Slow Burn (5 page)

“Oh, I believe that,” Sly said. “And I didn't come to ask if I could hire you.”

David turned to Sly, arching a brow. “Surely this isn't a social call, not in a cemetery, Sly.” Sly grinned. They couldn't be his own teeth, David thought, but whether they were or not, they were perfect.

“I didn't come about Danny.”

“Then…”

“I came about Spencer.”

“What?”

“I want to hire you to look after Spencer.”

“Why?”

“I think that someone is following her. No, that's not right. I'm
sure
that someone is following her, stalking her. In fact, David, I think that someone is trying to kill her.”

 

Jerry Fried, Danny Huntington's last partner in homicide, drummed his fingers on the table, staring unhappily at the headlines on the front page of the
Miami Herald.

 

More Than A Year After His Death, Humanitarian Cop's Killer Remains At Large

 

The reporter had done one hell of a slam job, throwing suspicion on everyone, including the untouchable Mrs. Huntington, David Delgado, half the crooks in the city—and half the police force.

Jerry groaned and reached across his desk for the large bottle of cherry-flavored antacids he kept there. He took a huge handful as if they were candies.

It was Spencer being back in town that was causing all this brouhaha again. Why couldn't they just let Danny stay buried? Everyone knew that cops did everything they could when another cop went down. Just like everybody knew there were some crimes that were destined to go unsolved. Maybe everybody didn't know quite how many there were, but people had to know they existed, especially in a city as big as Miami.

A queasy pain swished in his stomach again; he chewed another handful of antacids. Damn Spencer. Why hadn't she just stayed in Rhode Island? It would have been better for all of them.

 

Gene Vichy read the headline at the breakfast table while enjoying the elegant view of water and yachts at his club. He smiled slightly, shaking his head. It was one self-righteous reporter who had done the job on this one! The police were, it seemed, a handful of incompetents. His smile deepened. The general public didn't always understand the law. Take the case of his poor murdered wife. The cops sure as hell thought he had done it, but they didn't have a shred of proof. The D.A.'s office could never prosecute him; they had nothing but their certainty that the motive had been money. Now, as to Danny…

The poor cops. They didn't even have an obvious motive. In the murder of a husband or wife, as he well knew, the cops instantly looked to the surviving spouse.

Spencer had inherited a fortune on her husband's death, but what did that matter to a woman who had several fortunes of her own already. Then there was jealousy. A lover, perhaps?

But, alas again for the poor cops! Spencer Huntington seemed purer than the driven snow. Where to go from there. To a best friend?

To all those crooks Danny Huntington had been after?

A friend, a foe—a snitch?

He laughed out loud softly. He could almost feel it in the air. Fur was going to fly again.

Ricky Garcia swore violently in his native Spanish and threw the paper on the floor.

¡Merde!
The cops were going to be crawling all over him again. Coming down on his gambling, on his prostitutes.

All because the wife was back in town, stirring up trouble!

 

Jared Monteith hadn't read the paper at home that morning. He didn't see the headline until he sat down behind his desk. Even as he sat, his line rang. He winced before picking up the receiver, knowing full well that it was going to be his wife.

“Did you read the damned paper?” Cecily could screech extremely well when she wanted to.

“Yes, I'm looking at it right now.”

“I told you Spencer was trouble.”

“Cecily—the reporter is down on Spencer!”

Cecily sniffed. “As if Spencer is going to worry!”

“Sly's calling me,” Jared said and sighed. “Cecily, no big deal, okay? Gotta go.”

 

Trey Delia read the paper in his incense-filled room. He was sitting cross-legged and naked on his floor. The two young women who had recently come to fulfill his needs giggled softly from somewhere behind him as he sipped herbal tea laced with ox blood. Raw chicken hearts sat on a plate before him.

Something human would have been better.

The ancients understood. Consuming an enemy gave a man his enemy's strength. A heart offered courage and wisdom. Some organs gave strength. Bone-meal gave a man physical and mental powers.

Ah, and now this….

Everyone would be up in arms again.

The cops would be going crazy. It must be Danny's widow stirring up the dust. Spencer, the beautiful wife. Trey had seen her picture. Very blond, elegant. Tempting.

He popped a chicken heart into his mouth and drew a deep breath from the hashish pipe at his side. The girls were still giggling.

Spencer…

She was trouble. So pretty. So much trouble. So pale, slim, elegant.

He wondered how she would taste.

 

In his office, Sly read the headline and groaned.

 

Audrey was sipping her coffee and reading, as well. Poor Spencer. The wound Danny's death had left was being ripped open all over again. Of course, Spencer was doing it herself, but still, it was sad.

So many people would be upset! Dangerous people. But there would be no stopping Spencer. Audrey knew her well, and she didn't really blame her.

Audrey bit her lip and continued to scan the paper.

 

Jon Monteith, Jared's father, Spencer's uncle, lay his head wearily on his pillow.

If only they could let matters rest!

After all, it hadn't been a drive-by shooting, and any fool knew Spencer wasn't guilty. It hadn't been robbery.

So why kill a cop?

It was simple. The way he saw it, the cop had known too much.

A cop learned things on the streets. He was an investigator. He found things out, and sometimes he was careful about telling even his associates what he knew.

And pursuing what was going on could be dangerous. Danny had been bright. Danny had been on to so many things. And with Spencer raising a fuss and the newspapers going crazy, things were bound to happen.

Yes…

A veritable Pandora's box could fly right open.

He swore and groaned.

Spencer had come home, and she wouldn't let things rest. She just didn't know what was good for her.

Spencer was one royal pain in the ass.

He picked up the phone and waited for an answer. “Have you seen the headline?”

“Yes,” came the reply. “I'm on it. I've
been
on it, damn it!”

“Make sure you stay on it. Make damned sure, because if you don't…”

He let the force of the husky threat fade, then replaced the receiver with a sharp click.

Accidents did happen. Oh, yes. Accidents did happen.

T
here were at least a hundred good reasons she shouldn't be in a cemetery in the dead of night, Spencer thought.

And the longer she stood in the darkness, the longer the list became and the more foolish her errand seemed to be.

It was just that…she had to do something.
Someone
had to do something. She had tried very hard to let the police do their work. She had even understood when they had grilled her, relentlessly, apologetically, relentlessly again. She applauded their efforts—at least it had seemed as if they were traveling along every possible avenue.

And she even believed—no, she
knew
—that David Delgado would have stopped at nothing to catch Danny's killer.

It was just that they weren't doing enough.

She'd gone away for a long time. She'd stopped working for a while, but idleness had been sheer misery. She knew that she couldn't bring Danny back. But she also knew that she would never be able to live the new life David was ordering her to until she had laid Danny's ghost to rest by seeing his killer caught.

But this…this was probably sheer stupidity. She might not find out anything, and she might well be mugged by some petty thief. Or worse. The casual crime in South Florida was as scary as the acts committed with premeditated malice.

Sly was worried about her, she knew. It was because of the beam that had collapsed in the old house she'd been working on last week. But the place had practically been condemned, and she'd only agreed to work on it because her cousin Jared had set up a meeting with an ace architect and one of the best builders in the city. And it had been a gracious old place, designed by DeGarmo, with fantastic huge beams in the ceiling, the original tiles and stenciling—all crying out to be saved. The beam could have fallen on anyone, and it hadn't actually fallen
on
her. It had missed her by several inches. She wouldn't have thought anything of it, herself, but Sly had been with her….

A cloud rolled over the moon. It was very dark. A breeze suddenly stirred against the humidity and heat of the night, and she was startled to feel a creeping sensation of cold sweep over her.

The paper today had carried a wealth of information. The grave robbers were at it again, and the police again suspected Trey Delia's offshoot of Santeria. Santeria was indeed a strange religion, from what Spencer knew of it. It was a form of Catholicism mixed with some very odd theologies from the islands. Its rituals often called for live sacrifices—chickens and goats, usually, although human body parts were also considered useful, especially by some offshoot groups. Grave robbers had absconded with fingers and toes and the like before.

Today in the office, Audrey had idly pointed out how the grave robbery had seemed to follow a pattern the first time, a pattern that circled the city, then came dead center back into it. And now it seemed that things were happening just the same way again.

Was that what had brought her here?

She had one contact left who no one knew about. Not the police, not anyone. His name was Willie Harper; he lived on the streets in downtown Miami, and though he didn't have a drug problem, he did like a good bottle of Scotch. Spencer had once been very unhappy about Willie, telling Danny that he was paying the man just to help him kill himself with his alcoholism. But it wasn't really that bad. Willie was a good sort. Danny paid him well, and before he drank any of it away, he bought food for all his friends, blankets, sometimes even a cheap hotel room for the night. But Willie liked living on the streets. He liked to make money, too. When he'd contacted Spencer, she'd promised to keep paying him for any information he could give her that might help find Danny's killer.

He'd called her that afternoon—with the same observation that Audrey had made.

She exhaled, leaning against the edge of the small family mausoleum that sheltered her from the view of anyone who might have been driving along the twisting roads that led through the cemetery. The stone felt very cold, and she felt like an absolute idiot for being here. It wasn't as if she was carrying a gun—or as if she would know how to use one if she did. She had pepper spray in the car—Danny had always insisted she carry it, and he had shown her how to use it. But she hadn't thought to bring it with her; she wasn't planning on accosting anyone. She had just come to see what was going on, to make sure that if any grave robbers did come, they wouldn't touch Danny's grave or desecrate his tomb in any way.

She started to shiver.

This was nuts. What did she think she was going to do, if someone
did
show up? Was she going to yell at some ghoul in the middle of a dark cemetery and tell him to stop?

Especially when he might be her husband's murderer?

It was an old cemetery, filled with trees and foliage. She tried to tell herself that her car was parked relatively close by at the doughnut shop just across Eighth Street, that even though it was very late, the main streets were teeming with people—even though the cemetery did seem unbelievably dark and still and silent, and far from civilization. In fact, there were probably a number of cops eating doughnuts right by her car. But then, that was at least half a mile away.

An owl let out a hoot, and a nearby tree rustled, and she nearly jumped into the mausoleum. She forced herself to remain still and stare toward the tree. Images of Dracula came to her mind. Creatures breaking out of their tombs. Maybe the human monsters from
Night of the Living Dead.
Werewolves, mummies…

But this wasn't Egypt, and there was no full moon. In fact, with the clouds, there was barely a moon at all. She felt like an idiot. And she deserved to. She shouldn't be here. A squirrel had rustled the tree—she could see it now, even in the shadows, leaping from the ground to a monument, and then to another tree. No creatures from beyond the grave were going to come after her. In fact, she'd gone through a period of mourning when she'd lain awake at night just praying that Danny could come back as a ghost, in voice, in spirit—in anything. But Danny hadn't come back. It was just as her father had once told her, the dead were the least threatening people in the world.

No, it wasn't the dead she had to fear. It was the living.

The cloud broke over the moon, and a silver light fell down on the cemetery. It was time to go home, she told herself. A very light fog was rising, and it was growing cool and damp and uncomfortable here. It was time to go crawling over the wall and go home. Nothing was going to happen. Unless she was arrested in her black jeans and black denim shirt and sneakers for breaking into the cemetery. No, the cops would never arrest her. They would just suggest to someone in her family that Danny's death had been her undoing, and that it was sad, but she really ought to be put away somewhere—fast.

She started to move, but then a chill swept over her again, and for some reason she couldn't fathom, she stood dead still. She tried not to give way to flights of imagination, but the fog had added a strange feeling to the graveyard. It was a ground fog, deepening, swirling around marble images of Christ and praying angels. She heard a rustling sound again, and this was different. Something much larger than a squirrel was coming around one of the old oaks just down the trail past the vault she was leaning against.

She breathed quickly, her heart hammering. She could hear footsteps; then a figure appeared. Then another figure, and another, all dressed in black. Carrying spades and picks. They emerged in silence from the fog, walking her way. Walking as if they were staring right at her.

They couldn't possibly see her; it was just coincidence that they were heading in her direction. Her fingers icy, her heart slamming so loudly that she was certain someone would hear it, she ducked very low against the mausoleum.

“Where?” someone demanded in whisper.

“There, in the center,” someone whispered back.

Keeping low, Spencer swung around. She noticed what she hadn't seen before in the darkness—a new grave, the earth just packed over it. This was crazy, she thought. They were living in the twentieth century, and people weren't just dumped underground, they were well protected before being placed in their graves. But apparently these grave robbers knew what they were doing. They moved furtively and quickly, six of them, she counted, and every one of the six carrying a tool with which to dig—or to break open a coffin. She wasn't even sure just what all the tools they carried were, exactly.

She couldn't tell one man from another—if they
were
all men. They were dressed much like she was, in black, but they wore black caps, as well, and ski masks. They looked like bank robbers, she thought, and realized that hysteria was bubbling up inside her. The way they were moving, she had to inch around the mausoleum to keep from being seen. When she had rounded a corner, she sat on the earth, her back flat against the stone, staring into the night. She couldn't get up and run now; she would be seen. She could only sit where she was, barely daring to breathe, listening.

She heard the sound of spades hitting the earth. Somehow, just the sound made her flinch. She twisted to peer around the corner of the small mausoleum. As she did, her sneakered foot scraped against a rock.

It was a small noise. It shouldn't have been heard, not against the determined shoves of the spades digging into the earth. But somehow…

One of the diggers went very still, staring in her direction.

“What is it?” a husky voice asked.

“Don't know…something,” was the muttered reply.

She flattened herself against the stone, afraid to exhale her pent-up breath. She had to look. She peered around again. One digger had remained standing perfectly still, staring in her direction. It was dark, she was in shadows…and she'd been seen.

She stared at the figure in black and felt the figure's stare in return. Felt the eyes, felt the danger…

She didn't think—there was no time to think. She stood and ran, tearing down the central path, aware that her best bet would be to head for the main street. She was fast, she'd always been fast. And she knew the layout of the cemetery well enough.

But figures were tearing after her at tremendous speed.

She veered off the main path, around the huge, central mausoleum. She tore along a pathway to a gate but found it locked.

She could hear footsteps coming closer. Furtive, but moving quickly, coming in her direction.

She burst away from the mausoleum, ducking low to run behind angels and Madonnas that rose high against the shadows and the fog. She ducked behind one and listened. Running footsteps passed her by. She remained where she was, thinking herself an absolute idiot for the thousandth time. There was enough danger in Dade County. She hadn't needed to go looking for it. And these people had come to rob a new grave for body parts. They seemed to like them fresh. The fresher the better.

Hers would be very, very fresh….

She leaped up, bordering on panic. She could see a figure farther along one of the trails. She turned to run the other way.

Fingers suddenly curled around her ankle.

A scream of sheer terror rose in her throat, but she never managed more than a strangled gasp. Even as she inhaled, she was falling to the earth, falling into a hole, into darkness, into what seemed like an incredible void.

She landed against flesh. Terror wound more tightly within her, but she couldn't catch her breath to scream. It was like a nightmare.

A hand clamped tightly over her mouth, and horrible visions of the living dead raced into her panicked mind. The scent of the fresh damp earth filled her lungs, and it seemed as if it was the smell of death.

She felt herself being lifted and righted. Then she heard a whisper, hushed, dictatorial. “Shush! Whatever the hell you do, don't scream. It's me. David.”

She was shaking. She'd probably never been more frightened in her life. She registered slowly that it
was
David—she really had run into David in a freshly dug hole in the middle of the cemetery in the middle of the night. It seemed impossible.

“Get down!” he told her.

Easy to do—her knees were buckling beneath her. She could scarcely breathe, and she was willing herself not to pass out.

“What in God's name are you doing here?” she demanded in a whisper. It felt as if the blood had drained from her body. Her hair had probably turned completely white.

She clenched her fingers tightly. Wound them into white-knuckled fists.

“Damn it, David.”

“Shut up, Spencer!” he repeated in an emphatic whisper.

She managed to make a few observations. Basic black was really in. David, too, was in black. Black jeans, black T-shirt, black cotton jacket. She had a feeling that he was wearing a shoulder holster beneath the jacket.

“What are you doing here?” she asked again, barely mouthing the words. Despite the darkness, she was sure he heard her.

“What are
you
doing here?” he demanded in return.

“Watching for the grave robbers,” she admitted flatly.