Carol Shenold - Tali Cates 02 - Bloody Murder (14 page)

My brain turned to mush—must be the pain diverting the blood from my head to my ankle. I couldn’t remember what I needed to do next. Maybe I would sit out front and put my foot up for a minute to see if the throbbing would calm down. I’d already inventoried trophies, judges, banners, and flowers. The videotaping was proceeding in spite of Kyle’s dire projections of doom. Aiden met me at the top of the stairs and carried me down to deposit me in one of the front chairs.

The rest of the talent portion went smoothly except Kimmie Baker didn’t find her costume and had to perform in her formal, which worked okay for the blues song she sang. She was an exception to the usual amateur talent, having a clear natural voice, excellent pitch, and she could pick the guitar instead of using canned music. Performing indoors gave her acoustic style an edge since she didn’t have to compete with the midway. Lyn’s daughter, SueAnn, also sang, but in an unusual style. Her voice was soft, little volume and a smidge flat, as were a couple of other girls.

I struggled to concentrate on the talent but my mind kept wandering to Lyn and her personality change or multiple personalities. How she could go from sweetness and light, aren’t-the-little-girls-all-so-cute to Hansel and Gretel’s witch, I couldn’t figure out. Sometimes she was perfectly normal, then she struck like a snake. Nothing had been business as usual for this contest anyway. I’d be grateful if we made it through without another murder.

No one else had contests with this amount of drama. The fair board would never want me to volunteer again. I’d thought the public showing of my loyalty to Love’s youth would be good publicity, now it might simply point out, once again, that Tali plus event equals dead bodies.

Contestants finished their talent, changed, and waited for the judges to add up points. This year was unusual with the timing of the ball. The winner would be announced and receive her trophy, and she would also preside as Queen of the Masked Ball on Halloween night.

Stagehands moved a table out and arranged the banners, trophies, and flowers. I made my slow progress to the judges to receive their score sheets and list of winners. Lyn came over and held out her hand but I was faster and snatched the sheets.

“That’s all right, Lyn, I’ll make the rest of the announcements. I know you want to watch since SueAnn is there waiting to see if she places. Go ahead and focus on her.”

Lyn did not appear pleased by my generosity. I stumped onto the stage and motioned to the girls to line up. At each announcement the audience cheered, girls received banners, flowers, and trophies. When I announced that Kimmie Baker won and SueAnn came in second place, a murderous expression crossed Lyn’s face.

It wasn’t only Lyn’s expression as Kimmie was crowned, but the feeling she was somehow dangerous and, for whatever reason, the danger was aimed toward me. I shook my head. Now
that
was overdramatic. The pain must be addling my brain.

Chapter Fourteen

JT caught up with me as I left the building to go to the car. It had stopped raining, thank God. At least I could drive the car since it was an automatic and I’d hurt my left ankle.

“If I don’t take you to ER, you won’t go. I know you, Tali. You’ll try to tough it out, pretend nothing is wrong, and end up with a worse injury.”

“That’s all good and well but who is going to pay for a visit to the hospital, especially the emergency room? It’s not as if I have any coverage. I talked Brian into keeping Sean on his plan and Cass is covered as long as she takes classes in something, but I’m SOL, to put it delicately. I’ll go see Dr. Chambers on Monday if ice and elevation doesn’t work. And I have these handy-dandy crutches.”

“Why do I have difficulty seeing you sitting down with your feet up? Oh yeah. Because you are always too busy sticking your nose in everyone else’s business to sit still.” He grinned to take the sting out but I thought he meant it like it sounded.

“Bite me. Now, move. If you want me to put my foot up and rest, I need to drive home.”

He looked hard at me with his intense brown eyes, as if he wanted to read my mind, frowned and stepped back. “Yes, ma’am, whatever you say.”

I put the car in gear, then back into park. “JT, did I tell you what the boys did at dinner tonight?” I filled him in on their latest vampire theories and how they were shut down.

“Oh come on. They must have been kidding you. They’re old enough to know better. You need to ground Sean from TV and playing with that Rusty kid so much. You know how much trouble they got into this summer.”

How could I forget the call saying my son and Rusty tried to steal a gumball machine from the Laundromat? One of the biggest crime sprees in Love’s history, at least until I came on the scene and dead bodies began to follow me around. Now we had two more murders to worry about.
Maybe I shouldn’t drive home alone.
I shook my head.
Don’t be stupid, Tali
.

“Yeah, I remember. I think it’s movies and TV. It was like a scene from
Lost Boys
at my house, complete with a holy water cocktail and extra garlic on the side.”

“That’s nuts. Only you would have that happen. You’ll have to avoid having strange men over for dinner. Sean is probably worried, missing his dad and projecting that into a way to get rid of the boyfriend without appearing to be a jealous kid.”

“Wow, JT. That’s rather insightful for a stoic man of the law. Be careful, you might spoil your image and come off compassionate. Aiden isn’t a boyfriend.”

“Whatever he is, he feels like a threat to Sean, I’d bet. And Sean probably hasn’t forgotten the result of the last date you had with a stranger.”

I ignored the reference to the guy who darn near killed us. “Aiden lives next door. I was being a good neighbor and trying to show the kids he couldn’t really be a monster. Sean may be a little scared. I haven’t filled him in on the murders but I know the boys have heard rumors.”

JT shook his head. “I don’t think these killings have anything to do with any monster outside of plain old jealousy. I’d still bet on the involvement of some boyfriend. Plus, remember, Aiden was one of the two people who found Karin. Don’t be too quick to trust him. We haven’t found out anything about him. It’s like he never existed.”

“But how do you explain the condition of the bodies? You’ve got to admit that’s weird and scary. It’s not easy to drain a human body of all fluids—plain creepy.”

“Luckily, we have a coroner to take care of that end of the business. I have to find the killer, and I will. We may not be
CSI Miami
or
New York
but my department isn’t just a bunch of hicks.”

* * * *

My ankle hurt more when I was off it, maybe because I didn’t have as many things to distract me at the moment. You would think driving was enough of a distraction. Driving even a short distance made me nervous. I still remembered when Nancy Cain was riding her bike with her kids one evening and was hit by a motorcycle. She died in front of them. Took a while for the sheriff’s department to arrive, no one had cell phones then.

Lord. That was a random memory. Wonder what brought that on? Maybe all the recent dead bodies. In Love, Texas, a couple of murders were significant. Hell, the two murders last summer were enough for the decade, and now here I was involved with more dark and dastardly happenings.

I saw something ahead as I hit the stretch of road that had the deer crossing sign. Damn, that’s all I’d need. I just got the car and didn’t want to run into a stupid deer.

I screeched to a stop when I saw a dark figure in the middle of the road.

Shit, shit, shit
. I skidded to a stop and realized it wasn’t a deer, but a human, One stupid human I’d cheerfully kill for standing in the middle of the road and scaring me to death.

I jerked the keys out of the ignition and turned in my seat to get out, sending waves of pain up my leg. I stopped. I shouldn’t get out. It could be the killer. Dizziness must have addled my brain for a few seconds because I thought I saw Aiden in the middle of the street, then right in front of me.

“What the hell were you doing? I could have killed you. I could have killed myself. Have you lost your mind?”

“No.” He stood there saying nothing else.

“What do you mean, no? Don’t you have anything else to say for yourself?”

“No, you couldn’t have killed me, and I wouldn’t have let you kill yourself. I wanted to get your attention.”

“I have a cell phone you know. You didn’t need to scare me to death.”

“I don’t.”

“You don’t what?”

“Have a cell phone.”

“Then next time, call me on the regular phone instead. I’m hurting, I have to get home and put up my foot and put ice on it. Take drugs, whatever it takes to stop some of this pain.”

“Here, let me help.” Aiden opened the car door. He took my ankle in his hands. Cold, ice, blessed numbness, no pain. How could he do that with his hands? How could anyone’s hands be so cold?

Dizziness again. I no longer saw the road or Aiden, but unfamiliar roads, sensing blood, fear, dark, flying at impossible speed through the night.

I jerked back into my body and my foot out of Aiden’s hand, staring at him like a crazy woman. What the hell had that been? What did it mean? I recoiled from him and reached to slam the door shut.

What was I doing in the middle of a country road with a man I hardly knew, seeing visions of what had to be death and destruction? I didn’t need this. Maybe he was the killer.

Aiden didn’t get the hint. “Move, I need to go. I can’t do this.”

He seemed puzzled. “Do what? I wanted to help.”

“Do anything. I need to get out of here.”

“You mean away from me. Why?”

“Because we are in the middle of the road. You were holding my foot? Bizarre. We live next door to each other, for God’s sake. You don’t have to stand in the middle of the street and try to commit suicide to talk to me.”

“Then why won’t you stay?”

“I told you. I’m tired, worn out, and ready to go home and rest.” I was too close to tears to go on. What the hell was wrong with me? What was wrong with this man? If I wasn’t so attracted to him, I’d be frightened of him and probably should be.

He finally stood back. I slammed the door shut and gunned the engine before I took off like a kitten chasing a June bug.

* * * *

When I reached the house, I sat for a moment before it occurred to me that Aiden would be pulling into the driveway right next to me. I got out of the car without falling and made it inside the front door to collapse on the couch in front of the bay window. I began to shake. I knew I couldn’t make it any further. I didn’t want to. I wanted to curl up in a ball and forget everything. The murders were bad enough but the vision with Aiden was terrifying, more so because I didn’t know what it meant.

Should I be afraid of Aiden? Did the blood mean he was involved in the murders? Did the flying mean something? Was he really a vampire?

My shakes passed and so did my inclination to believe we had something supernatural going on. Vampire indeed, in Love, Texas, next door to me. At the very least, Mumsie’s spirit guides would have told us. Wouldn’t they?

It was late but I couldn’t sit still any longer. I had to at least change clothes, get ice, put the foot up. I did feel a little better since Aiden had done whatever he did but it was still swollen and turning all kinds of colors you do not want to see on your skin. I changed into sweats after what felt like a long hike across the house to my room.

I thumped back into the kitchen. Chaos decided the crutches were there for her to play with and bat at. She didn’t realize that winding herself around them like a toy could send me sprawling. Worse yet, I could land on top of her.

“Scat, stupid cat, before you get hurt or I do.”

Mumsie appeared, half asleep. She must have rushed home the second the judging finished and fallen in bed. “What the devil is all the noise? What took you so long to get home? Did you get the ankle looked at finally?”

I explained what happened on the way home.

Mumsie bustled around making tea, getting ice for my ankle and putting it on a chair with pillows, another pillow at my back. I sat back, watching the tea steam and let her.

“Amen Ka said there was something strange about that man but I liked him. He was extremely pleasant at dinner. You’ll have to have him over again. Maybe you were a little hasty when you left him in the middle of the road.”

“What about the vision? You know, blood, fear, flying.”

“It doesn’t have to mean anything. Maybe your vision was about something else entirely. That Lyn, for example, you know how she was by the end of the contests. She’d become a real bitch.”

“Noticed. Can’t explain it either. Do your spirits have anything else to tell us about Lyn maybe or Aiden?”

She tucked a blanket around my legs. “Not that he shared with me. But he tells me what he thinks I need to know or what some other spirit divulges to him, so who knows?” She put the steaming mug on the table and I could tell she’d spiked the tea with some honey and whiskey, her universal cure for everything on earth. “You rest for a bit, then put yourself in bed. I’m bushed and going to mine. See you in the morning.”

I watched her make her way down the hall, a little slower than usual. She wasn’t really old yet, but the years of taking care of Dad while he died from cancer and the fact she was in her mid-sixties couldn’t be ignored. I needed to be less quick to involve her in my messes. She didn’t need the stress from that added to us crowding her out of her home at a time when she should have been able to have a more peaceful life.

It occurred to me that combining the spiked tea with the pain pill might not have been a wonderful choice, but what the hell. It had been
some
day. I needed all the relaxation I could get if I was going to get any sleep tonight at all.

I thought back over the evening. Apparently, we’d dodged the murder bullet. As it was, two murders were way more than I wanted to have been around. The mere thought of the way the bodies had looked was enough to still turn my stomach. One had been a kid. I’d felt like a cold fish going through with the contest in spite of Karin’s death. But if it had been cancelled, it wouldn’t have been fair to Kimmie, who felt she had to continue because it had been her mom’s wish.