Medium Rare: (Intermix) (5 page)

Rose peered over his shoulder. “Not local.”

“Con artists tend to move around.” He flipped Alana DuBois’s picture back over. “Looks like she’s in her thirties here. Wonder how old she is now.”

Rose wrinkled her forehead as she studied the photograph. “No telling.”

She paused as he unlocked his car door and tossed the picture on the seat. “What are you going to do now?”

“Show this around. See if anyone can tell me any more about her.”

“Show it to whom?”

He leaned back against the side of the car. “I’ll show it to the cops in the Fraud Division. The ones who deal with con men, bunco artists, phony psychics, fortune-tellers, and the occasional medium.”

“I thought fortune-telling was legal.”

“It’s all legal, as long as you stay within the bounds. Don’t threaten people with dire things if they don’t give you cash. Don’t tell them the spirits want them to invest in Nigerian bank accounts. As long as fortune-tellers just tell fortunes and mediums just talk to spooks, and that’s what the people paid for in the first place, it’s legal.”

Rose watched him with narrowed eyes. “Suppose the person pays for something above and beyond what’s legal, but he’s satisfied with what he gets in return?”

Evan shrugged. “As long as it isn’t something nasty, like, say, the death of the mark’s mother-in-law, the cops probably won’t get involved. Who’d make the complaint?”

He could swear he saw her shoulders relax slightly. Then she took her car keys out of her purse. “Do you have anything else you want me to work on?”

“Do another search on Bradford. See what you come up with on the local front. What’s he been doing since he moved here? Give me a call tomorrow and we’ll touch base.”

Rose’s lips tightened slightly. “Count on it, Evan.”

Chapter 6

Rose stood watching Evan Delwin’s car turn up Novalis, probably heading for the police station on Nueva. She considered going back into the Nightmare. Augie said he had a referral but hadn’t given her any names.

Not that they needed another commission for Locators right now. They were already behind on the ones they had currently, what with this new Evan Delwin project. Skag was spending a lot of time in spirit spaces, doing who-knew-what but not working on Locators projects.

Rose sighed. She should go back and talk to Augie again. At least he and Rudy had stiff-armed Evan Delwin enough that Delwin shouldn’t be too eager to ask them any questions about Rose herself. She could imagine Augie’s reaction if he tried it. Delwin would be lucky if he got off with nothing worse than abrasions. Which would be a shame, actually. Because Delwin really did have nice eyes.

And good hair—dark and slightly disheveled. And very nice lips.

No, she really didn’t want Augie beating up Evan Delwin, even though there’d been moments during the afternoon when she’d wanted to punch him herself.

She flipped her purse strap over her shoulder.
Screw it.
Truth be told, she didn’t really want to talk to Augie right now. She could always call him later. She didn’t want to do anything except go home, even if it meant she’d have to spend time checking for society news about William Bradford.

And checking in with Skag, too, of course.
Oh joy.

She parked her car in the driveway at the back of the house as she did every day, and then, as she did every day, took a quick detour to the end of the backyard where the ground sloped down to the water.

The San Antonio River flowed wide and smooth between grassy banks. On the far side a man and woman pushed a stroller on the hiking path that ran along the river’s edge.

Rose stepped through her back gate and then ambled down the path on her own side of the river as far as the graceful iron footbridge at Johnson Street, watching a canoe glide lazily with the current. Despite everything, including her resident ghost, when she came home in the evening, she still thanked Grandma Caroline for bequeathing her the house in King William.

After a few minutes of watching the thick green water flow lazily under the bridge, she sighed and headed back home. She jiggled her key in the recalcitrant lock on her rear door for a few moments, then managed to push it open. One of these days, she needed to get a new one. Just another repair on her list. Keeping up a century-old house was a constant chore. She tossed her purse onto a chair in the kitchen, waiting for the inevitable.

“Rose!” Skag bellowed from the living room. “Where have you been? What happened? What did Delwin say?”

Rose sighed again. “Honey, I’m home,” she muttered.

As she walked through the dining room, she glanced longingly out the side window. Afternoon sunlight dappled the lawn under the spreading pecan tree. A glider swing hung invitingly at the end of the wide porch that ran around the first floor. She could be sitting out there with a glass of iced tea and a novel. Instead, she was going to be interrogated by a petulant phantom.

“Rose!” Skag trumpeted again as she walked into the living room.

He was sitting in his favorite chair, more or less. She was never sure exactly how to describe the way Skag occupied space. He didn’t sit—sitting required weight, something Skag didn’t exactly have. On the other hand, he was definitely in the chair, even though the texture of the chintz upholstery was dimly visible through his chest.

Skag’s version of the nasty gossip columnist in
All About Eve
, Addison DeWitt, was impeccable. He looked and sounded exactly like him, and whenever Rose suggested he might want to consider adopting a persona from somebody a little more recent, he reminded her, with a very Addison sneer, about George Sanders and his Oscar.

Skag removed the cigarette holder from his mouth and blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. “Well?”

She gritted her teeth. Since the smoke was spectral, she could neither smell it nor inhale it. And the possibility of anything harming Skag’s health was clearly a nonissue. Still, she didn’t allow living people to smoke in her house.

“I wish you wouldn’t—”

“—smoke in here,” Skag finished for her. “Yes, so you’ve said. I’m ignoring it. Now tell me about Delwin.” He regarded her with narrowed eyes, smoothing a hand across his hair.

She flopped into the chair across from his. “Delwin was intrigued enough to follow up on Alana DuBois. We found a picture of her at the Nightmare and he’s checking with the cops to see if anyone knows anything about her.”

Skag raised one perfectly curved eyebrow. “You went to the Nightmare? Alone?”

“It was the middle of the afternoon, and I was with Delwin. I don’t know what you think could happen to me down there anyway. Augie’s big enough to scare off anyone short of Godzilla.”

He tapped his cigarette holder against his glass ashtray. “Augie isn’t exactly a reliable protector.”

“I’ll pick up some pepper spray. Don’t worry about it. I can look out for myself.”

He closed his eyes in exasperation, blowing another cloud of smoke. “We’ll discuss it another time. Did Delwin have any ideas about Alana DuBois?”

“You mean aside from dismissing her repeatedly as a lying confidence trickster? He’s going to get back to me after he checks with the cops.”

She rubbed the back of her neck. The tension she’d built up following Delwin around was finally beginning to ease. “He’s a real pain in the ass. Are you sure this whole thing is necessary?”

“You’ve handled skeptics before. Don’t tell me you’re going to let this one get under your skin. I thought you were disguising yourself as a dowdy librarian.”

She sighed. “It’s not a disguise. I am a librarian. Or anyway I was. I can deal with Delwin if I have to. The question is, why do I have to? Have you found out anything useful about Alana DuBois?”

Skag exhaled thoughtfully, watching the smoke rise toward the shadowy ceiling. “In a way, perhaps. So far I’ve been unable to find anyone who had any contact with her. On the other hand, I’ve also been unable to locate DuBois herself, which may or may not mean she’s still alive.”

“May or may not?”

He shrugged. “Perhaps I simply haven’t found her yet. Alana DuBois’s disappearance strikes me as mysterious. And I detest mysteries. Particularly when they concern mediums.”

“You think DuBois disappeared because she was a medium?” A quick prickle of unease drifted along Rose’s spine.

Skag shook his head. “It’s hard to tell. Mediums like Alana DuBois do move around a great deal, particularly when they’ve exhausted the possibilities in a given location. On the other hand, it’s troubling that this one managed to disappear after she contacted Delwin about Bradford.”

“What’s to say she didn’t just take off? That’s what Delwin thinks.”

“Delwin strikes me as a devotee of Occam’s razor, meaning he’ll always accept a plausible explanation rather than a melodramatic one.” He tapped spectral ashes into his spectral ashtray. “Unfortunately, the supernatural reeks of melodrama.”

“You would know,” Rose muttered.

“I, of course, am the exception.” He gave her a chilly smile. “At any rate, we need to find out what happened to Alana DuBois. It’s a matter of safety—judging possible threats to our enterprise. If we find she simply went looking for a bigger score and that Bradford is innocuous, you can bid Delwin farewell and proceed with our business.”

Her lips tightened. “And if we find she didn’t and Bradford isn’t?”

“We’ll decide precisely what to do when and if that happens.” He glanced around the room, looking for all the world as if he were avoiding her gaze.

“What aren’t you telling me?” she asked quietly.

His eyes glowed briefly in the gathering darkness. “Ah, Rose, such cynicism is really unattractive in one so young.”

She snorted. “I repeat—what aren’t you telling me? What’s really going on? Did you find out anything about her séances?”

“As it happens, I was able to find someone who was actually in attendance at Ms. DuBois’s last séance.”

“I assume you don’t mean a living participant.”

His eyebrow arched. “Of course not. My contacts with the living are limited to you.”

“Lucky me. Does that mean Alana DuBois was the real deal, that she really was in contact with the Other Side?”

Skag blew another cloud of smoke. “She had some basic sensitivity to the presence of the dead, but she had no idea she was really in contact with anyone. She was completely untutored. The séance itself was little more than a theatrical performance.”

“Okay, what happened at this particular performance?”

“According to my source, the séance started about ten minutes late because one of the guests got lost. It was the night of that unusual heavy fog.”

She nodded, thinking back. “That was just last week. I didn’t know her séance was so recent.”

“Ms. DuBois began by asking for a moment of silent meditation. Then she became confused.”

Rose glanced up at him. “Confused how?”

“My source said she lost track of what was going on. She became disoriented, as if she was having difficulty remembering what was supposed to happen at the séance.”

Rose’s mouth twisted slightly. “Maybe she was in contact with the spirits after all. The distilled variety.”

He shook his head. “My source didn’t say anything about her being drunk. He said she pulled herself together after that and began asking the participants questions about what they wanted to ask her spirit guide.”

“Spirit guide? I thought you said she didn’t have one.”

“She didn’t. Apparently, Ms. DuBois called her imaginary guide Angelus and described him as a resident of Ireland.”

“Terrific. She watched
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
.”

“Possibly. The rest of the séance was strictly routine. She passed on so-called messages from the spirit world to the participants for around an hour and a half, and then she left for home.”

“And disappeared?”

“As far as I can tell, yes.”

“That’s . . . unsettling.” Rose rubbed a hand across her suddenly tense shoulders. “What do you think happened to her?”

“I have a few theories.” Skag took a quick drag on his cigarette. “Nothing I can share with you yet. Should things become more definite, I’ll fill you in. Particularly if things become more dangerous.”

Rose frowned. “I didn’t think being a medium was supposed to be particularly dangerous.”

“Normally, it isn’t. Occasionally events can become more . . . threatening.”

She studied him for a moment, then shrugged, picking up an envelope from the coffee table. “What about the jobs we’re doing now? We just got another note from Lourdes Graziano. She wonders how we’re doing at finding out where and when her great-uncle Eloy bought that ghastly painting that turns out to be worth a mint if it’s real.”

Skag ground out his cigarette, tossing the butt into the ashtray and pocketing the holder. “I’ll check on the provenance with Great-uncle Eloy myself. At this time of day he should be well sloshed on martinis. And he tends to be a garrulous soul. Until later, Rose, my treasure.”

He faded gradually until he was only a shadow before disappearing into the evening twilight. A lingering haze of smoke hung in the air above the chair, and then it, too, dissipated.

Rose stared across the room. She’d ceased long ago to be frightened by Skag’s sudden entrances and exits. Nonetheless, she couldn’t help wondering where ghosts went to become sloshed on martinis. She pictured a forties nightclub populated entirely by spirits. The Spook Club, perhaps, or the Corpseacabana.

She wouldn’t mind a little sloshing herself, but drinking alone was pathetic. She didn’t pause to consider just why Evan Delwin’s face popped into her mind at that point as she headed for her computer to spend a couple of hours tracing William Bradford’s exploits in San Antonio.

***

Harry Dominguez was on his computer when Evan arrived at the police substation. He glanced up with a grimace before returning to his hunt-and-peck. “What’s up? If it’s anything that requires more than five minutes, you’re out of luck. I’ve got to finish this report by this evening.”

“Shouldn’t take that long. I’ve got a name for you to check for priors.” Evan found a metal visitor’s chair at an adjoining desk and pulled it up beside Harry so that he could peer over his shoulder. “Another medium.”

Harry’s grimace intensified. “I don’t have time for this, Evan.”

Evan gave him a bland smile and waited.

Harry sighed. “Okay, you bastard, who is it?”

“Her.” Evan handed him the photograph. “The name’s supposedly Alana DuBois.”

Harry raised an eyebrow. “Supposedly?”

“You know anybody who’s actually named Alana DuBois? Particularly somebody who talks to spirits for a living?”

Harry stared at the photograph for a few minutes, brow wrinkled in something close to thought. “Doesn’t look familiar, but I don’t know every medium working in San Antonio, particularly if she stays under the radar. What’s she done?”

“Nothing I know of.”

“So why do you want to know about her?” Harry handed back the photo. “Looking up innocent citizens can get a man in trouble, Delwin, even if they’re mediums.”

“She’s disappeared. And she’s got a connection to Bradford. I just want to make sure she didn’t end up at the bottom of the river. And I need to know if she’s got a record.”

“What’s her Bradford connection?”

“Somebody left me a voice mail saying she had information about Bradford. She disappeared before I could track her down. She hasn’t been back to her apartment for over a week.”

Harry shook his head. “So why do you think she needs to be looked for? What’s to say she didn’t just take off? Are her relatives worried? Did she miss some appointment she was supposed to show up at? Did the family silver go missing in the house where she did a séance?”

“I don’t have any evidence that she didn’t take off, and to answer your other questions, not that I know of, not that I know of, and of course not because that would be a crime and you’d already have heard about it.” Evan sighed. “Look, Harry, we’ve both got stuff to do here. Could you just check her out for me?”