A Fatal Stain (23 page)

The kind lady at the desk tried to tell me those books were highly inappropriate for a three-year-old. I told her it was okay; the inappropriate book was in the back of the car and would be going right back to its owner. She gave me an strange look, and I decided not to explain.

Back in the car, with E’s books secured, I drove to my parents’ store, where Dad, manning the counter, gave me an odd look, then said, “Must you bring that creature in with you?”

“That creature,” I announced dramatically, “is your only grandson, and he can read.”

“He is?” My dad looked at me. “Are you sure of that? He doesn’t look a thing like Ben.”

Which was indeed fortunate for all concerned, but particularly Ben and I, because we’d never gotten that drunk, at least not while together. “Yeah, I know,” I told Dad with a bright smile.

“And another thing, Sherlockia,” he said. “If anything happens to the books, it’s entirely your fault.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” I said. I’d never be allowed to live down the time that E had spilled his juice bottle on the new paperback section. “I’ll keep E in a tight rein.”

“E?”

I gestured. “E. My son.”

My father looked at him again, as though he were yet again a new and wondrous object. Something never seen and scarcely imagined. “I wasn’t talking about him,” he said. “I was talking about the rude young man with the petulant accents who told me that if you don’t stop sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong, he’ll come here and burn all the books. He told me that I was supposed to keep you from meddling. Clearly”—Dad drew himself up to his full height—“he completely misunderstands the situation.”

“I’d say,” I said under my breath, thinking that Sebastian must have been very busy indeed.

“Because,” my father went on, as though I hadn’t spoken, “I have never yet managed to control you or tell you to stop anything. I mean, if you did what I’d like you to, you’d be a PI with a decent business. None of this crazy going around with however many men and getting shot at. No, you’d have a proper office and be versed in all the best forensic techniques. But no, you had to do your own thing, and marry…Who did you marry?”

“It hardly matters,” I said, and patted Dad on the arm. I never knew how much of a contact with reality he had at the moment, and at least half the time he seemed certain that I had married Ben at some point. The rest of the time he seemed to think I was some sort of a fancy escort.
And yet the rest of the time, he thought I was about six and in elementary school. “I’m divorced now, and truly, I’m not running around with any men.”

“Are you sure? Because he said you should stay away from someone named Jason, or it would be the worse for you.”

“Right.” I was starting to thing Sebastian, the sex god, was far more interested in Jason than it seemed. Or at least determined to keep me away from Jason. It made absolutely no sense, since Jason was not exactly my type and besides I had Cas. Also, Sebastian had definitely not struck me as swinging that way, so his interest in Jason could not be of that type.

I frowned, as I followed E to the juvenile mystery section, where he discovered detectives in togas. I hoped that now, with enough books on hand to keep him happy for several hours, it was safe to go to the police station.

But as we were leaving the store, Dad gave me a look of warning and said in a voice that could have come from an entire Greek chorus, “I warn you, if something happens to the books, I won’t be responsible for my actions.”

I hoped nothing would happen to the books, but as I got in my car, I thought the store was stocked so full of books it was a tinderbox waiting to go up. And there was at least one arsonist running around Goldport.

Before we drove off, I called the consignment store
in Denver, and found that three of my pieces had sold, and they’d made a—new for them since they’d always sent a paper check despite my repeated requests—automated deposit of my portion of the proceeds. They wanted more pieces. I stared at the trunk in the back of the car and decided that although there might be nothing I could do with it, at least I could look for more, small pieces I could refinish and take up to Denver. Of course, refinishing would have to wait for the weekend, and I’d have to convince Ben to babysit. So hopefully he got over whatever the drama was in his life, so that I could get back to taking advantage of his good nature when I needed work time.

But my two first favorite used furniture stores had nothing, and the salvage store yielded nothing but a set
of three copper lion-mouth pulls. I bought them, at fifty cents apiece. They’re the sort of thing that will lend class to any piece. But I wished I’d found a piece they’d go in, as well.

With some of my newly acquired money, I bought E and myself organic burgers at Cy’s and then compensated for the offensive healthiness of the food by drowning it in milkshakes, thick with fat and sugar. And marshmallows, because we got the Rocky Road milkshakes. The gods must have been with me, too, because I managed not to spill any of those saliencies on my chest, which always seemed to maneuver to be in the way of falling liquid, and E got nothing on his little coveralls or his red jacket. Instead, he collected most of the leftover on his face, where I could wipe it away with moist wipes.

I refused to imagine what child care had been like before premoist wipes. Perhaps archaeologists were wrong, and there had always been moist wipes. Sometime in the future, they’ll find a cylindrical container in a cave, with the telltale pull-through top.

So we both looked like respectable people as we headed into three other stores—where I looked in vain for serviceable furniture—and finally to the police station, with Nick’s book under my arm and E by my other hand.

The receptionist gave us a smile and didn’t say anything as we sailed past. Which meant that Cas would be in his office at the back. He was. And, bonus, Nick was with him. And looked considerably more animated than he had this morning. Or the day before. Or any time in recent memory. Which I hoped, for purely selfish reasons, meant the drama between him and Ben was at an end.

At least if they settled down a bit, I could—and would—impose on Ben to babysit while I saw what I could make of that green trunk.

So I smiled at him, a little nicer than I might otherwise have done, and dropped the book on the desk, on top of the papers he’d been looking at. “You forgot this at my house,” I said. “Why in heaven’s name did you need to bring a history tome with you, when you came to sleep on the sofa? A little light reading?”

He looked at the book like it contained all the ashes of his ancestors or something. “What? I didn’t take that.”

“Right. Well, someone did, because E was reading page six. He wanted an explanation of Caesar’s bad habit starting with
I
.”

“Icksets,” E said, and nodded.

Cas groaned. “Please, tell me he didn’t say what I thought he did.”

“Oh, he did say it,” I said, cheerfully. “But I’ve got him more appropriate books.”

Nick blinked down at E and the book E was holding up. “
Rotten Romans
,” he said in a fading voice. “How…interesting.”

“With recipes for dormouse,” I said, encouragingly.

Nick looked up at me. “What, no
Irksome Irishmen
?”

“No,” I said. “The Irksome Irishman gave E a book in that series, though.
Groovy Greeks
.”

A weird, surprised smile twisted Nick’s lips. “How interesting,” he said. He grabbed his book.

“Why do you have that book, anyway?”

“What? I like history,” he said, managing to sound just as defensive as E when E told me he hadn’t meant to
learn to read. He mumbled something about snobs, grabbed his papers, and left the room.

“So,” I said, looking at Cas. “The talk worked or not?”

Cas shrugged. “I’m as at sea as you are.”

“Maybe we
should
nail horseshoes to their feet. In the interest of their understanding each other better when they stomp.”

Cas looked immensely cheered at the idea, but before he could say anything, his receptionist came in and announced the real estate agent.

At which point, the talk became completely nonunderstandable. Honestly, I seem to have contract stupidity. I can read anything else, including big, fat tomes like the ones that Nick, apparently, felt like carrying around for the purpose of proving he could. But the minute you put a contract in front of me, I became illiterate. Or an official form of any sort.

One of these days, I was going to figure out I’d sold my soul to the devil accidentally because I’d filled my matriculation forms wrong when I’d first signed up for college.

This time, at least, I wasn’t in it alone. Which meant if I sold my soul, Cas would, too. This wasn’t precisely comforting, but at least we’d have one of the nicest, coziest arrangements in Hades.

And when the woman was done with the contract and had our signatures on it, she said, “And now, where is Mr. Nikopoulous’s office?”

Cas pointed her in the general location of Nick’s office, and when she left, I looked at Cas. “So why does she want Nick?”

“Nick is putting an offer on the house next to ours.”

“What?”

“Well, you know, it is not quite as big, and he figures he’ll have to pull up the carpet and refinish the floor before he moves in, but then again, he has a place to live meanwhile. Also, the way he sees it, he doesn’t need as big a place as ours.”

I calculated mentally exactly where this fit on the game of chess he and Ben seemed to be playing. Correction, the game of blindfolded chess, played in a pitch-dark room at midnight. From the Irksome Irishman remark, I assumed that not all had been decided. Which meant they were probably still sparring over who got to move in with whom.

This meant by buying a house, Nick was trying to call it a checkmate. Interesting. And entirely insane. So Cas and I would have the coziest arrangement in Hades, except that Nick would probably be sharing the general area with us, right after Ben brained him with his bio of Caesar. Seemed just about right.

“Anything new on the arson thing?” I asked Cas.

He frowned at me. “Eh. Somewhat. It looks like the burning of the place was accidental.”

“You mean, someone was playing with matches?” I thought of the equipment in the back of Sebastian’s car. “Or blowtorches?”

“No,” he said. “I mean someone was cooking meth and things got out of hand.”

I stared for a moment. “You mean…”

“I mean, we’re now evaluating samples from all the other houses,” he said, “to figure out whether the same thing happened. It would make a certain sense, since the houses are always houses that have been empty a long time
and that are away from other occupied properties. By the way, I told All-ex we would be keeping E because we wanted to go shopping for wedding clothes this week, at irregular intervals. We’re going to be shopping for clothes, right? Because you know E will tell him if we aren’t.”

“Yeah, we can,” I said. “But not at Dresses by Cthulhu.”

“New shop?” he asked, sounding confused.

“Yeah. They call themselves The Pink Rose, but don’t let them deceive you. In the back—”

“They keep a multitentacled seamstress?” he asked. “Plying multiple needles at an amazing speed?”

“Probably,” I said, not willing to admit I was being silly. There apparently was a lot of that going around. “So you think this is a meth ring? Which means it would have nothing to do with All-ex?” This was a bit of a relief. I mean, I didn’t particularly want to have to tell E his daddy was a criminal. I could see it now.
No, honey, Daddy just enjoys living behind barbed wire and wearing orange. He thinks One-Armed Art is better company than Michelle. No, no, he really enjoys talking to us across safety glass. It’s very fashionable.
I could see that if I worked the thing right, E wouldn’t need to know the truth until he was twenty, maybe thirty. But sooner or later, he would have to discover the truth, and he’d probably get upset. Almost certainly.

Besides, if he tumbled onto it earlier, there was a good chance he’d deploy his alleged lock-picking abilities and then he, too, would end up in jail. I’d have to figure out how to take them pancakes with nail files in them. And those would have to be much thicker pancakes than normal.

Cas shrugged. “Probably not. Right now, I have no idea if it’s even a ring. We haven’t seen any increased meth circulation in town, so whoever is doing this is a dumb fool.”

“A now-dead dumb fool?”

He frowned. “One of them, almost for sure, but we’re waiting for results from the lab, because right now all we have is a corpse. We don’t even know if he was dead or alive when the blast went off.”

“Ah,” I said. And then, “I have to go.”

“Why? You could wait. There isn’t much more I can do here today, until those reports arrive. I could take you and E out to eat and—”

I shook my head. “No, you don’t understand, I’m meeting someone.”

Suddenly he sharpened up and became all policeman. “Who?”

I could of course have told him it was just some friend—but why would he believe that, when I’d lost most of my friends in the recent vicissitudes? I could tell him I was going to see someone about furniture, but he wasn’t likely to believe that, either. And besides, I didn’t want to lie to him.