Ghosts of Christmas Past (7 page)

Al grinned. “Feel up to a little lesson in grand theft auto, Officer Alvarez?”

“Is that allowed, Captain?”

“Oh hell yes. So long as it solves the case.” He buttoned his coat and held the door open for her. “After you.”

Huh. She might even have blushed at his exaggerated gesture. Noir said he was charming every now and then. He never knew when that was.

Chapter Six

“I put in your anniversary as Salvatore's password and it worked, Cassandra, but all the thumb drive shows me is a series of numbers. I can't make sense of it.” Lucy sat back in the desk chair and rubbed her eyes. “Sorry, I thought I could sort it out.”

“I can't either.” Cassandra stood and stared at the towering levels of metal shelving against the outer wall. “You could do great things with all this leftover metal.”

“I'll add it to my to-do list.”

“I could make this look awesome, given time.” She turned around. “Your cop buzz you back yet?”

“No.”
I hate waiting.

“I hate waiting,” Cassandra said. “I want to look for Salvatore myself.”

Lucy closed the thumb drive window. It was odd Al hadn't at least texted her back, even with the museum murder to solve. Here was their chance to work on a case, and he had told her to sit on her hands.

“If we were to look for your guy, where would we start?” Lucy asked.

“I wish I knew.” Cassandra stared at the calendar page, the postcard and the knick-knack again. “Funny you should grab this from Sal's office. I made it by slicing up a menu at a hole-in-the-wall place where we ate two weeks ago.”

“How did you get the paper to stay in this shape?”

“I sprayed it with a clear-glue base.”

“Um, cool.”

Cassandra set the little totem down and pulled out her phone. She checked her messages and drew back her hand to throw the phone against the wall in frustration.

“You shouldn't. It'll cost to replace.”

Cassandra carefully set it on the coffee table. “I miss the old phones and the days when you could slam down the receiver with finality. But, you're right. I lost a phone not too long ago. Even with insurance, the replacement was two hundred bucks.”

“Did you track your lost phone first to see if you could find it?”

“No, I didn't have tracking on that one but I made sure to get it on this one. Of course, I never lose this one.”

“Yeah, tracking is awesome. Oh. Damn, I should of thought of this before. Cassandra, is Salvatore on the same phone plan as you?”

“Yeah, it was cheaper that way—oh wait, I get it!” Cassandra snapped to her feet. “I could track his phone. I'm an idiot for not thinking of that right away. I'm contacting the carrier right now.” She punched in the number on the keyboard.

“It's possible Salvatore isn't at the same place as his phone.” Better Cassandra face a worst-case scenario.

“It's a place to start.” Cassandra held up a finger as someone picked up on the other side. Lucy grabbed a pad and paper from the computer area and put it on the table in front of Cassandra.

“I'll hold… Okay… I know, crazy how they go missing… Okay… Great.” Cassandra wrote down an address. “I know, you only have its last-known location. Thanks so much for your help.”

Cassandra held up the pad when she was done. “Son of a bitch.”

“You know where it is?” Lucy asked.

“It's the restaurant I was just talking about. It's called Rickey's. She serves the most awesome pie.”

“Pie? That sounds worth a visit even if your guy isn't there.”

“It is,” Cassandra said. “You game?”

Lucy checked her phone one more time. Nothing. Snooze and lose, Al. “But what are the odds of finding Salvatore still there? He can't stay overnight at a restaurant.”

“Well, there's a place to crash at Rickey's too. There are a few businesses hiding in that underground.” Cassandra cleared her throat. “All off the books.”

“Let's go, then.” Lucy tucked her phone in the pocket of her coat.

Cassandra closed her hand around Lucy's wrist. “You have to promise not to tell your cop about this place.”

“He's not going to care about illegal businesses.”

“I don't know him. And we already had cops chasing us today.”

“They weren't cops, they were city hall rent-a-guards.”

“Lucy. Promise.”

What the hell. What Al didn't know couldn't hurt him. And there might be pie.

“Okay.”

“You going to go invisible on me when we get there?” Cassandra asked on the drive across town.

“That's probably the best way to search the place,” Lucy said. “Remember, if Salvatore wanted you to find him, he'd have called you by now. You may not like what we discover, if we find anything at all.”

“He could be a lying, cheating bastard. I know. But I need to find out, one way or another.”

“I sure as hell understand that,” Lucy said.

Lucy had thought city hall was messed up, but the neighborhood Cassandra drove to made her even sadder. City hall was offices. Business.

This had once been a thriving community where people raised their kids, worked hard, hung out and lived a good life. Home.

Now, much like the neighborhood near the abandoned warehouse, every other house here was burned out, only shells left. No doubt the copper pipes had been stripped out too for their resale value.

There were a few houses in the neighborhood with beautiful yards and newer cars in the driveway. Lucy wondered how the residents managed to protect them.

Once, the neighborhood block of corner stores must have been busy and full. Now the drugstore was missing half its roof. The dry cleaners had no windows and fire had charred the roof. It was just as well they hadn't had a big snowstorm yet or else the roof might have completely fallen in.

“How can anything thrive here?” she asked.

Cassandra parked around the corner from the stores. “I could say the same about that neighborhood you and your cop built up. Or our artists' collective. Or the gardens on the other side of town. Sheer stubborn refusal to look reality in the eye.”

Lucy smiled. “I get that.”

“I bet you do.”

Cassandra put up a hand to shade out the midday sun. “You going to do your invisible thing now?”

“Sure,” Lucy said, already having done it.

Cassandra did a complete three-sixty. “Jesus, Lucy. Give me some warning.”

“Noir. Call me that when I'm working.”

Cassandra rolled her eyes. “Sure, Shadow. Follow me.”

Cassandra navigated the wreckage inside the burned-out dry cleaners with ease, surprisingly nimbly. But then, she welded metal and climbed ladders for a living. What were downed timbers and scattered shingles to her?

At the far back, a door hung half off its hinges, revealing stone steps to what Lucy presumed was a basement. Cassandra slipped past the door without hesitation and knocked on a shiny steel door at the bottom of the stairs. Lucy looked around, but the shadows in the basement prevented her from seeing much.

Locks clicked, the steel door opened and the room was flooded with fluorescent light. “C'mon in, babe,” said an older woman with her head covered by a do-rag. Lucy looked closer and tagged the host as Indian, maybe midforties, maybe younger.

As Lucy walked inside, she smelled pie. Pumpkin spice pie. Perfect for the holidays. Her mouth watered and her stomach rumbled.

Their host laughed. “Can't wait, can you?”

Cassandra rubbed her stomach and her gaze darted around the room. “No way, not for your food, Rickey. Hey, is Salvatore here?”

“Are you kidding? He came in here last night, headed to the bar in the foulest mood I've ever seen, and I've seen quite a few. He fell asleep slumped over a table. A couple of the regulars helped him to the back and he's sleeping it off in the cot room. You two have a fight?”

“Looks like we did, though he forgot to tell me about it,” Cassandra said through gritted teeth.

Rickey laughed. “Sounds like, whatever it was, he got the raw end of the deal. Sit down, have pie. He's not going anywhere, and you might as well have some before you deal with him.”

Cassandra practically fell into the first available chair in the “restaurant”. She rubbed her temples and took deep breaths. “He's alive,” Cassandra breathed. “And now I'm gonna kill him.”

“I'll bring you our special, calming tea blend along with the pie,” Rickey said.

Lucy nudged Cassandra's shoulder. Invisible or not, she was not leaving this place without tasting that wonderful-smelling pie. And she was coming back with Al. He loved pie.

Cassandra cleared her throat. “Rickey, make that two slices of pie. I'm, um, really hungry.”

“Sure, honey.”

“Thanks,” Lucy whispered.

“Thank me by making Salvatore get his ass out here,” Cassandra muttered.

“Okay.”

Lucy glanced around the room as she left. The concrete walls were draped with handmade quilts and framed cross-stitch designs honoring not only Christmas but Kwanzaa and something Lucy guessed was from the Hindu religion. Handmade snowflakes filled the walls between them.

The mismatched furniture was scrubbed and polished; the smell of pea soup and waffles mingled with the pie scent wafting from the back area near the kitchen.

This place was awesome.

And, somehow, it reminded her of Al making chili for her. Hand cooked, hand served and with love since Rickey probably wasn't making much money from it. She hoped Rickey's food tasted better than Al's chili, though.

Dammit, Al should be here. He would love Rickey and her place. His loss.

Lucy leaned over to Cassandra. “Which way to the cots?”

Cassandra sat up straighter and put her hand over her mouth, to cover that she was speaking to thin air, Lucy guessed. “Through the kitchen, to the left, straight back.”

“Gotcha. Stay put.”

The smells were only more enticing in the kitchen. The pie was out of reach, but she swiped a warm biscuit from a tray cooling on the edge of a table. Once, people would've been able to see the food in her hand, though not her. The biscuit would have appeared to float midair. But she could munch in peace now, because her telepathic order to not be seen would cover it.

So much better.

Beyond the kitchen, the corridors were a maze. Left, Lucy remembered, and turned at the first corner. Light receded and she worried about accidentally bumping into someone or something. She stopped, concentrated, and a small light appeared in her hand. She was learning how to control that too.

With enough light to avoid obstacles, she followed the sound of snoring, skipped past empty mop buckets and found herself in a room full of people slumbering on cots.

No decorations here, just bare basement walls.

Salvatore was sitting upright on a cot on the far end, just under a grimy basement window that light tried but mostly failed to penetrate.

He rubbed his eyes, sighed and looked up. “Dammit, I should never have had that last whiskey,” he muttered. “Cassandra is going to kill me.”

Lucy walked over and loomed over him. “Do you have any idea how worried Cassandra's been about you?”

Salvatore shot to his feet. “Who said that? Aw crap, now I'm hallucinating. I thought that only happened when you were drunk, not during the hangover.”

Rickey poked her head in the doorway. “Your woman's here, Italian. Better come make your apologies. She looks wrung out. You scared her.”

Salvatore nodded and rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah sure.”

Lucy thought about becoming visible so she could start asking Salvatore questions about the thumb drive, what had sent him on a bender and what the hell he had on Schneider, but he'd probably open up better to Cassandra alone.

“Man up,” Salvatore muttered to himself and started toward the doorway. “And make damn sure we get the hell out of this fucking city.”

Behind them, the grimy basement window shattered, and a metal canister rolled on the floor.

Grenade!

Lucy dove for Salvatore, knocking them both to the floor. She pulled a cot over them just as the grenade exploded.

A burst of light and a roar of sound filled the room. Her ears popped. Sight ceased. She put her hand over her chest to make sure she was still breathing and at least felt her heart beating.

Was this what everyone experienced when she let loose her light bursts?

Salvatore pushed her off him and she let him. He groped around and she had to knock his hand off her knee. As sight came back, she could see his mouth was moving.

Could he see her or not? She concentrated and shifted back to visibility. He didn't need to be further freaked out and someone could easily stumble into her in the middle of a panic.

The room was a tangle of groaning people strewn about, but all of them were still moving. That meant the grenade wasn't an explosive meant to kill them, but to scare and disable. It'd done that, for sure.

Salvatore headed straight for the door, his mouth open in a yell that she couldn't hear. But the panic on his face was evident, and he knocked over a mop bucket on the way back to the restaurant.

Lucy banged her ear with the flat of her hand as she ran and followed Salvatore. Everything was still silence, even when she knew there must be noise from people scrambling or screaming.

For the first time in a long time, fear crept in. Sweat poured down her back. Who had attacked? Was her hearing loss permanent?

She wanted Al. She wanted him to start kicking ass and taking names and stop whoever was outside.

The kitchen was deserted. Everyone was crowded into the dining room and the outer hallway. Rickey was at the head of the group, gesturing with a dishrag. Noir guessed she was trying to get everyone to calm down until they knew what was going on.

Lucy peered around for Cassandra. A blur passed her as Cassandra threw herself into Salvatore's pudgy arms.

Tears ran down their faces as they hugged. Cassandra was saying something; so was Salvatore. Even without sound, it was still beautiful.

Cassandra tapped her lover's shoulder and he let her go. Her mouth moved but Lucy still had no idea what was being said. She shook her head and knocked her ear with the palm of her hand.