Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet (14 page)

I gave her a minute, then asked, “Can I ask you, when your father passes away, who
inherits the estate?”

She sniffed. “I do. My stepmother and brother have a sizable sum coming to them, but
I get the house and about seventy-five percent of the assets. It was part of the agreement
when they got married. I think she signed a prenup.”

“So, if anything happens to you, then what?”

“My stepfamily gets it all.”

That’s what I figured.

8

Insanity does NOT run in my family.

It strolls through, takes its time,

and gets to know everyone personally.

—T-SHIRT

I tucked Harper in, harassed Pari and Tre a bit, then headed home. The good news was
that it’d stopped raining again. The bad news was that my hair was still wet underneath
but the top layers were dry and it created that frizzy, homeless look I was so not
fond of. I totally needed a better conditioner.

All the parking spots in front of my building were taken, so I had to park in the
back of Dad’s bar. When I grabbed Margaret and climbed out of Misery, I realized the
SUV in my spot belonged to my uncle Bob. He would pay and pay dearly. With his life.
Or a twenty. Depending on my mood.

I took the stairs to my floor and heard hammering coming from the end unit when I
got there. I looked at it longingly. Lovingly. It had the coolest kitchen I’d ever
seen. Mine had a kitchen, but comparing the two would be like comparing the
Mona Lisa
to a drawing I once did of a girl named Mona Salas. Her head kept ending up on her
left shoulder and she had really big boobs. We were in kindergarten. Though I liked
to think of that drawing as some form of extrasensory perception, because when Mona
got boobs, she got boobs to spare. Clearly that drawing was irrefutable proof that
I could see into the future.

“Where have you been?”

I stepped into my apartment and met Uncle Bob’s glare with one of my own. “Out trying
to pass myself off as a movie producer to get hot guys to sleep with me. Where have
you been?”

Uncle Bob ignored my perfectly worded question and handed me a file. “Here’s what
I’ve got on the arsonist. He sticks to old buildings and houses, but that probably
won’t last.”

Without missing the look of concern that flashed across his face when he saw Margaret
in my arms, I placed her along with my bag on the breakfast bar and took the file.
“I need to do a little research,” I said, heading for the bathroom and my toothbrush
while reading. “I know the basic psychological profile of the everyday arsonist, but
nothing that would impress anyone of import. And now that he’s killed someone—”

“He didn’t,” he said, interrupting. “The homeless woman was already dead when the
building went up. From what the ME could tell, she probably died of pneumonia about
two days earlier.”

“Oh, but you’re still on the case?” I asked, studying the guy’s profile while squeezing
toothpaste onto the bristles.

“Decided to stick around, give a hand. And you went out,” he said, his tone pleased.

I said through the bubbles of toothpaste, “Had to. I got a case.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

After rinsing, I headed back that way, still looking over the file. “That’s a negatory.
But I’d like to keep that option open. You know, if I get in trouble.”

“So, you’ll be telling me all about it by tomorrow afternoon. Have you talked to your
dad?”

“Negatory times two. This guy seems to be very precise in what he’s burning down.
I’m assuming there’s no insurance angle?”

“Not a single one. Different owners. Different insurance companies. We can’t find
a single thread connecting them.”

“Hey,” I said, thinking about the news show I’d seen. “Do you guys have any idea who
those Gentlemen Thieves are? Those bank robbers?”

He perked up, clearly interested. “No, do you?”

“Darn. Not really. They just look familiar.” I glanced toward the ceiling in thought.
“Like their shape. I could swear I’ve seen them somewhere.”

The door opened, and Cookie waltzed in with her twelve-year-old daughter, Amber, in
tow.

“Well, if you figure it out, give me a call, okay?”

“Will do.”

Cookie offered an absent wave to Ubie, barely taking note of him. But he noticed her.
Both his pulse and his interest rose. So either he was still pining over Cookie or
he was having a heart attack. I voted for pining.

“Hey, Robert,” she said, dumping an armful of groceries on my counter. “I’m going
to try out some of these appliances before we send them back. Who knows, I may wonder
where they’ve been all my life.”

“What is all this anyway?” he asked, indicating the boxes with a nod of his head.

Amber spoke up then. “Hey, Uncle Bob.” She gave him a quick hug. “This is Charley’s
attempt to cope with her feelings of insecurity and helplessness. In a sad effort
to gain control over her life again, she has turned to hoarding.”

“For heaven’s sake,” I said, offering Cookie my best glower, “I’m not a hoarder.”

“Don’t look at me.” She pointed to the fruitcake of her loins.

“We watched a documentary at school,” Amber said. “I learned a lot.”

“Obviously, but for your information, I am not attempting to hoard control over my
sad … helplessness.”

“Oh, yeah?” Her eyes narrowed into a challenge if I’d ever seen one.

“Yeah,” I said, following suit, trying not to grin.

“Then why do you wear that gun everywhere you go?”

“Why does everyone have to give Margaret a hard time?”

She raised one brow. “You’ve never carried one before.”

“I’ve never been tortured within an inch of my life before, either.”

“My point exactly,” she said, but her face softened, and I realized I shouldn’t have
brought that up. Apparently my being tortured not fifty feet from her had caused her
no small amount of distress. Or nightmares. “And I’m sorry for making it so rudely,”
she continued.

Cookie put a hand on her shoulder.

“No,” I said, stepping forward and taking her lovely chin into my hand. “I’m sorry
that happened, Amber. And I’m very sorry you were so close when it did.”

I’d never told her that the man who attacked me had been in the room with her for
God only knew how long before I showed up. I’d never even told Cookie, and I never
kept secrets from her. But I had no idea how she would take it, knowing that the wreckage
from my life had spilled over into hers. Had almost gotten her daughter—and herself,
for that matter—killed. I just didn’t know how to tell her.

“Well, I wish I’d been closer,” she said, a vehemence thickening her voice. “I would’ve
killed him for you, Charley.”

I pulled her into a hug, her graceful body more bone than flesh. “I know you would’ve.
Of that, I have no doubt.”

“Am I interrupting?”

I looked past Amber as my sister, Gemma, walked in. She had long blond hair and big
blue eyes, which was a bitch growing up with, getting asked questions like, “Why aren’t
you pretty like your sister?” Not that I was bitter.

Gemma and I weren’t super-close growing up. Her insistence that our stepmother was
not an alien monster sent from a tiny settlement somewhere on the seventh ring of
Saturn had tainted any rapport we might have had, sibling or otherwise. But now that
she was a psychiatrist, we could talk about the fact that our stepmother was an alien
monster sent from a tiny settlement somewhere on the seventh ring of Saturn like two
grown adults. Though she still didn’t believe me.

Amber turned. “Hi, Gemma,” she said before heading to my computer. Or trying to head
to my computer. “Can I update my status before I do my homework, Charley?” She craned
her neck so she could see over the wall of boxes. Hopefully she’d find the computer.
I hadn’t seen it in weeks, but surely it was still where I’d left it.

“Sure. What are you going to say?”

“I’m going to tell everyone Mom had
the talk
with me.” She air-quoted the pertinent information.

I snorted and regarded Cookie with a questioning brow. “The one about the birds and
the bees?”

“Oh, no, not that one,” Amber said. “We had that one ages ago.” As tall as she was,
I still lost her when she entered the forest of square trees. But her voice was coming
through the boxes loud and clear. “The one about how guys are really aliens sent to
Earth to harvest the intelligence from young, pliant brains like mine. Apparently,
I won’t be completely safe from their techniques until I’m thirty-seven and a half.”

Cookie shrugged a brow.

“She’s right,” Uncle Bob said, pouring himself a cup of coffee. “I’m actually from
Pluto.”

Gemma put her bag down and came over for a hug, a tradition we’d only recently started
partaking in. I hadn’t seen her in a couple of weeks. After the torture thing, she
was coming over every day. But between work and her pretending she had a social life,
her visits had dwindled to a slow trickle.

“I see you took our last talk to heart.” She offered me her stern face, the one that
used to make me giggle. Now it just made me appreciate her lopsided sense of reality.
Like I took anything she said to heart. We’d been related way too long for that. “Do
you think you have enough small kitchen appliances?”

“We’re working on that,” Cookie said as Uncle Bob gave Gemma one of his big bear hugs.

“Yes, we are,” he concurred.

“Well, good,” Gemma said, stepping into the kitchen to see what Cookie was up to.
“I just came to check on things, see how you were doing.”

“Okay, well, thanks.”

“How are you sleeping?”

“Alone, sadly.”

“No, I meant
are
you sleeping?”

I figured I could tell her about how I roam my apartment all night like a paranoid
drug addict, checking and rechecking the locks, making sure the windows were shut
and the door was soundly bolted. I could explain how I would then go to bed only to
lie there conjuring images of burglars and serial killers with every creak and groan
the old building had to offer. But then she’d only insist on medicating me. A prospect
I refused to consider.

“Of course I’m sleeping. What else would I be doing at night?”

“
Not
sleeping.” She appraised me with a knowing gaze, probing, measuring my reaction.
Freaking psychiatrists.

I let a carefree smile part my lips and said, “I’m sleeping just fine.”

“Good. Because you look a little sleep deprived.”

“Is that your years of training talking?”

“No, that’s the dark circles under your eyes talking.”

“I’m not sleep deprived.”

“Wonderful. I’m glad.”

She wasn’t glad. I could feel suspicion on her every suspicious breath.

So, Cookie was here to check out my new appliances that I would never use. Amber was
here to use my computer, of which they had two in their apartment across the hall.
Uncle Bob came all this way just to give me a file. And Gemma came over to check on
me. I hadn’t had this much company since I had my apartment-warming party and invited
the UNM Lobo football team. Only about twelve of those guys would actually fit inside,
so the party spilled out into the hall. Mrs. Allen, the elderly woman in apartment
2C, has never stopped thanking me. And every time she did, her voice got this husky
tone to it and she would wriggle her brows. I always wondered just what happened that
night to make her so appreciative. Maybe she got a little on the side. Or copped a
few feels. Good for her either way.

But with this many people in my apartment, and with all of us surrounded by a jungle
of boxes, I was beginning to feel claustrophobic. And wary. Especially when Cookie
kept throwing secretive glances at Ubie. I should have known she was too dismissive
of him when she came in. She usually grinned like a schoolgirl at a boy band concert.
They were totally up to something.

I faced my well-meaning but garishly obnoxious group of friends and/or family members,
trying to decide, if this were a video game and they’d all been turned into zombies,
which one I’d take out first. “Okay, what’s going on?”

“What?” Gemma asked, her expression the picture of innocence.

Her.

Uncle Bob rubbed his five o’clock shadow. Amber peeked over a stack of boxes, her
huge blue eyes watching warily from afar. Or, well, a few feet away. Cookie was looking
at me from behind a set of instructions for the electric pressure cooker, fooling
absolutely no one. Unless she could read instructions in French. And upside down.
And Gemma propped onto a barstool to examine her nails.

“We’ve been worried about you,” Uncle Bob said, shrugging one shoulder.

Gemma nodded. “Right, so we thought we’d come over and make sure everything was okay.”

“All of you?” I asked.

She nodded again, a little too enthusiastically.

My brows slid together, and I regarded Uncle Bob, my expression a mask of bitter disappointment,
knowing he’d cave before anyone else, the old softy.

He held up a hand. “Now, Charley, you have to admit, your behavior has been a little
erratic lately.”

I crossed my arms. “When is my behavior
not
erratic?”

“She has a point,” he said to Gemma.

“No,” she replied, mimicking me by crossing her arms as well, “she doesn’t.”

I sighed in utter annoyance and strode around the breakfast bar to get to Mr. Coffee.

“Did the stain come out?”

“What stain?” I asked, pouring a cup of Heaven on Earth.

She pointed to a section of my living room I referred to as Area 51, where a huge
pile of boxes cleverly disguised as a mountain sat. It served a purpose: to conceal
that area of the room. That particular section. That black hole of turmoil and disorder.
I’d shoved box after box over it as they came in so I didn’t have to look at it, so
I didn’t accidently get sucked in by the gravitational force of millions of solar
masses. I knew how crazy it sounded, but burying the place where I was once cut to
pieces, shoving it under a mountain of shiny new products, seemed like a good idea
at the time.