A Fatal Stain (13 page)

He looked up startled. “What?” And blushed faintly. “Oh, that, yeah. I do get it, Dyce. It’s just…” He shrugged. “When did you become the grown-up in this association?”

I waggled my hand at him. “It comes and it goes. So…come on…if I shower, and go work a couple hours out back, can you spend a couple of hours with E? Because, you know, I am going to have to watch him the rest of the time. And look, if you brought the laptop, as long as you keep an eye out to make sure he’s not trying to teach Pythagoras to
waltz or something, you can work on your computer, meanwhile.”

Ben started to nod, then said, “Teach Pythagoras to waltz? Do you mean…like waltzing Matilda? I have to keep him from killing the cat?”

“No, no. It’s just he hugs Pythagoras and dances around and around in circles, till the cat barfs all over the carpet.”

“Oh. That’s okay then.”

He only said that because he’d never had to clean up one of Pythagoras’s impressive pools of vomit. For a cat that spent all day, every day, indoors, that cat managed to conjure up—possibly from another universe—the most absurd stuff to throw up. Oh, okay, fine, I knew that he periodically ate one of E’s toys. And I knew that for some reason he sometimes ate small objects, coins, and, on a single occasion, a balloon. Now, I didn’t know
why
he ate these, beyond the obvious reason that the poor cat was crazier than a refrigerator salesman in Antarctica. No. The problem wasn’t finding odd and unlikely objects in his vomit. The problem was finding impossible objects: things that looked like large semi-digested rats or parts of a squirrel tail.

I lived in fear of the day when Pythagoras would throw up in the living room, and I’d find an elk’s hindquarters in the mess or perhaps even a yucky but still functional 1954 Buick convertible.

But I wasn’t going to tell Ben any of that because men tend to get confused if not outright skittish once you start talking about space-time portals inside of a small black cat’s stomach. And besides, if he was so foolish as to let Pythagoras throw up, I intended to guilt him into cleaning up.

I got in the shower, cleaned up quickly, got jeans and a T-shirt on, came back out, grabbed a protesting E, gave
him a quick shower, and dressed him in jeans and a sweater. I left Ben trying to convince E to put shoes on and hurried out back to my work shed.

Once there, I put my coveralls on, then put goggles on—because it wouldn’t be the first time I splashed stuff on them and not my eyes—and started spreading mineral spirits with cornstarch on the surface of the table.

I established several patches, then went back to the first patch to scrape, using the sharp edge of the five-point painter tool and an infinite amount of care. I’d have to patch the huge strip in the middle, but I’d like to try to prevent myself from having a bunch of uneven strips.

Most of all, though, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to do anything with this table—not with its legal status undefined, as it were. I couldn’t really sell it while I wasn’t sure if there was a crime surrounding it.

Without thinking about that too much, I started scraping the finish around where the stains were and found myself discovering that along with the stains, in a splatter pattern, there was also a rather large pool, as though someone had poured out black liquid.

You don’t grow up as the daughter of the owners of the single largest mystery bookstore in Colorado—or possibly by now, in the West—without knowing that old blood dries black, instead of red. There were ways of telling if it was blood, of course—at least there should be, if the varnish and stain hadn’t changed the composition. I had a black-light flashlight in the house. The reason for it was obvious, walked on four legs, and was probably crazier than…well…I had yet to find something it wasn’t crazier than.

He was a good cat and didn’t often commit
indiscretions of the smelly type, but I suppose when a cat got scared, one couldn’t expect him to control his bladder, and Pythagoras could get scared by his own shadow. So, periodically, I had to play “find the tinkle,” an endeavor in which a good source of black light is invaluable.

I went back into the house, and was looking through the drawers in the kitchen for the flashlight when Ben called out, “Dyce, is that you?”

“No. It’s the tooth fairy.”

There was a pause, and I wondered if he was considering this hypothesis, so I cut in, “What’s wrong?”

“Your son,” Ben said, in ponderous tones, “cheats at Candy Land.”

I stuck my head into the door to the dining room, where they were sitting in front of E’s game of Candy Land. Now, this was something I hadn’t expected Ben to fall for. He’d known E long enough to realize that tying an adult down to a good board game was E’s favorite hobby and that he’d do anything to manage it, including but not limited to setting bear traps in likely locations. And once you sat down to a board game, you were doomed. You’d not be allowed to get up again, not even if you faked death. Two weeks ago, I’d spent an hour with my tongue hanging out and my eyes closed, pretending to be dead, before E got worried enough to promise he’d let me do something else if only I came back to life.

But there were some things that were impossible even for E. “He can’t possibly cheat at Candy Land,” I said. “No one can. The cards don’t even have words.”

Ben crossed his arms on his chest. “Oh, yeah? He will wait till I’m distracted by something, and he’ll stack the deck.”

E crossed his arms on his chest, in perfect imitation of Ben, and gave me his best angelic smile. It was very good. It almost hid the suspicions of little horns under the blond curls. “Ben has absolutely no proof.”

I smiled at my son. “Oh, cheer up, Ben. He’s going to be such a success at politics!”

“It can still be averted,” Ben said, hopefully. “You could treat him with aversion therapy.”

“Oh, come on, surely you can play a board game with a toddler without getting upset? Perhaps he’s lucky.”

I think Ben murmured, “Yeah, right. Lucky,” as I left the room, got the black-light flashlight, and went back to the shed.

By closing the door and draping a cloth over the small window high up on the wall, I reduced the amount of light in there enough that a black light shining on the table revealed a soft fluorescent glow where the stains were.

Um. Right. So…it was blood. Or at least organic materials.

On the other hand, it could be blood but not human blood.

The problem was that the only truly infallible way would be to tell Cas all about it and let him send samples to the lab.

I was standing there, shining the lantern on the table, when there was a knock on the door.

“Yeah?” I said, turning off the black light and taking
down the cloth I’d put over the window. It was probably Ben, of course, trying to get me to come and make E stop cheating at Candy Land.

But no one answered; instead, the door handle jiggled, and because I hadn’t taken the trouble to lock it, the door swung open.

For a moment, there was too much light for me to make out the figure in the doorway, and then I blinked, and my first impression of him—definitely a him—was that I was being visited by a faun. There was something earthy and sexy about the short, muscle-bound man. Then I blinked again and realized he didn’t have goat feet or legs. Well, at least not that I could see through the jeans and his big work boots. And I wasn’t going to stare at his jeans anyway. I was a grown-up, a mother, and
decently engaged to a nice man who was going to make an honest woman out of me. Mind you, if that meant I had to stop telling white lies, it might be a long time before I let it happen.

He was tanned and had deep-set dark eyes, which stared at me in an inquiring way. “Mrs. Dare?” he asked.

I’d never been called Mrs. Dare, certainly not by a man old enough to be a friend or a brother or something. I blinked at him. And realized he was smoking, as he threw the cigarette down and stepped on it, right in front of my work shed.

“Be careful,” I said, my voice coming out raspy, as though I was making a threat, which I certainly wasn’t. “There are a lot of flammables in here. If a spark should fly…”

He frowned at me, then smiled, a smile that managed to be sexy and not particularly nice. “Interesting,” he said. “I came here to tell you that, too.” And looking at what must be my look of total incomprehension, because I had no intention of smoking in the shed, or anywhere for that matter, “To be careful.” He looked as if he expected me to understand what the hell he was talking about, then shook his head. I repressed the urge to tell him
Life is full of these little disappointments
, which was probably a very good thing, as the next thing he said was, “My name is Sebastian Dimas.”

It took me a moment to remember who the heck that was, and then, because I remembered the way Peter and Collin had referred to him, heat went up my face, then down again.

He looked gratified, and I couldn’t really tell him that it was just because I was speaking to someone I’d heard
mentioned as Sex-on-Two Legs and not because I was actually doing anything wrong. I wondered what he thought I was doing wrong, for that matter.

He patted his jeans and pulled out a cigarette. “Listen, lady,” he said in that tone that people use when they don’t think you’re a lady at all and that, in fact, seems to imply you’re an old, gossiping biddy. “Jason has had enough trouble, okay? He really doesn’t need you poking your nose in, right? Just leave the man alone.”

I blinked at him again, which probably made me look like an old, gossiping biddy, too, or at least totally stupid. “What?”

“Jason Ashton,” he said, as he lit his cigarette, cupping one hand to protect the flame. I felt a creepy sensation go up my spine, like an overactive caterpillar was crawling on my back. “Look, he and Maria are the nicest people in the world, okay? They’ve got their kids, and they’re not exactly rich, but anyone who is down on their luck or in trouble can be sure of being helped by them. Too much so, in my opinion. Some of the people—” He shrugged. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. If Maria left, she had her reasons. She discovered something about…about herself, and she had to go away for a while to cope with it. She’ll be back, I’m sure, when she has figured it out. Meanwhile…I mean, Jason is worrying enough. You really shouldn’t be harassing him.”

I’d managed to add two plus two and get three hundred and fifty-four. He wanted to warn me away from looking into Jason Ashton. He’d probably run away with Maria and didn’t want Jason to find her. He…

He was smoking, inches from the door to my shed,
which in turn was filled with bottles and bottles of turpentine, mineral spirits, varnish, wax.

I stepped outside, closing the door behind me, and hoped that Ben would come to the back door and see what was going on. He was probably too busy preventing E from cheating, of course. The man was never there when I needed him. It was amazing he hadn’t gone into the police.

Sebastian stepped away from the shed as I stepped out, which was good; otherwise, I’d have walked straight into his cigarette. I was trying to figure out whether to tell him that the table was in there and that this is what had started me looking into it.

“Look,” he said. “I heard about you. I was in school just behind you. And I know that your parents are nu…that your parents are the owners of the mystery bookstore, and I understand that your boyfriend is in the police, and you probably think you’re some sort of a detective. But it’s just a bad idea all around. Jason made a missing-person report only because he has an assistantship offer in California, and if there’s any chance, he wants to contact Maria before he leaves.” He took a deep pull of his cigarette. “I told him it was misguided. Much easier for me to rent the place after they move out, and then, when she comes back, I’ll be there to tell her where he went, right? But he wanted to make sure she was all right, because she hasn’t been to her doctor.”

He blinked, as though realizing he’d said too much. His lips formed the
S
word, before he shoved the cigarette back in them. I realized that the reason he was surrounded by an unnatural haze was that I was still wearing my goggles. I pulled them up on my head, aware that
this made me look like some sort of wild Africa explorer, and said, “I wasn’t looking…I wasn’t trying to harass him, really. I just…”

But he frowned at me. “Did your boyfriend ask you to ask questions?”

“No. No, no, no, no. Cas is not even that concerned about it. He thinks that her disappearance was voluntary and…” I bit my tongue.

But he didn’t seem to get upset. Instead, he gave me a long look. “Possibly,” he said. “In a manner of speaking. Probably not what you meant, but yeah.”

“But…uh…I heard they were good people and seemed happy. I mean…”

“They are good people, and they seem happy. Sometimes there are problems, of course, for anyone. And sometimes I think they take on…well…deadbeats. But on the other hand, they took me on when I—” He stopped and shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Just if you don’t have a reason to prod and poke and drive around and ask questions, don’t, okay? They didn’t do anything to you. Let them work out their problems in their own way.”