Deadly Deceptions (17 page)

After the shower I dressed and, feeling refreshed, went into the kitchen and brewed myself a cup of coffee. While the pot was perking away, I called Tucker's cell from the kitchen.

“Darroch,” he said.

“Check your caller ID once in a while,” I replied. “Ask me where I am.”

“Okay,” Tucker said. “Where are you?”

“My place.”

“And this is supposed to be news?”

“My place,”
I repeated. “Soon to be known as Mojo's.”

“You're in the apartment?
Alone?
”

I straightened my spine. “I will be until you get here,” I said, feeling ever so slightly defensive. If Tucker had had his way, I'd live in a steel vault someplace, and wear full body armor. Sans underpants, of course.

“Damn,” he said.

“It's as safe as anywhere else,” I argued. “The locks have been changed and all unauthorized entrances have been sealed.” I remembered, with a shudder, the way a killer had gotten in, not all that long ago.

“I don't suppose I can talk you out of this,” Tucker said.

“Nope,” I said.

There was a long pause. Then, “You still want Chinese?”

“I want you,” I said. “The kung pao chicken is a bonus.”

He laughed. It was a weary sound, indicating better than anything he could have said that he knew a lot of things I didn't, and they weighed on him, but hearing it was good, just the same.

“I'll be there around five-thirty,” he said. A guarded note came into his voice. “I can call ahead for the takeout, but I have to stop by Allison's for a few minutes on the way.”

“Something wrong at home?” I asked as casually as I could.

“I don't know,” Tucker replied. “Allison called a little while ago, and she said it was important.”

I didn't argue. After all, a lot of guys wouldn't have mentioned the pit stop at all. Tucker had been straightforward.

I had to trust him—or let him go. And I wasn't any more ready to let go of Tucker than I was the bar downstairs, or my apartment. The best I could manage at the moment was not to cling like a scared climber on a steep wall of rock.

“See you when you get here,” I said as lightly as I could.

“Moje?”

“What?”

“It's no big deal, my stopping by Allison's. She probably just needs a form signed or something.”

“Did I say it was a big deal?”
You sleep there. Couldn't it wait?

“You didn't have to. I can hear it in your voice.”

I closed my eyes for a moment. “Okay,” I said weakly.

We said goodbye, hung up.

I decided to check my collection of
Damn Fool's Guide
s for one on keeping it together, even though I knew I wouldn't find it. I settled for
Time Management,
but it didn't hold my interest for very long, and I shoved it back onto the shelf with all its companion volumes.

I went into the kitchen. The coffee was still brewing, so I wandered into the living room—and stopped in my tracks because Gillian was sitting on the couch.

“Where have you been?” I mouthed, exaggerating each word.

She watched me the way she might have watched a mime at a street fair or in a park, then leaned forward and wrote in the layer of dust on top of my coffee table.

“MOM.”

I went to the couch, sat down beside her, slipped an arm around her tiny shoulders. She felt cold, but solid, and wiggled free to write another word in the dust.

“DOG.”

At this, she smiled.

“Maybe,” I said, thinking of Vince Erland, the promise he'd made to this little girl, one he'd never intended to keep. The chances were good he'd done a lot worse, too.

She smiled more broadly. “DOG,” she wrote again, this time with a confident flourish.

I thought about Justin and Pepper, and wondered if the dog and the boy had crossed over yet. As if in answer to the thought, Justin appeared, alone.

I started. You don't get used to things like that.

“Still here,” I said, on a long breath.

Justin nodded. “Pepper's gone, though.”

Tears filled my eyes. “When?”

“About an hour ago,” Justin said.

“I thought you were going with him.”

“I can't. You need me.” He nodded toward Gillian. “And so does the kid.” He paused, looked around. “Different place. What happened to the fancy guesthouse with the plasma TV?”

“I'm sort of in between,” I said.

“Tell me about it,” Justin replied.

“You should have gone with Pepper,” I said, though the truth was, I was glad he'd be around for a little while longer, although if he and Gillian were still hanging out when Tucker showed up, it would put a serious crimp in our plans to swing naked from the chandeliers.

Not that I
had
an actual chandelier. Apartments over shit-hole biker bars don't usually come with that kind of extra.

“He's okay,” Justin assured me. Then, in apparent anticipation of my next question, he added, “Mom is, too.”

Turning his attention to Gillian, he began to sign.

She beamed at him, happier than I'd ever seen her, and signed back.

“We're going to Burger King,” Justin explained when the conversation was over.

“Why?” I asked. “You can't eat, can you?”

“Happy memories,” Justin said. “And I like the way it smells.” He waggled his eyebrows at me. “Besides, you're expecting company, aren't you?”

I blushed, profoundly uncomfortable with the amount of information Justin was privy to concerning my personal life.

He grinned, apparently reading my mind. Which was even more disturbing than his knowing so much about my plans for the evening. “It shows in your aura,” he said confidentially. “No visuals, or anything like that. Just a strong glow.”

“If you're spying on me, Justin—”

“I'm not spying,” he insisted. “I told you, it's the
aura.
”

“It had better be,” I warned, though he must have known there would be nothing I could do about it if he was lying.

He signed to Gillian.

Gillian signed back.

And they both vanished.

I was a little jangled by the whole appearance/disappearance thing. Some of my earlier confidence ebbed away.

I put on some flip-flops—I'd been barefoot since my shower—and went down to the Volvo. Got my new used Glock out from under the front seat and carried it upstairs practically at arm's length, half afraid I'd make some wrong move and it would go off in the case.

The coffee was ready when I got back.

I set the gun case in the middle of my kitchen table and stared at it for a while. When it didn't explode, I figured it was safe to keep it in the apartment until morning, when I would motor over to the indoor target range and become a sharpshooter.

My computer beckoned, and I spent some time downloading the application to transfer Bert's liquor license into my name. After that, I switched on the TV. When in doubt, do something constructive.

The early news was on, and I was noticeably absent.

It was all good.

I'd just switched to a rerun of
Judge Judy,
and was already half dozing, when a really weird thing happened.

I mean
really
weird.

Judge Judy did a fade-out. I yawned, expecting a commercial, and stretched out on the couch with a contented little sigh.

In the next moment I was sitting bolt upright, staring aghast at my rent-to-own TV.

On the screen I saw Gillian, in living color, dressed for the recital rehearsal, still wearing both dance slippers. There was no sound.

Gillian smiled up at someone off camera, nodded and extended her hand.

I shot to my feet, electrified. I knew I was seeing the child just before she was murdered—her death might have been minutes away. An instinct compelled me to examine the back of the TV for an extra wire, check the DVD player for a disc, but an even stronger one kept me riveted to the screen, even though I was terrified of what I might see.

Had the killer had an accomplice?

What kind of sicko would
take pictures…

Bile scalded the back of my throat.

Gillian was walking beside someone, along a familiar sidewalk, one hand upraised, no doubt clasped in the killer's, signing cheerfully with the other. I stared hard, but I couldn't see any detail of the other person—not an arm or a leg or even a hand.

There was a clue here, I knew that subliminally, but I was so riveted, so horrified, that I couldn't catch hold of it. I wanted to turn away before I saw something I would never get out of my mind, but doing that would have amounted to betraying Gillian.

Tears stung my eyes.

My stomach roiled.

I watched, mute, as Gillian walked between two buildings, then over dry ground littered with old beer bottles and rusted things, smiling, curious.

Trusting.

Then the screen suddenly went blank again, and Judge Judy was back, with her lace-collared judicial robe and her attitude. I stood there, blinking, paralyzed.

What the hell had just happened?

Who had held the video camera?

A couple of minutes must have passed before I could move. I went to the TV, looked for a wire at the back. Nothing. Same with the DVD player—there was an old copy of
Smokey and the Bandit
in the disc holder.

I straightened, shivering.

Looked around. Somebody had piped the clip in, somehow, from somewhere. They'd wanted me to see it.

But how had they done it?

And how had they known I would be in the apartment to see the piece, instead of in Greer's guesthouse, where I'd been staying for days?

A shiver trickled down my spine, then shinnied back up again.

What the hell was going on?

I spent the next forty-five minutes scouring the place for electronic bugs, hidden cameras, anything. There was nothing.

Finally I hunkered down on the couch again, drawing my knees up, wrapping my arms around my legs. And I brooded.

But I think I knew even then that what I'd seen hadn't come through a wire, or by means of some electronic techno-magic. Oh, no. This was another kind of thing entirely, and there were no
Damn Fool's Guide
s to explain it.

I was still sitting there, staring, when I heard a knock at the apartment door and knew Tucker had arrived.

I felt both relief—when he was around, I was safe—and sorrow, because I knew even
he
wouldn't believe it if I told him I'd seen the prelude to Gillian's murder on my TV screen.

“Coming,” I called halfheartedly, heading for the door. My legs felt wooden, and I was stiff. Cold. “Tucker?”

“Yo,” he said.

I opened the door.

He was holding a cluster of take-out bags in one hand and a leash in the other. At the end of the leash was a small black-and-white dog with pointy ears, one of which tipped forward at a rakish angle.

“Meet Dave,” Tucker said, apparently referring to the dog.

Dave gave a hopeful little yelp of greeting and looked up at me with one blue eye and one brown one.

I stepped back to admit them both.

Tucker frowned as he handed me the take-out bags and reached back to shut the door. “What's up?” he said. “You look—if you'll excuse the expression—like you've seen a ghost.”

“I had a headache earlier,” I fibbed. “I'm better now.”

I hadn't had a headache, and I wasn't “better,” either.

Tucker unclipped the leash, and Dave went sniffing into my living room. “Aren't you going to ask about the dog?”

“What about the dog?” I asked dutifully.

Dave lifted a leg against a bookshelf and let fly.

“See that,” Tucker said. “He already feels at home.”

I gave him a look, carried the takeout into the kitchen, dumped it on the table and started tearing paper towels off the roll to wipe up the piddle.

“Somebody dumped him at Allison's front gate,” Tucker went on, watching me closely and somewhat thoughtfully, as if he knew something was up with me but couldn't quite get hold of what it was. “That's why she asked me to come by. She checked him over and gave him his shots, but she can't keep him because she's shutting down the practice while she and the kids visit her folks.” He spread his hands, as if he'd just brought stone tablets down from Mount Sinai to a waiting world. “You need a dog. Dave needs a home. It's fate.”