In Too Deep (7 page)

Just like last night, he thought. He had a vague recollection of having gotten lucky the night before that, as well, but his memory was somewhat unreliable when it came to the unimportant stuff. Sometimes it took everything he had to stay focused on his mission.

He hunkered down, bracing his back against the wooden wall of the café, and methodically consumed the chicken dinner. Really, it was a shame the way people threw away good food. All the starving kids in the world and yet folks in the Cove tossed out perfectly edible stuff like chicken and mashed potatoes and peas every night. Same deal with muffins and coffee in the mornings. Damn shame.

He finished the meal and got to his feet. He went back to the garbage can, lifted the lid and deposited the empty take-out container inside.

Adjusting the hood of the long, heavy coat to shield his face from the rain, he resumed his patrol. The pressure in his head had been building again lately. That was not good. It meant something bad was going to happen.

He had discovered the warm, waterproof coat and the boots sitting on top of another trash container in the Cove. He was pretty sure that particular can was located in the alley behind the PI’s office.

The PI was important to Scargill Cove, but Walker wasn’t sure why, not yet, at any rate. He knew what he knew and that was enough. He had gotten the same whispery sense of certainty again when Isabella Valdez arrived in town. He had watched her walk into the Cove that night and known that she belonged there. Just like Jones.

Walker walked behind the row of darkened shops and turned right at the corner. The familiar route took him past the Scar. It was early, not quite seven o’clock. The tavern was still busy. He could hear the voices of the regulars inside. Elvis music drifted out into the night. He paid no attention. Everything was normal in this sector. His job was to keep an eye out for things that were wrong or out of place.

There had already been a couple of very disturbing developments today. Several hours ago Isabella had driven out of town. Jones had followed not long after. Walker had been very relieved when Isabella had returned, but it alarmed him that Jones had not yet come back to town.

He looked in the windows of the bookshop. It had closed recently following the death of the proprietor, a guy named Fitch. The book-seller had keeled over one day down in the basement. Heart attack, the authorities said. But Walker had known from the start that Fitch was bad news, an outsider who did not belong in the Cove. No loss.

He walked some more and checked out the windows of Isabella’s apartment above Toomey’s Treasures. The shades were closed but the lights were on. She was safe inside for the night. That was good. That was the way it should be.

Walker heard the low growl of Jones’s
SUV
in the street. The PI was back in town. The pressure in Walker’s head eased.

Jones parked the big vehicle behind the building that housed the Jones & Jones office. Walker waited in a darkened doorway, hands crammed into his pockets. He watched the upstairs window of the agency, waiting for the lights to go on inside. The lights were almost always on in J&J.

But the lights did not come on tonight. Instead, Fallon Jones emerged on the street and started toward Isabella’s apartment. He carried his computer in one hand and a bulky object wrapped in a blanket under one arm. He walked right past the doorway where Walker stood. Most folks would not have been aware that Walker was there, but Jones always seemed to sense his presence, always acknowledged him.

“Evening, Walker,” Fallon Jones said.

Walker did not respond. He was too stunned. He did not know what Jones was carrying in the blanket, but he recognized the traces of energy emanating from the object.

The pressure in his head abruptly got stronger, becoming almost intolerable. He resumed his rounds in a desperate effort to ease the pain while he tried to decide how to handle the catastrophe that had just struck the Cove.

H
er name was Millicent Bridewell,” Fallon said. “She was a brilliant inventor and a trained clockmaker who lived during the Victorian era. She was also a powerful talent with a very unusual gift for accessing the paranormal properties of glass. All of her inventions include glass of some kind.”

“Like the face of the clock?” Isabella asked.

“Yes.” Fallon looked at the blanket-wrapped clock sitting on the floor of Isabella’s apartment. “Glass is still a big mystery to the Arcane experts. It’s unique in that it has properties of both liquids and solids. Generally speaking, paranormal energy passing through glass has unpredictable effects. But Bridewell figured out how to control the results. She used her talents to create a large number of what she called her clockwork curiosities. They were actually weapons.”

“How many did she make?” Isabella asked.

“No one knows for certain. She operated a legitimate shop that featured beautiful clockwork curiosities. Essentially, her creations were elegant toys for wealthy collectors. But she also ran a side business that catered to a different clientele.”

“What kind of clientele would that be?”

“Folks who wanted other folks such as inconvenient spouses or business partners permanently removed.”

“Got it,” Isabella said. “In other words Mrs. Bridewell ran a murder-for-hire business.”

“Well, in fairness to Mrs. B, she always insisted that the customer had to actually commit the murder. She considered herself an artist, after all, not a professional killer.”

“But she supplied the murder weapon,” Isabella said.

“Which was disguised as a charming example of the clockmaker’s art. The victim never saw it coming until it was too late.”

Fallon took a swallow of the whiskey Isabella had poured for him and let himself sink into the lumpy sofa. A great weariness was seeping into his bones, but it was not the kind of drowsiness that would promote sleep. The whiskey was taking off some of the edge, but it couldn’t touch the deep places. He would not get any real rest tonight. Just as well—he needed to think.

He watched Isabella through half-closed eyes. She was moving around in the minuscule kitchenette, putting together a meal. Her motions were economical, efficient, graceful. He was not hungry, but whatever she was making was starting to smell good.

He had been surprised when she had suggested that he come to her apartment for dinner after he finished with the county cops.
We both need to decompress
, she said. He wasn’t accustomed to decompressing with anyone else, but it had suddenly seemed like an excellent idea.

Isabella’s apartment was a warm, cheerful space filled with thriving green plants and cast-off furniture. The former tenant had disappeared one night, leaving no forwarding address, not an uncommon event in the Cove. Ralph Toomey owned the shabby rooms above his shop. He had offered them to Isabella and told her she could have the previous occupant’s furniture as well.

She had taken the apartment but declined the furniture. Fallon had helped Toomey haul a battered table, a couple of wobbly chairs, an unattractively stained mattress and rusty bedsprings to the town dump.

On the final expedition to the dump, a plastic baggie full of marijuana had fallen out of one ripped cushion.

“Always wondered how he managed to pay the rent,” Toomey remarked, pocketing the baggie. “Guy had no visible means of support. Figured he was in the business.”

“Probably explains why he disappeared in a hurry,” Fallon said.

Scargill Cove was on the fringes of the Emerald Triangle, a tricounty region in Northern California. In these parts it was freely acknowledged that marijuana was the largest cash crop, an economic engine that supported a multitude of businesses from gardening supply stores to gas stations. It also brought with it the usual law enforcement problems.

Toomey contemplated the stained mattress that they had tossed over the cliff into the ravine that served as the Cove’s dump.

“You know,” he said, “Isabella fits right in at the Cove. It’s like she belongs here with the rest of us or something.”

One more lost soul in a town where lost souls constituted the majority of the citizenry, Fallon thought.

When the apartment had been emptied out, Isabella, together with Marge from the café, Harriet Stokes, proprietor of Stokes’s Grocery, and the innkeepers, Violet and Patty, scrubbed the place from top to bottom. The cleaning had been followed by a fresh coat of sunny gold paint.

After the paint had dried, several people in the Cove had offered Isabella replacements for the furnishings and kitchen equipment that had been tossed. She had accepted each used item with glowing pleasure, as if it were a treasured housewarming gift or a valuable antique. The table and chairs and the heavy crockery had come from Marge. The secondhand sofa and the end table were courtesy of Violet and Patty. The Elvis lamps were a gift from Oliver and Fran Hitchcock, owners of the Scar.

The only new furniture in the place was the bed. Everyone in town had witnessed its arrival. The big van bearing the logo of a discount mattress store had blocked the street for half an hour while the new mattress and box springs were unloaded.

Fallon had watched the operation from the window of his office. Keen detective that he was, he had observed that the mattress was a traditional double. Unfortunately, that information was inconclusive. It did not tell him what he really wanted to know. Single people often used double beds.

On the other hand, the size of the mattress could indicate that there was a man in Isabella’s life. If so, the guy had not yet put in an appearance. On the whole, though, the evidence appeared to indicate that Isabella was alone.

Like me
, Fallon thought.

The weariness was getting heavier, weighing him down. He had used a lot of energy to take down the killer. Energy was energy, and when you pulled on your reserves, you had to allow time to recover. But he knew that the soul-deep exhaustion that was sinking into him was more than just the result of having pushed his para-senses to the max. It was not the first time he had killed and it might not be the last but coming to terms with the psychic damage was not getting easier. He knew it never would.

“More whiskey?” Isabella asked, coming toward him with the bottle.

He looked down at the glass he cradled in his hands and was surprised to see that it was empty.

“Yes,” he said. “Thanks.”

She poured out another healthy measure and went back into the kitchenette, where she splashed a little more into her own glass. She knocked back the whiskey with a dashing air and promptly went into a small coughing spasm.

He got up, crossed the room and thumped her lightly between the shoulder blades.

“Thanks,” she managed. She took a deep breath. “Whew. Bad day at Black Rock.”

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, sure. I’m a J&J agent. I can handle the whiskey.”

“I’m surprised you keep a bottle around,” he said. “Thought women liked white wine and pink cocktail drinks.”

“Shows how much you know.”

“Yeah, it does, doesn’t it?”

He looked at the bottle. It was nearly full. He’d heard her crack the seal earlier when she’d opened it and knew that his glass was the first she had poured from it. He wondered how she knew the brand he preferred, and then it dawned on him that she had probably seen the bottle he kept in the bottom drawer of his desk.

What were the odds that she drank the same brand? he wondered. About zero, given all available evidence. That left one tantalizing possibility. She had purchased this particular bottle of whiskey with the express purpose of serving him a drink from it. Something inside him warmed at the thought.

“Isabella.”

“Hmm?” She looked at him with her wonderful eyes.

“I think I’m going to kiss you,” he said.

“Want some advice?”

“Sure.”

“Don’t think about it too much,” she said. “Just do it.”

He set his glass down on the counter, took hers from her hand and put it down as well. He pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

For an instant, she did not respond. A heartbeat later the atmosphere around them exploded with blazing energy. Isabella put her arms around his neck and kissed him back with a fierce, feminine hunger that set his senses on fire.

She might as well have picked up a sledgehammer and used it to shatter the crystalline prison cell in which he had lived most of his adult life. He was suddenly free, wholly consumed by a fever unlike anything he had ever experienced.

“Isabella.” He could barely shape the word. It was as if he were invoking magic. He framed her face in his hands, astonishment and wonder unfurling somewhere inside him.
“Isabella.”

Her mysterious eyes widened briefly, as though she, too, was amazed by what was happening.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I won’t break.”

“I might.”

She smiled again and kissed him just under his jaw.

“No,” she said, sounding very certain. “You won’t. Nothing could break you, Fallon Jones.”

He could not seem to find his breath. The hair on the back of his neck stirred. He tightened his arms around Isabella, pinned her to him and kissed her mouth and then her throat. She responded with a soft cry and an electric passion. She was so delicate and sleek and feminine. He was afraid of crushing her.

He picked her up in his arms.

“Wait,” she said urgently. “The soup.”

He waited while she reached down to turn off the burner. Then he carried her swiftly down the short hall into the small bedroom. He set her on her feet beside the bed. When he started to undress her, he fumbled the business because his hands were trembling.

“It’s been a long time for me,” he warned.

“For me, too,” she said. “But I’m sure we’ll figure it out.”

The sound of his own laughter startled him. Delight gleamed in Isabella’s eyes. She reached up to take down her hair and then she unbuckled his belt.

They undressed each other in a haze of hot, shuddering excitement. Finally Isabella stood before him wearing only her panties. He looked at her, overcome by a sense of wonder. He cupped the gentle swell of one of her breasts in his hand and drew his thumb across the tight little nipple.