The mummy case (21 page)

“
Anthony, we do not bite in this household. Tammy, give me the remote control.”

“
But mom,” said Anthony, in that shriekingly high-pitched voice that he used to irritate me. “I was watching ‘Pokemon’ and she turned the channel.”

“
We each get one half hour after school,” Tammy said smugly. “And you were well into
my
half hour.”

“
But you were on the phone talking to
Richaaard
.”

“
Tammy, give your brother the remote control. He gets to finish his TV show. You lost your dibs by talking to
Richaaard
.” They both laughed. “I have a client in my office. If I hear any more loud voices, you will both be auctioned off on eBay. I could use the extra money.”

I left them and headed back to the office. Kingsley was perusing my bookshelves. He looked at me before I had a chance to say anything and raised his eyebrows.

“
You have an interest in the occult,” he said, fingering a hardback book. “In particular, vampirism.”

“
Yeah, well, we all need a hobby,” I said.

“
An interesting hobby, that,” he said.

I sat behind my desk. It was time to change the subject. “So you want me to find the man who shot you five times. Anything else?”

He moved away from my book shelves and sat across from me again. He raised a fairly bushy eyebrow. On him, the bushy eyebrow somehow worked.

“
Anything else?” he asked, grinning. “No, I think that will be quite enough.”

And then it hit me. I
thought
I recognized the name and face. “You were on the news a few months back,” I said suddenly.

He nodded once. “Aye, that was me. Shot five times in the head for all the world to see. Not my proudest moment.”

Did he just say
aye
? I had a strange sense that I had suddenly gone back in time. How far back, I didn’t know, but further enough back where men said
aye
.

“
You were ambushed and shot. I can’t imagine it would have been anyone’s proudest moment. But you survived, and that’s all that matters, right?”

“
For now,” he said. “Next on the list would be to find the man who shot me.” He sat forward. “Everything you need is at your disposal. Nothing of mine is off limits. Speak to anyone you need to, although I ask you to be discreet.”

“
Discretion is sometimes not possible.”

“
Then I trust you to use your best judgment.”

Good answer. He took out a business card and wrote something on the back. “That’s my cell number. Please call me if you need anything.” He wrote something under his number. “And that’s the name and number of the acting homicide detective working my case. His name is Sherbet, and although I found him to be forthcoming and professional, I didn’t like his conclusions.”

“
Which were?”

“
He tends to think my attack was nothing but a random shooting.”

“
And you disagree?”

“
Wholeheartedly.”

We discussed my retainer and he wrote me a check. The check was bigger than we discussed.

“
I don’t mean to be rude,” said Kingsley as he stood and tucked his expensive fountain pen inside his expensive jacket, “but are you ill?”

I’ve heard the question a thousand times.

“
No, why?” I asked brightly.

“
You seem pale.”

“
Oh, that’s my Irish complexion, lad,” I said, and winked.

He stared at me a moment longer, and then returned my wink and left.

Also Available on Barnes & Noble Nook:

The Body Departed

A Ghost Story

by

J.R. Rain

(read on for a sample)

1.

I stepped through the wall and into my daughter’s bedroom.

She was sleeping contentedly on her side. It was before dawn and the building was quiet. The curtains were open and the sky was black beyond. If there were any stars, they were lost to the L.A. smog. The curtains were covered with ponies, as was most of the room. A plastic pony light switch, a pony bed lamp, pony wallpaper and bedspread. Someday she would outgrow her obsession with ponies, although I secretly hoped not.

A girl and her pony. It’s a beautiful thing.

I stepped closer to my sleeping daughter, and as I did so she shifted slightly towards me. She mewed like a newborn kitten. Crimson light from her alarm clock splashed over her delicate features, highlighting a slightly upturned nose and impossibly big eyes. Sometimes when she slept her closed eyelids fluttered and danced. But not tonight. Tonight she was sleeping deeply, no doubt dreaming of sugar and spice and everything nice.

Or of Barbies and boys and everything in-between.

I wondered if she ever dreamed of me. I’m sure she did at times. Were those dreams good or bad? Did she ever wake up sad and missing her father?

Do you
want
her to wake up sad?
I asked myself.

No
, I thought.
I wanted her to wake up rested, restored and full of peace.

I stepped away from the far wall and glided over to the small chair in the corner of her room. We had made the chair together one weekend, a father/daughter project for the Girl’s Scouts. To her credit, she did most of the work.

I sat in it now, lowering my weightless body into it, mimicking the act of sitting. Unsurprisingly, the chair didn’t creak.

As I sat, my daughter rolled over in her sleep, facing me. Her aura, usually blue and streaked with red flames, often reacted to my presence, as it did now. The red flames crackled and gravitated toward me like a pulsating static ball, sensing me like I sensed it.

As I continued to sit, the lapping red flames grew in intensity, snapping and licking the air like solar flares on the surface of the sun. My daughter’s aura always reacted this way to me. But only in sleep. Somehow her subconscious recognized, or perhaps it was her soul. Or both. And from this subconscious state, she would sometimes speak to me, as she did now.

“
Hi, daddy.”

“
Hi, baby,” I said.

“
Mommy said you got hurt real bad.”

“
Yes, I did.”

“
Mommy said that a bad man hurt you and you got killed.”

“
Mommy’s right, but I don’t want you thinking about that right now, okay?”

“
Okay,” she said sleepily. “Am I dreaming, daddy?”

“
Yes, baby.”

We were quiet and she shifted subtly, lifting her face toward me, her eyes still closed in sleep. There was a sound from outside her window, a light tapping. I ignored it, but it came again and again, and then with more consistency. I looked over my shoulder and saw that it was raining. I looked back at my daughter and thought of the rain, remembering how it felt on my skin, on my face. Or, rather, I was
trying
to remember. Lately, such memories of the flesh were getting harder and harder to recall.

“
It’s raining, daddy,” she said.

“
Yes.”

“
Do you live in the rain?”

“
No.”

“
Where do you live, daddy?”

“
I live here, with you.”

“
But you’re dead.”

I said nothing. I hated to be reminded of this, even by my daughter.

“
Why don’t you go to heaven, daddy?”

I thought about that. I think about that a lot, actually. I said, “Daddy still has work to do.”

“
What kind of work?”

“
Good work.”

“
I miss you,” she said. “I miss you so much. I think about you every day. I’m always crying. People at school say I’m a crybaby.”

“
You’re not a crybaby,” I said. “You’re just sad.” My heart broke all over again. “It’s time to go back to sleep, angel.”

“
Okay, daddy.”

“
I love you, sweetie.”

“
I love you, too, daddy.”

I drifted up from the small wooden chair and moved across the room the way I do—silently and easily—and at the far wall I looked back at her. Her aura had subsided, although some of it still flared here and there. For her to relax—to truly relax—I needed to leave her room entirely.

And so I did. Through the wall.

To hell with doors.

2.

I was standing behind him, reading the newspaper from over his shoulder, as I did every morning.

His name was Jerrold and he was close to sixty and close to retirement. He lived alone and seemed mostly happy. He was addicted to internet poker, but, as far as I could tell, that was his only vice.

Thank God.

He turned the paper casually, snapping it taught, then reached for his steaming mug of coffee, heavy with sugar and cream, and took a long sip. I could smell the coffee. Or at least a
hint
of it, just like I could smell a hint of his aftershave and hair gel. My senses were weak at best.

As he set the mug down, some of the coffee sloshed over the rim and onto the back of his hand. He yelped and shook his hand. I could see that it had immediately reddened.

Pain.

I hadn’t known pain in quite a long time. My last memory of it was when I had been working at a friend’s house, cutting carpet, and nearly severed my arm off.

I looked down at my translucent arm now. Although nearly imperceptible, the scar was still there—or at least the ghostly hint of it.

Still cursing under his breath, Jerrold turned back to his paper. So did I. He scanned the major headlines, and I scanned them along with him. After all, he was my hands in this situation.

He read through some local Los Angeles news, mostly political stuff that would have bored me to tears had I tears to be bored with. I glanced over at his coffee while he read, trying to remember what it tasted like. I think I remembered.

I think.

Hot, roasted, bitter and sweet. I knew the words, but I was having a hard time recalling the actual flavor. That scared me.

Jerrold turned the page. As he did so, something immediately caught my eye; luckily, it caught his eye, too.

A piano teacher had been murdered at St. Luke’s, a converted monastery that was now being used as a Catholic church and school. Lucy Randolph was eighty-six years old and just three days shy from celebrating her sixtieth anniversary with her husband.

I had known Mrs. Randolph. In fact, she had been my own music teacher back when I was a student at St. Luke’s. She had been kind to a fault, a source of inspiration and joy to her students, and especially to me.

And now, according to the report, someone had strangled her, leaving her for dead on the very piano she had taught from. Perhaps the very same piano
I
had been taught from.

Damn.

Jerrold clucked his tongue and shook his head and moved on to the next page, but I had seen enough. I stepped away,

“
You’re still young, Jerrold,” I said to him. “Lose fifteen pounds and find someone special—and ditch the gambling.”

As I spoke, the small hairs on the back of his neck stood up and and his aura shifted towards me. He shivered unconsciously and turned the page.

I left his apartment.

3.

We were in Pauline’s apartment.

She was drinking an apple martini and I wasn’t, which was a damn shame. At the moment, I was sitting in an old wingback chair and she was on the couch, one bare foot up on a hand-painted coffee table which could have doubled for a modern piece of abstract art.

“
If you ever need any extra money,” I said, “you could always sell your coffee table on eBay.”

“
It’s not for sale,” she said. “Ever.”

“
What if you were homeless and living on the streets and needed money?”

“
Then I would be homeless and living on the streets with the world’s most bitchen hand-painted coffee table.”

Her name was Pauline and she was a world-famous medium. She could hear me, see me and sometimes even touch me. Hell, she could even read my thoughts, which was a bit disconcerting for me. She was a full-figured woman, with perhaps the most beautiful face I had ever seen. She often wore her long brown hair haphazardly, a look that would surely have your average California girl running back to the bathroom mirror. Pauline was not your average California girl. She wasn’t your average girl by any definition, spending as much of her time in the world of the dead as in the world of the living. Luckily, she just so happened to live in the very building I was presently haunting.