Haunted Honeymoon (22 page)

She was keeping something from me, but I didn’t seem to care.

Mercedes said, “Okay, I’ve got all your account info from the last time I upgraded your laptop, and I’ll give Gabriel the key to your place.”

“Sure, whatever,” I said. “Where’s my laptop?”

“Don’t you have a therapy session?” Mercedes said. “The faster you recover, the better chance of us finding Wilcox’s killer.”

I said good-bye to my friend, and Oswald put the call on hold and told me that Lily was waiting for me in a small parlor down the hall.

I went past the staircase and saw an expansive family room through one doorway.

The parlor, on the other side of the hall, was a cozy room lined with bookshelves with a plum-colored velvet sofa. I’d look wonderfully melancholic reclining on this sofa while I mused about the intricate workings of my psyche.

Lily was sitting at a delicate writing table, working at her laptop. She looked up as I came in. “Hi, Milagro. Please take a seat.” She reached for a notepad and a ballpoint pen.

When I sat across from her, she said, “Let’s start off with a few word associations.”

“Fantastic. I’m all about the words. I like them whether they’re mono- or multisyllabic. I like onomatopoeia and foreign words and expressions. I like funny words like ‘bric-a-brac’ and ‘noodle’ and ‘persnickety.’”

“Good. Just say the first thing that comes into your mind without thinking,” she said. “Hot.”

“Chocolate.”

“Cold.”

“Hands, warm heart.”

“Cat.”

“Pickles.”

She paused before writing down my answer and then said, “Tree.”

“Prune. The verb, not the fruit.”

“Just one word is fine, Milagro. Black.”

“Bra.”

“Red,” she said.

“Wine.”

“Blood.”

I wondered if she knew that I snacked on the steaks and said, “Blue.”

“Blue?”

“Blue-bloods. Fancy-pants, hoity-toity.”

“Oh.” Lily wrote for a few seconds. “Knife.”

An image flashed through my mind of a knife slipping through flesh, crimson fluid welling in the cut, a man’s hot mouth hungry for my flesh, but I answered, “Spork.”

Lily looked confused, so I said, “It’s the combination of a fork and a spoon, a spork. Ah, the elusive charm of the spork!”

We went on in this fashion for a few more minutes. I must have done well, because Lily looked utterly captivated by my answers. I said, “I’d be thrilled to do some inkblot tests, or we can go outside and I can tell you the shapes of clouds.”

“That’s all right. I need a little more of your personal history, so I’d like you to tell me your earliest memories.”

It was refreshing to talk nonstop about myself. While I gabbed,
I also tried to use my brainpower to lift a book off the shelves. It was a slim volume called
Spiritual Transformations: Adventures of a Shapeshifter
by someone called
Don
Pedro. I scrunched my face in my effort to make it move.

Lily put down her pad and said, “I know this is a painful process.”

“It’s arduous work, but I’m happy to soldier on.” The damn book hadn’t budged a smidgen.

“I’d like you to process what we’ve discussed and we’ll have a session this afternoon.”

“Okay, thanks,” I said, and when Lily glanced down at her notes, I grabbed the book and took it back to the maid’s room.

It had an intriguing cover with a man morphing into different shapes, including a platypus. The memoir used the same flowery language I’d seen in the composition books I’d brought, and I recognized several of my favorite words and expressions.

This must be the memoir I’d ghostwritten, and I knew I was commissioned for a follow-up. I went back and forth from the book to my outline and somehow I knew the story I wanted to write. When I put my pen to paper, the words flowed easily.

Lily and I had a quick lunch of strawberry yogurt and then she said we should return to the small parlor.

“The day is too nice to be stuck inside. Let’s go outside.” She pursed her lips as she thought, so I added, “It’s wrong to waste such fresh air.”

“All right. Let me get my notepad.”

She left the kitchen, I spotted a half bottle of zinfandel on the counter and took several glugs to quench my red-thirst. I was wiping my mouth when she came back with her notepad and a jaunty cotton hat.

We went into the garden, where there was a table and chairs in the shade of the old oak. I noticed that the truckasaurus had been
moved to the covered carport. I grabbed the red-handled pruners from where I had left them.

“You don’t need those,” Lily said. “I want you to focus on our session.”

“Gardening puts me in the zone. Otherwise I’ll just be distracted by all that needs to be done here.”

“All right. I may as well weed while you whack.”

“Do you know anything about gardening?”

“My parents garden,” she said. “I had my own flower plot and worm bin growing up, but I don’t know much about roses. Are these heirloom varieties?”

I grinned and said, “Let me get my gloves so you won’t get snagged by thorns.”

I dashed to the ugly truck, grabbed my goatskin gloves and a plastic bin for green waste, and ran back. I handed Lily the gloves and led her to a large shrub growing over an arch. “She’s called Reve D’Or, or Dream of Gold. The flowers get more goldy-pink if the plant is in partial shade.”

“It’s gorgeous,” she said.

“The best thing is the fragrance.” I plucked off one of the creamy flowers and held it to her nose.

“Heavenly.” She crouched down, and I saw her pinch a weed at the base and pull it up by the roots. Pleased that she knew what she was doing, I began to snip at the roses.

Soon we were working harmoniously, moving from one shady area to the next as the sun moved across the sky. The novelty of giving a self-centered monologue wore off. I preferred the interactive drama wherein I nattered as inanely as possible and Mercedes tried to talk sense into me, or Nancy said something even more outlandish.

“Lily, where do you live?”

“Lately in Boston, but I’ve been all over for college, med
school, and training,” she said. I’d given her the pruners and she was holding them toward a shrub. “My folks are north of Seattle. What about this branch?”

“Leave it, because we can train it over the top of the fence. What do you do for fun?”

“I like to sketch and do watercolors.”

“What about guys? Do you have any patients doing transference and falling madly in love with you, or hot docs who want to do in-depth consultations?”

She laughed. “It’s completely unethical to get involved with patients, and my situation is complicated by the family condition.”

“You and Oswald keep using that word: ‘complicated.’” I reached over and plucked a leaf out of her hair. “I look at Oswald and I can’t imagine what our life was like together, and the sex …”

“Mmm?”

“He must have been incredible, or why would I get engaged to him? I look at those long fingers and think of what they could do to a woman’s body, and that mouth, oh, my. The way he smiles crookedly is sexy, don’t you think?”

“Well …,” she said uncomfortably. “He does have a nice smile.”

“‘Nice’? There’s such a thing as taking understatement too far, Lily,” I returned to waxing poetic about our host. “I’m enraptured by the way his jeans lovingly embrace his ass, and those eyes, like the color of storm clouds, portending something thunderous to come, and by ‘come’ I mean—”

Lily said, “Milagro?”

“Hm?” I glanced up from the damp soil and saw Lily staring at something behind me. I turned and saw Oswald. “Oh, hi, Oswald.”

His storm-cloud gray eyes portended nothing at the moment.
He raised his eyebrows and said to Lily, “Is this part of your therapy?”

“I, uh,” she began.

“It
is
part of the therapy, Oswald, taking me on the same emotional journey in order to build a framework for my memories, right, Lily?”

“Yes,” she said. “I read about it in the
Nordic Journal of Psychiatry.
”

“Oh,” Oswald said, taken aback. “I’m sorry for interrupting then. I thought we could have cocktails in about a half hour on the terrace. My grandmother is trying out new recipes.”

Lily said, “Wonderful. We’ll see you then.”

When he nodded and went inside, I laughed and Lily said, “I can’t believe you said that.”

“I can’t believe you went along with it.”

“Only because I’m open to any theory right now. If you can connect with the feelings you had for Oswald, you might trigger memories. But think about him, the whole person, not just his body.”

“I’ll try, but that body is utterly captivating, don’t you think so?”

She smiled a little slyly. “It’s not my role to disagree with your opinions, Milagro.”

I changed into a clean set of the boring clothes and was putting my hair into a scrunchie from hell when there was a knock on my door.

“Enter.”

The door opened and I saw an adorable man with red-gold hair, black slacks, an ecru button-down shirt, and eyes the same pellucid pond-green as Mrs. Grant’s.

“Hi,” I said, lowering my voice for maximum flirt effect.

“Hi, honey,” he said. “It’s me, Gabriel. We spoke on the phone
this morning. You look as if you’re leading a revolt against good taste.”

“It’s part of my therapy, like no skin contact.”

“Good luck with that.” He dropped into the old green armchair beside the desk. “We checked your apartment and found a million fingerprints and more body fluids than I want to think about.”

“I probably had parties,” I said. “You know how people get.”

“Actually, I do,” he said, and grinned. “We’ve tracked your activities on the day Wilcox arrived. You left a debit card trail all the way into the late evening. We also found Wilcox’s rented car in the visitors’ parking area of your garage. There was blood in the trunk.”

“Does that clear me or implicate me further?”

“The timeline seems to clear you, but it’s not conclusive. I’ve given a report to the Council and there’s not much they can do without a body.”

“Mrs. Grant scoffed at me when I asked if ‘family’ means mob. What kind of family hires forensics experts?”

Gabriel smiled, showing delightful dimples. “We’ve found it useful to support each other’s businesses and careers. We’re more like a cultural group.”

“Except that ‘cultural group’ sounds more like potlucks and clog dancing than sexy Titian-haired security managers,” I said. “I suppose I know all about this.”

“Yes, you met with the Council when you were going to marry Oswald,” he said. “Now, if you don’t regain your memory …”

“But I will. I’m not going to toss away two years of my life because, ooh, I can’t face reality. I’m willing to do the hard work of wearing my big-girl granny panties.”

“You in big granny panties, how hot!”

“You’d know if you gave me a full-body search.” When he stopped laughing I said, “I’m also not supposed to flirt even though I’m guessing you don’t swing my way.”

“If I swung your way, I’d swing your way,” he said, and winked.

“Hey, that’s something I say!”

“Who do you think I got it from? All right, no flirting, but I’ll pass along a pointer I learned from a waitress. The higher the ponytail, the bigger the tip.”

“You have earned my respect forever.” I pulled out my scrunchie and gathered my hair into a high ponytail. “Now let’s have a drink.”

The sun was low in the sky, just edging behind the mountains, and the sky was deepening to indigo. Lily sat in one of the teak chairs beside AG. Mrs. Grant was mixing a shaker of cocktails, and Oswald set a platter of antipasto on a table.

“Sit by me, Young Lady,” Gabriel said, as he took a chair on one side.

I looked at him and said, “Why does everyone call me that?”

The others looked at Mrs. Grant, who said, “Because I’ve always hoped you’d act like one.”

“Ha, ha, and ha,” I said. “What are we drinking?”

“Pink cellos from my homemade limoncello, vodka, and cranberry juice.” Mrs. Grant poured out the drinks in martini glasses.

I took a sip of the tangy, fruity drink, and AG turned to Gabriel. “How is Charlie’s hotel search going?”

“He’s still looking in foggy towns for a place he can remodel into a boutique hotel for family members.”

“Do you want the responsibility of a hotel?” Oswald asked. He leaned back against a pillar facing us and I admired his shoulder-to-hip proportions.

“It’s Charlie’s dream,” the redheaded man said. “I can’t complain
about him taking a time-consuming project when I’m gone so much.”

I was thinking that the vista was so beautiful and that it was such a treat to enjoy the evening with companions, to share this relaxed time, this spirit of camaraderie, when Oswald said to his cousin, “You’re lucky that you’ve got a partner who has his own interests to pursue instead of someone so bored that she … I mean, um, you’re lucky he’s got a career.”

In the silence that followed, I deduced that Oswald’s comment was a reference to me. I put down my drink and said, “Excuse me, but I’m feeling worn out. I think I’ll go rest.”

I felt their eyes on me as I left, and Gabriel whispered, “Oswald!”

Even though I didn’t know Oswald, I was hurt and very confused. How could I have been bored, when I’d always had so many things to do? I’d reached the door to the maid’s room when my ex-fiancé caught up to me. He took my arm and turned me to face him.

His eyes were the same hue as the scarf I’d been making. I must have been making it for him even though we’d broken up.

“Milagro, I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. I have a history of screwing up relationships and clearly something went wrong between us. You didn’t ask for me to come here, didn’t want me to stay, and it’s good of you to take me in now when you don’t have to.”

“That doesn’t excuse my behavior.” He touched my exposed wrist, sending a zizz through me. “I was the one who brought you into my life and my problematic family. I gave you the condition. I’m responsible for you.”

I looked up into Oswald’s clear gray eyes. “Did you love me, Oswald?”

He hesitated and then said, “Yes, even though you drove me crazy. You still drive me crazy.”