like that happening again
are astronomical.”

“Do you even pay attention?”

“That captain said it himself. You solved four cases in one day. Four, Charley. That’s—that’s
unheard of. And you captured an escaped serial killer. You saved who knows how many
lives. And I got to help. We’ll just have to be more careful in the future. We need
better locks, right? We’ve already talked about that. And a security system.”

It would hit her later. Anger. Regret. Despair. And she might even hate me a little.
Better to hate me for almost getting her daughter killed than for actually accomplishing
the feat.

In the meantime, I’d just turned Cookie into a slightly older version of myself. She’d
probably be up nights, checking and rechecking the doors and windows, turning the
tiniest of sounds into a full-blown home invasion. I could totally see why she liked
being my friend. Working for me.

“Is everything okay, pumpkin toes?”

I turned toward Aunt Lillian as she melted through the door. I was just about to answer
her when the landlord walked by. “Ladies,” he said, a lecherous grin on his face.

“Traitor.”

He chuckled and knocked on the door to the end apartment.

Cook and I perked up, our interest aroused. I wiped my cheeks, and we leaned together,
hoping to get a look at the new tenants.

“I got that other key for you,” he said. Then he ogled us from over his shoulder,
wiggled his brows.

I rolled my eyes until they were staring into the face of Barbara.

The door opened, slowly at first, and I fought back a bizarre kind of excitement.
It was like opening a present, trying to discern the contents inside, guarding your
expression not to show disappointment if it came to that. And perhaps it was the concussed
state of Fred and Barbara, or the delicate state of Betty White, her fragile chambers
beating between pangs of pain and desperation, but when I saw Reyes Farrow open that
door, I was pretty sure I seized.

Cookie inhaled so sharply, Reyes looked past the landlord and directly at us. His
eyes glistened in the low light as he looked me over. I did the same to him. He had
a bullet wound in his chest from a fifty-caliber that would have ripped another man
apart, and yet I felt no evidence of pain or signs of physical weakness from the blood
loss. No doubt he was covered in duct tape underneath his dark red T-shirt. The one
where the sleeve openings weren’t quite large enough to hang loosely over his arms,
so they formed to his biceps instead, caressing them, embracing them.

After he finished examining me, he spoke, his voice like warm brandy on a cold night.
“You can just give it to her,” he told Mr. Zamora.

“Oh.” Mr. Z stammered a bit in surprise, then handed me the extra key to Reyes Farrow’s
apartment with a delighted leer on his face.

Reyes nodded toward Cookie congenially. “Cookie,” he said, addressing her with reverence.
He moved to Aunt Lil. “Lillian,” he said, and if Aunt Lil had died with her dentures
in, I was pretty certain they’d have fallen out at that point. Then he leveled his
smoldering gaze on me, tilted his head in interest. “Dutch.” He offered me one last
look—a look full of promise and desire—before stepping back and closing his door.